Political commentary

Showing the reality

Charles Moore

T eaving aside, for the moment, the rights Land wrongs of the question, how is it that Mr Austin Mitchell managed to muster 164 MPs ready to countenance the intro- duction of television into the House of Commons and so to give a first reading to his Televising of Parliament Bill last week? What can they have been thinking of?

Even Mr Mitchell, who is a television per- sonality, did not try to argue, and presum- ably does not believe, that television would improve the public standing of MPs. Con- scious of the House's low reputation deriv- ed from the radio broadcasts of its pro- ceedings, he did suggest that television would be kinder. The radio microphones, he said, were 'omnidirectional', and so picked up 'extraneous noise' and did not 'show the reality of what is going on'; whereas the sort of television camera he had in mind ('bracket-mounted cameras with- out crews, with the lighting only slightly in- creased') were based 'on a shot of a person speaking only'. In short, Mr Mitchell's show would be as unrepresentative of the character of the proceedings as it could possibly be; but even so, one cannot im- agine it pleasing the general public. The bits reported on news bulletins and at peak viewing times would rightly be the most acrimonious and controversial bits, and it is those bits which lead people to believe that MPs are like animals or schoolboys. No doubt each MP believes that, unlike his col- leagues, he alone can master the medium, and increase his fame, but one would expect him at least to acknowledge that his own success would be won at the price of the disrepute brought upon the House by other Members.

One has to conclude that those of the 164 who did not vote for television out of ex- treme vanity can only have done so out of altruism. They must actually agree with Mr Mitchell when he says that MPs 'have no right to exclude the people from their deliberations', and believe that not being able to watch Parliament on television real- ly does constitute such an exclusion. They have probably lent their names at one time or another to support for more 'open government', and they are probably old- fashioned enough to think that the practices of the House of Commons should be 'brought in line' with those of foreign legislatures.

It is so difficult and unpleasant being altruistic that one would think that MPs would want to save it up for occasions where altruism could be supported by sound argument instead of wasting its sweetness on the deserted airwaves.

According to Mr Mitchell, it seemed 'natural, inevitable and right that the deliberations of 'this national forum' should be available to those in whose name the Commons deliberates. Well, they are available. The fact that reading Hansard's verbatim reports is a minority pastime does not mean that it is not proper reporting. Anyway, what happens in Parliament is covered ad nauseam already, and in far greater depth and breadth than would be likely on television.

By suggestion that there is a lack of availability, Mr Mitchell is trying to slip in the notion that television, by its nature, conveys information which is relevant and not otherwise obtainable. We must see what MPs look like as they sit on the benches, or at least, with Mr Mitchell's discreet camera, as they rise from them, in order to be assured that they are there and to know that they are doing their job. But whey stop with the visual sense? By arguing, as he does, that the onus is on the opponents of televi- sion in the House to justify themselves, Mr Mitchell affects the plain man's line of say- ing, 'Well, it's obvious, isn't it ... ?' It just isn't.

In the absence of any clear increase in public knowledge of Parliament due to television, the House of Commons only has one question to ask on the subject — would its introduction assist the work of the House? There is a strong, though again not simply obvious, argument that the proceed- ings of Parliament should be publicly recorded and available. It was won at the beginning of the 19th century by William Cobbett, producing his Political Register from Peterborough Court, where today stands another great Tory independent, the Daily Telegraph. But perhaps an equally powerful reason for Parliament's accep- tance of the work of Hansard was that it provided Members with records of their proceedings which made it much easier for them to do their work. Later in the 19th century, Hansard ceased to pay as an inde- pendent entity and, after various hand-outs proved inadequate, Parliament made it its official record in 1909. In short, it quickly came to matter more to MPs than to the public.

It is difficult to see how Parliament could put television recordings of itself to good use. If it set up a video library of its debates, it would help still further to reduce the level of life and interest in the proceed- ings in the chamber. MPs would vote themselves the right, which they already have with Hansard, to make the film record what they meant to say, not what they ac- tually said, perhaps to insist on refilming, certainly on hours of pulling out tapes and cutting them to shreds. Mr Mitchell thinks that the camera would strengthen the Op- position, lead to sharper questioning and more incisive speeches. One can imagine that it might, but rather in the way that par- ty conferences alway help the loud- mouthed and publicity-seeking. Party con- ferences are frequently bitter or phoney, partly because speakers in the hall concen- trate on an audience outside it. That already happens in Parliament, and would happen much more. It would, oddly enough, increase the hostility between the parties that the public so much dislikes.

There may be a more pathetic reason which leads people to think that the Com- mons needs to be televised. Like bishops who will do anything that they think will enable them to 'reach a bigger audience', some MPs believe that things are not quite real if they are not on television, and that poor little Parliament will just wither away and die of neglect unless it can get itself on the screen. (There is a hint of this fear in Mr Mitchell's suggestion that Parliament ought to be televised to satisfy 'the wishes of television'.) By such a view, the success of a representative assembly would be judged by its place in the ratings.

Apparently, there will not be time for Mr Mitchell's Bill to get its second reading next Friday. But what throws out all calculations in the matter is the move by the House of Lords to get in first. If, as seems likely, Lord Soames succeeds in introducing televi- sion cameras into a debate in the House of Lords on 8 December, and the Lords like the experience enough to want to repeat it, the House of Commons is stuck. The Lords on the box is one of the many things not considered very thoroughly by the Mitchell party. No doubt Mr Mitchell will say that it only shows that the Commons should hurry up; but if it is possible to watch the Lords on television, the Upper House's proceed- ings, so much more intelligent and polite that those in Another Place, will win it public acclaim. If the Commons then offers a rival show, it will be booed off the stage. The best outcome would be an apparent but not real anomaly by which the House of

Lords was televised and the House of Com- mons was not. Ther result would be the securing of the heredity peerage, the chastening of MPs and the saving of the House of Commons from further self-

destruction. After a century or two, no one would be able to remember how this situa- tion came about, and it would be universal-

ly admired as yet another example of the

British empirical tradition. I should love In be the latter-day Bagehot there to explain

how the greater visibility accorded the

Lords reflected the deference paid to nobili- ty, and how the House of Commons stood

back from publicity because its pro- ceedings, being more essential to the coin' monweal, were too solemn for the clamorous attention of the camera.