HL Deb 22 May 1952 vol 176 cc1347-64

6.12 p.m.

Debate resumed.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

My Lords, the noble Lord who spoke before the Commission was read said that he was a broadcaster. I, too, claim to have had some dealings with the British Broadcasting Corporation in the past few years, although I certainly would not claim his skill and experience. Nevertheless I thought it right to mention the fact lest it should be thought—I hope it will not be thought—that I am in any way influenced in the opinions which I am about to express by any dealings I may have had or might hope to have with the Corporation. Indeed, after the noble Lord's speech, I could readily say that my interests lie in favour of a rapid extension of sponsored broadcasting. But I myself find my opinions directly in the opposite camp to that of sponsored broadcasting. I know that the subject is a difficult one. I know that in a short speech one is bound, to some extent, to seem dogmatic, but since I feel no doubt about the opinions I hold, I think it right to put them forward before your Lordships in the hope that I shall not be regarded as being unduly dogmatic.

I am at least fortified by this reflection. The opinions which I am about to express make no pretence at being original. They have not, until recently, been thought unusual in the Party of which I am a member. They were the opinions of successive Conservative Governments before the war. They represent a policy consistently pursued for twenty-five years by Conservative Governments, of which my own father was a member, and, in the main, subject to a minor criticism which is contained in the Beveridge Report, they represent the successive opinions of Royal Commissions. If, therefore, I seem to be controversial or dogmatic in putting them forward, I hope to be forgiven. But after hearing the Postmaster General's speech, I must say that I was diverted in one respect from my intention. I had intended to deliver a diatribe against the White Paper on certain points, but I realise that what I had attributed to vice must be ascribed to a pardonable ignorance.

I know that it will be difficult to persuade the Government and the Postmaster General to agree with me, or to agree with those who do not like the proposals in the White Paper, but at least I shall attempt to make them understand our case, because at present they manifestly do not. They have not understood the case which they have attempted to demolish. The White Paper has been put forward as a compromise. It is a mistake to confuse inconsistency with compromise. The White Paper is to be condemned not because it is a compromise but because it is inconsistent. The inconsistency can be expressed in two sentences: either the encomium of the B.B.C. contained at the beginning of the White Paper was justified, or it was not. If it was justified, the distinctive features of policy which follow it in the White Paper are both irresponsible and absurd. If, on the other hand, the policy which is contained in the White Paper is not irresponsible and not absurd, the encomium of the B.B.C. with which the paper begins is obviously unjustified and probably insincere. To my mind there is no way out of this dilemma.

The case against the use of sponsored broadcasting has nothing whatever to do with the general controversy regarding the merits of private enterprise and public monopoly. The B.B.C. is not a monopoly in any accepted sense of the word, because it sells nothing. Sponsored broadcasting is not, in the ordinary sense, private enterprise, depending for its revenue upon direct consumers' choice, because the public buys nothing when it gets the broadcast; it buys nothing directly. The peculiar feature of broadcasting is that it must be financed in one of two ways, both of them, to my mind, fundamentally unattractive. Either it must be financed out of taxes, which may be raised by licences or otherwise, or it must be financed out of advertisement revenue. No third method has so far been discovered.

If it is financed out of taxes, clearly of course there is a danger of inefficiency and unattractiveness in the programme. But if it is financed out of advertisements, what is otherwise a danger becomes a certainty. The thing which is destroyed by sponsored or commercial broadcasting, financed out of advertisement revenue, is the integrity of the editorial function. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and indeed the Postmaster-General, said: "Cannot we trust the good taste of our population?" Up to a point we can, of course, but the population is not getting what it wants with commercial broadcasting or sponsored broadcasting of television; it is getting what the advertisers consider a good advertisement medium, and that is not necessarily good broadcasting or what the listener wants.

Take a simple example illustrated by an admirable cartoon in the Daily Express two days ago. Suppose that an advertiser wants to sell toothpaste. He asks himself: "Shall I put on variety or shall I put on a religious service?" Obviously, the more religious he is, and the better his taste, the more he wants variety, because there can be no less suitable advertising medium than a religious service. The public, therefore, must get a kind of broadcasting which is distorted by reason of the fundamental purpose for which the vehicle is used—not broadcasting for its own sake but its use as a medium in which advertisements can live. It is this, and not the defects or demerits of private enterprise, which renders commercial broadcasting fundamentally pernicious.

In the White Paper, curiously, the Government have recognised this. But they have recognised it in a perverse and odd way. They have excluded from their proposed new experiment religious and political broadcasting. They recognise that such broadcasts would be inappropriate to be placed in private hands. But what is the result of that? It is that the alternative programme is intrinsically unbalanced as a programme. Religious and political broadcasting is an essential part of any well-balanced broadcasting programme, and the Government are proposing to give the public an alternative programme which is bad because it is unbalanced, and bad because it is animated by advertising methods rather than the methods of the independent editor, together with the B.B.C. programme, which will be a balanced programme.

The noble Earl the Postmaster General says that this will give the public a wider choice. In a sense, it will. But the public would get an equally wide choice, but of two balanced programmes, if the B.B.C. were given back 15 per cent. of its revenue and allowed to run two alternative balanced programmes. The advantages of giving the public a wider choice have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the advantages or the disadvantages of sponsored broadcasting. They are irrelevant to the issue. A wider choice is to be achieved by increasing the number of channels made available to the public. It does not depend upon the method of finance selected for supporting these various channels. When the Postmaster General solemnly tells us that he will get a 100 per cent. increase in consumer choice because he develops a commercial system of television, side by side with the system of television proposed by the B.B.C., my answer is that be will continue to give the public one good programme, but that he will give the public a new programme which is relatively bad. By returning to the B.B.C. its revenue, by maintaining its monopoly, by giving it enough money and the means to develop two alternative channels, he could equally well give the public two good programmes of different kinds between which they could choose. Therefore, it is wholly false to suggest that the policy of the White Paper offers the smallest additional advantage to the public in the way of consumers' choice. The variety of consumers' choice depends upon the numbers of channels available, and not upon the method of finance.

Secondly, it is sometimes said that the B.B.C. would benefit by competition. But under the new proposals the B.B.C. will not suffer any competition; it cannot suffer any competition. A public monopoly, financed out of public revenue, cannot in the strict economic sense of the Manchester school be competed with. There can be competition between rival commercial broadcasting systems, but there can be no competition, in the strict sense, between a public system, financed out of public revenue or revenue from licences, and a private system financed out of advertisements. As one noble Lord pointed out—I think it was the Postmaster General himself—although more listeners may tune in to the private rather than to the public system, it will not decrease the revenue of the B.B.C.; and certainly the B.B.C., under this system of so-called competition, could continue to operate with its full revenue without having a single listener. This is not competition in the sense in which it is generally understood.

The idea of various public corporations competing with one another as if they were private enterprises when they are not, is a perfect chimera. I am not in the least wedded to the principle of public monopoly, but it has at least the advantage of singleness of control. To provide and operate three alternative systems with separate control, each of them financed by public money and each having different staffs and separate systems of central administration, is to combine all the disadvantages of private enterprise with all those of public control. You have no competition thereby. Both corporations would get their revenues from the public purse. Yet in their very essence they would destroy the one advantage which public monopoly can always give—namely, a unified control. Therefore, I think the Government were right in rejecting the suggestion which was put before the Beveridge Commission, as I think the Beveridge Committee rejected it too. But to bring it in now as a sort of "King Charles' Head," to make us swallow sponsored television a little more easily, by saying that in about three years' time the Government may erect three alternative corporations, is, I think, rather a strain on our intelligence.

If in fact what I have said is true, as I think it is, of sound broadcasting, I must insist that there is absolutely no reason at all why it should not also be true of television. So far as I have heard—and I have heard all the speeches in the debate, including that for the Government—there is no argument whatever why television should be treated on principles different from those which apply to sound broadcasting. On the contrary, I should have thought that if there were to be any distinction at all, the advantage might well be in favour of effecting a change in the older system, which might well be expected to survive it, rather than the newer system, which is now in its infancy and taking on its distinctive features.

If the encomium at the beginning of the White Paper was correct, the B.B.C. secured that position from which it established the tradition and characteristics which have caused it to be praised by the possession of those particular advantages of which television is to be deprived in its infancy. The members of the B.B.C. staff, who must know that television has only reached the beginning of its development, will necessarily be discouraged in the knowledge that the growing weapon has been taken out of their hands, whereas the obsolescent one has been left with them. The running of new sponsored broadcasting systems in the television programme, when it is denied to sound radio, is therefore in my belief nothing more than an attempt, possibly deliberate and possibly misguided, to kill the B.B.C. in the end, to impose upon it sentence of death but to allow a stay of execution. At least in my belief, the idea of those who have succeeded in achieving this programme, and certainly its effect, is to wreck the life's work of the noble Lord who opened this debate. That I think is what he felt and to some extent it explains the heat with which the noble Lord spoke. The idea is to wreck the life's work of the noble Lord by gradual means. It is hoped that the B.B.C. will continue as a monopoly with sound broadcasting but that, as television develops, with its new sponsored broadcasting and competitive techniques, it will come to take the place of the monopoly more and more.

Of course I am aware that the introduction of very-high-frequency broadcasting may change the whole technical picture under which broadcasting is conducted. I should have thought that was an argument for the status quo and not against it. It may well be that one at least of the arguments for monopoly which have existed hitherto—namely the limitation on the number of channels effectively available to the public in one country—may be removed when very-high-frequency broadcasting becomes the rule. That, to my mind, is an argument for prolonging the present situation until it has become a real and immediate prospect. But even here I must say that I agree with the noble Earl opposite when he says that the mere fact that monopoly may ultimately come to be modified or broken down is not in itself a reason why one should switch over from public financed broadcasting to broadcasting financed by advertising.

By way of conclusion there are two short points that I desire to make. The first is that if the Government are going to experiment with commercial broadcasting and television it would be wiser to do so under the power which they possess under the existing Charter, of permitting or even directing the Corporation to allow sponsoring on limited terms and for limited periods, say in regard to variety, where it will do relatively little harm, than to erect new stations consecrated to a principle which is so gravely in doubt.

The second point is this. For the reasons which have been given by numerous noble Lords who have spoken, I hope that we have heard the last of the suggestion that the Lord Chief Justice and the President of the Court of Session will be allowed to take part in executive actions which may bring upon themselves public criticism. I wonder whether those two judges were consulted before this proposal was put abroad. We know that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, in a speech last week said that it is now not the habit of the Government to consult interested parties before announcing policy. That was one of several novel constitutional doctrines for which this Parliament will become famous. I should have thought on this occasion that, before using the positions of the Lord Chief Justice and the President of the Court of Session in such a way, they would have had the wisdom first to consult members of the Judiciary. I doubt very much whether, if either of the judges mentioned had been consulted first, he would have said he would conceivably accept such a post. I very much hope that they would not.

Suppose that by some misfortune or inexperience they should select for the British Broadcasting Corporation a hidden Communist. I am not saying that it would be a bad thing or a good thing that a hidden Communist should be a Governor of the B.B.C. but I know that they would then incur criticism. They are then in politics. You cannot confuse executive and judicial functions in this country without undermining the essential principles of our Constitution. I have no doubt that whoever may claim credit for this ingenious but ridiculous scheme had in mind the analogy of The Times. But The Times is not a public monopoly, and the B.B.C. is. If they had in mind the analogy of The Times, I wonder why they omitted the name of the Warden of All Souls College, Oxford. I trust that the last has been heard of this ridiculous proposal, and I sincerely hope that on the major matter of policy the Government may have second thoughts before they pursue the matter to its logical conclusion.

I am gravely disturbed by various signs of the policy which the Government are pursuing. It seems to me that they are running the risk of antagonising those very sections of opinion. they ought to be wooing at the present time, the opinions of responsible people without strong political convictions on either side, who might make all the difference in the next few years between the present Government remaining in office—or getting elected for a second term—and complete defeat. These may not be numerous in point of number, but the state of political opinion in this country I am sure, precariously poised at the present time, and I view with great alarm, even from the purely Party point of view, the numerous signs I have seen which seem to indicate that the Government are almost going out of their way to antagonise moderate opinion outside the Conservative Party merely to gratify the somewhat confused political pressures from within.

6.35 p.m.

LORD FOLEY

My Lords, there are one or two issues that I should like to raise. I have a deep interest in all branches of the entertainment business, particularly sound broadcasting and television. First let me say that I should be extremely grateful to the noble and learned Lord who is to reply to the debate on behalf of the Government if he would let me have the average listening figures for the Third Programme. I feel that many people would be very surprised if those figures were made known, as I do not believe that sufficient people are listening to the Third Programme to justify the expense of running it. I wish to say right away that I am in no way personally opposed to the Third Programme; indeed I well remember that when I last spoke in this House some two years ago in the debate on television which was initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, one or two members of your Lordships' House were indignantly opposed to any attempt to abolish the Third Programme.

Of course, from a prestige point of view the Third Programme is undoubtedly a success, although, of necessity, it appeals to only a minority on account of its high intellectual level. But does it really justify its existence as a separate entity? Could it not very well be merged with the Home Service? The Home Service could cater for the more serious-minded, including those who listen to the Third Programme at the moment, leaving the Light Programme for light entertainment and the Third Programme wavelength free for a commercial programme. There are several reasons why, contrary to the opinion expressed by most noble Lords to-day, I am very much in favour of commercial broadcasting. After all, the success of a play or a film can easily be judged by noting the number of people in the theatre. If the theatre is full, you know immediately that the play is a success: if the house is empty you know it is not.

I should like now to quote a few facts and figures about the success of commercial broadcasting in this country at the moment. Radio Luxembourg, a foreign firm with a British branch, to-day has an average listening figure of over 6,000,000 people. This. I think your Lordships will agree, is a staggering figure and it constitutes a substantial supplement and a real contribution to the B.B.C. system. Also one must consider that reception of Radio Luxembourg, particularly in the Southern area, is often far from good, and that Radio Luxembourg is never advertised, boosted or in any way mentioned by the national Press, who, on account of advertising, are not in favour of commercial stations. I think this proves fairly conclusively that the great mass of the British listening public is in favour of commercial broadcasting and would very much welcome a British commercial programme which, with perfect reception, would, I feel sure, have an enormous listening public, probably far greater than any one programme broadcast at the moment by the B.B.C.

I wish to pause for one moment to say that I am sorry but I completely disagree with the statement of the noble Lord who has just spoken, that sponsors are people who are buying your time to advertise their goods and that they think only about selling their goods and not about the programmes. I think that is evidence of terribly muddled thinking. I know several sponsors and I can assure your Lordships that they try their hardest to get the best possible programmes.

VISCOUNT HAILSHAM

Would the noble Lord forgive me for intervening? If I may say so, I never said anything of the kind that he has atttributed to me. What I said was that no doubt these people want to put out as good a programme of its kind as they can, because their purpose is to get persons to listen to it, but they think of programmes as mediums for advertisement and that is essentially and intrinsically bad for broadcasting.

LORD FOLEY

Let us pass that over for the moment, if we may. I believe that those of your Lordships who have listened to programmes on Radio Luxembourg will know that there is a certain friendliness and lack of formality in the atmosphere which provides a pleasant contrast to the often rather cold-blooded approach of the B.B.C. Against this, there are, of course, people who, having been to America and listened to the many hundreds of commercial radio stations which they have there, profess an active dislike of all radio advertising. The speech made by the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, is a typical example of that. He has lived for some time in America and he feels very strongly against radio advertising as it takes place in America. But surely what goes on there would not necessarily go on here, because we should put in an advertising programme only as an alternatve programme. I am sure we should all agree that advertising of the kind of which the noble Earl has had experience in America is absolutely unsuitable for this country.

But is not advertising in all forms a necessary evil? Surely nothing could be more unpleasant than some of the ugly, disfiguring posters, so distracting to motorists, which one sees on buses and in the countryside. Moreover, advertising on commercial radio, judged by the percentage of time devoted to it, is a small matter in relation to other forms of advertising such as in newspapers, et cetera. About 6 per cent. of programme time on Radio Luxembourg is devoted to advertising and a very high percentage indeed of the remaining time is devoted to musical items. On the other hand, I took the trouble to study a copy of the Radio Times and I discovered that roughly 60 per cent. of B.B.C. programme time on the Home Service is devoted to speech and only 40 per cent. to music. This, I feel, is another reason for the great popularity of commercial programmes.

There is another point: why should a foreign company amass wealth in this country—money paid to them by British companies for advertising their goods—even if that money is not allowed to be taken out of the country owing to the exchange laws? Why should not British firms pay money to a British company or companies running commercial broadcasting? I do not see why foreign companies should invade the ether and take our money as well. I feel sure that artistes like working on commercial radio and for these reasons: first, they are, of course, able to obtain more money; and secondly, as a large percentage of commercial programmes are recorded, they know that only their best work will be heard. The B.B.C. are very conscious of the danger of losing their artistes to commercial broadcasting, and even if an artiste asks if he may appear on a commercial programme, the answer is: "We would rather you did not." If the artiste persists in so doing, the chance of getting a B.B.C. booking for a considerable time to come is very slight indeed. I find this an intolerable situation. I should like a statement from the noble and learned Lord on behalf of the Government that the B.B.C. do not intend to victimise artistes who wish to appear on commercial programmes.

In my opinion, monopolies without competition can lead only to decadence. Monopolies are bad things and stifle initiative. I find it surprising that the Government appear to have set their minds firmly against commercial radio while at the same time they accept the possibility of commercial television. Surely to-day the capital expenditure necessary for the construction of an alternative radio system is considerably less than that of the competitive television system. I believe I am right in saying that it is possible to have commercial radio on very high frequency at once. I am told the equipment is available and a transmitter could be put up to cover London at the negligible cost of £10,000. Also, B.B.C. television does not operate between six and eight in the evenings. These two hours could be allocated to sponsored television without the building of new transmitter stations or equipment.

Finally, as I feel I have perhaps spoken for too long and I do not wish to bore you, I would say just this. In olden days the kings and courts of Europe were the great patrons of art, and artists of all kinds well knew that their cause would be furthered. At the present time the greatest patrons of the arts are the industrialists of the United States of America, who spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to provide entertainment for their clients, and thereby return to their purchasers directly in kind and in pleasure some of the money they spend in acquiring their goods. I believe that sponsored programmes will play a great part in the future of both television and radio. I am not suggesting they should be the only programmes—and, after all, those who do not like them are not forced to view or listen. I believe they are part of progress, and all progress is to a certain extent unpopular. I cannot believe that propellor manufacturers were highly delighted with the advent of the jet engine. I sincerely hope that the noble Lords present who do not feel the same way about these matters as I do will bear with me for having expressed my views.

6.42 p.m.

THE EARL OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

My Lords, I do not want to detain your Lordships long as the hour is getting late. Before I make my few remarks I should like to offer an apology to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, who is to reply on Monday, because I shall be unable to be present when he makes his reply. I have read many letters in The Times on this vexed question of commercial and sponsored broadcasting. There seems to me to be an erroneous impression expressed in some of these letters, that if sponsored broadcasting came in it would do away with the B.B.C. programmes. Surely that is entirely wrong. We do not wish to do away with the B.B.C. Although there is room for improvement, we all agree that the B.B.C. is doing very good work. What we want is a little more variety.

Paragraph 4 of the White Paper says in its first sentence: The successive Licences granted to the B.B.C. have not of themselves established the Corporation as the sole authority for all broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Further on, the White Paper says that the Government would be most unwilling to see any change in the policy of the B.B.C. towards the existing restriction on commercial broadcasting without the consent of the Postmaster General. I am certain that that is right. Whatever happens, all broadcasting of any sort should be under the control of the Postmaster General. The White Paper talks of using television for sponsored broadcasting or advertising. To my mind this is good. I do not possess a television set and I do not intend to possess one for some considerable time, but I have seen one or two programmes and, except for the broadcasting of sporting events, I must say that I have been highly disappointed. I know of several people who were enthusiastic watchers every night for a time after they had obtained their television sets, but lately have stopped using them. Surely that indicates that the programmes need a large improvement. If sponsored television comes into existence, I think it will have an effect on the television programmes of the B.B.C. and should encourage the B.B.C. to improve them.

But if we are going to have sponsored television, why should we not have sponsored sound broadcasting? The noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, answered that point, rather uncertainly, by saying that this was a matter of common sense. I was rather surprised at that answer. If we are to have sponsored television, surely it would also be common sense to have sponsored broadcasting. We have the experience in other countries to go by—in Australia, for example. I am not suggesting that the systems in these countries are perfect. We may be able to improve on them, or we may not. If we look at the Beveridge Report we see in paragraph 368 the result of public opinion polls on the question of commercial radio. In 1946, 43 per cent. of the people were in favour of it, and in 1949 the proportion was reduced to 33 per cent. But like the noble Lord, Lord Foley, I suggest that 33 per cent. is a large proportion.

The noble Lord, Lord Foley, said that 6,000,000 people listen to Radio Luxembourg. Does that figure not speak for itself? It is certainly a minority of the population, but time and again we talk about the preservation of minority rights. Should we not at times give the service that certain members of the minority want? We already do so in one sense in the Third Programme. Can we not do so by sponsored broadcasting? I suggest to your Lordships that here is a great chance to give a service to that minority. I agree that it is no use rushing into this wholesale. The whole question has still to be looked into. I suggest that one or two experimental stations might be started for sponsored broadcasting, as well as for television. I appreciate that this cannot be done at once, as the White Paper indicates, but I submit that there is a strong case for sponsored broadcasting as well as for sponsored television.

6.49 p.m.

LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU

My Lords, we have had a long debate—ten speakers long—and it is interesting to notice that the last two speakers, both of whom are members of the younger generation, support the line of sponsored radio. Earlier this afternoon we had a series of speakers who were born when the B.B.C. was established; but it is the men of my generation who have been brought up with the B.B.C. who are not satisfied. We are the new generation of radio listeners, and we are the people for whom this legislation is ultimately intended. I think the Government have done more than some people think to find out what public opinion is on this question. Some time ago the Daily Mirror had an article on commercial radio, which criticised and attacked the idea. The paper asked for its readers' views, and they were surprised to find that seven out of ten readers were in favour of commercial radio. Another point is that the British Forces in Germany are listening more and more to the American Forces Network, to which they grew accustomed during the war and which they now prefer to the B.B.C.

We call ourselves a democratic country and this House is often accused of being reactionary. I think we have provided evidence this afternoon of that, and I am glad that some people have taken the other line. Gresham's Law has been mentioned. Gresham's Law was a law about money, not about entertainment. We still have good films; we still have good theatres, and we still have Good music. The bad music does not drive out the good music, and the bad films do not drive out the good films. The advertising man of this country seems to have become the scapegoat of this operation. The advertising man is really quite a meek man: he is not an evil man. With their great experience of what the public want, I feel that they are just as good judges as the Governors of the B.B.C.—in fact, I would say that they are better. There is no reason why the Director-General should have complete control of what the British public want to listen to.

Casting our minds back a little, we find that the reason why the broadcasting systems of America and Britain started differently was mainly a geographical one. America is a very large country; it was impossible to get any national network going, and a large number of stations grew up under private enterprise. This country was small enough to be able to grow up under one system. The B.B.C. has now grown up. It has been in existence for twenty-six years, and it has now come to a stage where the whole essence of sound radio is giving way to television. I believe that it has been said that if we are to obtain the highest quality of television in this country licences will have to cost about £10 each, which is obviously much more than any man can afford, even to get the best quality entertainment. There is only one other way to do it, and that is to call in the many people who will willingly spend in order to have something competing with that service.

I am sorry that the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, is not here, because I wish to take up two points which he made. The first point was about the Grand National, which I think was a very unfair point. The whole question there was one of negotiation between the: B.B.C. and the Grand National people about money. What was hinted at was that commercial television sponsors would not get the highest quality people. That is absolutely untrue; they would get the best people. I would refer to the case of Stewart Macpherson. He was trained in commercial radio in Canada; he came to the B.B.C., but did not get what he wanted, and has now gone back to the Canadian commercial radio. Another point raised by the noble and learned Earl was about the Tate Gallery. The Tate Gallery was founded by a great sugar manufacturer. I cannot conceive of any place more suitable for a well-known sponsor. We have the Courtauld Collection, and many great industries in this country have built up works and collections of art. I think the objection is wrong particularly as the Tate Gallery put advertisements in their own catalogues. It really comes down to this. Many speakers seem to be terrified of competition. Why are they terrified of competition? If they consider the B.B.C. the best in the world, they have no need to be frightened of competition. If it is not the best in the world, and there is room for improvement—as I think there is—then it is up to the Government to try and provide better entertainment for the people for whom the B.B.C. exists. I therefore strongly support the White Paper and the introduction of competition into broadcasting.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, before the adjournment, may I have the leave of the House to add a supplementary observation to what I said in the debate? I referred to the new proposal for the appointment of the Governors to be in the hands of a committee presided over by the Speaker. In regard to that matter I ought to have said that I was speaking on my own behalf, and not for my colleagues in the House of Commons or here, because, after having made that observation, which was not a very carefully considered one or at all emphasised, I was much impressed by what was said from the Front Opposition Bench, and by the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Halifax. I should like to make it clear that I do not wish to be considered as committing others in that particular matter.

VISCOUNT SWINTON

The noble Viscount does not want to withdraw the rest of his speech?

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

Not at all.

LORD MACDONALD OF GWAENYSGOR

My Lords, I beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.

Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.