|
(Mr Mellor's speech continued from overleaf)
Since the Bill left the House, not as much has changed as some contributors to the debate in the other place
Column 522
suggested - and I suspect from the look of jovial good humour on the face of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) he might also want to suggest that there have been many changes.
As a result of a small wobble over the word "current", the substantive law on impartiality in the Bill is precisely the same as it has been since 1954. That is important. We made one addition in the House in recognition of the fact that the Independent Broadcasting Authority is the broadcaster and the Independent Television Commission is the regulator. We added to the Bill a requirement for a code, making clear that the code was not one approved by Parliament because that would blur the arm's length relationship in regulations to which I and many others attach importance. The code will deal with what we know to be some of the problems. It is recognised that there were problems about what constitutes a series of programmes and about other aspects of the regulations. That will always be a difficult and sensitive area. That is why, to general acclamation - no one dissented - we made provision for a code. It will enable broadcasters to know where they stand because, if the regulators are to have the right to intervene, the broadcasters should know on what basis they may do so. Also, the public should know where they stand. All manner of folk, from time to time, take issue with what is contained in television programmes and it would probably assist if one had clear guidance as to what the ground rules were.
4.30 p.m.
I want to restate the principle with as much clarity as I can muster that it is the right of Parliament - it has been so for four decades - to insist that there is due impartiality on matters of current political or industrial controversy and so on. However, it is not for us to usurp the function of the regulators and state exactly what the detailed rules should be. We are not doing that in the amendments. I say that with sincerity amidst the mutterings of scepticism from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher), who has lifted his head from correcting the proofs of "War and Peace" or whatever he is doing. I had not expected that to be a universally acclaimed sentiment, although it is a true one.
It was necessary - and it was welcomed - for the Government to take account of the strong expressions of view in the House during the passage of the Bill. It also seemed to be eminently right that we should take account of the strong expressions of view in the other place, although not to the extent - I make no apologies for this - of accepting the precise amendments tabled by the noble Lord Wyatt and others, but to recognise their concern. That concern has been reflected in an early-day motion in the House. There was concern that the rules would need to be clear after the Bill had finished in the House. However, insights come to people at many different times. St. Paul gained his insight rather late, so I dare say that everyone else is entitled to gain theirs rather late as well. But there was still time, and we considered it right to add to the Bill a series of points that the code should cover - points that I believe to be a matter of common sense.
It is crucial for hon. Members to understand that we did not specify what the code should say about those points; we merely provided for the ITC, in drawing up its code, to take account of them. I still believe that that was a legitimate way of dealing with the sentiments that were
Column 523
expressed so strongly in the other place, and that it does not blur the crucial matter of principle to which I have adhered throughout.
I shall reserve my more detailed comments until later. Let me say now, however, that I was intrigued by the allegation made persistently in the other place and elsewhere that this would be a lawyers' picnic. As I have said before, I am well aware of - and subscribe to - Ogden Nash's view of professional men:
"Professional people have no cares, Whatever happens, they get theirs."
I am certainly not anxious that my former profession should benefit unduly from any act of generosity performed late in the day. Everyone can come to this party, with their lawyers; it is not only those who take exception to some of the legislation who will have the benefit of legal advice. We have the benefit of that advice, and so has the ITC.
The Bill will not open the way for any legal challenge that is not in any case inherent in the concept of due impartiality, and the need for the regulatory body to flesh out a bare rule and make its own judgment about how that rule should be applied in complex and difficult circumstances. Provided that the ITC draws up its code in a reasonable manner, there will be no scope for judicial intervention or extensive litigation, because the normal rules of scrutiny will apply: a decision made by a public body cannot be overturned in the courts unless that body has acted unreasonably. It is no more likely that the ITC would act unreasonably when faced with a limited or skeleton framework for its code than that it would err in drawing up a code seeking to give effect to a basic principle that Parliament has set out for nearly 40 years.
I place some reliance on that. In the other place, as one or two speakers in that debate pointed out, there was a tendency for arguments about the legalities of the matter to apply not so much to the limited amendments that the Government were seeking to make - as to the whole principle of the due impartiality provision itself - which, as I said, has been part of our law for nearly 40 years. Someone who had arrived the previous day from Mars - or, in the case of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett), from Australia or some equally far-flung place - would assume that the argument did not concern some minor adjustments to the code proposals; he would assume that exception was being taken to the very idea of a due impartiality provision. That was where many of the more telling - or, depending on one's view, not particularly telling - legal points took us.
Let me state categorically that, if I thought for a moment that they would result in a legal picnic, I should not commend the amendments to the House; nor should I do so if I thought for a moment that they blurred the key distinction that strikes me as fundamental. Parliament has a right and a duty to prescribe due impartiality in what is still a relatively scarce service, in television. The concept of due impartiality does not exist in the written word, but I still believe that it is necessary to retain it in respect of the principal television services. It is right for us to tell those responsible that they should regulate that rule and, so that everyone knows where they stand, for there to be a code dealing with certain issues rather than avoiding them.
However, it would be wrong to dictate the way in which those issues should be dealt with, and none of the amendments does so. That is the bedrock of principle on which they are founded.
Column 524
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) rose-
Mr. Mellor: I was about to subside into my seat for good, but I shall do so only temporarily instead.
Mr. Maclennan: I understand why the Minister prefers to reserve his detailed responses until a subsequent intervention. However, as he is advocating a change of considerable controversy and of great importance to broadcasters, as he admits, his initial speech should discharge the onus of proof for change - particularly as the Minister himself earlier made it abundantly clear that the thought that the language in use since 1954 is still adequate.
|
|
