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(Lord Annan's speech continued from overleaf)
Is there no remedy then against prolonged and offensive bias? I am sure that no remedy should be written into the Bill. However, the director general of the BBC, his senior managers and the ITC would be wise to institute a practice whereby, after a programme, which they had been advised would raise hackles, a 10-minute discussion is tacked on at the end in which the producer could face his critics. Then another view of the matter could be expressed. If they do not do this, the blood be on the head of the broadcasters. They ignored public feeling on violence and standards and as a result they now have the British Standards Council set over them. What is more, the director general of the BBC was sacked. Something far worse could happen to the broadcasters, in my view, if they do not heed the continuous criticism of unmitigated bias in programmes…
5.48 p.m.
Baroness Cox [Deputy Speaker] spoke for 12 minutes during which she addressed the issue of impartiality thus:
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…In my contribution I wish to concentrate primarily on the specific issue of what is described as "due impartiality" on matters of political controversy. That matter has just been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Annan. I am a great admirer of the noble Lord and I almost invariably agree with all that he says. However, on this occasion my conclusions differ from his. I shall explain why.
Clauses 6 and 85 of the Bill as currently drafted will do nothing to prevent in future the debilitating series of arguments which has surrounded broadcasting in this area in recent years. Your Lordships will not need reminding of the numerous public disputes about political bias which have sapped public confidence, soured relations between broadcasters and politicians and demoralised commentators, many of whom to their great credit genuinely try to maintain political even-handedness. Indeed, there is reason to think that the Bill as drafted will make the present unsatisfactory situation even worse.
Such effects will not be confined to the independent sector. They may also damage the BBC, for the BBC's impartiality requirements are only very sketchily defined in the annexe to its licence and agreement with the Home Office. Therefore a great deal is left for BBC administrators to interpret. They will presumably take account of parallel procedures in this Bill laid down by Parliament for the independent sector.
In contemplating the need for due impartiality in the presentation of political issues I was reminded of the sinister Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four". One of its chilling slogans was:
"Who controls the past controls the future".
In other words, if you can rewrite history, if you can falsify the record, if you can destroy the past, then you can distort the present and manipulate what is yet to come.
There are a number of points in the impartiality clauses of the Bill which may at worst allow the
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corruption of recent history in broadcasting output or, at the very least, lead to bitter and damaging disputes between broadcasters and their critics. First, in the Broadcasting Act 1981 and its predecessors due impartiality was required "on matters of political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy". Thus the story of past events which are still controversial, such as the Falklands War, the 1984 miners' strike, or the origins of East-West confrontation had to be recounted fairly and accurately. Unless the Bill is amended that will no longer be the case. Why is this? - because all that is now demanded is "due impartiality" on matters of current political or industrial controversy or relating to current public policy.
I suggest that there can be no possible purpose in making that change other than to narrow down drastically the arena in which fairness will be required. I know of no anomalies which have arisen from the previous wording. There have been few, if any, frivolous complaints that ancient historical events have received biased treatment on Channel 4 or anywhere else. Yet there have been closely documented examples concerning recent history, history with an indirect bearing on present-day disputes, but not so recent as to deserve the description of being "current". Perhaps I may give three examples to illustrate my point.
First, the programme "Greece: The Hidden War" was disclosed as a communist distortion of the civil war in the
1940s and of Britain's role in those events. Secondly, "Summer of the Bomb" blamed the start of the Cold War on the Hiroshima attack and claimed that to be the consensus view of informed historians, which it certainly is not. That is a fact which is recognised in the belated apology given by the BBC to the Freedom Association, as reported in today's Daily Telegraph. Thirdly, "Arm in Arm Together" spent nearly an hour featuring unchallenged communist criticisms of wartime Britain for not trusting Stalin's Soviet Union enough without once mentioning the Nazi-Soviet pact.
I fear that the changes in the wording of the impartiality requirements will exempt such cases from future criticism. It could indeed open the floodgates to wholesale tendentious historical revisionism. I do not accept that as soon as a controversy begins about a non-current issue it will ipso facto become a current controversy in the sense of the Bill as presently drafted. Instead, one result could be the undermining of the existing obligation for fair coverage of contentious events in 20th century politics. I suggest that we must uphold that obligation by amending the Bill.
I found another of Orwell's novels, Animal Farm, coming to mind when considering the record of the Committee stage of the Bill in another place. Your Lordships will recall the constant motif of that novel: cast-iron guarantees of liberty are written upon the wall of the barn, but are then rendered worthless by the addition of a few extra words. That is precisely what has happened to the impartiality requirements for independent radio services set out in Clause 85 of the Bill. Let me explain.
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According to that clause radio services will be required to avoid giving what is termed "undue prominence" to one-sided views on controversial political matters. The extraordinary rider is then attached stating that in applying that principle all the programmes in a radio service "shall be taken as a whole". I suggest that such a provision is unenforceable. Who can possibly listen to or monitor the entire output of a whole broadcasting service? It is as good as saying that independent radio programmes may be as biased as they like.
Already the provision that an entire series of programmes may be considered as a whole has led to abuses. How often has a one-sided programme been properly offset by another on ITV's "World in Action" for example? That was an example given by the noble Lord, Lord Annan. At least one could monitor an entire series and point that out. Such monitoring has been undertaken, with some disturbing results. However, such monitoring would be impossible for independent radio unless the Bill is amended. We should therefore be passing a law which cannot be enforced in any meaningful way.
If that is our intention it would be more honest to say openly that there is to be no requirement for political impartiality on independent radio. It is absurd to say that impartiality must apply - but not to individual programmes, not to an identifiable series of programmes, but only to the entire output of a whole radio service. Over a week? Over a year? Over a lifetime of Parliament? The Bill does not say. Nor would that make any difference because I suggest that the requirement is so flabby as to be completely worthless. To take the dental analogy of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, a little further, it has no bite in it whatever.
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