Mr Phillip Whitehead: Is the Minister at all concerned with the present rate of bankruptcies in the building trade, which in part at least stems from the difficulties which come when a firm has to make a low tender under the system and is then caught out by rising costs and prices?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Many hon. Members have begun their speeches in the debate with a personal statement of their position. That is right and proper because the wider public would wish the decision taken in principle by this House to be taken by the whole House on the principles involved. We have listened with particular interest to statements made by such hon. Members as my hon. Friends the Members for...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is now in a position to announce the result of his examination of new evidence in the case of James Hanratty; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: May I put one general and one political question to the right hon. Gentleman? May I say first of all that this ghost will not be laid by this decision and that the concern of many hon. Members in all parties in the House will not be allayed? May I beg him to think again about setting up a public inquiry into this business? More specifically, may I ask him what correspondence there was between...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: The best white Rhodesian Prime Minister.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: We have heard a good deal, not least from the hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees), about prospects for a settlement in Southern Rhodesia. I am one of those hon. Members who believe that no settlement is possible, or should he attempted, with this régime. We have the word of Mr. Smith himself that he does not believe in the five principles. We have the word of hon. Members...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: As the hon. Gentleman would have heard had he been listening, I said that I had encountered [MR. WHITEHEAD.] businessmen who had come back to this country—I myself was last in Rhodesia some three years ago—because their businesses had been destroyed over the last three or four years as a result of the situation in which the Rhodesian economy now finds itself. Therefore, it seems evident...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I welcome the important statements on this matter which the Minister has just made, but will he ask the Independent Television Authority to inquire into the circumstances in which a "World in Action" programme on events in the Republic of Ireland was banned without being seen by the Authority, against, as I understand it, the views of the I.T.A. officials who saw the programme in its early...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Is my hon. Friend saying that the six or notionally eight cameras which would be used in the precincts of the Chamber would have to be manned at all times? Does he not concede that there are automatic cameras which could do some of this work, certainly within the Chamber's precincts?
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I understand that my hon. Friend is saying that the professional who, as it were, orchestrates the eight cameras and decides which one appears on the screen—this is perhaps the most highly skilled job in television—should be either an official of this House or under the control of this House. Is he saying that this person would be a professional in the employ of this House or that this...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: rose—
Mr Phillip Whitehead: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has for further meetings with the Chairmen of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Independent Television Authority, relating to coverage by the broadcasting media of events in Northern Ireland.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Will the Home Secretary accept that when he goes off, if he goes off, trundling again to see the two Directors-General or the Chairmen he should go perhaps as the emissary of the 1922 Committee but not of this House as a whole? Is he aware that there is grave concern in the country at the calls for the B.B.C. and I.T.V. to report things from the point of view only of the Unionists or security...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: There is and must be in current affairs reporting an interrogative function for the television journalist which involves putting a contrary view but not necessarily and certainly not conspicuously the point of view of the reporter himself.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I would like to begin by offering my congratulations to the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Fowler) both on raising this subject and on the exhaustive and moderate way he has done so. I would, however, ask him to accept that on this side of the House there is a certain attitude of hostility to the notion of a broadcasting council because of the great concern which many hon. Members...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: I think that that is true, yes, but I had not thought that journalists were calling for the sort of body now proposed by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South, and I am addressing myself to him and those who support him.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: In the editorial columns, yes. I concede that. The hon. Gentleman has quoted, for example, Mr. Charles Wintor. However, if one looks back to the columns of the Press at the time when the Press Council was instituted, one finds that there was far less unanimity about the need for discipline, regulation and so on. In moving his Motion, the hon. Gentleman said that he wished to have a council...
Mr Phillip Whitehead: Yes, I do. It would be a fairer tribunal of appeal for two reasons. First, it would not simply be a group of nominated, establishment, elder statesmen. Secondly, it would be able to call upon people who were genuinely representative of the public and of all shades of opinion in broadcasting. It is not true to say that all professional broadcasters are employees of the B.B.C. and I.T.V....
Mr Phillip Whitehead: The hon. Gentleman is reinforcing the point that I tried to make. It is that, since Lord Hill has an executive function, an appeal to him for the redress of a grievance cannot be made with the confidence that existed 10 years ago, when the Chairman of the B.B.C. had a different and regulatory function.
Mr Phillip Whitehead: asked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications what proposals he has received from the Director-General of the Independent Television Authority relating to a fourth television channel.