House of Commons
Wednesday 14 April 1999
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
BBC Parliamentary Coverage
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Dowd.]
9.33 am
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for giving us the opportunity to conduct this first Adjournment debate of the summer on the important issue of the BBC and its parliamentary coverage. The House has debated the subject several times in the past year; the debates have been good-humoured and reasonable. The House has left behind some hon. Members' old habits of Beeb-bashing, which was a good blood sport in the old days, but I believe that we all want to work together to ensure that the BBC fulfils its mandate and fully discharges its obligation, set out in its charter, to provide an adequate report of parliamentary proceedings.
We are conscious that it is not just the House that is in play; soon we shall have a Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament, and there is a proposal for a Main Committee. The BBC will have to have regard to all the debates that take place in our different national forums, but I still maintain, as a strong supporter of the Government's constitutional programme, that what happens in this principal House, representing all the United Kingdom, remains paramount.
This morning, the BBC is holding a seminar on how to pay for itself--the usual chinwag between distinguished journalists. I received a nice note from the chairman of the governors, apologising for his absence from today's debate. The two Front-Bench spokespersons, my hon. Friend the Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting and the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring), are present. I look forward to hearing what they have to say, but I hope that they will speak as Members of the House rather than as representatives of Government and Opposition.
What is the main concern that brings us to this morning's debate? It is, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that to lose one, or perhaps 1,000, listeners may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose 3 million is unacceptable carelessness. That is what the BBC has done: it has lost 3 million listeners for parliamentary coverage.
I quote the BBC's figures, distributed in a document to some MPs before the Easter recess. Last year, "Yesterday in Parliament" had 3.13 million listeners; now ithas 830,000. When "The Week in Westminster" was broadcast on Saturdays, it had 658,000 listeners. Now, in its graveyard slot of Thursday evening, it has 227,000 listeners. Taken together, that is a loss of 3 million listeners for parliamentary coverage on Radio 4.
Last year, when the subject was debated, we were solemnly told--in letters from the chairman and statements made by Mr. James Boyle on the radio and elsewhere--that people were bored with "Yesterday in Parliament", that they were not interested in parliamentary proceedings and that "Today" would gain plenty of new listeners between 8.30 and 9 o'clock as a result of taking Members of Parliament off the air. We now find that there has not been a single new listener to "Today". That is what we predicted. We now have proof. Today I ask the BBC to reverse last year's disastrous decision.
To be fair to the BBC, it has admitted that it got things wrong. In a letter that I received from the chairman, dated 9 April, he says:
The BBC will argue, as it has argued in the document that it circulated to some Members of Parliament, that it has extended parliamentary coverage, via the Parliamentary channel, the internet, the Sunday night programme "The Westminster Hour", and "Westminster Live" in the afternoons, but none of those programmes, good as they are, can replace a linked journalistic narrative of what is said in this place, broadcast on FM.
Tony Hall refers to
The "time and place where people can listen" is not on long wave. In a document sent to us before the recess, the BBC admits that one British person in five has no access to it. Last year, in correspondence, Sir Christopher Bland said that he was willing to come to my house to retune my radio at 8.30 am. Although that was an extraordinarily generous offer--my children asked whether this would take place before or after their Weetopops!--I did not want to burden Sir Christopher with such raw contact with a Member of Parliament and his family.
Driving up to Rotherham and wanting to hear a report of the important debate on Kosovo that we had just before the recess, I tried to retune my radio from FM to long wave, but it was impossible. There I was on the M1, being hounded by Eddie Stobart's and other lorries--lorries to left of me, lorries to right of me. Hon. Members know what the M1 is like in the mornings: lorry drivers rush to burn up their diesel fuel as fast as they can. Jabbing at my radio set trying to find long wave, I nearly caused a pile-up. I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Whip, who is sitting on the Front Bench, thinks that a by-election in Rotherham would be a good or a bad thing; perhaps we can talk about that afterwards.
The situation is preposterous. As Mr. Hall says, our parliamentary proceedings should be broadcast at a time and place where people can listen. The purpose of this debate, however, is not just to make that fundamental demand, or simply to moan about the BBC; it is to defend the central role of parliamentary democracy.
It is currently fashionable to deride Parliament. I heard a woman journalist on Radio 4's "Any Questions" last Friday. I cannot remember her name, but in terms of flatulent, self-important pomposity she could knock any of us into a cocked hat. According to her, Parliament was not important, MPs were not important and nothing that happened in Parliament counted. Parliament has been written out of the national agenda. That, of course, is true for the fashionable intelligentsia--and some hon. Members play a political game by trying to present Parliament as the weak poodle of the Executive, although those of us who try desperately to stay on message but are always six months late know just how wrong they are. That is true even when we write, whatever language we happen to write in.
Parliament is central to democracy in this country. How we all wish that there had been one parliamentary debate for one hour in Belgrade to discuss the tragedy in that area. Parliament does hold the Executive to account. Of course it is not as exciting as it was earlier in the decade when there was no majority and Prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer were losing their jobs, but that is not the fault of Parliament or the Government. We must blame the British people, who in their wisdom decided to send a massive majority to the House of Commons two years ago.
"the BBC should be, and I believe is, big enough to put things right when mistakes have been made.
I welcome, as all of us do in our Lord's mansion, a sinner who is prepared to convert, and I hope that the chairman will put his words into practice. He also says:
Two things are clear. The loss of listeners to 'Yesterday in Parliament' and 'The Week in Westminster' is much greater than we had expected--and that, whatever the causes of that loss, there is an unacceptable 'democratic deficit' which the BBC, with its special public service responsibilities, needs to address. The BBC must give appropriate prominence to coverage of parliamentary proceedings."
"The Today"
programme
"figures, while steady, have not improved as a result of moving Yesterday in Parliament."
We also have an interesting statement from Mr. Tony Hall, head of BBC news, made at a Fabian seminar held in the House, now published by the Fabian Society--which, as a member of its executive committee, I advise all hon. Members to join. He says:
"we are all told--almost daily it seems--we live in a rapidly changing world. Some say audiences are no longer interested in politics. Our research for our Programme Strategy Review showed something very different. People still expect, and want, the BBC to provide full coverage of difficult subjects. 65% said it was important that the BBC reported what was happening in Parliament."
I invite Mr. Tony Hall, as it were, to put his editorial decisions as chief executive of BBC news where his mouth was and restore "Yesterday in Parliament" to the "Today" programme as it is listened to by the majority of listeners in this country, and put "The Week in Westminster" back on Saturday morning.
"a time and place where people can . . . listen".
It is no use shunting us into a slot late on Sunday night, or into an obscure corner of the digital network; what people need is a report of Parliament on their daily morning newspaper of the air, the "Today" programme. Radio 5 does an excellent job, but it does not report parliamentary proceedings. It will rush off to the Ministry of Defence for a press conference, but to my knowledge it has never presented a proper report of what happens here.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |