Television Without Frontiers: ECC Report

HL Deb 03 March 1986 vol 472 cc35-74

4.50 p.m.

Viscount Torrington rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Communities Committee on Television without Frontiers (4th Report, 1985–86, H.L. 43).

The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I often think that the word "revolution" is much misused today. To me, it implies going round in a circle and ending up in much the same position as you started. When applied to political events in certain African and South American countries it may be apt—"The dictator is dead: long live the dictator!"—but when it comes to technology Mao Tse Tung perhaps had a better phrase when he talked about "a great leap forward".

Advances in electronics have begun to bring about great leaps forward in many aspects of our lives. Our cars, our refrigerators, our washing machines, our central heating controls, our telephones and even a Christmas card I received last year all seem to contain micro-processors. But perhaps the most visible great leap forward has been in the field of information and office technology, where the typewriter has been replaced by the word processor and computer and that ubiquitous cousin of the humble television set, the visual display unit.

Somewhere in all this, however, the television set seems to have been left behind. Yes, the advent of colour was indeed a step forward; and, yes, every few years we have been given another channel so that today in Britain we enjoy a choice of four television channels; and, yes, some clever chaps did come up with a system to use a few spare picture lines at the top of the picture to create and transmit hundreds of pages of teletext and graphics which are intelligible only to those of us who have the money to buy a suitably adapted set and the patience to operate it. And, of course, the video tape recorder has liberated the keen telly-watcher from the minor irritation of programmers' scheduling.

But compared with the astonishing developments in electronics generally, especially computers, today's television sets seem almost archaic. Television's early days were full of promise. John Logie Baird was experimenting with colour and stereoscopic television as long ago as 1928, and he and his rivals were aware of the possibilities of line systems giving far greater definition than the 405 lines which was eventually adopted and the 625 lines which we have today. Yet since the BBC started its first regular service nearly 50 years ago, on 2nd November 1936, this system has grown only slowly.

Television ceased altogether during the war, from 1939 to 1946, and to celebrate the re-launch, the last programme broadcast before the war was repeated after it. It was a Mickey Mouse cartoon, which, when you think about it, was something of an aberration. Television was a very serious matter in the 1950s. The chaps who read the news usually wore dinner jackets. It was nine years before the country got the benefit of another, alternative and, indeed, competitive television channel, when ITV started in 1955, and yet another nine years before BBC2 started in 1964. A much longer period—18 years—was to elapse before Channel 4 came on the air. The fourth channel had in fact been available to the Home Office for nearly 20 years, but it had lain unused.

Ironically, 1982 was also the year when a small British company started Europe's first satellite television company. SATV, now known as Sky Channel, broke all the rules of the television game. Its originator, Brian Haynes, sidestepped Home Office regulations by going directly to British Telecom. Instead of asking for a Home Office broadcasting licence, which would have been refused, Mr. Haynes merely negotiated a contract with British Telecom whereby he paid them some money for the use of spare capacity on a telecommunications satellite. Since British Telecom has no responsibility for broadcasting and far less for public service broadcasting, the question of regulation, codes of conduct and programme content never arose.

The spirit of SATV/Sky Channel continues to thrive. At present, London is in fact the centre for Europe's new and burgeoning satellite television industry. There are benefits in this not only for Europe but also for Britain—for programme makers, industry, advertisers and, I hope, viewers.

The fundamental limitations on the proliferation of television broadcasting are really two-fold. First, television is a very voracious consumer of what I am told is technically called bandwidth. A single television signal, carrying synchronised video and audio, occupies a bandwidth broad enough to carry more than 1,000 telephone calls and thus requires a carrier wave high up the frequency spectrum. Yet that spectrum is a very scarce resource. The old 405-line television bands have already been taken away from the broadcasters and given over to mobile radio, and the higher UHF bands have room only for four national channels if we are not to get overcrowded in Europe.

At the same time VHF and higher frequency signals are generally limited to line of sight—the more so the higher up the frequency spectrum you go. In other words, the transmitter and the receiver have to be in almost unobstructed contact and certainly not obscured by the curvature of the earth. The short range of terrestrially broadcast signals therefore for practical purposes limits the coverage to a single country. People in neighbouring countries and perhaps within 30 miles of the border may be able to pick up foreign signals but there is no question of the signal penetrating any further. This would require the building of land-based relay transmitters, and no government have to date effectively allowed that.

All national governments are very well aware of television's power, although they may not always be clear what that power really consists of. Often, perhaps, they have exaggerated it. But practically all governments seem agreed that television channels should be strictly regulated on a national basis rather than given up to the market place. So television has always been constrained by national sovereignty and national rules. The system began to crack a few years ago when the first cable systems were built and relayed foreign signals, but this was done on a very piecemeal basis, with little money changing hands, and the major services and governments were effectively able to ignore it.

Into this cosy little existence has sailed the communications satellite, acting as a mirror in space from which information, and in the context of this debate television signals, can be bounced back to earth to cover areas far greater than can be served by terrestrial transmitters. At the same time far higher sectors of the frequency spectrum can be used to convey the signals since, while a 10 gigahertz signal is truly line of sight, this presents no problem when the transmission is coming from almost immediately above the aerial of the receiver.

True, the present generation of satellites transmit only low power signals requiring large dish aerials and boosters at the receiving end to pump their signals through domestic television sets. Such equipment is provided on a collective basis for redistribution by cable, and hence the growth of cable systems in Europe. Already, however, the choice of television channels has expanded, but the next bound will probably complete the great leap forward. This will be the arrival of direct broadcasting satellites—DBS—signals from which will be receivable directly by individuals equipped with relatively cheap equipment, in due course obviating the need for cable systems. I am told that a well known department store in London already has this equipment on offer for those who are interested in buying it.

The areas covered by transmissions from individual satellites will acknowledge only the broadest of geographical limitations, and certainly not the winding frontiers of the member states of the European Community. Space in turn is free—any corporation or nation can park a geostationary satellite in orbit and in effect broadcast to whom it chooses.

What does this say for the principle of national or EC regulation? It says to me that sooner or later (and we had some debate in Sub-Committee F about what might be sooner and what might constitute later) regulation in the form to which we have been accustomed is doomed.

In its interesting Green Paper, Television without Frontiers, the European Commission has done a valuable service in awakening and stimulating debate on the future role of television broadcasting. However, in the opinion of the Select Committee, it draws some very questionable conclusions about what should happen next. The theme of those conclusions is that television broadcasting is a service and as such falls under Articles 59, 60 and 62 of the Treaty of Rome. Those articles give the Commission powers to promote the free flow of goods and services across internal Community frontiers. Obviously there is room for a great deal of debate as to whether television broadcasting is merely goods or a service, or is a broader cultural matter.

Leaving that point aside for the moment, the Green Paper identifies a number of areas where it feels that directives are warranted to promote a freer flow of broadcasting. Those areas are the standards of advertising; the amount of advertising allowed in television programmes per hour of programming; the prohibition of certain types of advertising, such as alcohol and tobacco; matters to simplify copyright, the right of reply; and the protection of minors.

The committee examined each of those proposals in turn and concluded that the Commision had made no really convincing case for involving itself in any of them. I do not propose to go through those individual subjects in detail as I suspect that many noble Lords taking part in this debate will have interesting views on particular topics. Later in this debate, we will be privileged to hear from my noble friend Lord Chilston who, as a film maker, will no doubt have strong views on copyright, among other matters. I hope that his maiden speech will be the forerunner of many interesting contributions by him to the affairs of this House.

As I have already implied, the footprint of a satellite will not acknowledge either the internal or the external frontiers of the European Community, so any attempt to regulate broadcasting within the Community must at best be a piecemeal approach. If there are serious abuses of the powers of broadcasters in the future, I suspect that it will need action on an international rather than on a purely intra-Community basis to correct such abuses.

Just as the pleasant life of rural England was changed for ever by the motor car, train and aeroplane, so, I believe, will TV broadcasting be changed for ever by the satellite. It is not hard to see, for example, that the BBC, which operates largely a national service, may ultimately wish to distribute its service by satellite and cable—if only to eliminate the high cost of maintaining large numbers of terrestrial transmitters. By moving to satellite broadcasting, the BBC would in effect be able to shift a lot of its maintenance and hardware costs onto the viewer.

Also, much of the output of the ITV companies comprises of nationally-networked programmes, which could similarly be distributed. Therefore, we may well see the situation where the terrestrial transmitters are ultimately surrendered to truly local television stations whose programmes might depend on high-volume, low budget advertising. In fact, they may be a sort of audio-visual Yellow Pages. It may be appropriate for them to have a rather higher advertising content than the EEC proposes to allow in its proposed legislation. Therefore, rules of the kind proposed in the Green Paper for maximum programme advertising content could well become inappropriate.

In spite of that, the Commission still seems intent on producing a directive in that particular area, and in a number of others, that the committee felt were inappropriate. I dare say that we as a committee will have to climb Big Ben and shout a collective "Foul!" in the direction of Brussels. Certainly we may have to reserve our position, to return and make a follow-up report on their specific proposals.

Distributed by satellite and covering much more than the United Kingdom, the major independent networks might have to undergo certain considerable changes. Providers of films, for example, may claim that their use by ITV gives instant international coverage and will seek royalties based on the actual audience coverage and not merely the British coverage. To balance that, advertising revenues may have to relate similarly to a broader audience—the audience then reached—and hence the nature of advertising would have to attract a more international class of advertiser with internationally-branded products.

For the BBC, as a non-commercially financed service, there is a greater problem. If they go to direct broadcasting by satellite, who will pay the licence fee? The British public will be up in arms very quickly if they have to go on stumping up £58 per year while 50 million or 100 million other Europeans can watch BBC and pay nothing. Ironically, that might drive the BBC right out of the scope of the Green Paper and into the area of encrypted and scrambled transmissions, where the viewer pays an annual fee not for a licence but for the renting of a decoder device.

There are many ifs and buts and other things about which one may speculate in the future of television. I do not advocate the total abandonment of the regulation of television broadcasting, which has undoubtedly served us very well in this country since the dawn of the television age. However, the watchword must be flexibility in a time of change; flexibility to alter the laws, regulations and charters of the BBC and the IBA—to allow them to adapt and compete with new forms of broadcasting and broadcasting systems.

There are many small impediments to the cross-frontier flow of television broadcasting at present but I contend that they will be swept away by a tide of change and not merely by EEC directives. While the Select Committee itself has carefully refrained from suggesting particular alternative directives, it has suggested one area where the European Community could usefully assist in preparing the way to allowing the major "quality" networks of Europe to compete in the satellite era.

The committee has suggested that the Commission direct that EEC member governments should simply remove all barriers to the cross-frontier flow of existing national broadcasting, whether or not such broadcasts comply in detail with their own internal regulations. We contend that that would assist the major networks to get into a position to defend themselves against the newcomers, and at the same time allow viewers of one member state access to the cultural values of others. That is in effect the prime purpose of the Green Paper, which the committee and almost all the witnesses who spoke to it thoroughly applauded. We merely believe that in coming up with its particular areas for proposed directives, the Green Paper lost sight of its main objective and became bogged down in minutiae.

There are those merhants of gloom who foresee television broadcasting in the future as being a non-stop diet of American soap operas coming from 50 or so channels, all heavily interposed with low-quality advertising. The prospect, however, of a future free market in broadcasting does not alarm me quite so much. The growth of public television in America has shown that there is a demand for quality within a free market and that the public will pay for it. The BBC may continue to provide that role in the future. Indeed, I hope and I am sure that it will. However, I suspect that it must think beyond the narrow confines and terms of reference of the Peacock Report for its future funding and embrace the satellite challenge—perhaps moving from terrestrial broadcasting to encrypted satellite transmission, and derive its income not merely from every viewer in Britain but from a slightly smaller percentage of a larger geographical audience.

I am not sure how the commercial stations will cope. They will have to provide quality to secure an adequate slice of the not inexhaustible supply of advertising revenue. Who knows?—we may, after the cosmic dust has settled, end up with perhaps only four worthwhile English language channels in this country. If that is the case, then we will have had a true broadcasting "revolution". I beg to move.

Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Television without Frontiers. [4th Report, 1985–86, H.L. 43]—(Viscount Torrington.)

5.8 p.m.

Lord Mishcon

My Lords, for one entrancing moment I thought that I was due to speak on the subject of frontiers without television. However, I find that the subject matter of our discussion is just as fascinating. At this moment, I would love to pay a tribute that I believe all sides of this House would want to pay, to the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, for having chaired a very able committee. We thank and congratulate him. Like him, I am sure that we shall listen with great anticipation to the maiden speaker in this debate. I may say to the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston, that we know that, when he speaks, we will be hearing from someone with great experience.

I have said that this is a fascinating subject. What could be more fascinating than to try to deal with the following questions? Does broadcasting—radio, television, satellite and cable—come within the economic domain or the cultural domain, or both? What is the picture ahead of us for European integration? Would European Community legislation on the subject of the interchange of programmes—and a subject absorbing to the noble Lord, Lord Kilgerran; that of copyright law—be helpful to European integration?

The next question is: is the European Community within its legal powers in legislating on matters of this kind? Some of us wonder whether, even if it were within the legal province of the EC, it is the best body to legislate on matters such as programme control, advertising, and copyright in this particular field and the domain of fair play; that is, the right of reply and, too, the protection of young people. Those are matters—the latter items—which I believe the EC Parliament first concentrated upon before this matter was broadened out into the Green Paper.

It must be remembered that this is a Green Paper; in other words, it is a discussion document, purely that, and this worthy committee of your Lordships' House has been trying to guide us on these very important issues.

I start by trying to answer from my own humble point of view some of the entrancing questions posed by a debate on this subject. My opinion, for what it is worth, is that if broadcasting were deemed to be in its widest aspect an economic issue many of us would have our very material beliefs and traditions shattered. It must be more essentially a cultural issue than an economic issue, even if there be an admixture of both. As I believe one of the witnesses put it in the evidence which he gave to the committee, this is scarcely like selling pigs in a market. If he did not use that colourful phrase it was one similar to it.

May I say in parenthesis that to read the evidence attached to this report is a real treat. Not only is it so succinctly given by the various witnesses but the questions from members of the committee are very pertinent. If I may say so, if I had not looked up his biography and found otherwise I would have taken it for granted that the chairman, the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, was a very eminent member of the Bar.

What does the Commission aim to do in this Green Paper? I think we should get it perfectly clearly in front of us, as indeed it was summarised by the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington. First, it wants to co-ordinate specific aspects of member states' law regulating radio and television advertising. Secondly, in a limited way, it wants to co-ordinate the member states' copyright laws, replacing the right to prohibit simultaneous transmission with the right to receive fair remuneration. Having previously mentioned the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, in regard to copyright law I add that your Lordships will be much better advised to listen to him on these matters than ever to listen to me. However, I would say in passing that for the European Community to restrict the rights of the holders of copyright merely to receive remuneration and not to have their normal rights under copyright law may be an interferance in those rights which is to be disliked and not immediately upheld.

Thirdly, it tries to co-ordinate certain aspects regulating broadcasting in the interests of fair play; and that is what I referred to earlier as the right of reply. I must say that having read this report I find myself very much in sympathy with the points on the legal powers of the EC to deal with these matters which your Lordships will find summarised very clearly in the Commission's submissions in paragraph 33 and in the Committee's observations in paragraphs 37 and 39. I do not intend to bore the House by reading out those paragraphs. I am sure your Lordships will be able to read those paragraphs for yourselves, but broadly the committee, having heard the evidence from experts on these matters coming from the BBC and elsewhere, says that the case for the legal right of the EC to legislate upon these matters is very thin indeed and asks: even if it had the right, would it be wise to exercise it? Again, I refer the House, if I may, to paragraphs 40 and 43.

In summarising those paragraphs may I say that the committee, in my view quite correctly, said that its recommendation was that certainly at this moment within the restrictive area of the EC and covering, after all, but a few countries and with a wider ambit in the Council of Europe, and with a wider ambit in the EBU, this is not, in fact, the best body to deal with this matter. It comes down upon the side—at all events for the time being—with all the revolutionary changes (the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, defined the word "revolutionary" in his speech in this context) and with the increase of satellites, cable and so on, that it really is not the time now, even if it were appropriate, for legislation of this kind.

Therefore, one ends up, as I intend to end up, with a very sound recommendation which is to be found on page 29, at paragraph 111: In the cause of allowing the citizens of each Member State to become more acquainted with the culture and values of other Member States, the Commission should put pressure on Member States to facilitate the cross-frontier flow of existing national broadcasting". We are justly proud of our own broadcasting services. We are not so justly proud of our linguistic abilities as a nation. It seems to me that if this were done we would be exporting more which would be understood in Europe than we would be importing of that which is likely to be understood by our own population. However, it seems to me that the paragraph I have just quoted is the essence of what we ought to be aiming at in order to achieve proper, gradual European integration and cultural understanding.

5.20 p.m.

Lord McGregor of Durris

My Lords, as from all parts of the House, from these Benches we welcome the admirable and very well-informed report on Television without Frontiers and the elegant, succinct and highly informative speech of the noble Viscount the chairman of your Lordships' committee.

A recurring theme of the committee's report is the speed of technological change. Some of its effects on broadcasting and related media are reflected in miniature in the United Kingdom in the experience of my own organisation, the Advertising Standards Authority. A few years ago a clear distinction could be drawn between broadcast advertising, over which the Independent Broadcasting Authority exercises statutory authority, and print advertising—which attracts two-thirds of all expenditure on advertising in the media—falling under the independent and self-regulatory machinery of the Advertising Standards Authority. Recently, however, that authority has been asked by British Telecom to monitor advertising on Videotext and Prestel; the Cable Authority wishes the ASA to be responsible for the advertising on cable, which approximates to "classified" in print; and the Home Office has asked the authority to apply the British Code of Advertising Practice to community radio for an experimental period and also to take on special event radio. The earlier distinctions are indeed becoming blurred.

The new factors which gave rise to the Commission's Green Paper were the advent of mass broad-band cabling and direct broadcasting by satellite, both of which probably lie beyond the control of national governments, even if they wished to make the attempt to control them. As advertising will pay for much of the variety of broadcasting with which the report is concerned, as it already pays for the choice of newspapers and periodicals, I intend to focus my comments largely upon Part 5 of the report, which deals with advertising and which must be of central importance in the further development of European broadcasting.

After considering the advantages and disadvantages of harmonising advertising standards by EC ukase, the committee concluded, in paragraph 67 of its report, that: developing voluntary common rules for advertising is to be preferred. In the Committee's opinion this is another area where the rapid pace of technological change makes self-regulation the best way of dealing with any problems". What then, one may ask, is the nature of self-regulation, and how might it become established to achieve the committee's objective?

Self-regulation may be defined as the regulation of an activity on a co-operative basis by those engaged in it. The "self" in self-regulatory refers to the body corporate and not to the individual practitioner. Thus, the reach of a self-regulatory system is not necessarily limited by the extent of willing submission of those who are regulated. By virtue of their co-operative structure, self-regulatory systems can effectively control the activities even of individuals who have not made any voluntary gesture of submission. The noble Viscount and his colleagues are not thaumaturgists. Their report will not create a self-regulatory agency; and one of the type envisaged by the committee cannot exist unless at the minimum the industry to be regulated wills it, is prepared to finance it, agrees to accept its guidance and rulings and is capable of securing the adherence and loyalty of its members.

So far as concerns advertising, there would be great advantages in establishing a self-regulatory system. Our own experience in this country suggests that an effective system, as compared with the legal process, will be much quicker, cheaper, much more adaptable and flexible and more effective, in the sense that the industry will more readily accept the rulings of such an agency than it will accept a law which must be mediated through the courts and about which there can be argument. But a self-regulatory system, which is designed to control an international industry and to control it in a number of separate countries, is an entirely new venture in this field so far as I am aware.

To be successful it requires to be based on an international body which has status and is recognised by all the relevant national and regional bodies —because it is no use imagining that a new self-regulatory agency could be established from scratch in time to exercise any effective control over technology which is proceeding at such speed in this field. I can think of only one body which might achieve this task; namely, the International Chambers of Commerce. They have many of the requirements; they are well-known; they have high status; and they are well regarded by governments and by other organisations. One must not forget that one characteristic of the successful self-regulatory agency is that it is acceptable to all the main interests involved—to governments, to advertisers and to consumer groups, to name only three of them.

The International Chambers of Commerce have already been working in this field. They drafted the first international code of advertising practice 50 years ago. Through a Marketing Practice Council they maintain a system of arbitration on arguments about advertising, and they have established similar organisations in a number of other fields. In the nature of things governments will have very little part to play in such a development, though certainly a wink and a nod from governments will be very useful indeed to get things moving, because there is some experience to show that what persuades industry and other bodies into self-regulatory activities is very often fear of government. Indeed, one might say that fear of governments is the beginning of wisdom so far as self-regulation is concerned.

I hope that some attention is paid to this vital recommendation of the committee in terms of ensuring that steps are now taken to see that an agency can become established. Without it, or, what would be worse, with an ineffectual agency, great damage may very well be done to such self-regulatory institutions as we already possess. I cannot conclude without saying how much I, like all those in the House for this debate, look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Viscount who is to follow.

5.31 p.m.

Viscount Chilston

My Lords, I am deeply aware of the honour that I have in addressing your Lordships' House for the first time. I am sure that you will be equally aware of the trepidation that I feel in addressing myself to the occasion. Repeat fees are sometimes payable to film producers. They should perhaps also paid to stammering Peers. As might be expected of someone on this side of the House, I am a committed supporter of the ideals of the Treaty of Rome, and, as is particularly appropriate in this debate, its insistence on the free flow of goods and services across the Community's internal frontiers. Unfortunately, the EC creates as much, if not more, absurdly detailed legislation in upholding this freedom as other less democratic societies do in preventing it.

My noble friend Lord Torrington has mentioned the four areas where the Commission suggested that legislation should be put forward—minimum standards of advertising, a right of reply, the protection of minors, and the observance of copyright. I hope that my noble friend's howls will be heard from the roofs of Parliament because although I am pleased that the Select Committee was of the opinion that the Commission should not involve itself in any of these areas, I have since heard that it is nonetheless still set on such legislation.

Certainly, minimum standards should be established and upheld—but by self-regulation and the commercial judgement of broadcasters and not by legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, has pointed out, this will require an immense commitment from the television industry in Britain and also in Europe. The standard of British broadcasting is unmatched anywhere in the world, let alone Europe. Yet legislation has played a very small part in upholding these standards. Programme quality cannot be imposed by rules that define minimum standards. It has to grow from a competitive framework that provides the highest rewards for those producing the best programmes. I speak to you, my Lords, as a film maker. I know that my colleagues within the industry will agree with me in singling out copyright as the crucial issue for the continued well-being of originators and hence an important contributory factor to the quality of programming.

The basis of copyright law is that the owners of intellectual property have a right to a fair reward from the exploitation of their material. That reward can only be a fair reward if the rightsholder has, as he does at the moment, the right to control the various uses made of it. The European Commission in its Green Paper considered several alternative methods of copyrighting. I shall quickly run through them.

One was to treat programmes in the same way as books and records; namely, that if a book is published in one member state it can then circulate freely within the rest of the EC. This suggestion has already been quashed in the European Court of Justice on the grounds that works in material form are different from non-material ones.

Another model suggested was the formation of a few collecting agencies, or even a single one, to which rightsholders would subsume their rights. Apart from the enormous complications and cost involved in setting up and staffing such an organisation, rightsholders would be deprived of their right either to refuse transmission or to negotiate royalties. Another alternative considered by the Commission relies, as at the moment, on private contracts between the rightsholder and the broadcaster. This is basically the system that works at the moment where material is submitted for broadcasting terrestrially. However, the European Commission argues that it will be more difficult when, as is the case now, European satellite broadcasts are transmitted only to cable networks which, in turn, send the signal down to their customers on the end of the wire. The rightsholder then, it argues, would have to enter into separate contracts with each and every cable operator as well as the original broadcaster.

Rather surprisingly, the Commission concluded in its Green Paper, and still maintains, that there is no alternative to legislation. It favours a statutory licensing system whereby rightsholders would have a statutory right to equitable remuneration but would have no right to choose whether or not their programme is broadcast, nor in which territory it is broadcast. That, says the Commission, would constitute, a restriction on the free flow of television". I maintain that such a statutory system would be unworkable. if programmes cannot be purchased competitively, how can we expect broadcasters to transmit them competitively? When every television broadcast is transmitted by high powered DBS—direct broadcast satellite—to the consumer, each with his own dish aerial on his roof, there should be no problem with the existing copyright rules as we know them. The rightsholder can negotiate with the broadcaster and agree a royalty based on up-to-date audited ratings figures. In the present climate of low powered satellites transmitting only to cable networks, such audience figures can still be verified taking into account the number of sets serviced by each of the networks receiving the signal.

I suggest that the rightsholder can either do a sell-out to the original broadcaster bearing in mind the probable number of networks taking the programme, or he can negotiate a percentage of the sales made by the broadcaster to the retransmitting cable operators. In this way, when the programme is retransmitted by the cable operator copyright is transferred from the individual copyright holder to the original broadcaster. The various copyright holders would then look to the original broadcaster for their royalties from the retransmission as well as from the original broadcast. The original broadcaster, in turn, can negotiate retransmissions as he sees fit, reflecting the royalties that he has already paid or will have to pay to his contributors. This system seems to me the most workable.

The rightsholder would not, of course, be able to prevent particular retransmissions in particular territories. This is often a problem because certain programmes have particular appeal to other specific territories whether in the EC or elsewhere. Frequently, such programmes have to be radically adapted to suit these other markets. Programmes tailored specifically for a given territory have a much greater sales value than would the original version, although often the original version can be sent out with a redubbed foreign language sound track. It is my belief that programme appeal, just like advertisement targeting, is to a large degree dependent on a well defined audience. The more defined the audience, the more pertinent the programme, the more effective the advertising and the greater the revenue from both.

Language is, of course, a most obvious limiting factor when making material available to pan-European audiences, and when DBS broadcasting is the norm the number of channels available for simultaneous sound tracks will be severely limited. At the moment, foreign language sound tracks—any number of them—can be sent by land line to the various cable heads. We are perhaps lucky in that English is the most widely spoken language in Europe. As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, commented, British television, not forgetting Irish television, would seem, on the face of it, to have the lion's share of this potential market. However, the United States currently produces vastly more television programming in English than we do. If existing English language television is anything to go by, then European satellite television in the future will have a very transatlantic flavour.

Perhaps I might be excused for quoting from Satellite television magazine who publish a sort of Radio Times of United Kingdom satellite TV broadcasts. At the moment your Lordships are missing, or have just missed, the "Lucy Show"—a comedy; an Australian film called "Storm Boy"; "One Thousand Dozen", which is an American Western, and episode 31 of "Thunder Cats".

A noble Lord

Thank God!

Viscount Chilston

If so-called "brain candy" is to be typical of European satellite broadcasting in the future, then the discerning have very little to look forward to.

I believe, however, that with the present national and commercial television stations of Europe competing for the Euro television tube with freely negotiated and competitively commissioned material, television of "minimum standards" will not be on offer and nor will it be accepted by the viewer. So may not your Lordships feel that live broadcasts from this House, beamed by satellite across Europe, have some future? The free flow of such high quality television would surely satisfy the highest ideals of the Treaty of Rome. And it could be free, with an established copyright, no royalties and certainly no repeat fees.

5.42 p.m.

The Earl of Halsbury

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to rise and congratulate a maiden speaker who has acquitted himself as notably as the noble Viscount who has just resumed his seat.

It is one of the boasts of your Lordships' House that no matter what subject is up for discussison we always have at least one expert on the subject, someone who has a mastery of the field and can command your Lordships' attention as I know it was commanded during the course of the noble Viscount's maiden speech. The three qualities on which we traditionally congratulate are to be wise, witty and modest. I can assure the noble Viscount that he has won his spurs under all three headings. We look forward to hearing him many times in the future.

Having delivered a message of congratulation to the maiden speaker I now have an apology to address to the House. An unexpected opportunity to visit the fast reactor at Dounreay last week landed me with some rather terrible arrears of correspondence to which I had to attend in the early part of this afternoon. I was in the middle of that when the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, began the debate on this subject, and I had to be reminded that I was due to speak. I therefore not only missed his contribution but, I am afraid, half of that of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, as well. Having made that apology, I hope your Lordships will accept it. I should of course remain to listen to the rest of the debate.

I want to draw your Lordships' attention particularly to paragaph 109, which says: Because things are changing so fast, the Green Paper is trying to do too much too soon. What is needed is a more modest first step on the lines suggested in … paragraph 93". The "lines suggested" in paragraph 93 are taking such steps as will facilitate cross-frontier flow of existing national broadcasting. With that I entirely agree, as I think would the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, judging by what the noble Lord said during the half of his speech to which I was privileged to listen.

I want to quote something from paragraph 93, which talks of the impact of the new services and technologies: changes can at present be assessed only be speculation rather than empirical evidence". I was absolutely convinced of the truth of that listening to witness after witness. I thought that the Green Paper was trying to do too much too soon. My mind cast back to a situation where the firm of Ferranti had been given a contract to build the first computer in the world that had not been put together Meccano-wise in a university laboratory. They were engineering it to the design of Professor F. C. Williams on a contract originally placed by the Ministry of Supply but later transferred to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The late Lord Blackett, who was then a colleague of mine, wanted me to do market research on the future of computers. I had to persuade him as gently as I could that one cannot do market research on something which does not exist. The potential man at the other end of the market must be able to look at what it is he is being asked to buy and see what it is doing.

I went up and talked to Sir Vincent de Ferranti about the future of this machine that he had built under full industrial conditions, not, as I say, in a university laboratory. I asked him whether he would like another development contract. He said, "No, I do not want a development contract. I want orders. I shall do the development if I can get the orders." Thereupon I placed an order with him, more or less on the spot, for 10 computers at £100,000 each to be manufactured on a cost-plus basis, and I assigned him the sole selling agency for them on a commission, reserving 20 per cent. overall profit for the National Research Development Corporation, whose funds I was employing. That meant investing a million in that order out of the £5 million which had been allocated to us by Parliament. And that is how the British computer industry started.

I believe very much that the same sort of situation will develop over, for example, direct broadcasting by satellite. I do not think one can start legislating for it at this point in time. We do not know enough about its opportunities and what will happen at the receiving end. It is all very fine to talk about every man having his own dish. But suppose one lives in a block of flats. Will there be one dish for the block? Which satellite will it be looking at?—and so on and so forth. Nobody seems to have thought about these things at all.

My own belief is that when we legislate we should wait until a mischief develops and then remedy that mischief. To try to see in a glass darkly the future of something so totally different from anything we have experienced so far is, I think, unprofitable as an exercise. I believe that we should avoid it. Therefore, for my own part I support the committee of which I am a member under the chairmanship of the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, in its conclusion that the Green Paper is trying to do too much too fast.

5.48 p.m.

Lord Graham of Edmonton

My Lords, I have a double pleasure, first, in acknowledging the debt that the House owes to the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and, secondly, to echo the words that have already been said so eloquently by the previous speaker, in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston, on his maiden speech. As the noble Viscount will have gathered—and one senses these things—he was very well received. He was also very well listened to by those in the film-making business. I noticed that behind him sat the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey who is a film-maker, and opposite was the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, who brings to this House his experience as a former chairman of the IBA. There are many in the House with some experience in these matters.

I do not of course include myself. I am a talker and not a doer in these matters. Therefore the presence of the noble Viscount, and the speech he made today, certainly indicate to us that the field of film-making and the media generally will be enhanced by the contributions which the noble Viscount makes. I look forward to hearing many more in the future.

I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, who, from our Front Bench gave a very warm welcome to the sagacity of the committee, and the enormous help that that committee had from the range of witnesses many of whom were prompted or invited to appear and many others of whom sought to appear. At the end of the day we are in possession of a very valuable document. As the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, said, there may not be an ideal time, but it is certainly timely now to bring together those strands and threads in order to ask: Where do we go from here? To that extent we are indeed indebted to the authors of the Green Paper.

I certainly agree with many of the detailed responses of the committee to Television without Frontiers. Quite rightly, this is a British response of which I am proud. Who else but the committee will speak, as they are entitled to, on behalf of Britain and introduce a British input into these matters?

I also bring to this debate the views of the Association of Cinematograph and Television Technicians—ACTT—who have advised me of their views on these matters. ACTT has 25,000 members. When one looks at the population of Europe which is served in these matters, which is 350 million, there is no doubt that the technicians who work in this field have a very important contribution to make.

The first point they make is that, if one is looking for strands and thrusts in the Green Paper, then they are in favour of deregulation. Coming fresh from the battles and scars of Sunday trading and shopping, this is not the only field in which I am not in favour either of deregulation or of complete deregulation. I believe that in his maiden speech the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston, referred to the standards and qualities of British broadcasting, as have other speakers. When one looks at those qualities and standards one can see that not only are they good by our standards and by European standards, but they are good by world standards. In part, though not wholly, this is due to the regulatory framework of the business. It is not merely regulated by the force of law but there is self-regulation by the business, and I refer not merely to the managers and the entrepreneurs but also to the workers in the industry.

We also have the benefit of the observations which were made prior to this debate by the Government in correspondence. The Minister at the Home Office, Mr. Giles Shaw, wrote to my friend Mr. Alan Sapper giving some observations on these matters. One of the phrases used was that: the Government … has serious doubts about the need for Community legislation in this field". A great deal more is said in the letter and I would not presume to impinge upon the Minister's response, which I shall certainly stay to listen to and appreciate. However, the kernal of what we are about is whether it is right and proper, despite the arguments, for the Community to legislate in this particular sphere.

The Green Paper mentions the need to harmonise national agreements. However, the British experience has grown up by trial and error and by practical guidance. I would certainly echo one of the points made by my noble friend Lord Mishcon. Quite clearly, as my noble friend and the ACTT pointed out, the imperative which drives the Green Paper is the economic imperative. The economic imperative is not the only one, and even if it is one of a number, it ought not to be the prime imperative. The others concern cultural, social and political purposes, and they all need to be weighed with the economic imperative, particularly when we talk about these matters.

The report makes the point, which I echo, that when we talk about commodities that can be translated, transported and transformed across boundaries, we are not talking about milk or pig meat; we are talking about ideas, about abstract matters and about matters that need to be handled differently. To that extent, in my view, a major error was committed by the authors of the Green Paper.

I also think that, when looking at the long-term implications of the report, this House, the industry in this country and legislators should recognise what is already on the stocks in this country for those who are deeply involved in broadcasting. We are awaiting the report of the Peacock Committee and, whatever it says, it will undoubtedly be a major and significant 1986 initiative in these matters.

We are looking very closely at the possible relaxation of regulations governing independent local radio. We are assessing the whole of our experience in cable and satellite. My noble friend Lord Mishcon and I first began to discuss these matters when this House dealt with the cable Bill more than two years ago. It is quite clear that, although we recognise that there are European dimensions in these matters, in this House we are not the European Parliament but we are negotiating, advising and trying to guide these matters as they affect us. I would very much favour the approach which talks in terms of regulation by public accountability and would not want it replaced by regulation through market forces. In the United Kingdom we are no stranger to regulation, of which I certainly approve. We have regulations in respect of programme standards; we have regulations in respect of foreign quotas as regards films; we have regulations in respect of feature films. There are no references in the Green Paper, Television without Frontiers, to any of these crucial areas of which we ought to take account.

The Green Paper has much to say about advertising. One paragraph speaks of direct sponsorship and refers to up to 25 per cent. of air time for advertising. Even if we were beginning to talk in terms of accepting the report in general, 25 per cent. of air time for advertising is far too high.

I intend to listen carefully to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, when we shall hear from an acknowledged expert in this House on the issue of copyright. I simply look at paragraph 77 on page 24 of the Green Paper, which deals with this subject. I am struck by the words: Any undertaking engaged in re-transmitting broadcasts originating in a Member State would be licensed to do so irrespective of any copyrights in the material transmitted; the rightsholders would have a statutory right to 'equitable remuneration' to be determined according to various principles or, if necessary, by arbitration". As I say, I await the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, but I would start from the premise that there must be a basic right that the fundamental original owner has the prime rights and must wholly govern the manner in which his work is treated in this particular matter. I would imagine that what has been proposed is contrary to the practice in most countries which are being invited collectively to subscribe in this matter.

I simply want to conclude by making a brief reference to two of the recommendations of the committee. At paragraph 80 on page 25, the committee states: The Committee do not believe … that rightsholders should be deprived of their freedom to negotiate their own fees or stop their material being used". That is a fair point.

There is no reference in the Green Paper to any enforcing or policing provisions, or any time-scale over which this report is to be carried out. I notice in particular, however, that in paragraph 96 it is said: The Green Paper is a comprehensive attempt to stimulate debate. But it must be regarded only as a basis for discussion". Then in paragraph 110: Each Member State should remain so far as possible the ultimate arbiter of its own domestic broadcasting policy". In those two paragraphs the House will find much agreement with what the report says, with what the committee says, and what the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, has advised us to listen to with care. It is on that basis that I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate.

6.1 p.m.

Earl De La Warr

My Lords, I should like to start by declaring an interest in that I am a director of one of the new cable companies. I should like to go on and say how delighted I was with the maiden speech by my noble friend Lord Chilston. It was particularly pleasant for me. Having spent much of my life in a trade closely relating to broadcasting, I recognised, not a fellow traveller, but a fellow human being, and he seemed to address the House with some good, hard, business sense which commanded my full approval.

I want to talk briefly about the subjects dealt with in this report, and then go on to talk rather more specifically about some aspects of direct broadcast satellites, which are so nearly with us. I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Torrington on the report of the committee of which he was chairman, and on the fascinating way in which he introduced it.

The committee, as I understand it, gave a decisive rejection to pretty well all the proposals put forward by the commission, not necessarily because they were wrong but because the committee felt that self-regulation was much better, and that what we had been able to do with the Council of Europe and the European Broadcasting Union showed that there were better mediums through which to achieve these objects. Therefore, I fully agree with everything that the committee said, and I hope that the Government will too.

There are some wider implications to this report which I should like to put to your Lordships. The Green Paper, which was the first of its type—the first communication addressed specifically to broadcasting—should be looked at as something of a thin end to a very thick wedge. It is my belief that at the thick end of that wedge lies an aspiration to create a European Broadcasting Authority. In this era of high tech. and an entrepreneurial approach to broadcasting, it would be devasting to have a bureaucratic body like the Commission impose itself in any way on this creative industry.

It was really summed up perfectly by the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, in a speech he made last year when he gave the Fleming Memorial Lecture. He said: There is talk of seeking to establish a European Broadcasting Authority. I yield to no one in my enthusiasm for progress in the search for European unity, but I think my former colleagues in Brussels would be well advised to concentrate on creating a monetary community, or a technological community or on breaking down the international barriers to trade, rather than the more elusive issues of seeking to integrate European broadcasting practices which are already handled very well by the European Broadcasting Union. When you have said that, I think you have said it all.

Therefore, I would suggest that we should not say to the Commission, "You are a little bit early. Perhaps later on." We should be firmer than my noble friend in his report in paragraph 93, and firmer than the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. We should not say, "Not yet". We should say, "Not at all. We do not want the commission now, or at any time, to involve itself in broadcasting affairs".

Lord Mishcon

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Earl will forgive me if I intervene merely to say—and the noble Viscount will speak for himself—that I did not say that eventually what was suggested in the Green Paper would commend itself to your Lordships' House. I merely said certainly not now, and by all means let us look at this in stages.

Earl De La Warr

My Lords, I am most obliged to the noble Lord. I do not think there is really very much at issue between us. I believe we look at it in very much the same way. I shall be extremely interested to hear what the Government have to say to us about their view.

I should now like to talk for a bit about direct broadcasting satellites. I do not know whether any of your Lordships remember the book I have with me. It was a book produced in 1981 by the Home Office. It is the only textbook that has been written on this subject. It was written by a civil servant in the Home Office, and I remember congratulating him on that work in your Lordships' House in 1981. It is even more prestigious because the prologue was signed by no less a person than my noble friend the Leader of the House when he was at the Home Office.

Let us be clear what direct broadcasting satellites are about, or indeed any satellites. They are about offering extra choice of programmes to those who are prepared to pay for it, for nothing is for free. There are three ways in which you can get extra choice. First is the video cassette recorder, which has two uses. First, the time shift, and that, of course, because of the sequential nature of broadcasting, enables, you to have extra choice. You can record a programme that you might not see because you are out, or you can record a programme that you might not have seen because you were looking at another one. That is extra choice in every sense.

In addition to that, there are the pre-recorded cassettes that one can buy. My information is that in this current year the trade expect that people will spend over £100 million on buying, or renting, prerecorded cassettes. There is a penetration of well over 40 per cent. of these objects in television homes. It is clear that the demand for choice is pretty big.

The second way is by cable. Usually the cable programmes these days come from low-powered satellites which broadcast on 10 watts and distribute to 3m. dishes at the head ends of cable systems. Most operators are now offering their subscribers something like eight extra channels. Subscribers can easily pay £15 a month or more for the extra programmes that they want. Then, finally, there is the new breed of satellite which goes direct to the home, not to a 3m. dish but to a 50cm. dish, which has attached to it certain equipment on the down lead to make the programme receivable by an ordinary televison set. It broadcasts on 200 watts not 10 watts. Every home that wants this facility with the dish and its equipment will probably pay £250.

That is still to come. At the moment, apart from the video cassette recorder, we have cable to offer subscribers an additional choice. But there is a big difference between cable in this country and cable in western Europe. In France, Germany and the low countries cable is growing very fast. There is much government finance. There is the intention of setting up a grid in each country, and the big cities are being tackled energetically. In this country, in spite of the enthusiasm there was a year or two ago, the growth of cable is very slow. If I were asked to say why, the reason I would give is because there is little sign of anything like the support from the institutions that is needed to enable this new system to build up.

In my opinion for a very long time there will be an unsatisfied demand for extra choice. I have no doubt that that demand will be filled by direct broadcast satellites. Indeed the French and the Germans are putting up their first direct broadcast satellites either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. The French satellite TDF1 has a footprint which adequately covers the whole of this county. One channel is being offered in English. We understand that Mr. Maxwell is at a fairly complete state of negotiation to take over that channel. If those negotiations are successful, by summer 1987 at the latest, for those who are prepared to buy a dish there will be at least one programme available, but it will be under the control of the French Government, not under British control.

Who will come next? We hear that Luxembourg might come in possibly using a French channel. We hear that the Irish are very interested. I suggest that it is essential that the next people should be the United Kingdom because if we do not do anything then for certain somebody else will. My noble friend Lord Torrington spoke very properly about the lack of control that can come from non-United Kingdom-based satellites and the real danger of lower standards being created. I personally do not believe that control is necessarily doomed. I very much hope not because I am one of those who believe passionately that the excellence of our broadcasting in this country, which is the envy of the world, has come about because of the way in which the Government and the broadcasters between them have been willing to see it controlled.

I should remind your Lordships that there is one further benefit. If a British satellite is launched, the footprint, as it is called, will cover the whole of this country for the domestic dish, but the footprint for cable will cover the whole of Europe. We shall not only have the opportunity of broadcasting in this country to homes and to cable systems, but we shall have the opportunity to move into a pre-eminent position in the growing European cable systems. I believe that we have at the most three years, if we are not to be overtaken by more extraterritorial competition.

I very much welcome the initiative that the Government have recently taken (which they announced, without very much fanfare, in a Written Answer in another place to a Private Notice Question on 20th February) that they were asking the IBA to put out tenders for contractors who would be prepared to find finance for the putting up of a satellite, who would operate it and who would find programmers for the three channels which they suggested should be operative out of the five possibles. I have no doubt at all that both the Government and the IBA understand the urgency of this, but I shall be grateful for anything that the Government can tell us today. I do not ask my noble friend today to describe this whole large subject, but I should be pleased to hear that the Government have some date in mind for British direct broadcasting satellites to go into business.

As I said we have the finest broadcasting in the world, so let us seize this latest opportunity to make ourselves pre-eminent in that as well.

6.17 p.m.

Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran

My Lords, I join other members in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, upon the fascinating way in which he introduced this report. I should like to emphasise, and add further congratulations on, the nature of the report, because he has done a splendid job, in my view, in finalising this report on a very difficult subject, with the perhaps difficult witnesses who came before us. I feel that this report will be of great use to the Commission in its further deliberations. It is a contribution towards helping further integration of the Community on matters with which the report is concerned.

It would be trite of me to say that this Green Paper deals with very complex problems arising from cross-frontier broadcasting in a period of rapid technological change—something which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, emphasised. One of our witnesses said that the Green Paper is merely a web "of theoretical reasoning". But its proposals are controversial and have already led to much useful debate in many countries.

It has also been emphasised that I am a practitioner in intellectual property. I am grateful for the kind words that have been said about me this evening. Consequently, as the Green Paper raised matters in relation to the Rome Treaty, I confess that I rather selfishly and pragmatically limited my interests in the committee's activities to two main themes in the Green Paper and tried to follow them.

That was somewhat difficult. First, I tried to follow the argument as to whether the Commission was competent to deal with cross-frontier broadcasting in this way having regard to the terms of the Rome Treaty; and, secondly, I attempted to analyse that part of the Green Paper which dealt with copyright matters arising, as it were, from the footprints made by television broadcasting in crossing frontiers. As to the competence of the Commission in these matters, I had noted with some interest that this Green Paper, unlike so many other Green Papers, was not merely born of bureaucrats in Brussels but had, as far as I can understand, arisen from a resolution of the European Parliament in March 1982. I have not been able to find whether that resolution has been debated in the European Parliament.

However, at an early stage in the evidence it became clear that there would be severe objections to accepting the Commission's view that the concept of regulation of Community broadcasting over frontiers fell within the scope of the Rome Treaty. Indeed, some parts of the Green Paper seemed to run counter to some recent decisions of the European Court of Justice. I was supported in this view by the oral evidence of the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, who gave evidence to us as chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority. But his evidence was of very considerable significance, in my view, as he was also a former commissioner of the EC. He said this—and I think that these are words which are worth quoting: I ought to begin by saying we very much understand and sympathise with the European aspirations that lie behind the Commission's Green Paper … The concept of a Community broadcasting without frontiers is, certainly, on the face of it an admirable European sentiment and a goal with which we would in principle agree. But I am bound to say that the IBA has serious reservations about the basic premises of the Commission's approach to these issues". He goes on to say later: The EEC is an economic community. The Treaty of Rome is an economic treaty. The Green Paper treats broadcasting as if it were predominantly an economic service, justifying this by reference to Articles 59 and 60 of the Treaty. But, broadcasting, while it is to be paid for in one way or another, is predominantly not an economic service". He goes on then to apologise for speaking so harshly of the results of such painstaking Commission work in producing this Green Paper. I put the views of the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, to the witnesses who appeared from the BBC. Mr. Jennings, a legal adviser of the BBC, was good enough to say (at page 76 of the report) that I had accurately summarised the basic view of the BBC that broadcasting, like education, was not covered by the terms of the Rome Treaty. He went on further to say that even if Articles 59 and 60 of the Rome Treaty were to apply to broadcasting as a service, it would not be regarded as just an economic activity but was something much broader than that. For those reasons he felt that the Green Paper had got itself into serious difficulties in the present context of broadcasting.

However the sub-committee had one further interesting memorandum introduced by Mars Corporate Services, who are one of the biggest advertisers and whose advertisements pass all over Europe. I was sorry that that representative of Mars Corporate Services was not orally examined. He made an interesting analysis of the Rome Treaty position, starting at page 252 of the report. This interpretation of the Rome Treaty is certainly something which I shall bear in mind in other discussions arising out of this report.

Now I come to the question of copyright. There have been certain references to what I shall say about copyright. I hope that I shall not disappoint those kind persons who have spoken earlier this evening about my being a practitioner in this field particularly concerned with the Rome Treaty. I must confess that I went to Dounreay with the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, with the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and with today's maiden speaker, the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston. He told me that, as a film producer, he would be dealing with practical matters out of his experience on copyright matters.

Perhaps I am rather late in congratulating the noble Viscount on his maiden speech but all your Lordships heard how he dealt so practically with these questions of copyright in the context of TV broadcasting crossing frontiers. I think it would be a waste of time for me now to enter into anything speculative about the future of copyright matters when we have had this practical statement from the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston.

When the British Copyright Council gave evidence, it said (at page 239) that in so far as copyright was concerned this Green Paper was: densely written"— and again I quote— rather tedious and time consuming to assimilate". Therefore, having heard the splendid maiden speech of the noble Viscount and having quoted what the British Copyright Council has said about the Green Paper on copyright, I shall be quite brief in dealing with this section on copyright. It was interesting to have Mr. Coleman, the head of the Intellectual Property and Unfair Competition Division of the European Commission, to give evidence. He made it clear that copyright itself comes within the scope of the Treaty of Rome. I have had some professional dealings with Mr. Coleman recently on questions relating to the harmonisation of the laws of copyright in EC countries quite apart from the deliberations of this Select Committee.

It is the view of a number of countries, and of some members of the secretariat of the Commission, that the United Kingdom law on copyright has provisions which other EC countries have not and therefore that the owners of UK copyright have advantages in some areas over other countries in the EC. For instance, we have what is known as conversion damages. If you are successful in suing anybody for breach of copyright, you do not merely get ordinary damages but you get conversion damages which may be very much larger than the normal damages that are given in intellectual property matters. Again, the length of term of copyright in this country is so much greater than the length of term of copyright in other countries.

There is now pressure being brought to bear to modify the United Kingdom law particularly in these two areas. Many of the United Kingdom institutions that gave evidence to us may wish to reserve such advantages as we may have against those neighbours abroad who, as it were, were making footprints, gaining access and infringing some of their rights. However that may be, I do not feel that I should take up your Lordships' time with more of my legalistic views on the present copyright themes in the Green Paper.

Mr. Collins, a member of the European Parliament, gave evidence at page 219 that the Green Paper, whatever its complexity, lays a good foundation for a Commission directive on television advertising along the lines talked about by my noble friend Lord McGregor of Durris. On page 138 I raised with a witness the question of the protection of children and young people from advertisement of alcoholic beverages. That seems to be a factor needing urgent attention because it may have some influence in relation to the vandalism at football matches which we so much deplore. The Government may have something to say about that.

Perhaps I may, in conclusion, say that I sympathise with the European aspirations that lie behind the Commission's Green Paper and its efforts to achieve coherence and co-ordination in the interests of the integration of the Community economically as well as politically. However, it is clear that at present the differences of political, cultural and historical heritage of EC countries and, perhaps, the limited terms of the Rome Treaty, have provided stumbling blocks to progress of the kind envisaged in the Green Paper. As the Select Committee has concluded, there is a strong case for regarding the Green Paper mainly as a basis for further discusssions, in particular with regard to standards for satellite transmissions, advertising and many of the other fields of high technology which will impinge upon broadcasting in the future.

6.32 p.m.

Lord Taylor

My Lords, the noble Viscount, Lord 'Torrington, must be very pleased by the reception of his baby. It is obviously an extremely popular one. I was equally delighted with his speech until about the last one-third, when he made us think of a television yellow pages supplement which would help to raise the advertising revenue necessary for the many channels.

It is worth remembering that one can only watch one channel at a time and that the advantages of 60, 40, 20 or 10 channels are limited, in particular if their quality is limited. The vision of the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, of complete freedom of broadcasting is more roseate than mine when I think of public service broadcasting in America. It has to devote days appealing to the audience to send half dollars, dollars or whatever it may be to keep the system going. It is a highly dicey job to get the money necessary for the excellent broadcasting service that is provided. I think the public service broadcasting probably underpays for BBC and other feature films. The noble Viscount and his committee have done the most remarkable job. I must congratulate them on their English, which is superb, beautiful, crisp, delightful and all correct.

The noble Viscount, Lord Chilston, made an excellent maiden speech. I take it that he Is an independent producer—a most dangerous occupation, as I understand it, and one in which one can sometimes lose a great deal of money and sometimes make a great deal of money. I must confess to indirect family connections as one of my children has married into the Holmes Associates family, which the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston, I am sure, will know.

I must also declare a couple of indirect interests. My elder son is co-ordinator of the plans for the super channel. That is a combined ITV and BBC company to make programmes which would be radiated on an existing satellite. I must not say anything about that because it would be wrong. They must speak for themselves.

One thing which is clear is the cost of putting up a satellite. I believe that it costs 12 million dollars, of which half is the cost of launching. It will take a bit of doing to get back 12 million dollars commercially. It means that most television via satellite must be commercial. It must earn a large advertising revenue and it must command a large audience.

My second special interest in the matter is that I am still a visiting professor of medicine at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. I was the vice-chancellor when we started a tele-medicine unit which aimed to cover the whole of Newfoundland and Labrador with medical advice by means of television. We conducted a series of experiments. Fortunately, the Americans provided half a satellite. I think it was called Hermes. This was in about 1970. That satellite was available to cover the vast and sparsely populated areas of northern Canada from Calvary and St. John's. We did not know how it would work, but we knew that there were doctors working in isolation who might benefit from the service.

However, after a six-month trial we found that there was very little to be gained from having a moving picture as against voice-to-voice transmissions. With conventional voice-to-voice telephone transmissions we could have a still picture within 70 seconds. We take a video picture and transmit a single still. That gives, for example, an electro-cardiograph or an electro-encephalograph, if they are required. That can usually be done by two people speaking together; they do not always need a satellite.

As one drives along the roads in Canada, one sees large red and white trellis poles with dishes on top. They constitute the microwave system of the Canadian telecommunications commission. They enable one to have a hook-up of any number of people for individual consultations, conferences or committee meetings. They are quite useful. I say "quite useful" as they do not replace the conference, because at conferences the most useful information is often that which comes out in the bar or, in America, on the broadwalk, and in general discussions after the conference.

If one uses the system for teleconferences, one must be a very good chairman to keep the thing going properly. We have found the system useful in relatively few cases. We have had one successful use of a satellite. It is to link St. John's with the University of Nairobi. The satellite has voice-to-voice communication with a picture one way—to St. John's. This is used for the interpretation of electroencephalograms, and has proved quite successful and worthwhile; but it would be utterly uneconomic in terms of cost had it not been a free gift of spare time on an existing satellite.

The last problem we have in Newfoundland—and it is a special problem—concerns working with floating oil-rigs. Here the transmission of a signal is fairly frequently frustrated by the roughness of the sea. If one is trying to send a picture it is not always easy. These rigs have to be mobile because of the possibility of icebergs coming down and wrecking the rig. So, again, the value has been limited. It is a very good example of why one should not legislate until one has done a great deal of experimenting.

I therefore heartily welcome the conclusions of the report and heartily welcome the work of the committee of the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington. I hope that we shall follow the advice and hasten very slowly here.

6.41 p.m.

Lord Lovell-Davis

My Lords, before commenting on the report I should make it clear to your Lordships that, although I am a consultant to companies and associations which have made their own responses to the Green Paper, the views I wish to express in this debate are my own.

I should like to start by adding to that of other noble Lords my appreciation of the time and effort that the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, and the committee have devoted to the preparation of their report on the Commission's Green Paper. A substantial amount of evidence has been painstakingly taken and deliberated upon before the committee has presented us with its conclusions.

I should be concealing my true reactions, however, were I not to admit to some sense of disappointment at several of those conclusions. It seemed to me, as I read much of the evidence, that too many interested parties want to preserve the status quo—a status quo which does not in fact exist. The broadcasting scene is changing rapidly and will go on changing. New technology, in the form of cable television and DBS, is presenting us with social, economic and technological challenges to which neither the Community as a whole nor its member states can afford to adopt a "wait and see" policy.

In certain respects, a comparison of the Green Paper and the report reminds me of the American comedian Mort Sahl's definition of the difference between the Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats, he would say, believe in change; the Republicans believe in change, too—but not now. Well, I believe that a policy of change is needed—and needed now. I agree with that part of the National Consumer Council's evidence which says: A 'do nothing' policy is likely to produce the worst of all worlds". Consequently, I cannot agree with the committee's conclusion at paragraph 96: The Green Paper is a comprehensive attempt to stimulate debate … it must be regarded only as a basis for discussion". In my view, the Green Paper represents a careful but determined approach to problems we cannot shrug off, in which cables are already laid and are still being laid, in which satellites are in orbit and more direct broadcasting satellites will go into orbit in the future, covering vast areas of the EC and Europe as a whole with their broadcasting footprints. All this is happening against a confused background of national rules and regulations which, if they remain as they are, will create chaos, as cross-frontier broadcasting inexorably presses forward.

One has only to look at the present situation so far as broadcast advertising is concerned to get some idea of the problems which may arise. In some member states television advertising is permitted; in others it is not. The prohibitions on what may or may not be advertised, and when, vary from country to country and in some instances have a somewhat bizarre quality. In France, for instance, there are restrictions on television advertising of tourism, records, the press, textiles and (the farming lobby at it again perhaps) margarine. In Italy, cruises, tours and boats cannot be advertised on television; in the Netherlands, correspondence courses. Here in the United Kingdom, not only correspondence clubs, matrimonial agencies and "undertakers or others associated with death or burial", but the IBA code also prohibits advertising by charities. Comparative product advertising is effectively ruled out in Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Television advertising as a whole is prohibited in Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

However, more and more countries are beginning to recognise that much of the funding for the costly new technologies, and the programmes which will be needed if we are not to import wall-to-wall soap operas but are to set minimum quotas of Community and national programmes, will have to come from advertising. Whatever may be one's personal view of broadcast advertising and sponsorship, it is unrealistic to imagine that this is not going to be a major source of the massive funding which will be required. It is equally hard to imagine the convoluted arrangements which would have to be made to fit advertising-backed cable and DBS broadcasts into the complex variety of national rules and regulations as they exist at present.

The Commission's Green Paper is a laudable attempt to establish some ground rules which will take the place of these complicated national arrangements. It proposes to simplify, not to impose new rules and regulations. Its objective is to open up the field to the new communications technology which exists, is already in operation and, in my view, can do so much for the economic and social well-being of the Community; and within which the self-regulation referred to in the committee's report can operate effectively.

It has been said, notably by the Home Office in its evidence and by the EBU, that all, these difficulties can best be sorted out on a bilateral basis between the broadcasting organisations themselves or between the broadcasting organisation in one country and the government in another". Apart from finding this a rather mind-boggling method of dealing with the situation we are debating today, I take a rather cynical view of this bland assumption, not least because I have attempted to find out more about these bilateral agreements, even to the point of raising the subject with a senior member of the EBU, only to find that singularly little information is forthcoming. This leads me to suspect that, apart from being an inadequate solution to the problems facing us, the arrangements may cosily suit the parties involved more than they serve the Community as a whole.

There is one conclusion in the report which seriously affects the contribution it makes to the general EC debate on television without frontiers. It is contained in paragraph 97, which states: The Green Paper fails to make a convincing case that the EEC is either fully competent or the best suited authority to regulate broadcasting between Member States". Leaving aside the second part of the statement, consideration of the Green Paper's recommendations must have been rather inhibited by the committee's doubts about the competence of the Commission to legislate on broadcasting. I must confess that had I been a member of the committee, I would have found it academic to go much further than that one conclusion.

The view that the Community is not competent seems to be based on two lines of argument. The first is that Community institutions have authority to deal only with those matters that are specifically assigned to them under the EC treaty, and that since the treaty makes no reference to broadcasting, that matter is the exclusive concern of the member states. The second is that broadcasting serves vital cultural, social and political purposes, which are also the individual concern of member states.

But the treaty is a framework that sets out a number of general objectives, the manner of achieving which is not described in detail; it is left to the Commission to apply the broad principles of the treaty. And two of the main objectives of the treaty are to create a common market in services by the removal of barriers to the freedom to supply services across national boundaries, and to create a common market in goods by the removal of barriers to their free movement between member states. The proposals in the Green Paper, I suggest, are a step towards achieving those objectives.

Your Lordships will know, better than I, the cases that have come before the European Court of Justice and may be adduced to advance the argument that the Community has authority to introduce measures to eliminate restrictions on the freedom to provide services. In such an august legal assembly as your Lordships' House, I shall not presume to rehearse them. I only wish to say that I believe that the committee has not given proper weight to the economic importance of broadcasting—which already provides direct employment for some 100,000 people within the EC and a substantial volume of work for the electronics, telecommunications and aerospace industries—and that (to refer to a matter that has already been raised) broadcasting is no less subject to the treaty than what is referred to in evidence as cross-frontier traffic in pig-meat or banking". In putting forward the proposals in the Green Paper, the Commission is acting within the authority and duty given to it under Article 155 of the EC treaty to ensure that the provisions of the treaty are applied. Broadcasting involves the provision of services that are subject to the rules on freedom to provide services. As the European Court of Justice ruled in the Saatchi case, the transmission of television signals, including those in the nature of advertisements, comes, as such, within the rules of the Treaty relating to services". Although in the Debauve case the court pointed out, the provisions of the Treaty on freedom to provide services cannot apply to activities whose relevant elements are confined within a single Member State", the opportunities for trans-national broadcasting are widening and current national copyright legislation and widely varying restrictions on advertising can severely prejudice its viability. The Commission therefore is taking what seems to me the eminently sensible step of proposing harmonising legislation under Article 100 of the treaty, and, as the report itself emphasise, The Commission wants 'the absolute necessary minimum' of harmonisation". The Green Paper is not about laying down the law on matters of national culture, programmes or the specific interests of individual states.

The committee's report refers in Part 6 to matters of copyright and concludes that: the Green Paper has not made out a case for Community regulation of copyright by a statutory licensing system", and that, Copyright matters should be left to evolve further". Clearly, this is an important matter, and the Green Paper's implication is that: existing copyright arrangements are a barrier to the further development of cross-frontier broadcasting". However, there are Members of this House far better qualified than I am who have pronounced on those matters—notably the noble Viscount, Lord Chilston, whom I congratulate upon his maiden speech and its contribution to this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran. I shall not venture into that particular minefield, as I am certain to get blown up.

However, I should like to make one further comment on the committee's general approach to the Green Paper, exemplified by its consideration and conclusions on subjects such as advertising, air time, bans on advertising, the protection of minors, and the general interests of consumers and viewers.

No one who has been following the widening debate on the Green Paper since its publication in May 1984 can have failed to be aware of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which deals specifically with freedom of expression, the limitations which may be placed upon it, and its part in that debate. Article 10 is referred to specifically in the Green Paper; legal opinion on it has been published; and it appears in speeches, articles, and most of the discussions that have taken place on the Green Paper. Properly so, since it raises the subject of freedom of commercial speech and also because 21 European countries, including the United Kingdom, subscribe to the convention.

Article 10 crops up in the evidence given to the committee—but it is not mentioned in the report. Considering all its implications, I find that an extraordinary and disappointing omission, not only because it is germane to the subject but also because the committee's views would have been an informative and useful contribution to the debate.

In conclusion, I am of the opinion that a directive is needed and, since it will probably take years for it to be implemented by member states, I welcome the Commission's initiative in producing the Green Paper. The directive should be broad and designed, as the Green Paper itself states, to achieve only the absolute necessary minimum of harmonised rules". I really cannot agree with the committee's conclusion that, the Green Paper is trying to do too much too soon", and while recognising that this is a highly complicated subject to which the committee has devoted much thought and effort, I wish that its report had been a more positive and forward-looking response to the Green Paper.

6.57 p.m.

The Duke of Portland

My Lords, television without frontiers sounds fine but I have a feeling that we should beware of attaching too much importance to that appellation. I detected in the Green Paper adopted by the European Commission in 1984 a tendency to propose directives and regulations that may, owing to lack of experience, hinder rather than further the international spread of television.

In my opinion, the Commission should not be in a hurry to issue directives or to set up new regulatory bodies but should see how those bodies that are functioning now can be adjusted as required to cope with new technologies. For instance, the ITU remains the best forum for the allocation of frequencies. To discard the present system of national allocation would put in question the entire world legal system for the administration of frequencies, whose effectiveness in establishing a system for the administration of frequencies is unquestioned. Likewise, the European Broadcasting Union—the EBU—has proved through the years the most effective body in smoothing out difficult problems between individual broadcasters, etc.

At the same time, our enthusiasm for the new technologies that are opening before us should be curbed by bearing in mind the immense obstacle created by the numerous different languages of the peoples of Europe. While broadband cable may enable the subscriber to receive perhaps as many as 30 different stations, how many will he really tune in to? Two or three in his own language, except perhaps for sport or music.

Perhaps I am being over-pessimistic, remembering my experiences as a director of British Relay Wireless. When this company was founded over 20 years ago and I joined the board, we were filled with optimism that this would prove a real money spinner. We were disappointed. If we had not also been engaged in the rental of television sets we would have been bankrupt; and in those days laying cables was comparatively cheap. As for direct broadcasting services—that is, satellites—we cannot be certain how this new technology will develop.

The Green Paper—perhaps we should call it a volume, as it has about 400 pages—is trying to do too much too soon. While there may be a case for trying to harmonise advertising standards by EC regulation the proposed directive for advertising contained in the Green Paper may impede rather than achieve a free flow of advertising. I would submit that the development of voluntary common rules for advertising is likely to prove more efficient than regulations set up by authorities which have their own theories based on little practical experience.

I should like to turn to the question of copyright. Here I wish to refer to a passage in the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee of the EC commenting on the Green Paper's proposal as regards copyright. That committee rightly attaches great importance to the protection of copyright for authors, performers and producers, and all others involved in cable and satellite broadcasting. It considers that steps must be taken to ensure that the exploitation of copyright and performance rights are adequately rewarded; for which purpose the present contractual systems must be maintained and the question of what royalties should be paid must be left to contractual negotiation between the parties and not depend on the decision of a third party.

I think that the Green Paper has served a useful purpose in ventilating the various aspects of Television without Frontiers and new technologies. However, as was made clear to us in the committee by the numerous witnesses we interviewed, the Green Paper is trying to do too much too soon. I have heard disturbing rumours that the Commission intends to issue the directives proposed in the Green Paper without further discussion. If these rumours are correct I hope that Her Majesty's Government will strongly oppose this folly.

7.3 p.m.

Lord Kissin

My Lords, I wish to pay special tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Torrington, who has patiently and efficiently led the committee through unexplored territory with the help of the special adviser and the committee's clerk. I for one now have a greater appreciation of the difficulties that will face us as the broadcasting revolution proceeds.

I support—and I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis—the committee's conclusions that the Commission's Green Paper should be regarded as a discussion document rather than as an action plan. The European Community is often slow in responding to political and economic developments and bringing forward proposals when member governments and other bodies have already established their positions. It is amazing that in this case the situation has been reversed. The future of broadcasting can take us in many different directions and areas and technology is advancing at such a speed that I am concerned that the Commission's Green Paper is coming out with detailed proposals for legislation rather than suggestions for monitoring these changes and keeping an open mind.

I was fascinated by the enormous amount of evidence that the committee has taken from a wide variety of interested bodies. There is no doubting the vitality of the European broadcasting industry and its willingness to take advantage of technological change; in particular the introduction of broadcasting by cable or satellite. It is clear that consumer demand for a wider range of services will have a marked impact on development and broadcasting in the future will bear little resemblance to the broadcasting of today. Is it cable or direct broadcasting by satellite which will become the most popular media? I am not sure. If it is direct broadcasting—and I shall refer to that later—then many of the Commission's proposals are, to my mind, irrelevant.

In that case it is likely that non-European organisations will soon be able to broadcast directly within the Community and further undermine the position of nationally based broadcasting systems. The Community will have no legal jurisdiction over these satellite systems and the committee have had to take the view that a strict Community régime is therefore likely to be at best irrelevant or at worst damaging, creating many legal anomalies. The committee's conclusions stress that the Commission's proposals are at this stage unlikely to bring any advantages to the furtherance of a European Economic Community. It is a very wide issue which clearly will be debated over a long period.

The Commission believes that a broadcasting policy will contribute to European integration. Even listening to the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, in his plea for greater regulation on advertising, I am not clear how this will help in the integration of a European Economic Community. I think I should like him or even the Commission to clarify their objectives in this regard. I am not clear about what it wants to achieve at this juncture by legislation.

It has become obvious from all the evidence that the committee has taken that the legal basis for Community action in the field of broadcasting is rather nebulous. There is at present only very limited European case law and there is widespread disagreement as to its general applicability. Ultimately, political judgments will have to be made by member governments as to how far they wish the Community to be involved in this area. I believe, with the committee, that there is very little that requires legislation at this time while there may be many areas that need to be watched as technology progresses.

Moreover, as far as advertising is concerned, which is a major issue, attitudes to broadcasting differ widely throughout Europe. This is hardly surprising given the cultural and historical diversity of the nations which are members of the EC. I am concerned that any attempts to harmonise broadcasting standards will not further anybody's interests. We have clearly heard from witnesses that they fear that harmonising means restricting, rather than liberalising. Thus, I feel that the committee is right in not supporting the Green Paper's directive on advertising at this point.

The committee's conclusions must be right that the development of voluntary common rules is a better way to proceed, particularly in the case of advertising standards. Both the Independent Broadcasting Authority and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers spoke positively about the advantages of self-regulation. I would repeat the statement of the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers: When codes of practice are willingly supported by all parties, especially the advertisers, then they carry a great deal of practical and moral force and are likely to be observed". I think that this is a better way than legislation at this point in our development.

In addition, if direct broadcasting by satellite becomes dominant, it puts television in the same position as radio, since it will make it possible to receive signals from all over the world. Even communist countries have great difficulty in banning broadcasts from the free world, and the Community should itself guard against adopting rigid legal rules. The committee rightly concluded that: The Green Paper fails to make a convincing case that the EEC is either a fully competent or the best suited authority to regulate broadcasting between member states". It does not exclude the possibility that there may be another authority that could be of practical value to standardisation of an advertising system.

Despite the committee's misgivings at this stage, one does not want to discourage the European Commission from continuing to take an interest in these matters as they arise and publicising the problems accordingly.

However, there are two areas which I think the Commission might examine—and my colleagues on the committee were not all with me on this point. First, I wonder whether it is possible to devise a method to defend individuals or commercial bodies and to give them redress if they are defamed or slandered in broadcasts originating outside their own country but in an EC broadcast. I do not believe in the viability of a right to reply. It will not be enough. The committee believes that the directive to enforce a statutory right to reply would be unlikely to achieve universal acceptance. But what happens if someone's livelihood is materially damaged by allegations made in broadcasts? There is no way in which a person defamed through a broadcast in any of the EC member countries has any immediate remedy but only through an action in the courts in that country. To my mind this is inadequate. At present it will fail absolutely to give any kind of protection within a reasonable period of time.

There was evidence that it would be possible to set up a pan-European organisation through which claims for defamation which are relevant to a person's or a commercial organisation's livelihood might be set up. I do not wish to see more bureaucracy in Europe, but the problem deserves consideration because redress is only of value if it can be implemented more rapidly than is normally the case. Secondly, I would support greater consideration being given to protection of copyright and how it could be extended from the national to the European level and be enforceable and effective in all member states with immediacy.

There are greater experts on this subject that I, and I feel that it is not for me to continue speaking on this subject but I think that these two areas deserve some attention and will be focussed on in further discussions. Beyond these I believe that the Community should help broadcasters to learn from each other and find their own solutions.

The Committee did not believe, and I support their view, that there is a case for furthering a distinct European Community culture. There is no such thing as a European Community culture. There are only many national cultures. If television really is to be without frontiers then the Community cannot afford to isolate itself from the rest of the world by proposing regulations of a restrictive nature.

I should like to make one personal observation. I am a strong supporter of the basic aims of the European Economic Community but I disagree with some of the EEC's priorities, as the committee diplomatically indicated in its conclusions by saying—which was something that disturbed the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis—that in regard to broadcasting, the Commission is trying to do too much too soon. The reason for this is very simple. We do not know the frontiers of the future of the broadcasting revolution through which we are passing. When we have a better conception of how far this revolution is going, I think we must come back to the subject—but not before. Any measures now would be half measures. They will not deal with the rapidly developing systems that will come into operation within the next few years.

To me the central point of the problem is that the type of regulation which in this Green Paper the EEC is trying to enforce is not the most relevant to the aim of establishing a European Economic Community at this point.

Introducing a decimal system into our monetary world, regulating the shape of icecream cones, lawnmower noise or the question of retirement for men and women, on which so much effort, time and money are being spent, does not bring us any nearer at this moment towards the economic integration of the members of the European Economic Community and to the exploitation of its real potential.

To return to the matter in hand, I believe that the Community should help broadcasters learn from each other and, except for the two specific areas which I have mentioned, it should not take an initiative at this point.

I found my time on the committee most enjoyable. I learned a lot about technical developments of which I had only known rather vaguely before. I certainly have not wasted time by taking part in the deliberations. I am not critical of the Commission's effort to highlight the problems arising from the DBS and the implications arising from the upheaval that we have witnessed. However, I am critical of the Commission's attempt to put forward practical and immediate proposals for early legislation in this field when we have so many technical developments still to come.

I wonder whether those who are supposed to give the Commission a brief on urgent legislation that is of great immediacy should not re-examine their priorities on the EEC in the shortest possible period so that the EEC can become a united and powerful voice in the world.

7.18 p.m.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur)

My Lords, it is not often in your Lordships' House that we have the opportunity to debate broadcasting, and the chance to consider its international aspects is an even greater rarity. Radio has, of course, crossed frontiers ever since its inception and, despite the excitement over the development of short-wave radio in the 1930s, has never caused any major problems. Now the technologies of cable and satellite are leading us into a new and exciting age, when television programmes as well as radio can cross international frontiers to a degree undreamt of a few years ago. This debate therefore provides an important opportunity for me to explain the Government's approach to this revolution, as my noble friend Lord Torrington described it.

The debate has also provided the moment for my noble friend Lord Chilston to make his excellent and often amusing maiden speech. I am delighted to be able to congratulate him on it most sincerely. As we have heard, he brings to the subject his experience as a film producer. I was most interested to hear his lucid views on copyright, to which I shall return shortly. I know that I speak for all your Lordships when I say that I hope we shall have the benefit of his interventions regularly and again before long.

I, too, should like to pay a sincere tribute to my noble friend Lord Torrington and to his committee—five of whom have spoken in the debate—for their excellent and highly readable report and also for the evidence that it contains which has provided the opportunity for the debate. He and his committee have undertaken a most thorough and painstaking examination over the past year of the complex proposals put forward by the European Commission. They have taken evidence from all the relevant interests: the Government, the broadcasters, the cable interests, those who provide the satellite programmes, the advertisers, the copyright interests, the consumers, and even from the Commission itself. The balance of opinion in this country on the EC Green Paper is very well reflected in the committee's final report, which constitutes a most valuable and effective commentary on the Green Paper and it is certain to influence the course of the debate in Europe.

In June 1984 the Commission decided to follow the very British practice of publishing its proposals in Green Paper form, although it is coloured lilac, and subsequently throwing them open to the widest possible debate. Since then it has held numerous meetings with all the interests involved. Despite the considerable reservations that the Government have on the contents of the Green Paper, I would like nevertheless, along with the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, to acknowledge the debt we owe to the Commission for having brought the document to public light. It has raised the profile of the debate in Europe on these important current questions, and we particularly welcome its willingness to discuss the issues freely and to listen to the full range of views expressed. It has kept a relatively open mind which I hope, as does the noble Lord, Lord Kissin, it continues to do.

The Government's attitude to the Green Paper proposals is very clearly set out in the two memoranda submitted to the Select Committee by the Home Office and the Department of Trade and Industry, and follows closely the general approach which the committee itself has taken. In general, we believe that the Commission has not yet made out a case that would justify in practice the promulgation of Community legislation on broadcasting from Brussels. Like the Select Committee, we believe that any problems that do arise in developing trans-frontier television services would best be dealt with under the traditional procedures that have been followed by the broadcasters and programme providers until now; that is, by multilateral agreement in the European Broadcasting Union and by bilateral discussions, between broadcasters and between governments. This informal, flexible, ad hoc approach is far more likely to succeed, I suggest, than one of central legislative direction which, as we have seen in the recent reaction of the Green Paper, is more likely to breed hostility and lack of co-operation. In that regard, can I say how much I agree with the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, when he gave his parallel illustration of how there may have been too much haste in the marketing of computers when they first appeared on the scene.

The Select Committee speaks out plainly on the question of Community competence in broadcasting matters. The Treaty of Rome does not, of course, mention the word broadcasting at all, although that is a point of which one might lose sight in reading the Green Paper. Of course, as the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Graham of Edmonton, indicated, broadcasting has its commercial and industrial—economic, in a word—aspects. But it is far from being merely a commercial service. Rather, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, it is the social, cultural and political considerations that inevitably predominate.

Indeed, one of the general criticisms of the Green Paper that seems to be shared by most groups is that insufficient weight has been given in it to the significance and indeed the sensitivity of those aspects. The Government have yet to take a firm view on the general issue of competence. But it is clear that before any discussion can take place in Brussels on the detailed content of any draft directive these questions of competence must be gone into in some depth to the satisfaction of all member states.

I am sure that your Lordships would not expect me, within the confines of this debate, to go into the Government's attitude on every fine point of detail of these proposals. But, so far as the advertising proposals are concerned, many of them seem to follow the lines of the system already adopted by the IBA. We hope that the Commission will follow a flexible approach in this respect.

I listened with considerable interest to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, with his unparalleled experience of self-regulation in the field of advertising. It is perhaps an open question whether self-regulation in international broadcast advertising should require a specific institutional framework with enforcement powers or whether it should merely involve voluntary adherence by countries to the guidelines already promulgated by the International Chambers of Commerce, the EBU or the Council of Europe. The noble Lord's proposals in this respect will have given us serious food for thought.

The noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, in a dissenting note, referred to the different advertising rules in European countries. I acknowledge that these differences do of course exist. But it is our view that these differences are slowly breaking down as cross-frontier transmissions become more frequent. It is certainly true that those few countries which do not now permit broadcast advertising domestically nevertheless in practice permit such advertising in services from abroad.

My noble friend Lord Chilston, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, with his experience of the subject, and, indeed, my noble friend the Duke of Portland and the noble Lord, Lord Kissin, all referred to the question of copyright. The essential purpose of the Green Paper in its copyright proposals is to ensure that copyright should not be used as a means to prevent the retransmission in one member state, normally by cable, of a broadcast made from another member state. It proposes therefore that rights to control such retransmission should be abolished so that cable operators will be free to transmit cross-frontier broadcasts without needing permission. The copyright owner would, however, be entitled to receive equitable remuneration at a rate to be determined, in the absence of agreement, by an arbitration body.

As your Lordships will be aware, this proposal has been almost universally condemned by copy right interests, who argue that copyright, like any other right, should be properly protected. The Government agree with them that the negotiation of voluntary agreements, as done so successfully in Belgium, is the best way to proceed. I can say that the Government will continue to argue as before for a system of voluntary agreements freely negotiated.

Since the Green Paper, there has been, we understand, another major change in the Commission's approach. The noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, indicated in the debates in the European Parliament last September that the Commission would be bringing forward additional proposals to assist programme production. It has been rumoured that it is now considering proposals to place quotas on certain types of television programme; for example, on the amounts of domestic production and on co-productions. We believe that such ideas are misconceived and will be strongly resented by both broadcasters and new media interests alike.

What our broadcasters fear is that the process of harmonisation, however limited in first intention, will be upwards rather than downwards and burden our broadcasters, both domestically and overseas, with more restrictions than they face already. Our aim must surely be to try to preserve the flexibility that we enjoy under our present system and which indeed helps to preserve what my noble friend Lord Chilston and others referred to as our unmatched standards.

The detailed proposals in a Community directive on individual products such as alcohol would have to be written on the face of a new Broadcasting Act, or at least in regulations made under that Act. If changed circumstances in this country make it necessary to adapt those regulations, we shall have first to go to Brussels to try to negotiate an amendment to the directive with our other Community partners. If we succeed in that, we shall then need new primary or secondary legislation to make the appropriate changes in our existing law. What can now be done by the IBA in a matter of days, would in future have to be done by the Government, perhaps over a period of many years. This is the kind of inflexibility that will lead to heavy and insensitive regulation, quite out of keeping with the needs of our broadcasting system.

The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, referred to the need to control advertising of alcohol in the interests of children. Having mentioned alcohol just now, perhaps I may say that the IBA code prevents the transmission of alcohol advertisements in proximity to children's programmes or the addressing of such advertisements to the young. Similar controls exist in other countries and I do not foresee a major problem in this area although I note the caution which he counsels.

We and our broadcasters are not alone in questioning the Commission's proposals. All the broadcasters in the European Broadcasting Union have made clear their opposition to Community legislation in this field, although of the member states' governments, not all have yet taken a clear stand. But we think it is likely that the majority will share our doubts. It is certainly true, however, that many of the new media interests—the Cable Authority, the Cable Television Association and some of the satellite programme providers—take a more positive approach to the Green Paper and might welcome some sort of Community framework particularly on advertising. But I believe that even they would not want such a framework if its price were the imposition of many additional restrictions on our domestic arrangements.

In the long run, what most broadcasters in this country fear—and the Government agree with them—is that the Green Paper will be the first step on a road towards centralisation of control over broadcasting which will culminate in each country's broadcasting legislation and programming policies being made from a central point in Brussels rather than in each member state. Harmonisation of rules on advertising is one thing, but central control of programme content is quite another. The Commission is quite open about this issue. Page 177 of the Green Paper, for example, states: an approximation of the rules on broadcasting—especially as regards the content of programmes—is already possible, and in the long term necessary, in order to achieve a common market for broadcasting. The question is not whether this objective of the EEC Treaty must be attained, but when and at what stage of integration. The inclusion of programming quotas in the first draft directive that the Commission brings forward may well imply that this stage is coming faster even than the Commission itself envisaged. The general question we have to ask ourselves today is whether we want our broadcasting arrangements and our broadcasting legislation in the longer term to be made in Brussels rather than in London.

That is a brief summary of our doubts and reservations about the Commission's proposals. But they certainly do not mean that the Government are opposed to the exciting new developments in trans-frontier broadcasting. Far from it. Like most other countries in Europe, we adhere to the general internationally held principles of free flow of information across frontiers. We fully support the Commission's general objective to facilitate as far as possible the development of trans-frontier broadcasting. We do not create obstacles to the reception of foreign services here; nor do we hinder our own programme providers in sending their programme services abroad. Our cable operators fully welcome new services from abroad. A number now take the Francophone service TV-5, and Westminster Cable, which has been perhaps the most enterprising in this field, takes World Public News (which includes programmes from the Netherlands and the Nordic countries as well as the United States) and even an Arab service from Dubai. Last May, the Government announced that they would freely issue licences for the individual reception of low-powered satellite programme services. Now anyone who can afford a dish antenna and can comply with planning permission is able to receive any number of these services from abroad, including two channels from the Soviet Union.

We heard a most interesting speech from my noble friend Lord De La Warr, who most effectively brought his long experience in the broadcasting world to bear upon this debate. I am grateful for the kind remarks of my noble friend on what I think he referred to as the textbook on DBS. It is not often that the Home Office gets lavish praise for the paperwork which it produces. I am very grateful for what my noble friend said. He mentioned the importance of maintaining a fast momentum in our current plans for IBA DBS, which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced on 20th February. I can assure him that the IBA is very well aware of this need and I understand that it hopes to be ready to issue its advertisement for DBS contracts in a month or so. If contractors can be found, and good progress made, our hope must be that a United Kingdom DBS Service can become operational before the end of 1989. I hope that that provides the reassurance in this exciting new field which my noble friend is looking for.

The record of this country is significant in exporting services to the rest of Europe. In 1982 Sky Channel became the trail blazer for satellite programme services in Europe. It has now achieved an audience size of over five million. It has been followed closely by the success of Music Box, and others such as Screen Sport, all of which have a viewing audience on the Continent considerably larger than their domestic audience because of the relatively slow growth of cable in this country to which we have heard reference made this evening. And recently the ITV companies have announced that their Superchannel service—to which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, referred as one in which he had an indirect interest, and may I say that I was most interested to hear the description of the noble Lord of the services in Newfoundland?—will be starting up this autumn to send the best of British television programmes, including some purchased from the BBC, to audiences in Europe.

These examples show that we are committed to the principle of trans-frontier broadcasting. But, while it is one thing to recognise the importance of a European dimension, it is quite another to imply, as both the Commission and the European Parliament have done in the past, that all television services must cross frontiers. The domestic services of one country, because of differences in culture, outlook and—as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and my noble friend the Duke of Portland pointed out—language, will not always readily find an audience in another. At present, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, there will be only a limited audience for foreign programmes in this country, partly for language and partly for cultural reasons. And, despite the very great strength of television programming in this country and the world-wide recognition of its quality, we must never forget that much of what we see in this country on our televisions, in news, current affairs and other non-fiction programmes, is essentially of local and domestic interest to us and will not necessarily appeal to a rural family in the south of Italy or a businessman in Bonn. That is why, again, we emphasise that these movements of television across frontiers should be allowed to take place naturally, not as the result of a system of central direction.

The Green Paper quite rightly points out, and my noble friend Lord Torrington did too, that broadcasting signals are no respecters of national boundaries. What the Green Paper fails to emphasise, however, is that they are no respecters of Community boundaries either. If we look just at the television scene in this country today, we see that our home-grown services like Sky Channel are transmitted via satellite into countries such as Austria, Norway and Sweden. Similarly, TV-5, which is received by more than one cable system in this country, contains a segment of programmes from Switzerland. These illustrate the fact that if there were to be trans-national rules governing broadcasting in Europe they should be formulated in a wider grouping than that of the European Community. We do not want to see a tight system of EC rules preventing programme exchanges with non-EC countries. Nor do we want to impose unilaterally upon non-EC countries a set of Community rules just in order that we should see their television services and they ours.

That is why the Government favour the work that has already been going on for some years now in the Council of Europe on these matters, because that forum covers 23 European countries rather than just 12. The mass media committees of the Council of Europe have been heavily involved since the early 1980s in the latest developments governing trans-frontier broadcasting, and have already considered and discussed many of the issues presented in the Commission's Green Paper. Furthermore, they have as part of their continuing work programme already taken action on questions of trans-national regulation.

In December this year the Council of Europe will be holding in Vienna what I believe is the first meeting of Ministers responsible for broadcasting throughout Europe. They will no doubt be reviewing the work of the council in the general field and the common problems that remain, and setting the program me of work for the future. We shall, of course, play our full part in the proceedings in Vienna, and I have no doubt that they will prove productive. We shall, of course, play our full part in the discussions in Brussels as well. We await with interest the publication of the Commission's draft directive on all the matters that have been discussed in the Green Paper.

In bringing my remarks to an end, I again thank my noble friend Lord Torrington, his committee and all noble Lords who have spoken today. We shall scrutinise the text of the report closely and make our views on it clearly known. It is important, however, to make it clear now that the Government still remain to be convinced that Community legislation is justified at the present time, and in this I am glad to find that the Government agree completely with the cogent arguments deployed by the Select Committee. I say this with no disrespect to the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, who made an interesting if dissenting contribution, but the majority of those who have taken part in today's stimulating debate support the main view, too.

7.42 p.m.

Viscount Torrington

My Lords, I do not want to detain noble Lords from their dinners or from BBC, ITV and Channel 4, and especially from repeats of "I Love Lucy", "Bonanza", "Hopalong Cassidy", racing from Saratoga in 1965 and other delights no doubt reaching us by satellite television at the moment. I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. It is always gratifying when we have these EC debates that a number of noble Lords from outside the Select Committee, and especially the subcommittee, take part. There have been many this evening. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his robust bolstering of the committee's conclusions. I am sure that they will drive the "wedge" of my noble friend Lord De La Warr back to Brussels.

We are certain that there are proposals for further directives coming out of Brussels, and the Select Committee will want to look at those in a great deal of detail and possibly make a small supplementary report. I am sure that in the process we shall look into the matter of Article 10, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate.

On Question, Motion agreed to.