Orders of the Day — Broadcasting Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:04 pm on 16 February 1987.

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Photo of Mr Clement Freud Mr Clement Freud , North East Cambridgeshire 5:04, 16 February 1987

This is a very minor Bill. It is not one with which the alliance or anyone else disagrees. However, I deplore the fact that it is such a minor Bill and that it lacks courage, foresight and dynamism. As hon. Members have said, it is another example of piecemeal legislation. It asks us to wait and see. It allows the Government — 1 suppose that this is important to any Government before an election — to say, "Our hands are clean," even if they have to add, "We have not done anything."

I was disturbed by the Home Secretary's answer to an intervention by the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) when the right hon. Gentleman said that the Government proposed to introduce a comprehensive Broadcasting Bill early in the next Session. Is it Conservative policy to introduce some non-specific Bill? Since we have a Broadcasting Bill before us, it is the Home Secretary's duty to give us a little more information before he tries to put this piecemeal legislation on the statute book. The House deserves to know what the legislation will do to preserve the quality of television stations such as Border—small, excellent, vulnerable and open to predators. We deserve to know whether the forthcoming legislation will seek to sell off independent television companies and whether it will use money or standards as the criterion for sale.

It is terribly wrong to allow the Peacock recommendations to lie idle without any word from the Government other than, "We wish to hear the debate." All hon. Members want to know how the Government will react to the Peacock suggestions. Will the Government preserve the opportunities for independent television producers and for independent producers generally? A move within market place economics will not be encouraging in any way to those who make independent programmes.

Your predecessor in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, intervened to say that the Bill does not concern the BBC. I believe that any debate on broadcasting cannot isolate one form of broadcasting because one form reverberates substantially on all other forms. Hon. Members are disturbed by what is happening in the BBC and by the concept of "acceptability of BBC governors" without a move to bring in governors, as there are hon. Members whose job it is to probe what is happening.

I am concerned about the centralisation of television production in the south-east of England. We want to know what the Government will do about this. It is extraordinary that, in every facet of Government responsibility, people are being directed without much concern about where the expertise lies.

The whole nation is interested in community radio, and that includes even those people who did not want community broadcasting to come about — but it ill becomes the Government to make a promise, to allow people to spend substantial sums on research and development and then withdraw that promise and say, "There will not be any community radio for the time being; you must wait and see."

We are also concerned about subscription television because we fear that it could lead to an even more divided society. Some people might be unable to see "Rumpole of the Bailey" because they do not have the money to buy the programmes that their neighbours watch. It is essential that the concept of subscription television will be to top up, and not to take from people their right to view.

What they propose to do to Channel 4 is perhaps the most brilliant example of the Government's inability to leave good things alone. It is one of the most successful of broadcasting enterprises. Why do the Government not leave it to flourish instead of attempting to make it a commercial, avaricious begetter of its own advertising? That would not do any service whatsoever for Channel 4 but would jeopardise something of great and substantial quality.