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New clause 4
'.--(1) In exercising their powers under this Act and the 1990 Act, the Independent Television Commission and the Radio Authority ("the relevant authorities") shall have as their principal objective to secure that programmes included in any service licensed under either Act shall, taking the relevant service as a whole--
(a) be of a consistently high quality; and
(b) contain a suitable proportion of original material produced, or predominantly produced, in the United Kingdom.
(2) "Suitable proportion" in subsection (1) above shall have the meaning assigned to it in guidance which shall be issued by the relevant authorities.'.--[Mr. Mullin.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following: New clause 35--Duty of Commission and authorities to promote quality etc., in television and radio services in Wales--
'.--It shall be the principal duty of the Independent Television Commission, the Welsh Authority and the Radio Authority, in exercising their powers under this Act and the 1990 Act, to secure that the programmes included in any service intended for reception in Wales are of a consistently high quality and that they reflect, taking the relevant service as a whole--
(a) the tastes and interests of all communities living in Wales; and
(b) the cultural and linguistic heritage of Wales.'.
Government amendments Nos. 11 to 13.
Mr. Mullin:
May I begin by thanking my hon. Friends for the backing that they have given to this new clause? It is not every day that my name appears on the amendment paper above that of the Leader of the Opposition, and I do not suppose that will happen often in the future. I am grateful none the less.
New clause 4 seeks to repair one of the fundamental omissions from this Bill--the absence of any requirement that programme quality be taken into account when licences are allocated. It seeks to do this in two ways. First, it will enable the ITC to take into account the quality of the service proposed by the applicant. As the Bill stands, the nearest we get to laying down minimum standards is the requirement in clause 8(2)(d) that the service shall appeal to
Secondly, the new clause will ensure that the material broadcast shall contain a suitable proportion of original British-made programmes. I say "original" because I would not want the purpose of the new clause to be subverted by the endless recycling of second-hand material, whether produced in Britain or anywhere else. As to what constitutes a "suitable" proportion, that would be for the ITC to judge, taking into account all the circumstances--including the fact that, initially, it might be necessary to exercise leniency until the new service was up and running.
It will not have escaped the notice of those who advise Ministers that the application of new clause 4 is considerably wider than any amendment moved in Committee. It provides the ITC with powers to enforce minimum standards not merely upon applicants for multiplex licences, but on applicants who come within the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990. As clause 45 of the 1990 Act makes clear, this includes non-domestic satellite television--in other words, Sky Television.
For reasons at which one can only guess, Sky has been exempt from the requirement imposed on terrestrial commercial television that a given percentage of its output must be British-made and original. Sky spends almost nothing on original production apart from news and sport, with the result that it is free to import--often from other parts of the Murdoch empire--American and Australian movies and soaps at a fraction of the costs that its terrestrial rivals have to spend on producing original material. It is hard to think of anything more calculated to undermine the quality of British television.
I am sure that Sky's exemption from the rules that apply to its commercial rivals has been a factor in the desperate spiral of cost-cutting and ratings chasing that has afflicted British television in the past six years. I do not know how this extraordinary arrangement came about. It has been suggested that Margaret Thatcher sent a draft of the 1990 Act to Mr. Murdoch's lawyers, who simply deleted the parts that they did not like. That is one possibility. Another justification was that Sky's start-up costs were so massive and the risk so great that it would have been unreasonable to expect it to meet the same standards as its commercial rivals. I am not sure whether that argument ever held water, but if it did, it has long since been overtaken by events. Sky is now seven years old, and is highly profitable. It is about time that it was required to operate on a level playing field. New clause 4 will provide the regulators with powers to make sure that it does.
I now return to the argument about quality. I read the Minister's speech on this issue in Committee and, frankly, I was confused by it. On the one hand, he appeared to argue that the Bill already provided the regulator with powers to insist on minimum standards of programming. On the other hand, he argued that any safeguards would place an unreasonable burden upon investors. He cannot have it both ways. As regards his suggestion that variety was an adequate substitute for quality, that was admirably disposed of by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), who said that the Oxford English dictionary defined variety as "the absence of monotony". Is that the best that we can hope for from this wonderful new technology? Should we not be a little more ambitious?
The Minister argued that we must allow multiplex providers to give viewers what they want--the very argument that has given us The Sun and has dragged the rest of our tabloid newspapers into the gutter to compete. I do not want to see the same thing happening to our television. None of us should pretend that we know what the viewers want, but of one thing I am certain--unless we insist upon the enforcement of minimum standards from the outset, the viewers will get what is cheapest and most profitable for directors and shareholders. When challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) in Committee to say how we could prevent a decision by one operator to go down market from dragging others down with it, the Minister said that there was "every reason to hope" that the quality of channels 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 would be imported into the new digital services. He continued:
The only way to guarantee minimum standards is to provide the regulator with power to enforce them. That is what I am proposing. In Committee, the Minister said that the dominant criterion by which the ITC will judge applicants is
If the Government are not willing to take into account the Opposition's fears or those of many in the industry, for example those associated with the Campaign for Quality Television, one might expect them to listen to the ITC, which was set up precisely to regulate the industry. I presume that the ITC--or, I would presume it if the Minister were anywhere to be seen--enjoys the confidence of Ministers. It would be a strange affair if it did not. What does the ITC have to say on the issue? I will quote from a briefing that has no doubt been circulated for the Report stage to all hon. Members who were on the Standing Committee, which states:
"a variety of tastes and interests".
That, as I shall argue in a moment, is wholly inadequate.
"We shall have to wait and see."--[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 25 April 1996; c. 64.]
For my part, I am not prepared to wait and see, or to rely on hope. All the evidence from at home and abroad suggests that once one surrenders decisions about quality
entirely to the market, the trend is remorselessly downhill. As for the quality of channels 1, 2, 3 and 4--we are still awaiting channel 5--which the Minister hopes will be imparted to the digital services, there has been a dramatic decline in quality since the wave of mergers triggered by the 1990 Act. The knowledge that the first two digital multiplexes will go to the holders of existing franchises gives me no confidence.
"the degree to which the application . . . is likely to advance the cause of digitalisation in this country."--[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 25 April 1996; c. 66.]
Never mind the quality, feel the width--that is precisely the philosophy that will lead us down the road to ruin. In the long term, it will not be the standards of terrestrial channels that set the pace for digital television, but the opposite. Digital could undermine the standards that we are struggling to maintain on the other channels. We will end up with a tabloid TV--50 or 500 channels, but nothing worth watching on any of them.
"Despite widespread agreement concerning the need to empower the ITC to take these matters into consideration when analysing applications for multiplex service licences, it is by no means certain that the ITC will have sufficient statutory powers to exercise discretion in these areas. If this uncertainty remains, the ITC believes the legislation could actively prohibit"--
that is underlined--
"consideration of these factors in the licensing process."
At the end of the debate in Committee, the Minister undertook to go away and reflect on the quality of what he called "the backstops". I gather that amendments Nos. 11, 12 and 13 are the product of his reflections. If that is so, I can say only that they are obscure. Their purpose may be clear to the fine legal minds who advise Ministers, but they are not clear to me or to the people whom I have consulted.
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