TELEVISING THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE HOUSE (Hansard, 18 July 1967)

§ THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL)
My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now considered.

§ THE EARL OF LISTOWEL
My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now agreed to. This is the second Report which the Select Committee have presented to your Lordships. Although we have now spent nearly a year considering the important question of broadcasting the proceedings of this House, I am afraid that we have not yet completed our work. One reason for this is that final recommendations concerning public broadcasting cannot be offered to the House until after the closed-circuit television experiment, and (if the House agrees to to-day's Report) the concurrent closed-circuit sound experiment have actually taken place. The present Committee will, of course, lapse at the end of this Session and we therefore recommend your Lordships to appoint a further Committee next Session to continue, and I hope to complete, our work.
As I have already mentioned, and as your Lordships will have seen from the Report, we recommend that a 2-day closed-circuit radio experiment should be carried out at the same time as the television experiment. I hope the House will accept this recommendation, for I think that both the Committee and the broadcasting authorities attach great importance to the experimental value of sound broadcasts of the proceedings of the House. We also recommend that a complete record of these experiments should be preserved on video and sound tape, at any rate until the House has come to a final decision on public broadcasting.
We are making progress with the arrangements for the closed-circuit television experiment, and details of the provisional arrangements are given in an Appendix to the Report. I should, however, 218 like to repeat the warning given to your Lordships in our First Report, that this closed-circuit television experiment will not give your Lordships an accurate impression of the physical conditions likely in the Chamber in the event of public television broadcasting. In that event, the cameras would be less obtrusive and the lighting nearer the present level.
Our last recommendation concerns questions of privilege and law arising from the broadcasting of the proceedings of your Lordships' House. The Committee have formed the opinion that such questions are so obviously bound to affect both Houses, in relation to all forms of reporting of Parliamentary proceedings, that they should be referred, subject to the agreement of another place, to a Joint Committee of Members of both Houses. We believe that such a Joint Committee should have strong legal representation among its members. It may well be that, in order to confer the necessary protection on broadcasting authorities during the closed-circuit experiments, your Lordships will be asked next Session to make an Order directing the authorities to carry out the experiment.
Finally, my Lords, I should like to express, on behalf of the Committee, our warmest gratitude to all those who have so generously given us their time, their knowledge and their expert advice. I beg to move.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD
My Lords, I think all of us can be very grateful to the Select Committee, and particularly to their Chairman, for their Second Report, and indeed for the work that has been put in both by the members of the Committee and by the expert witnesses. They have certainly enabled us to have a much clearer idea of what the processes of televising the proceedings of this House will mean in practice. We now have a plan which shows us where the cameras will be and gives an indication of the extra lighting required.
On behalf of the Government and, I hope, on behalf of the whole House I welcome the Report. I endorse the view 219 that a Select Committee should be appointed next Session, as recommended in the Second Report; and, speaking personally, if I may I agree with the conclusions of the Report on the desirability of the closed-circuit sound experiment and on the desirability of preserving televisual and sound records of these experiments. On the suggestion mentioned by the Lord Chairman, of a Joint Committee to investigate matters of privilege and law connected with televising, I think that this is a matter which must be explored further with another place, and I will undertake to see that this is done. I should like to conclude with my sincere thanks expressed once again to those who have given so much time and trouble to the birth of this extremely important experiment, which will be of great value to the life of this House in the future.

§ LORD BOOTHBY
My Lords, as one who has had a certain experience of television I believe that this experiment is an absolute disaster. It will kill the debates in this House, as it will kill the debates in another place. They consist of animated argument and discussion. Nobody will know when the lights are on them, and everybody will be playing up to the gallery.

§ LORD BOOTHBY
Of course, my Lords, I would be the best!—I have no illusions on that point. I would be on every time. I do not want to be on. I would be the best at it because I have done it the longest. But I say that it will kill the debates in this House as they should be conducted. I think the whole experiment is an absolute disaster, and I hope that the Leader of the House will withdraw it. It will destroy the debates as we know them now in this House and, indeed, in another place. Debates, as I have said, are animated discussion and argument. With these lights coming on and off, with nobody knowing when they were on and when they were off—I should know when they were on, but normally nobody would know—it will absolutely kill it. It will be disastrous, and I just want to go on record as having said that.

§ THE EARL OF LISTOWEL
My Lords, I would only say, in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, that I very much hope that he will wait until the experiment 220 takes place, when he will be able to judge for himself whether in fact his fears have been realised. I should also like to thank the noble Earl the Leader of the House very warmly, on behalf of the Committee, for his friendly reception of the Report, and other Members of the House for their tacit support of it. This is a great encouragement to members of the Committee.
On Question, Motion agreed to.