Televised Election Debates

John Lamont Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I commend the organisers of the petition, the Petitions Committee for allowing time for the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who introduced the motion so effectively.

I agree with the former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Whitelaw, who said in the House of Lords in 1990 that Sky News had “a very high reputation”, adding:

“I admire it as do many other people.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 October 1990; Vol. 522, c. 195.]

Those comments are relevant today. Sky News is an award-winning broadcaster, picking up awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the Royal Television Society; it has won the RTS news channel of the year award. It therefore has a strong reputation for news coverage. That strength comes from the quality of its journalists, including Beth Rigby, Ed Conway, Mark Stone and Mark White. It undoubtedly has a team of top-notch journalists and is one of the main sources of news in my household. I cannot understand why the channel has threatened an enviable reputation by devoting so much coverage and air time to its own campaign and petition for the leaders’ debates commission.

I am now going to shatter what has so far been the consensus in the debate. In this day and age, when we are all concerned about fake news and the reliability of what we read, watch and interact with, I question the editorial decision by Sky News to report constantly on its own campaign, as if it were actual news rather than simply an attempt to gather more signatures.

The campaign and petition on the Parliament website started in early September 2018, ahead of the party conference season. Since then, Sky News has been reporting on its progress almost every half hour and certainly every hour. Latterly, there has been a running total of the number of signatures in the top left-hand corner of the Sky News screen together with its campaign hashtag. During critical moments of the Brexit debate in this place, and at moments of crisis, either for the Government here or elsewhere in the world when wildfires were sweeping California or conflict was raging in Yemen, Sky News still found time to insert and promote its campaign for election debates.

If the petition was gathering huge support it might be argued that that should be reported by Sky News. However, if one looks at the other petitions on the Parliament petitions website that argument falls flat. A petition calling for a ban on the sale of fireworks has 297,000 signatures, which is twice the support that the Sky News petition has. A petition asking for the UK to leave the EU without a deal has the support of almost 300,000 people. Another petition, set up by a young cancer sufferer and calling for the lowering of the age for smear tests from 25 to 18, so as to prevent cancer, has 93,000 signatures.

My point is that but for the fact that Sky News was the promoter of the debate campaign, it would not have been gathering the air time and signatures it has. I have struggled to find any coverage of any of the other petitions, which have either attracted more support or are arguably more worthy, on any Sky News outlet. One hundred and sixty-five of my 74,000 constituents signed the petition and, despite the best efforts of Sky News, only one asked me to attend today’s debate. I felt so strongly about the misuse of Sky News’s position in the broadcast media to promote its own campaign and petition that I had to come and speak.

As to my views on leaders’ debates and the idea of setting up a commission, general elections in the United Kingdom are not about electing a president. Voters elect 650 individual MPs, and from them a Government is formed. My experience of previous elections—to this place and to the Scottish Parliament—is that leaders’ debates suck the oxygen away from local campaigns. The focus on the doorsteps, instead of being on the merits of each candidate and on local issues, is on what will happen or has just happened in the debates. The media reporting is all about how well each leader performed. Who looked good? Who answered the questions best? How did the broadcasters or newsreaders appear? It is not about the substantive issues of the election campaign.

For a period, journalists are not reporting on the critical issues of the election. They become more like commentators at a boxing match. In 2010, as several hon. Members have mentioned, it was perceived that Nick Clegg had performed well in the debate. That resulted in hours of coverage of the so-called Liberal Democrat bounce. However, the actual result showed little or no change in Liberal Democrat support, so how much influence do the debates have? In my view, the drive for leaders’ debates is simply about the media machine and journalists trying to insert themselves into an election campaign rather than doing their job of reporting on the key election issues of the day. They provide little new information to voters.

In the United Kingdom, we have the added complication of four nations with differing political perspectives. If a leaders’ debate is about assessing how potential Prime Ministers perform, how does that model accommodate smaller parties, such as the Scottish National party, the Democratic Unionist party and Plaid Cymru? Other Members have already commented on that issue.

Those parties might have significant support in their own parts of the country, but there is no prospect of their leaders occupying Downing Street. The Sky News proposal does not accommodate what is essentially a way to scrutinise presidential candidates. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) proposed an alternative, but I do not think that accurately reflects the huge regional variations in how we vote as between the different parts of the United Kingdom. Why, for example, should voters in Cornwall have to listen to the leader of the Scottish National party, when none of the voters in Cornwall has any prospect of voting for the leader of the Scottish National party, whether or not they have any desire to do so?

In the letter that we all received from John Ryley, the head of Sky News, before this debate, we were told that an

“independent commission would remove the ability of political leaders to block debates because of narrow political interest.”

My question is this: if it is the politicians who are blocking this, where are the BBC and ITV in all this? They have been pretty quiet ahead of this debate, which I think is telling. I have had private discussions with the BBC and ITV, and I think a number of hon. Members will have done likewise.

[Steve Double]

As a matter of accuracy and balance, my hon. Friend might be interested to know that I was interviewed this morning by BBC Scotland about this debate, and there was a great deal of interest in this from the BBC in Scotland.

[John Lamont]

I am grateful for that comment, but from my constituents’ perspective there has not been much interest. My point was more about the management within ITV, the BBC and BBC Scotland, who are not as supportive as the editorial team behind Sky News appears to have been in pushing this campaign; certainly they do not have equivalent petitions running and have not added their support to the petition being run by Sky News.

I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate and the Minister’s response. I could have said more, only I thought that more colleagues would have wanted to contribute to this debate, given that it is headline news—but it would seem that it is headline news for Sky News and very few other people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

rose—

[John Lamont]

rose—

[Tommy Sheppard]

Let us see whether the hon. Gentlemen make the same point. I will take the intervention from the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk first.

[John Lamont]

Just to clarify the point that I was making, it was not that the people of Cornwall would not care about what the leader of the SNP would want to say, but that neither she nor the party are on the ballot paper in Cornwall, so the people of Cornwall would not have the opportunity to vote SNP even if they wanted to. If we extend the argument, or the argument that the hon. Gentleman is making, which other parties do we include in the debate if they are also not on the ballot paper?

[Tommy Sheppard]

Let me just take the intervention from the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham), which I presume is relevant to the same point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

I will not give way to the hon. Lady, because she was not here for the debate and I am old school in that regard, I am afraid. I am happy to give way otherwise. It is not personal, but that is how I prefer to operate.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr made a valid point, but I think it raises interesting issues about which parties should be involved in these debates. They certainly must have a role and somehow be incorporated into this process, whether through the means suggested by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) or others.

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay also said that leaders are much more visible and accessible these days than they used to be. I am not sure that is entirely true. When Clement Attlee was campaigning to be Prime Minister in 1945 and 1950, he drove around the country with his wife, Violet, in a Hillman Minx, to engage with the electorate. It is certainly true that times have changed. Attlee also said that being Prime Minister was the job that took up the least amount of his time of any job he had ever had.

The hon. Gentleman gave an interesting response to the questions from Parliament’s social media. Some of the points being made about the potential Americanisation of politics are important. However, I think the real challenges are not about the Americanisation of politics through TV debates, but about the involvement of large and shadowy amounts of money in British politics—the activities of organisations such as Cambridge Analytica and so on. Those are more worrying issues with the Americanisation of politics, rather than our having television debates.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) quite rightly said that the decision about whether we should have debates should not just rest in the hands of the Prime Minister. He also quite rightly pointed out the lack of television coverage of regional politics these days. He wanted to take the issue of debates out of party politics. He referred to the Nixon-Kennedy debates, saying that the thing he knows is that Nixon lost. Interestingly, of course, a lot of the polls showed that Nixon had won, particularly for people who had followed the debates on the radio rather than on television. That makes a valid point about the role of image in people’s political perspectives. Whether or not the TV debate was responsible for John Kennedy’s narrow victory is highly debatable, not least because when his father, Joseph Kennedy, was asked why the victory had been so narrow, he said that he could not afford a landslide. Again, money was perhaps more compelling and important in American politics than the debates.

In response to the hon. Member for Wellingborough, who also mentioned the 2010 debates, I am tempted to say—unusually—“I agree with Peter,” because I did agree with much of what he said. We look forward to seeing the details of his private Member’s Bill. He is the sort of Member who would never commit to supporting a Bill without having read every clause and word, and without having carefully performed an exegesis of every part, so I will not make any commitments about his Bill until we have seen what it says, but it certainly sounds like it contains some interesting ideas. We look forward to it surfacing on the Ides of March, as he suggested, and hopefully it will have a less portentous fate than that date might otherwise suggest.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the inclusion of the minor parties in one of the debates proposed by his Bill. It is an interesting area, because it is true that some parties that have a lower share of the vote and that do not stand in all parts of the United Kingdom were represented in previous debates—for example, in 2015, when David Cameron insisted on having a diluted debate because he did not want to have a head-to-head debate with my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and preferred to have a large number of voices, possibly to defuse the impact of the event overall. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it is the “Conservative and Unionist” party, at no point was it suggested that the Democratic Unionist party should participate in the debate. Unlike Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party, it was not invited, even though it also stands in only one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Nor was the Social Democratic and Labour party, which had hon. Members elected to this House at that time; the Ulster Unionist party, which has had hon. Members elected to this House in recent times; or indeed—whether it would have turned up or not—Sinn Féin, which stands in the general election and has elected MPs, although they do not take the oath or take their seats in this place.

There is an asymmetry to the way that such debates have been organised. Northern Ireland has largely been excluded from that process, even though it is an integral part of the United Kingdom. It is interesting that we now frequently debate the issue of the British border in Ireland, as I call it, because of the backstop and Brexit, but that in those general election debates, Northern Ireland was treated as a sideshow and almost as a separate election from the United Kingdom general election in terms of inviting people to participate. We look forward to the Bill tabled by the hon. Member for Wellingborough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) reluctantly accepted that there would have to be a quango to administer election debates, but quite rightly pointed out that any such body should have a greater diversity than bodies such as the Electoral Commission. I agree that different political views should be represented, and it would also be important for any such body to have representation from the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, and from different social classes. Many of our bodies tend to be made up of the same kind of people with similar views. His suggestions on that were refreshing and interesting.

My hon. Friend also discussed the 2010 leadership debates and the so-called Cleggmania that allegedly resulted. Interestingly, of course, despite that spike in the polls, the Liberal Democrats won fewer seats in the 2010 election than they had held before, but because it was a hung Parliament, they ended up in government for the next five years.

The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) was extremely critical of Sky News for having campaigned on the issue. I have thought carefully about what he said and whether it is appropriate for a broadcaster to campaign in that way. It would be wholly inappropriate for a broadcaster to campaign on a political policy issue, but I do not think it is inappropriate—it is not outwith Ofcom’s rules—for a broadcaster to campaign in such a way for such debates. It is possibly more difficult for the BBC and ITV, which are also party to Ofcom’s rules, because special considerations are involved for public service broadcasters. I do not agree, however, that it was inappropriate for Sky News to campaign on the issue and in fact, in doing so, I think it has provided a valuable public service and has helped to bring about this interesting debate.

[John Lamont]

Given that other petitions on Parliament’s petition website are arguably more worthy and, in some cases, have more support, why has Sky News not given them any coverage or reported on them, but has given almost hourly coverage to its own campaign?

[Kevin Brennan]

I suggest, probably, because it is its own campaign. It is a valid point that a lot of the issues that the hon. Gentleman mentioned are worthy of more news coverage. Hopefully his remarks will have brought those campaigns to broadcasters’ attention and they will receive more coverage in future.

The hon. Gentleman said that he thought debates provide little additional information for voters, and again I disagree. As I said in an intervention on the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay, the Hansard Society report indicates that the general public say that they find debates a valuable way—indeed, among the most important ways—of gaining information to help them to decide how to vote. He went on to talk about the SNP leader’s role in the debates and whether a voter in Cornwall would be interested in what the leader of the SNP had to say. He said that such a voter could not vote for the leader of the SNP, but, of course, nobody in Scotland could vote for the leader of the SNP, because the leader of the SNP was not a candidate in the general election. That raises interesting points as to who should participate in debates and whether those who do should be the leaders of political parties or the leaders of groups that are hoping to gain election to the House of Commons. It is a moot point, but a valid one. Even though the leader of the SNP is extremely important to Scottish voters, it is true that Scottish voters would not have an opportunity to vote for her in a general election.

The hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones), who always speaks with a great deal of expertise on broadcasting matters because of his previous career with the BBC, asked how leaders could be compelled to attend if we were to pass a Bill, such as the one envisaged by the hon. Member for Wellingborough, that said that political party leaders had to participate in such debates.

As other hon. Members have pointed out, it is not unreasonable for us to expect the leaders of political parties, who have ambitions to become the Prime Minister, to comply with the law. I am not suggesting that we should have draconian penalties for anyone refusing to comply, but it would be extraordinary if the leader of a political party, a potential candidate to be the Prime Minister of this country, sought not to comply with a perfectly reasonable law to get them to participate in an essential element of the democratic process as judged by this Parliament. That is a bit of a red herring; they would turn up by virtue of the fact that it would be the law that they should participate. Nor is it unreasonable that such a law should be considered and potentially reach the statute book.

The hon. Member for North Devon made an interesting and valid point about how relevant TV debates are in this age of social media, whether they are old fashioned and whether, in a sense, we are asking a question that is no longer particularly pertinent and might have been more relevant 30 or 40 years ago. However, although I bow to his expertise about television, I think that where linear television still hits home is in the big live event type of television, whether that is “The X-Factor”, a sporting event, or the participation of political leaders at the time of a general election, when the nation’s attention turns to the question of who will govern the country for the next five years. At such times, a live television linear-type event is still highly relevant and of interest to the public, and would be supplemented massively by activity on social media; I think that is true. Obviously, social media has a huge role to play in modern elections and we need to look at the whole issue of social media, including Facebook and other types of platforms, in more detail, as it now has a major influence on our politics.

We support, in broad terms, the campaign that there should be some sort of independent means to ensure that TV debates take place between party leaders at general elections. The reason we are doing so is that the Minister, as a Minister, has the opportunity to try to make some sense of the complicated electoral law that we have. It is voluminous, it is fragmented, and it poses problems for electoral administrators, campaigners, voters and policy makers. There are 40 Acts of Parliament and more than 170 statutory instruments relating to our electoral legal framework and some of those provisions go back into the 19th century.

It is widely accepted by those involved in administering or competing in elections, such as the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators, that fundamental reform of electoral law is needed, but the Government have not really listened to that argument. In February 2016—nearly three years ago—the Law Commission published its interim report, calling for the laws governing elections to be rationalised into a single consistent legislative framework governing all elections, but the Government are yet to respond to that, even though, as I say, it has been nearly three years. I encourage the Government to look again at that report and respond to it.

I have mentioned this previously, but I also urge the Government to look at the 2018 audit of political engagement by the Hansard Society, which found that among the different sources of news and information that respondents used to inform their decision making at the 2017 general election, party leaders’ debates and political interviews were deemed to be the most important ways in which they were able to make up their minds. Furthermore, 74% of those who used those things in that way said the party leaders’ debates and political interviews were at least “fairly important” in their decision making. There is a need for a wider reform of electoral law and the issue of TV debates should be included within that.

My own party leader has said in response to this campaign:

“I welcome any move that will guarantee general election debates so that voters can hear directly from those putting themselves forward to lead the country.”

That was a welcome statement, but unfortunately the Prime Minister has not matched it, which is a shame. Speaking to Sky, she said:

“The next general election isn’t until 2022. There’s plenty of time to think about those issues at that time.”

In fact, that is exactly the time when there will not be plenty of time to think about these issues. Now is the time to think about them. We may not be immediately able to solve them, but now is the time to think across parties about the best way to handle the issue, because if we get to 2022 and start thinking about it, we will have the same old to-ing and fro-ing, and shenanigans, and jiggery-pokery that we have seen recently in relation to the discussions about the possibility of leaders’ debates on Brexit.

Whatever we think about the merits of such debates, and the question is different from that of whether party leaders should debate at a general election, the truth is that the way in which such arguments come about, and this has happened over the course of a number of Governments, going back some considerable time, is something like this—in fact, I know exactly how the suggestion of a Brexit debate came about. No. 10 went to Tom Newton Dunn at The Sun and said, “We need a page lead for the Prime Minister on Brexit. The Prime Minister is in trouble on Brexit. We need a page lead.” If someone needs a page lead in The Sun, they don’t get it for nothing. So The Sun said in return, “Well, what can you give us as an exclusive, or a scoop in old-fashioned terms, for giving you a front-page lead in The Sun?” Of course, the answer was, “Well, we’ll say that the Prime Minister is in favour of challenging the Leader of the Opposition to a debate on Brexit”, in the full knowledge that that would never happen unless some groundwork had been done, unless there had been some discussion between parties, and unless the other parties that have an interest in this matter—as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East, the spokesman for the Scottish National party, rightly pointed out—had an opportunity to have an input as well. A debate on Brexit was not going to happen on those terms, but that is how these things come about, which is a pretty shabby process. If we had a properly independent process, then we could get rid of all the jiggery-pokery around election debates and actually get down to concentrating on trying to present our policies effectively to the electorate.

Finally, I challenge the Minister to go a little further than the Government have so far and at least entertain the possibility of supporting the kind of measure that is being proposed by Sky News and her hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Wellingborough, which the Opposition and other parties support, whereby a consensus on a way forward can be found to ensure that such debates can happen, rather than waiting until 2022, when it will be far too late.