TELEVISING THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE HOUSE (Hansard, 16 March 1967)

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

§ THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES
My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be agreed to. In moving the approval of this Report, I must start by apologising to your Lordships for two printer's errors. Correction slips have been issued, and are available in the Printed Paper Office. Before I refer to the contents of the Report, I should like to take this early opportunity of expressing the gratitude of the Committee to the British Broadcasting Corporation and to Independent Television for the great help they have given us throughout our deliberations. They gave us a great deal of their valuable time both in preparing memoranda and in submitting oral evidence, and we are very sensible of the debt we owe to them.
I should like now to turn briefly to the Report. The House will have noted that the entire Report, including the recommendation for a three-day closed-circuit experiment, was agreed unanimously by the Committee. But your Lordships are probably aware that a number of members of the Committee, are like some other noble Lords, opposed to the public televising of the proceedings of the House. Those noble Lords on the Committee of this view have asked me to say that, while they have not changed their opinion about the undesirability of having any public televising of your Lordships' proceedings, they are nevertheless in full agreement with the particular proposals the House is considering this afternoon. They have come to this conclusion because they think that a closed-circuit experiment will assist the House to form a judgment about the nature and the value of public broadcasting.
436 We are asking your Lordships in this First Report to agree to two proposals. First, to a three-day closed-circuit experiment early in 1968, the results of which will he seen by your Lordships; and, secondly, to widen the Committee's present terms of reference so as to include sound broadcasting. I should like to start by dealing with our main recommendation which is in favour of a private closed-circuit experiment. The Committee interpreted their terms of reference as meaning that the House desired a public television experiment. The evidence we heard, however, convinced us that such an experiment should take place only after a closed-circuit experiment had been conducted.
The value of such an experiment would, I think, be twofold. It would show Members how the House would appear when televised, and it would also provide them with some idea of the use of our proceedings which the broadcasters at present intend to make in edited programmes. It would also help the broadcasting authorities to judge for themselves the value of their present ideas about broadcasting the proceedings of the House. Your Lordships will observe from pages 30 and 31 of the Report that the broadcasters attached the greatest importance to a closed-circuit experiment. Indeed, in answer to a question I put—namely, whether it would be difficult for public broadcasting to take place without a previous closed-circuit experiment—the answers were, and I quote: "Most inadvisable", and: "We would want an experiment even if your Lordships were not wanting one". These were the two reasons why the Committee felt that such an experiment would be of value.
I should like at the same time to emphasise to the House the warning contained in paragraph (8) of the Report. In this paragraph we pointed out that, however useful and necessary the closed-circuit experiment might be, your Lordships will not receive an accurate impression of the physical conditions in this Chamber that are likely to prevail when public broadcasting takes place. The reason is this. It is because, in order to keep down the cost of a closed-circuit experiment, we shall have to use conventional television cameras, and they will take up a certain amount of space 437 in the Chamber itself, and will require a higher degree of lighting than your Lordships are at present accustomed to. There is no doubt, therefore, that the closed-circuit experiment will cause some slight inconvenience, but I am sure that in any experiment at a later date in public broadcasting, if miniature remote control and concealed cameras are used, your Lordships would scarcely be aware of the existence of any equipment in the Chamber, or, indeed, that televising was actually taking place.
The Committee considered carefully the question of how long such an experiment should last. While we recognise that the cost of a one-day experiment could be nearly £6,000 less than the proposed three-day experiment, we considered that only by taking a period of three days would it be possible to obtain a typical cross-section of the main types of proceedings in your Lordships' House. I should hope that during these three days it would be possible to cover Question Time, the Second Reading of a Public Bill, the Committee stage of another Public Bill, and, of course, one of the general debates which normally takes place on a Wednesday afternoon, and which are such a characteristic and outstanding feature of our proceedings.
So, after one day of rehearsals, which will take place on the Monday, in the proposed programmes the remaining three days will be televised continuously. The resulting signal will be shown on monitor television sets placed in various Committee Rooms. This will enable noble Lords to see how the continuous live coverage of our debates will appear. In the week following the experiment, your Lordships will have an opportunity of seeing, again on closed-circuit monitors, "dummy" edited programmes of various types, representing the uses which the B.B.C. and Independent Television might make of our proceedings. The Committee recommend that it should be left to the House to decide whether the broadcasters should be allowed to broadcast publicly any part of the closed-circuit experiment. If the broadcasters express the wish to use this material, the House should be asked as soon as possible after the experiment whether to allow it.
The provisional estimate of the cost of this three-day experiment is £16,650, and to this must be added the sum of £1,050 438 for the construction of a sound-proof commentary box, bringing the total cost up to £17,700. The Leader of the House has informed the Committee that there is no reason to suppose that the Government will alter their previous decision to make available, early in 1968, the sum of £18,000 for the purpose of a closed-circuit experiment in this House. I very much hope that the Leader will be able to confirm this to your Lordships this afternoon. But, of course, the ultimate decision to vote this money will rest with the House of Commons.
The second recommendation for which we seek the approval of your Lordships to-day seeks to widen the Committee's terms of reference to include sound broadcasting. The Committee recommend this extension of their terms of reference because at the moment they have no power to consider whether the B.B.C. should be allowed to make use of sound extracts from any television recording in its radio broadcasts. Obviously, such extracts would find a place in current affairs programmes, schools broadcasting, news bulletins, and so on. Indeed, the B.B.C. have already indicated to the Committee their interest in sound broadcasting of our proceedings, and provision of technical facilities for this would be both easy and inexpensive. Already, as your Lordships are aware, tape recorders are in use in order to help Hansard. and it may be that only very small technical improvements would be necessary in order to provide the B.B.C. with a continuous recording of the daily proceedings of the House. If your Lordships agree that our terms of reference should be so widened, I believe that the Committee would, in a subsequent Report, be able to put before the House some interesting suggestions about sound broadcasting.
If your Lordships approve this Report, and authorise the Committee to continue their work, I should like to say something about the future programme we have in mind. We shall, of course, go on preparing the ground for the closed-circuit experiment in 1968, and also examine the question of sound broadcasting. But we shall also then pursue our inquiry into several other matters closely connected with the televising of Parliamentary proceedings. These will include privilege, copyright, the repercussions of Parliamentary television on the Press, and 439 archives—that is to say, the question of whether the proceedings of Parliament should be preserved for posterity, and communicated to the young, by sound and vision as well as by the printed word. In some of these fields we shall be breaking fresh ground, and we may—I hope we shall—be able to perform a service that will be useful not only to your Lordships, but to Parliament as a whole. I trust that I have succeeded in making clear to the House the principal considerations that have led the Committee to make the recommendations in this Interim Report, and I hope that they will be acceptable. My Lords, I beg to move.

§ THE EARL OF LONGFORD
My Lords, I rise to support the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, approving the Report from the Select Committee. If I may say so, they appear to have done an excellent job and to deserve our sincere gratitude. I am sure the House will not wish me to enter this afternoon into the general question of the wisdom or unwisdom of televising our proceedings here, although it is a question in which I personally happen to be particularly interested. We gather from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that all members of the Select Committee, whatever their views on the general question, were unanimously in favour of these proposals for a limited experiment. I certainly feel that in this they have all acted in complete accord with the Resolution of the noble Lord, Lord Egremont, which was carried last year.
My main purpose in speaking, apart from generally supporting the Report, is to answer a question which the noble Earl put to me and which will readily occur to anyone who reads the Report. The noble Earl has pointed out that, on being approached by the Committee, I informed them that in my view there was no reason to suppose that the Government would alter their previous decision to make available, early in 1968, a sum of up to £18,000 for the purpose of a closed-circuit experiment. I can now confirm that this is, in fact, the attitude of the Government.
I think that that is all I can usefully say this afternoon. I repeat that it gives 440 me great pleasure to support the noble Earl's Motion, and to express on behalf of the House, if I may, our deep appreciation to the members of the Committee for their hard and successful work, and to include in that reference the various officials who gave them such invaluable assistance. I beg to support the noble Earl.

§ LORD CARRINGTON
My Lords, I too should like to support the noble Earl, the Lord Chairman of Committees, in what he has said. I think that the Committee's Report and the general attitude of your Lordships show once again how much more adventurous we are in these matters than the House of Commons, and how much more receptive to new ideas. Who knows?—we may even encourage our rather timid colleagues in another place to follow our example.
If I may say so, I think that the Committee have come to a very sensible conclusion. The experiment will enable us to see how televising of the House works out, yet we shall not be finally committed to anything until we have seen it on the television screens: we can leave the final decision until then. I would only say, on behalf I imagine of everybody in this House, how grateful we are to the noble Earl, the Lord Chairman of Committees, and to all his colleagues who gave up such a lot of time to sitting on this Committee and making, their Report.

§ LORD EGREMONT
My Lords, I feel that I must say just a few words, as the man who is at the bottom of all this. First of all, I think that the Select Committee Report is a good one, as the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and my noble friend Lord Carrington have said; and it is all the better for being as short and terse as it is. I think that we shall all agree that the Committee deserve our congratulations. They have handled a difficult subject in a most careful, sensitive and sensible way, and it is an able Report.
All this comes from a Motion of mine suggesting that we should try this television experiment. We had a Division. and it turned out that we should; and that is what we are going to do. I have in the past moved various Motions in this House—indeed, I once got a Bill through this House—but I sometimes 441 think that the next worse thing to getting a Motion negatived is to get it accepted. I once moved in this House that speeches here should be shorter. This was agreed to without a vote. But it did not make the slightest difference, except to me. If I make a speech in your Lordships House now I have to be careful. I am hoist by my own petard; hobbled like a horse, as it were. So I shall be brief to-day, and, I hope, always.
I have no misgivings, no reservations whatsoever, about backing this television experiment as proposed in this Report. I cannot think that this experiment will do any harm, and it may do some good. But I am bound to confess to your Lordships that when I was talking the other day to an elderly nobleman to whom I am devoted, and with whom I am closely connected, he asked me what was "all this damn nonsense" about televising the proceedings of your Lordships' House, and who was at the bottom of it. I had to own up, and I said to him what the infant George Washington said about the cherry tree: "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet". I am afraid that he was a bit shocked. But he—naturally enough—belongs to a different generation from myself. I am sure that I personally shall never regret the original Motion which got this thing going, and, thanks to the able handling of this subject by the Select Committee, I am sure that none of us will.

§ THE EARL OF LISTOWEL
My Lords, it only remains for me, on behalf of the Committee, to thank all three noble Lords who have spoken for their friendly support for the recommendations in our Report. I should like, in particular, to thank the noble Earl the Leader of the House for confirming the Government's offer of a sum of money towards the television experiment. I feel that the fact that both the noble Earl the Leader of the House and the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition have spoken in this short debate is an indication of the importance which the House attaches to the subject of television, and this is a welcome encouragement to the Committee.