General Election Television Debates

David Simpson Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dodds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is in the interests of people throughout the United Kingdom. If we are to hear the views of the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru, it is absolutely right for people to hear the views of the Democratic Unionist party and others on the national issues, because this could have a major impact on the next Parliament.

When the leader of my party, Peter Robinson, and I met the BBC in Belfast, we heard this argument: “We have included the SNP and Plaid in addition to UKIP, the Greens and the three major national parties, but it would be difficult now to include the DUP. We recognise the strength of your numbers; we recognise the role you could play in the next Parliament; we recognise that you have more votes than Plaid; we recognise that you have more seats than Plaid; we recognise that, unlike some parties, you are genuinely going to weigh up the options after the election on the basis of proposals that come forward. You are not in the pocket of any party; you have not already sold your vote. You have not already said that you are going to oppose the Tories, come what may, or that you will never go into coalition with the Labour party. All that is perfectly valid, but it will be very difficult to broadcast a debate because we would have to invite all the Northern Ireland parties, which would make it very unwieldy.”

So it comes down to a problem the broadcasters have created by the inclusion of the SNP and Plaid Cymru, leading them to say, “It is too difficult to cover Northern Ireland because we would then have to include more parties than the DUP”. It is a problem of their own creation. It is hardly fair to blame the DUP or Northern Ireland when this is a problem that the broadcasters have created themselves. When they came forward with this formulation and created this problem, they must have done so with their eyes wide open. They must have known that the effect would be to exclude Northern Ireland completely and that they would have to resort to a weak argument along the lines of: “It would be very unwieldy in broadcasting terms and it would not be a great television show.” I have no reason to doubt that functionaries at the top of the BBC and elsewhere are reasonably intelligent people, so they must have known the implications, but they were prepared to proceed nevertheless. In my view, that is a gross dereliction of their duty of fairness and reasonableness.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is blatant arrogance coming from the BBC. This is an organisation funded by the general public who pay the licence fee. The public want to hear what the parties have to offer. This is just blatant arrogance.

[Mr Dodds]

That is absolutely right, and I think the BBC will live to regret that arrogance. The way it is treating the political parties of Northern Ireland displays a great level of contempt for the people of Northern Ireland.

I shall start my conclusion as I know other Members want to speak. Where are we at the moment? We are, preposterously, supposed to believe the threat from the broadcasters that they can legally contrive debates during the short general election campaign at which the Prime Minister is not present while many of his political opponents are. Reference has been made to what Lord Grade has said today. Some people may believe that that is possible. Some people in the BBC, including broadcasters, may believe that it is possible, although I should add, in fairness to the BBC’s employees, that I have yet to meet a BBC journalist who believes that it is. It would do the BBC Trust, and indeed Rona Fairhead, some good to listen sometimes to what members of their front-line infantry are saying.

Even now, it is not too late to do what should have been done long ago. A matter of such importance—putting the electoral choices of the British people directly in front of them—should be raised above the level of partisan squabbling or media meddling. Even at this late hour, a Speaker’s conference would start to take us where we need to go, towards the establishment of an independent commission to superintend broadcast election debates. Of course the public want to hear from us, but they must hear from us fairly, without bias and without the blatant incompetence that we have seen here before getting in the way.

Throughout the world, broadcasters work with independent commissions arranging political debates of this kind, and the end result is that in other countries, those debates happen. Here, it seems that the broadcasters know best. They know how to organise the debates, and they go ahead and try to do so on their terms. What has been the end result here? Chaos and confusion—and, eight weeks before the general election, no one has any idea what is happening about any of these debates.