§ 2.58 p.m.
§ Lord Boyd-Carpenter rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the Select Committee on Televising the Proceedings of the House and resolves that the public televising of its proceedings should continue on the basis outlined in Part III of that report until the House otherwise orders.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think all your Lordships would like to express the gratitude that I am sure we all feel to the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees and to the Select Committee over which he presided for producing, after what was obviously a great deal of hard work, the exceedingly interesting report which they have laid before us. We are most of us doubly grateful to them for this, because whatever view one takes of the merits of this matter it plainly is one of very great importance to the House—to the House as a whole and to the future of the House.
§ The Motion suggests that televising should continue until the House otherwise orders. That is a very proper safeguard. But after the fairly prolonged experimental period and the close examination of its working which the Select Committee undertook on our behalf, it would be reasonable for your Lordships to consider that if televising is to continue it should continue at any rate for a reasonable period. The safeguard is there in the proviso at the end of the Motion; but one can hardly expect those concerned to undertake the quite substantial expenditure in respect of improvements in lights, cameras and the rest unless there is at least a reasonable expectation that your Lordships' decision would last for at any rate a fair length of time.
§ That view is supported by one fact that stands out very clearly from the mass of documentation that we have seen on this matter. I refer to the large, and to the broadcasting agencies quite surprising, degree of public interest to which the televising of this House has given rise. The figures up to the time of the Select Committee's report are contained in the report (and I shall not weary your Lordships by repeating them) but 964 since then the figures have gone on improving. The late-night programme now regularly broadcast has an audience rating of some 300,000 people, and for its repetition the following afternoon 200,000 people. It is significant that those are larger figures than the broadcasting agencies themselves anticipated, and are apparently also larger than for the programmes not connected with this House which the broadcasts of our proceedings have replaced.
§ Lord Harmar-NichollsMy Lords, may I ask a question?
§ Lord Boyd-CarpenterOf course, my Lords. I have hardly started, but if my noble friend cannot contain himself—
§ Lord Harmar-NichollsMy Lords, my noble friend very quickly went over a most important point. Is he aware that unless he defines what is "a reasonable time" his Motion will give permanent authority for this House to be televised? If we want to be certain that it comes back to the House when time can be allocated to it, the period after which it has to be brought back again should be included and it should not be left in the hazy phrase "a reasonable length of time" unless that is defined.
§ Lord Boyd-CarpenterMy Lords, I am afraid I do not agree with my noble friend. The Motion provides that it shall continue until the House otherwise determines. That seems to me a much more effective control than the suggestion of my noble friend that there should be a fixed period, which presumably could not be diminished. I therefore wholly disagree with my noble friend. It leaves the matter for the House, in its own good sense, to decide on that future occasion, as I hope it will decide this afternoon.
§ Lord Harmar-NichollsMy Lords, but may I—
§ Lord Harmar-NichollsMy Lords, my noble friend may well be aware that it is my view that we are accepting something almost unwittingly on this very important point. My noble friend talks about the House eventually deciding. Unless he can guarantee that those who may want the House to give consideration to the matter will be given parliamentary time for a decision to be made, it is in no way effective.
§ Lord Boyd-CarpenterMy Lords, my noble friend has not in fact put down his name to speak. I know—and I respect it—that he has strong views on this subject, but, if he will allow me to say so, by that intervention he shows a singular lack of understanding of the way this House works. If the House were at any time to form a predominant and prevailing view that the televising should for some reason be brought to a stop, I really do not believe that either the present Leader of the House or any possible successor of his would deny the House the opportunity to debate a Motion to that effect. If they did, there are many of 965 your Lordships who are more than capable of finding a way of compelling them so to do. Therefore, I really do think that my noble friend is trying to raise a suggestion which has no substance. In other words, I say to him, "That hare won't run!"
When my noble friend endeavoured to assist me—and I am most grateful for all assistance—I was dealing with the interesting figures for the audiences that your Lordships' debates have commanded. Apart from the late-night summary and the repeat in the afternoon there have been live debates whose average audience viewing figures have been 650,000. The items which have appeared in "Newsnight" have attracted audiences of 1 million, and your Lordships' debate on Libya was watched, not over its whole length but from time to time, by up to 3 million people. Whatever else it indicates that shows that there is a very considerable interest outside in your Lordships' proceedings; and I suggest, particularly in view of the fact that these figures show a tendency to rise, that there would be a great disappointment if the broadcasting were to stop, as it would stop if your Lordships decided not to accept the Motion now before the House.
We see this increasing interest in many ways. I was spoken to in Hampshire last week-end by someone who I had no idea had any interest in public affairs. He said to me that he had been watching. He said, "Now one can see it, I have become interested"; and that is reflected in innumerable ways. It is reflected, as your Lordships will see, in the lengthening queues for your Lordships' Public Gallery. It is reflected sometimes—some of your Lordships may think that this is a counter-argument, an argument against me—in the increased correspondence from all over the country which I think a great many of your Lordships have received, and which I know I have received, almost on the scale that I used to receive it when I was a Member of another place. All this is an indication of a great increase in interest in your Lordships' House, and the reason, it seems to me, is quite clear.
Before this began the idea widely held by the public was that your Lordships' House was rather dull, rather stuffy and rather prejudiced on public issues. The public have now had the opportunity to see and hear your Lordships' debates; to hear the tone of reasoned argument which in general prevails in your Lordships' debates; and to see also the fact that whatever subject, is selected there is always to be found among your Lordships one or two noble Lords whose expertise, whether the subject be scientific, political or technological, is acknowledged world wide—and your Lordships' House in fact includes a great many experts in almost any subject that can be discussed. All this has been revealed to the public through the medium of television. I stress this because—and here I come to delicate ground—this public understanding and appreciation may at some time be very important indeed from the point of view of the survival of your Lordships' House.
It is the fact that at one time there was a proposal for the abolition of your Lordships' House. Given public illusion as to what your Lordships' House was like, to which I have referred, I am sure that that proposal had a great deal of support. I should be very surprised 966 indeed if it had that support today. I should be very surprised if it were possible to rally much public support for the idea that your Lordships' House was obsolete and should be abolished. If I may put it in terms that your Lordships' will understand from a former Member of another place, I believe it is clear to most thinking people that today that proposal is not a vote winner.
I turn to some of the objections, which will no doubt be expressed in debate and which it is right that I should seek to anticipate. First, it has been suggested that your Lordships' House will behave differently in front of the cameras and under the lights; that noble Lords who otherwise would not think it necessary will seek to intervene. I concede that on the first televising of this House in January of last year that seemed to me to be the case and that that happened. But equally—and I speak with due humility as a fairly regular attender of your Lordships' House since then—I have been unable to detect any such effect. Your Lordships' House has tended to continue as it always did, regardless of the fact that it was or was not on television.
There is then the question of the lights. I will not pretend that they have not been something of a hardship to some of your Lordships, particularly during long sittings. Your Lordships will observe that today, for the first time, two of the sidelights have been extinguished and that their effect for television purposes has been replaced by strengthened lighting in the chandeliers. I do not know what your Lordships feel about that change, but sitting where I do certainly there is distinctly less glare in one's eyes. It is my understanding—and the noble Lord the Lord Chairman of Committees who is to follow me may be able to confirm this—that if televising of your Lordships' House continues, it should be possible to replace the existing lighting by the end of the Summer Recess with something along the lines of the present lighting in the middle of the Chamber, possibly assisted by some side lighting of fairly modest intensity.
At any rate, that is an indication that, if we accept the Motion, we are not saddled for all time with those powerful and rather ugly sidelights in our windows, but given the security that the passing of the Motion would give, it is reasonable to expect that improved and less tiring lighting would be installed. A great deal of thought has also been given to the appearance of the cameras, but I believe that the noble Lord the Lord Chairman of Committees will refer to that aspect. As I understand it, his speech will deal with what he so nicely describes as the nuts and bolts of this matter; I only refer to it so as not to appear to ignore it.
Some noble Lords were concerned about the possible behaviour of those operating the cameras; that they might swing their cameras around in order to show some of your Lordships concentrating, shall we say, by closing your eyes. But we had a very good example of the responsible attitude of the cameramen on the first day that the House was televised. Your Lordships may recall that on that day—and it was not coincidental—there was a disturbance in the Public Gallery. The Cameramen remained quite calm and kept their cameras on those who were speaking from the Floor of the House. None of them diverted their 967 cameras to take a view of the gallery. I must say that that gave me very great confidence in the way in which the camermen would—and do—carry out their duties.
I now come to perhaps the most difficult objection of all—the suggestion that there may be, that there could be, and that there is political bias in the editing of our debates in the selection of which noble Lord should appear and which should not appear in the televised programmes. None of us is wholly objective on that subject. We all of us tend to feel that it is a pity that our own magnificent speech was not televised, whereas a terribly dreary speech by a noble Lord opposite was shown at great length. It is human nature to feel that way.
I admit that editing is an extremely difficult thing to do. I myself believe that it has been done in good faith. Equally, I do not believe that it has always been done perfectly. If one talks to the television authorities, one can sometimes get from them an indication that they feel with hindsight that they might have edited differently. But it is an immensely difficult job, and I for my part believe that the broadcasters attempt, subject to the human limitations to which we are all prone, to do it as fairly as they can.
I remind your Lordships that even if the House takes a different view by excluding the cameras from this Chamber you will not exclude the possibilities of political bias in connection with television. If the cameras are excluded, it would still be possible for the television authorities to select one or more of your Lordships for interviewing on television. In that case, their selection is absolutely free. If there is a political bias, it is much more easily exercised when it is simply a matter of selecting a noble Lord to be interviewed and to give his views than when the editors are at least limited by the fact that they can transmit only the speech of a noble Lord who has actually spoken in the debate.
I appreciate the sincerity of the apprehensions that some noble Lords have on the question of bias. I appreciate that it may be possible to quote examples, when perhaps things might have been done differently. However, your Lordships should bear in mind that one does not avoid bias by excluding the cameras, any more than one can exclude it in the press. No one can control those newspapers that report your Lordships' proceedings in reporting one noble Lord and not reporting another. I am sure many noble Lords have sometimes felt that the press has made mistakes or misjudgments in what they have done.
Indeed, only Hansard and the official reporters are able to ape what Philip Guedalla once called,
The dreary impartiality of the recording angel".The main argument on that point curiously reflects, if your Lordships will look at it, the arguments of two centuries ago and more as to whether the press and the official reporters should be admitted to report the proceedings in your Lordships' Chamber. If your Lordships will look at the records, it will be seen that there was great argument at the time, that the press and others would report only the news that they liked and would ignore that which they did not like; in other words, that there would be political bias in the editing. So that argument goes back two centuries.968 It is perhaps of historical interest that the admission of reporters by this House took place two years before they were admitted to another place. That is perhaps an indication that even in that era it was regarded as a matter that each House should decide for itself. Your Lordships' House, as ever, was the more progressive of the two.
As I have mentioned Hansard, I come to a very interesting study undertaken by the Hansard Society which, as your Lordships will know, is entirely impartial on public matters. I shall not quote the whole passage, but your Lordships may see that at the end of the report it is stated that:
After 15 months of monitoring the output from both the BBC and ITN, we have concluded that an upward learning curve is really apparent in the development of programmes, editing, presentation and camera work, and … it would be unfortunate if for the second time in 20 years the learning which has clearly taken place in an experimental period of Parliamentary broadcasting should be wasted. It would be doubly unfortunate if at some later date a new generation of broadcasters, editors and technicians had to start from scratch yet again".That seems a very wise comment from the Hansard Society.Finally, one comes to what seems to be the question of principle, which I believe will weigh very much with your Lordships. On that issue I cannot do better than quote the memorandum to the Select Committee by the Cable Authority which states:
The public galleries of the Houses of Parliament serve a valuable purpose in enabling a number of people to gain a limited impression of the work of the legislature … However, the numbers are insignificant in relation to the people in both categories who would be able to view parliamentary proceedings through the medium of television. The benefits in greater awareness of the nature and operation of our democratic institutions, understanding of social and political issues and the law-making process, and closer identity with the way in which decisions are reached are considerable".That makes, in better language than I could, the point of principle that I want to leave in your Lordships' minds.This House is not a private debating society: it is a House of Parliament with still very considerable powers and perhaps even greater influence. It plays its part in the public life of this country. If your Lordships care to cast your minds back to the beginning of modern systems of government, to classical Greece, you will recall that public business at that time, in classical Athens for example, was discussed in the agora, in the market place, where any citizen could wander up and listen to the proceedings and the debates of his representatives and of those in charge of his society.
Modern technology has now enlarged the market place enormously. Modern technology has made that market place nation-wide. I suggest to your Lordships that we should have sufficient confidence in ourselves and in our debates not to turn our backs on the possibilities which technology offers but boldy to say that we are prepared to allow our fellow citizens to see and to hear what we do, conscious as we should be throughout that the further Select Committee which the report recommends to supervise the process will be there to supervise it and see that it operates fairly. I think your Lordships' House has this afternoon a very great opportunity; I hope it will take it.
§ 3.22 p.m.
§ The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare)My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, for his very kind references to me and to my committee. I should like to pass on those thanks to the committee Members because we had to work hard, especially towards the end of our deliberations when affairs started to move rather quickly.
Perhaps I may also express my gratitude to the broadcasting organisations—the BBC and the IBA. It was not all smooth running. There were problems and there were criticisms, but the problems were solved with good will and with co-operation from both sides and the criticisms were received sympathetically and constructively so that we worked well together.
I refer also to the way in which the cameramen—and sometimes camerawomen—have behaved. I say only that their sartorial elegance has blended indistinguishably into these noble surroundings. Only this afternoon I was asked by one of your Lordships if I could identify a certain Peer and when I could not I was much relieved to see that the answer came when he mounted one of the camera rostrums.
The report is in three parts. The first part is entirely factual. It gives an account of the experiment and it is backed up with three appendices covering matters to do with the broadcasting programmes, their use overseas and the viewing figures as far as they could be obtained. I do not intend to say anything more about Part I.
Part II covers the long term. We thought there was a possibility at some time—indeed, even a probability—that both Houses of Parliament might be televised and we thought, therefore, that it would be a pity if some of the experiences and lessons that we had learnt in the course of the experiment were not recorded. So Part II of our report applies to a long-distant future when perhaps Parliament as a whole agrees to be televised.
There has been a great deal of discussion in sound broadcasting about the provision of a signal by a parliamentary unit; that Parliament itself should take the responsibility for the initial signal. If that were to be applied to television, it would entail a great deal of responsibility in Parliament because a parliamentary unit would be a very complicated, expensive and difficult unit to establish. We came across a possibility that it might be within our bounds to find a private company—a facilities company we call it in the report—which could do this work under contract to Parliament. It would provide what we came to call the "clean feed". The clean feed is defined in paragraph 35 of our report which states:
When televising is in progress, there are several cameras in the Chamber and the producer in the Control Room can select from them and determine which of them is broadcast or recorded on tape. Only one signal goes out live or is taped. This the Committee have referred to … as the 'clean feed'.The suggestion we make in the report is that a company under contract to Parliament could be responsible for the production of this clean feed. Parliament, after all, is ill-equipped to do this for itself. It would require a specialist staff which would need to 970 be recruited and trained, with some sort of career found for them. This solution would avoid that. We would have one company under contract and our control would be complete under that contract. The contractor would then be responsible for selling the output to broadcasting organisations at home and abroad, including possibly television on cable in the future. I think this is a matter worth considering in the long term.I now come to Part III, which deals with the medium future and which is of the greatest relevance to this afternoon's debate. We decided as a committee that we should make no specific recommendation. We felt that it was very much a matter for the House itself to decide, and that is what your Lordships are faced with today. We were only a small committee and we were not particularly representative of the House. If we had tried to make a recommendation, we might well have been divided, and we thought it would be better to produce a unanimous report, putting before the House the factors relevant to your Lordships' decision.
The two facts that faced us most squarely were these. The first was that another place had decided not to embark on a television experiment at the moment and the second, with which we are all familiar, was that we have no money. Therefore, the only basis on which television could continue is the one on which we have hitherto conducted the experiment which we have come to know as the "drive-in" basis whereby the broadcasters can come when they like, go when they like and televise what they like either live or recorded. They can then put it out in their programmes as they wish, excluding only those Statements made in another place which are repeated here, the televising of which, for very obvious reasons, would be undesirable. Other than that, and subject to the Charter of the BBC and IBA Act, they would have complete freedom, as they do now, to televise in the Chamber.
It is not easy to predict what the future will be. The first 10 months of the experiment were, in my opinion, well used. A number of different programmes were tried out. There were live programmes; there were taped programmes, subsequently edited; there were summary programmes; there were items in news programmes and there were items in regional programmes. But all this ceased on 20th November last year when another place decided not to have television. It was as though the broadcasters were stunned by an unexpected shock and suddenly the amount of coverage that this House was receiving was greatly reduced. However, by December they had recovered their breath and since then we have had even more coverage than we had previously.
As your Lordships are no doubt well aware, ITN is now here for four days a week. It broadcasts on Channel 4 every evening about midnight a quarter-hour summary programme, which is repeated at 2.15 the following afternoon. The BBC is now broadcasting a weekly summary. The first programme of a quarter of an hour went out last Friday on BBC 2. So at the moment our proceedings are being very well covered and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, gave us some viewing figures. Both organisations have guaranteed that this will last until the Summer Recess. Of course, what happens after that is still in doubt. 971 ITN is financed by the independent programme companies; the BBC has its own financial commitments, but it, too, has agreed to continue until the Summer Recess.
I imagine that much will depend on the audience reaction to these programmes and the willingness to find further finance. All that can be said I think is that the broadcasting organisations themselves are enthusiastic and hopeful.
The most unsatisfactory part of the experiment, as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has already indicated, has been the lighting. Unfortunately, in the time that was available before the experiment started it was impossible to do better than to instal the rather hideous panels which we have so far had to suffer. They were the best that could be done under the circumstances, but they were very unsightly and the sort of support that they require with scaffolding is liable to cause damage to the building. We have been experimenting with alternative forms of lighting, for which I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord On-Ewing, who was the chairman of a sub-committee of the Select Committee that worked out the technical details with the broadcasters and with the Property Services Agency. I should like to thank them and the Department of the Environment for the speed with which they have produced alternative chandeliers, because they are not unlike those that we had before, they are not unsightly and they seem to be able to produce at least some of the extra light that is required by the broadcasters. The committee has reason to hope that by the adaptation of our existing lighting we shall be able to satisfy the needs of the cameramen without damage to the appearance of the Chamber in the long term.
The Select Committee recommended that certain conditions should be attached, if your Lordships give approval to this Motion. Sound broadcasting was controlled by resolutions of both Houses of Parliament, and I understand that if your Lordships agree to this Motion, the noble Viscount the Leader of the House will table a similar resolution which will govern television broadcasting of this Chamber. The committee also recommended that one single committee should be established to control both sound broadcasting and television, which seems a natural and sensible procedure.
So far as concerns televising the committees of the House, during the experiment we allowed access to certain committee proceedings and ITN took advantage of this to do some broadcasting from the Select Committee on Overseas Trade. We think that this should be allowed to continue, if your Lordships agree to allow television, and we think that possibly at least one of the committee rooms might be adapted specially for television, which would overcome some of the undesirable features that occurred during the experiment on the last occasion.
Finally, the only other point I should like to make is that we hope that the broadcasters can be better accommodated than they are at present in their vans and portakabins in Black Rod's Garden, because that is not really very suitable accommodation for them in the long run.
972 Perhaps I may sum up by saying that I believe that the experiment has been well justified. At least it has produced plenty of evidence which is available this afternoon to enable your Lordships to come to a decision. If your Lordships agree, television broadcasting will continue on the same basis as at present, at the expense of the broadcasters and largely at their discretion. We hope to make significant improvements in the provision of adequate lighting, but in other respects we can expect things to go on much as they are at present, if your Lordships will it.
§ 3.36 p.m.
§ Lord ArdwickMy Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has said, this is a very serious decision that we have to make this afternoon; and indeed the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on which I was privileged to sit, has put in many hours of very serious labour.
But as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has indicated, the subject also has its lighter side. I have been casting my mind back 18 months to the time when the great television experiment was in prospect, and there were all the nagging doubts and agonising apprehensions. Some of us with a touch of photo-phobia perhaps feared that we should be dazzled by the brilliance of the lighting required for television. Others believed that the lights would create a stifling heat beyond the capacity of the air-conditioning system to cool down. Then there were those of us who feared the broadcasters themselves: would these young men make mocking fun of our venerable frailties, of our amiable eccentricities and of our quaint and stately customs?
Those gloomy and fearful speculations were fortified by newspaper cartoonists, who portrayed ancient and decrepit Peers—fully robed, of course—applying greasepaint to their rubicund faces as though they were about to take part in a theatrical performance. Even more apprehensive were those of us who feared that we might be seduced by the camera and the limelight into making fervent and frequent theatrical speeches which the broadcasting presenters would not be able to resist. As Thackeray put it:
How very weak the very wise,How very small the very great are.Vanitas vanitatum—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, would no doubt translate for us, "Vanity of vanities".Eighteen months ago a few of us thought that television was a rather vulgar thing and that the very presence of the cameras and their operators would detract from the dignity of the Chamber. Surely we should preserve our last privacy! The press have been here since 1795, writing down all that we say; and we were once very dubious about that. In recent years our voices in the Chamber have been broadcast to the wide world. Now it has been proposed that we should submit ourselves to total exposure, to be portrayed in action—or worse, sometimes in total inaction, in the arms of Morpheus—and to be portrayed in vivid colour.
I too have had my apprehensions. I was always in principle in favour of televising the proceedings of this Chamber, but I doubted the practicalities. My 973 apprehensions developed after I had seen the television records of an experiment made in our own Chamber a decade before. Those fears were strengthened after I had seen a number of videos of other Parliaments, including Commonwealth Parliaments, whose procedure was recognisable to us old Westminster hands. What I feared was that to the viewer our proceedings would be infinitely boring; that the subjects of our debates would be too esoteric for the general public; and that our parliamentary procedures would be totally baffling. In that I was wrong, just as the other timorous Peers were wrong in their apprehensions.
Let us take, for example, the lights. I know that one or two noble Lords have found them rather trying, but they are less bright than they were and, as we have seen today, if we convert all the chandeliers to this experimental type we shall be, as Wordsworth said, "apparelled in celestial light", to the discomfort of nobody. As for the heat, the air-conditioning engineers have been more successful in keeping it down in summer than they sometimes are in keeping it up in winter.
When we come to the question of whether our frailties and our customs have been exploited we have to admit that the broadcasters have operated in complete good faith. If a sleeping nobleman has appeared from time to time in the background, that has been inadvertent and inescapable. As the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said, our conduct has not changed. We have not yielded to the temptation to act up to the cameras. Of course, as in every parliamentary chamber in the world, we have a tiny minority who feel that they have a contribution to make on a very wide variety of topics; and we have another tiny minority who are oblivious of the clock. But they were always like that before we had television and they always would be like that even if television never appeared again in this Chamber.
Most of us come to this Chamber rather late in life, when our styles of composition and delivery have long been formed and fixed. Even Saatchi and Saatchi's best operators could not get us to change our ways and could not make us into television stars. Few of us have the enviable gift, as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and the noble Lord, Lord Soper, have, of being able to speak without notes. The rest of us appear on television not as stars but most of the time with our heads down, because, although none of us ever reads a speech in this Chamber, many of us find it necessary to keep a pretty sharp eye on the text!
As for boring the viewers, there is no doubt that we shall never have a large audience. But there is no doubt either that we give solid pleasure (entertainment of the higher kind) to a minority whose numbers in any context other than broadcasting would be regarded as considerable. For most of them this is their only experience of the parliamentary system and they find it fascinating, as we all know from what our friends have told us. They and we ourselves should give great credit to the professional broadcasters. They are becoming more and more adept at explaining clearly and succinctly the context in which our arguments are taking place and also the procedure of the debate.
974 This is a very difficult House to report, and here I speak as an old newspaper reporter. To sit up there in the Gallery for hour after hour listening to speeches which often have a literary and an intellectual content, and then to produce before the deadline falls a brief newspaper, radio or television report calls for the highest professional skill. Of course, nobody can get it right all the time. One has to take the average—the long run—in making a judgment. As I listened the other day to the superb debate that we had on education I thanked God that I did not have to report it. Nobody could have the time or the space to do full justice to its excellence.
This has been a modest experiment and the proposal to continue televising is modest, too, though it is not inadequate. As the noble Lord said, Channel 4 is doing a 15-minute stint late at night—very late at night; early in the morning; 12.30 a.m. I think will be the time of today's debate—and early in the afternoon, well out of peak viewing time; and the BBC is providing not 15 minutes but I think something like a 40-minute review of the week, once a week, very late at night. Of course, when there is something of compelling news value to the nation or to the region, that will justify additional treatment.
What I want to argue is that an operation of these dimensions at these times of day and night is neither a display of pride by us nor a challenge to the other place. It will show both the opportunities and the limitations of parliamentary television. When the Commons admits the cameras, as it will one day some time in the future, there will be a number of cameramen and presenters with a profound experience of parliamentary broadcasting, and that must be good.
It took the newspapers many years to establish themselves in Parliament. My version differs slightly from that of other people. My source says that this House did not accept reporters until three years after their grudging admittance to the other place. And when we let them in in 1795 we kept the poor wretches standing at the Bar taking notes.
Political broadcasting has had a hard life. There was a time not far away when broadcasters were not allowed to debate a topic that was coming up in Parliament in the next 14 days. Parliament was most jealous of its privilege. Today that rule has long been abandoned and the media are highly politicised. Radio and television provide debates on the great political subjects of the day that mean much more to the mass of people than what goes on in the Chambers of Westminster, and that is wrong. I hope that the televising of Parliament will one day redress the balance. The paradox is that by giving up its privilege completely Parliament will regain it when every minute of its proceedings every day that it sits will be within the sight and hearing of every citizen.
Parliamentary democracy, like justice, is not a cloistered virtue. Today those who turn their backs on television turn their backs on life. I fervently hope that we shall in this Chamber keep the lights, keep the cameras, keep the esteem of viewers and continue in the way that the broadcasters now propose.