Coronation Street: 60th Anniversary

Debate between John Whittingdale and Tracy Brabin

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Media and Data (Mr John Whittingdale)]

I am not sure I can claim that title, particularly having listened to the contributions this evening. I would like to start by congratulating the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) on obtaining the debate and managing to unite the House. Members on both sides of the House have spoken with real admiration and affection for what is undoubtedly the world’s greatest soap.

I am delighted to join others in congratulating “Coronation Street” and ITV on the 60th anniversary. At the beginning of this year, the programme transmitted its 10,000th episode, and the 60th anniversary is next week. It is the world’s longest running soap opera, and it is still the most popular. It also demonstrates the extraordinary changes that have taken place in the media landscape over those 60 years. Today, it is still bringing in the biggest audience of any soap, but that is around 7 million, whereas in the ’90s, it was regularly getting 20 million. Indeed, the departure of Hilda Ogden in the 1987 Christmas episode had an audience of 26.65 million. It is still getting something like a third of the audience share. This just shows how linear television has changed during that time, but nevertheless, “Coronation Street” has maintained its position at No.1.

I cannot claim the encyclopaedic knowledge that has been displayed by so many Members, but I, too, have twice visited the set of “Coronation Street”. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) said, the first time I did so was with Margaret Thatcher in January 1990, and it was indeed the case that I had to brief her on the way to the set on the characters who were stars at that time. I did indeed go through all the various storylines, and she was particularly keen to visit Alf Roberts’ corner shop, because of course her own father was Alfred Roberts, who ran the grocer’s shop in Grantham. She arrived on set and was very upset to see that Alf Roberts’ corner shop had the sign saying, “Licensed to sell alcohol”. She said that that would certainly have never been allowed in her father’s shop, as he would not have dreamt of selling alcohol. Having said that, she did then visit the Rovers Return, but she was very clear that she would have a bitter lemon from behind the bar.

Some 24 years later, I was lucky enough to visit the set again. This was organised by the redoubtable Jane Luca, of ITV, whom I suspect was responsible for the visits of most of my hon. Friends who have spoken of their own experiences. She organised for the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, which I was Chair of at the time, to visit the new set. This was in 2014, after the set had been transferred to the new location in MediaCityUK in Salford. I was indeed accompanied by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West, whose excitement at going to the new set I remember. We met a number of cast members, including Michelle Keegan and Sam Aston. One thing that struck me was that the set had been made slightly bigger so that two cars could drive down the street and pass each other, and 54,000 cobbles had been laid, with extraordinary attention to detail. Each cobble was both positioned and weathered in order that it remained absolutely authentic. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) referred to the extraordinary amount of ancillary occupations involved and jobs created on a major TV production—I suspect that the 54,000 cobbles employed quite a lot of people.

Over the years, “Coronation Street” has had a number of famous visitors. There is a wonderful picture of Alfred Hitchcock peering around the door of the Rovers Return, and a young Prince Charles visited. As the hon. Member for Batley and Spen and one or two others have said, many great actors started their careers in Weatherfield; as well as the hon. Lady, we have the trio of theatrical knights, Sir Ben Kingsley, Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Patrick Stewart, as well as Sarah Lancashire and Joanna Lumley. As well as the actors, screenwriters such as Jack Rosenthal and Russell T. Davies started off in “Coronation Street”, and directors such as Paul Greengrass, Mike Newell and Michael Apted all directed episodes.

A number of the speakers in this debate have referred to the willingness of “Coronation Street” to confront difficult issues, and we have heard a number of examples of that, starting with the issue of racism in the very early episodes in the 1960s. Since then, it has addressed teenage pregnancy; domestic abuse, of both males as well as females; and transgender issues. It has even covered the challenge of someone having to try to find the money to pay the TV licence and failing, with this resulting in imprisonment. I am happy to tell the hon. Lady that almost nobody now goes to prison for a failure to pay the TV licence or meet the fine. I am sorry that in her case this came at a time when that was not true.

[Tracy Brabin]

It was pressure from this place that changed that law and a subsequent “Panorama” programme that unearthed all these cases of women who were sent straight to prison for non-payment. So I would like to thank the predecessors of MPs in here who saved so many women from experiencing that.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that. It has been some years since anyone was sent to prison for that and I hope it does not happen again, but it was disproportionately women who suffered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) talked about the issue of raising awareness of sepsis. It is perhaps worth observing that there cannot be another street in Britain that has experienced so many disasters and so many tragedies in such a short space of time.

Of course, most recently, the programme has had to wrestle with the challenges of covid, both in terms of production and also as a storyline. Covid stopped production of “Coronation Street” in March, but it was able to resume in June under the protocols to ensure safety. I want to pay tribute to the ITV health and safety team and to Magnus Brooke of ITV who played a very large part in helping to draw up those protocols so that not just ITV Studios productions could get going again, but all the other broadcasters and film companies could, too.

I have been chairing the broadcasting, film and production working group, which has brought together representatives of all the broadcasters, film companies and production companies to discuss how we could get production going again. We have now put in place very strict protocols to ensure that production can take place safely. As the hon. Member for Batley and Spen mentioned, we have also put in place the £500 million film and TV restart scheme. She is absolutely right that one obstacle was the difficulty in obtaining insurance of productions against the possibility of their having to stop because of covid. I am glad to say that that is in place and, as a result, productions have been resumed by most of the major broadcasters and film companies, but it has required some quite inventive solutions.

I understand that, on “Coronation Street”, furniture is quite often placed between characters in order that they can remain apart and socially distanced. Indeed, in a particularly inventive way, filming of romantic scenes takes place with one actor sitting on one end of a sofa looking longingly at a tennis ball suspended from the ceiling and then, once that section has been filmed, the other actor takes their place at the other end of the sofa and stares at a different tennis ball longingly and the production crew then splice the two together so that no one can tell. It is very important not just, obviously, that production is done safely, but that a show like “Coronation Street” gets across the public messaging about the importance of maintaining social distancing and mask wearing. “Coronation Street” had the socially distanced wedding between Maria and Gary.

I fear that it is almost certain that Weatherfield would still be in tier 3 at the end of the national lockdown, which would mean that the Rovers Return would be able to supply only a takeaway service, but I hope that it would not be long before the Rovers Return would be in tier 2, which would, of course, allow the sale of alcohol with a substantial meal such as Betty’s hotpot.

The hon. Lady also rightly referred to the importance of the UK production sector and our creative industries and the need to ensure that every region and every nation of the UK benefits from them, and we have been very keen to ensure that more production is done outside London. The BBC now has a major centre in Salford at MediaCity. ITV is now located with the “Coronation Street” set there. I have also had the pleasure of visiting the “Emmerdale” set in Leeds. ITV still has a presence in Leeds and Channel 4 has now established its headquarters in Leeds. I am absolutely clear that it is very important that we continue to encourage production to take place right across the UK, because it brings enormous economic benefits in terms of jobs and wealth creation.

The hon. Member for Batley and Spen and my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham referred to the importance of public service broadcasting. We are living through extraordinary changes in the media landscape that have brought huge extra opportunities for viewers in the range of content available through a number of streaming services that did not even exist two or three years ago. Now we have a choice of Amazon, Apple, Disney and Netflix, as well as Sky and the public service broadcasting companies. The PSBs have a tremendous role in supporting the UK creative industries, and while some of the streaming services are now commissioning content in this country, because we are so good at it here, the PSBs nevertheless still represent the major commissioners of UK content. We have recently established the Public Service Broadcasting Advisory Panel to examine the way in which PSB needs to adapt to this new landscape, but I am absolutely clear that there is still a role for public service broadcasting, and we will be looking at the issues and challenges facing public service broadcasters, such as the issue of prominence that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham raised.

I would like to conclude by joining all those who have spoken in paying tribute to a show that has not only brought pleasure and entertainment to millions of people over the course of the last 60 years, not just in the UK but in many other countries around the world, but also played a vital role in raising awareness and affecting attitudes on so many important public issues. As several people have said, I look forward to at least another 60 years.