Broadcast General Election Debates (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

My Lords, I join those thanking my noble friend Lord Inglewood and his committee for what has turned out to be a prescient and relevant contribution to the debate. This debate this afternoon is an unusual event in that it is a debate about a public debate about debates. Possibly this is a first. There are an awful lot of claims made for leaders’ debates—a new phenomenon in this country—about voters’ rights, democratic rights and so on. Perhaps I might recall a little history. It was mentioned earlier that the first televised leader debates were in 1960. These were the famous Kennedy-Nixon debates which some would say that Nixon lost because he had not had a shave. That is a piece of historical anecdotal evidence. What people have forgotten is that three elections went by subsequently where there were no leaders’ debates. It was not until 1976 that President Ford agreed to debate with Jimmy Carter and lost after making what was probably one of the first significant gaffes in what is now a cornerstone of all electoral campaigns, the opening of the gaffe season—“spot the gaffe”. We are in for quite a few weeks of that to come.

Despite the fact that there were three presidential elections in the United States without a leaders’ debate, I did not notice any damage to the American democratic way of life and the way of their political life. Yes, leaders’ debates are interesting, and are nice to have, but they are not absolutely essential to the democratic processes in this country.

I was interested to read Charles Moore in the Telegraph on Saturday. For those on the Benches opposite who perhaps did not quite get through their Guardian and make it to the Telegraph on Saturday, he addressed this question of context:

“The real question is, what makes us think that the demands of the broadcasters are the same as the rights of the voters? These debates are not, as Paddy Ashdown imagines, prescribed by some ‘independent’ body: Ofcom can do no more than modify what others propose”.

[Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon (LD)]

I wonder whether my noble friend will allow me to comment. I did not actually say what he claims I said, I said that, for instance, they had been equipped legally to take decisions of this nature in other cases.

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth]

I will ensure that Mr Moore reads Hansard as quickly as possible to correct that. I am grateful. He went on to write:

“The essentials of our democracy are the House of Commons, the constituency and the ballot box, not the media. Obviously politicians should speak to voters and the voters should speak to politicians. The media help this happen. But beware when a medium tries to hijack this process … In elections, the telly news increasingly could not be bothered to go round the country reporting speeches and examining the sheer variety of voters’ concerns. It preferred to confect a daily agenda involving a ‘gaffe’ by one party or another”.

He concludes:

“In a general election that returns 650 people to Parliament, no leaders’ debate is in any sense necessary”.

I agree with him in that respect. A debate may be desirable, watchable—sometimes—and certainly something that, in the word used in the report, the public “expect” to see. However, there is a big difference between expecting to see something and having the right to have it produced on your behalf.

As to the empty chair issue, I put myself in the position that I have been in, in past existences, as editor-in-chief of various networks. If I was asked, in the event that a senior member of one of the leading parties in a debate was, for some principled reason, not prepared to attend, whether we would put in an empty chair, I would regard that, without having to consult m’learned friends, as a breach of the statutory obligations on impartiality. In my view, it is unquestionably, editorially, a political statement. Reading a principled statement from the absent party explaining why it did not wish to take part seems to me to cover the point. I agree with most people, who would say that no individual leader of any party should have the right to veto a debate, but an empty chair is a step much too far.

In conclusion, I can only quote the words of Sam Chisholm, an old friend of mine, who was one of the architects of the success of the Sky enterprise. I was going in to discuss some deal with him, when he patted me on the head and said, “Michael, in every negotiation, there is a difficult conversation, and we are about to have it”. He then boxed my ears for half an hour, explaining why he could not do the deal that I wanted him to do.

We are at the early stages of some very difficult negotiations. A huge amount is at risk here, and I can understand perfectly well the Prime Minister’s point of view about the fairness of including the Greens. The simple way through this is not for the other parties to try to ascribe motives to the PM but for them to try to explain to the public, in a democratic fashion, why they believe the Greens should be excluded. If they will drop their principled objections, we can get on, and the public can have the debate they expect to have.