§ (LORD SNOW)My Lords, I think you would wish me to begin by saying again how much we are indebted to my noble friend Lord Willis for introducing this debate. It has been a debate which I am sure will be of immense help to Her Majesty's Government and to the heads of the two television services, the noble Lords, Lord Normanbrook and Lord Hill of Luton, who are sitting silently with us to-night. I have found myself fascinated by each speech—I have heard every one of them—and I do not think I have ever in my life felt myself more in accord with a group of fellow speakers.
Telecommunications have made more difference to our daily lives than any other invention of this century: of that I think there is no reasonable doubt. Television has reached people in a way that no other means of communication has ever reached them. Shakespeare could walk through the streets of Tudor London and no one would recognise him. The same would not happen to, say, Mr. Eamonn Andrews or a television announcer: they are recognised by face more than any people have ever been in any large society, or probably even in any fairly small society. None of us knows what this influence really means. We know that it is there. We know that this extraordinary force is going on around us, and yet we cannot measure what it really means in terms of influence or of life. This is the thing that we have to try to guess. I am told that it is rather odd to be a great television personality. It is not so much like being famous as being like a domestic pet, inasmuch as wherever you go people pat you on the head, or say, "It is nice to see you", or make some jocular remark. It is an odd kind of notoriety or fame. Television itself, to some extent, has this same kind of oddness. I am sceptical about some of the claims made for its influence—and I shall come to that later. But it is going to grow under our hands, and we should be far more irresponsible than we are if we were to let it happen without thinking about it.
My impression is that, on the whole, television has had a strongly beneficial influence. I believe that the level of interest of the ordinary working life has been immensely heightened by this invention; and that seems to me to be a great good. It is fashionable among some of my friends to think of the wonders of the 997 peasant life, this being seen from comfortable urban surroundings. I suggest to such gentlemen that they should go and see how peasants do live, and the intolerable boringness of the lives that most people on this planet still have to endure. In fact, television has removed part of the curse of that boringness more than anything I can think of; and in that way it seems to me to be a force far more for good than for harm. I believe there are some possibilities of harm, and I should like to make a personal contribution later to cover those. But now I think I should try to reply to the business part of the debate.
My noble friend Lord Willis made a speech which showed the warmth of feeling and depth of imagination which make him such a good writer. Most of his practical points, I can assure him, the Government are studying, considering or about to act upon. The first point is, of course, the rather crude one of the B.B.C. licence fee. I cannot give your Lordships a categorical answer about that this evening. I should like to answer the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, with the same courtesy which he extends to us; but we cannot do this. We have had a certain amount on our plate, if I may say so, and this has not been absolutely first on the list. But we are taking it seriously, and we want to give the right answer.
There are certain ways of maintaining the B.B.C.'s independence, which we desire just as much as noble Lords opposite, that would not necessarily involve an increase in fee. It may do, but we are not sure. Quite clearly, no Government, in the present state of our economy, wants to impose an extra charge, even of this kind, unless we are completely forced to do so. I can assure the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Worcester, that his desires for the integrity of the B.B.C. and its freedom from influence are being extremely carefully watched. Let us have no doubt about that; that is completely common ground.
The second point that my noble friend raised was the part the regions play in television. This is a complex administrative matter which is being actively analysed at present. How we are to get the full contribution from places other than London is something we should all like to know, and not only in television but in everything else in 998 this country, since it is true that it is concentrated in one part of England, and anything we can do to break that up we should like to do. In fact, quite a lot of programmes reach the national services from the regions, both on B.B.C. and I.T.V. Quoting figures offhand, I think I am right in saying that on B.B.C. in 1963-64 something like 2,000 hours of programmes originated in the regions, of which something like 600 hours were spent on the national network. That is not contemptible.
I agree that more could be done, but I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, and other persons from Northern parts, that these things are not being forgotten. We want any kind of devolution, and we do not share the fears of the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, that he will be stupified by the conversation of the dons of that excellent University of Exeter. We suspect that regions, if properly used, can be extremely valuable. Anyone who has had any American experience will agree with this. It is done, particularly in sound radio, to a very large extent. Almost every university in America has its broadcasting station, and they do many extremely interesting things with this, including broadcasting programmes which could never in American circumstances, find their way on to the air at all. These tangled administrative arrangements about regions, and so on, we are at the moment working on very hard.
That leads me to the question of the fourth channel, and the pleas made by the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for an immediate decision about the destination of the fourth channel, or, rather, where the fourth channel is going. Here again, we all want the same things. I can assure noble Lords opposite that there is no prejudice in the Government against I.T.A. Indeed, I should like to associate myself with the compliments paid to the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, for the work that he has done with the Authority. There is no prejudice whatever. We should all like more channels of various kinds, and it is merely a question of how soon we get them into effect; which we do first; what the order of priorities is, and how much we can afford. All noble Lords will realise that these are complicated administrative problems, not large, so much as tiresome. It may be some time before we get them 999 sorted out, and I am afraid that it may be some time before we can possibly do everything we want. Money is short and, to some extent, other resources also are short.
We have one complication. We are committed—and we wish to be committed—to a serious educational channel, or, shall I say, a serious source of educational material. This was for some time resisted by educational circles, academics and the like, but the present mood has changed. I think it is now generally agreed that in our real educational predicament television could make a serious contribution. Whether we call it the "University of the Air", or whatever we call it, we could, in fact, get education of a serious kind, rather in the same sense that at the beginning of this century the university correspondence colleges did splendid work. It is not ideal, and not up to the standard of education which most of us have had; but it is a great deal better than nothing.
We suspect—in fact we are sure—that with sensible treatment this particular educational use of television can be one of its real values to our society. So this, to us, has a very high priority. Whether it means immediately giving the fourth channel to such education, or whether we can find another way of doing it, is again for discussion; and it was being seriously considered, I can tell your Lordships, by Ministers last night, in conjunction with the B.B.C.
This does not mean that the normal services of either the B.B.C. or I.T.V. will be shorn of their present educative contribution. It would be very wrong if we had an educational channel which was deliberately designed for people wanting to obtain degrees and if this were regarded as a reason for taking away the serious educative programmes—if your Lordships will allow me to use a different adjective—which are now one of the best parts of the B.B.C. and I.T.V. Let us be quite clear about that. We wish those services to go on in something like their present distribution time.
Like my noble friend Lord Francis-Williams, I wish we had more time for them, but they must have something like their present balance, whatever we do with an educational programme. We should propose to further such an educational service by a proper use of regional 1000 sound broadcasting, which, we suspect, could be very useful as a follow-up weapon to this kind of use of television as the main teaching instrument. This matter has not yet got much beyond the study stage, but we believe that we can weave the two together in a way which has already been tried in the United States and elsewhere. We are fairly sure that this will be a useful method of using local sound broadcasting which again, if it is really local, can have some virtues. If it is just an excuse for having songs sung from the centre, so to speak, but produced in the North, that is nonsense. There is no point in local services unless they are really local. On that, I think pur minds are already made up.
My noble friend Lord Willis laid great stress, and rightly—and he was backed by other noble Lords—on the problem of export. Here we are in great sympathy. What we can do is not quite so obvious. It is worth mentioning, of course, that some of the more distinguished achievements of British television have been extremely effective in the United States. The "Age of Kings", which my noble friend Lord Willis mentioned, took the more cultured part of America completely by storm. That is an example of what could be done with real skill in this medium. It was an immense success.
While I am on the subject of external broadcasting, I should like to say how much I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, in his praise of the external services of the B.B.C. They are one of the great contributions of the B.B.C., and, indeed, there we have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Far from it, we have every reason to be deeply proud. Some parts of British television are better than anything I have seen elsewhere in the world. Here I would agree with the compliments which have been paid by noble Lords on both sides of the House. The science programmes on B.B.C. television, for instance, at the moment are quite first-class; they are marvels of expository skill. A series like "The Plane Makers" on I.T.V. is as well done of its kind as I can imagine anyone doing it. In sound broadcasting our external services are first-class.
I do not think I am quite as optimistic as my noble friend Lord Willis in thinking that there is an infinite or very large 1001 supply of talented dramatists just waiting to be given a free go by both television services. I should have thought that play-writing, as he should know better than any of us, is in fact a rather difficult game, and that most playwrights, if they can write at all, would prefer to write for the stage, for the very crude and simple reason that the commercial rewards are about ten times as great. I find it really hard to imagine that this enormous demand for dramatic hours, so to speak, which the television services are throwing up, this constant appetite for plays, is going to be seriously satisfied. If so, we are richer in talent than any country in the world has ever been, because no country can cope with this. I am not sure what the answer is.
I should now like to come to what has been on the mind of many noble Lords throughout the debate and with which my noble friend Lord Willis encouraged us all at the end of his speech. When all this is over, when we have got through the administrative problems which broadly we are all agreed is a matter of priorities, the actual ends are clear. We all know approximately what we want to do with the arrangement of services and so on; there are no real differences between us; and we also know some of the technical problems with which my noble friend Lord Hobson coped: whether colour television is really a high priority (all this is for sensible discussion and will not give us any great pain). But at the back of most of our minds there is the thought, how serious we do not know, that we have here a medium which we do not fully understand, whose powers we do not really know, whose influence we can only estimate. And here (God help us!) we are having to try to cope.
No one in the history of this kind of communication has really had a coherent view of what he wanted to do with it. with the single and startling exception of the noble Lord, Lord Reith. He began with a vision which I must say I do not entirely share but which I deeply respect, of what can be done with such a medium. In the process of carrying out his vision, though many of us disagreed with him, often violently, he raised the tone of our national life. Of this we are quite clear. We are not so sure that the same vision is easy to sustain at present.
1002 I find myself in serious and fundamental disagreement with the kind of implicit attitude which I suspect is present somewhere beneath the consciousness perhaps of those most responsible for the programmes on television. Much of it is excellent. As I say, on this there is no difference between any of us. Much of our television is as good as anything in the world, or better. But there are bits which stand out like sore thumbs. We are uneasy; we do not know how much they matter or how much they mean. We do not know whether the passionate eloquence of my noble friend Lord Peddie or of the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, has exaggerated the case or whether it is true. But I would suggest that we ought to think about it as deeply as we can. We can conceivably do real harm; we do not know.
The influence on children of a medium like this may be negligible; it may be very great. I should like to see some serious sociological and psychological examination. Whether repeated sexual programmes really have an impact on many people, again we do not know. Whether the incursion of violence is serious, again we do not know. I should suspect that it was rather more serious than the first, but I have no basis for that remark; it is just a hunch. These are problems which no responsible man in Parliament can possibly ignore. If we try to ignore them we are merely trying to be "with it", as the fashionable phrase is; and nothing is more contemptible than middle-aged or elderly gentlemen trying to be "with it". It does you no good; it is bad for the soul; it is very bad for the young with whom you are trying to be "with", because the only way in which you meet anyone different from your own age is acting in your own freedom, as the existentialists say, and letting them act in theirs. That is the only serious way for a human relationship.
So I often have a feeling that part of our television friends try to be "with it" much too much. It does not fit them very easily and it leads to some curious results. There is a fashion to say things like this: "Violence is the artistic climate of our time", or is the "climate of our art". I do not believe anyone can say that, who has ever seen or been concerned with violence. It is always said by people who have com- 1003 pletely escaped it. Go to Russia, to people who really know something about violence, who lost 20 million dead, and see what they put on television. Some of it you will not like, some of it you will find dull; but the idea that they ever have a programme of the kind of violence that we had about two years ago—I think the position has improved much since then—would be absolutely unthinkable and intolerable, as a great deal of the sexual expositions would be.
This would be true not only of old-fashioned Russia, of hard doctrinal Russia; this would be true of my young intellectual friends. When they see our television, though they admire 95 per cent. of it passionately and think our skills are wonderful and they always admire our acting—and I thought the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, was rather unfair here—our most emancipated friends, people passionately longing for emancipation in their own society, say that, whatever happens, they are not going to have this. I think we ought to take that kind of outside reflection to heart.
I suspect the difference between me, at least—and here in all that I have just said I am speaking for myself and not for the Government—is that there is a difference in attitude. I believe that men are wild and dangerous animals with some possibilities of goodness and grace. I do not believe in a sort of romantic Rousseau-ish idea that if you just let everything go, all will turn out well on the night. This seems to me destructive in the extreme, because by doing so, by letting all the destructive impulses in your own nature go, you know in your own life what may happen, far more than you know if you encourage the destructive impulses in other people.
Another of these manifestations which I, like the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, find extremely distasteful, is an element of defamation. He protested with chivalry against defamation of this side of the House. I am going to return the compliment. I heard as a casual insult, not the least witty, a remark about a member of the last Government whom I happen to know. I know this remark to be totally untrue; it was an insult without any humour, just thrown out, as though I said "You are the stupidest man I have ever known". This is intolerable; 1004 this sort of defamation no society can survive for ever. It wears down the good nature which is essential if we are to live a corporate life. Cruelty comes very easily to most of us; it takes a lifetime to get any sort of kindness. It is putting that opposite the present conventional view where I find myself in real antagonism.
The Government, however, believe that the content of programmes is entirely the responsibility of the two authorities. There is No 1ntention in anyone's mind of departing from that attitude. It is our right, and I think our duty, to say what we feel on these matters, as persons in Parliament and, presumably, persons who are interested in how our society is going; and this we must continue to do. But the responsibility is fairly and squarely with the noble Lords, Lord Normanbrook and Lord Hill of Luton. There is no getting away from that. We will not attempt to alter that by one inch. But I still find it necessary to say some of the things I said tonight. But to be just—let us end on a more cheerful note—I believe that, in fact, both in violence and in over-sexuality, both services have improved since the very bad period about two years ago when things really were getting somewhat absurd. I have no particular love for incest, but incest several nights of the week is getting rather too much. Defamation still seems to me to continue its gay and giddy way, quite unfounded. This I regret; but, as I have said, things are improving.
I believe that noble Lords can make a contribution by expressing their views to the television authorities. I am sure they will be grateful for it. In fact a great deal of writing books or public entertainment or instruction is a curiously lonely thing; you write a book or send out a programme, and you have not the faintest idea of what is happening. I suspect that a great deal of the alienation and loneliness mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, derives from that: they have not anybody to talk to them, even to disagree. I believe this kind of thing is largely prevented by people talking vigorously to one another.
My Lords, with all these qualifications we still have one of the best television services in the world. It has skills and devotion beyond compare. It produces a quite remarkable amount of talent. I 1005 repeat that, in general, it has done incomparably more good than harm. It has enlivened life for thousands and millions of people. Like my noble friend Lord Willis, I do not think the people who watch it are stupid. I believe, in fact, that they are picking out what they want; they are getting great enrichment; the quality of their lives is going up. It is now our duty to see that they get even more and even better.
§ LORD ABERDAREMay I ask the noble Lord one question? In the course of his most interesting speech he mentioned that the Government were considering some method of financing the B.B.C. which would respect its independence but, at the same time, would not involve an increase in licence fee. Could he give some idea of what he had in mind? Would it be a Government grant?
§ THE EARL OF LONGFORDDo not go too far.
§ LORD SNOWOne possibility, which I know would be acceptable to the B.B.C. and which the Government might consider, would be if we had an educational channel that might conceivably be financed by the Government as a separate institution. This would not impair the B.B.C.'s independence but would take considerably from their overheads, and in fact would be another method of doing very much the same thing.
§ 7.36 p.m.
§ LORD WILLISMy Lords, I should like to thank very much all those noble Lords who have taken part in this debate to-day, which I think has been extremely interesting and useful. I had thought that since it was fixed for virtually the first day of discussions in your Lordships' House after the Recess there might be a little difficulty in getting it going and we might have what the Light Entertainment department might call a "flop", and what the Third Programme might call an unfructifying manifestation. In fact, we have had, 3 think, an extremely useful and interesting discussion. I think it is a pity it has drawn to a close, because I should like to clash swords a little with one or two things 1006 my noble friend Lord Snow said and argue them a little further. But I am not going to detain your Lordships any longer.
I would thank particularly the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for his very generous and, I thought, wise statement. In particular I was pleased that he corrected what I thought was a rather unfair balance creeping into the discussion of an anti-BBC kind. I think that would be wrong; I think nobody in your Lordships' House would want this to exist. I think we should want to say that what criticisms we have made have been made fairly, in relation to the immense and very valuable job being done.
I think also that perhaps I have been a little ungracious, and I apologise for not having thanked the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, and the noble Lord, Lord Normanbrook, for the pleasure that their organisations have given us in the last few years: I wish to convey my own personal thanks and those of this House. I have, as I say, a lot more things to say, but I am not going to say them tonight. I wish to thank your Lordships once again, and beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.