Televised Election Debates

Debate between Peter Bone and Peter Heaton-Jones

Monday 7th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I join other hon. Members across the Chamber in congratulating my fellow south-west MP, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), on the way he introduced this debate and the Petitions Committee on bringing it forward. I also join other colleagues in congratulating Sky News on initiating the petition; it is to be congratulated, certainly, on achieving 130,000 signatures—as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) said, not for want of trying, given the fairly widespread coverage that Sky News was able to give it.

I suppose I should start with an informal declaration of interest: before I reached this place, I was a broadcast journalist for 20 years. For much of the time I worked, not for Sky News at all, but for the BBC—this is starting to sound less like a declaration of an interest and more like an admission of guilt, is it not?

I suspect people will be unsurprised to hear that, because of that background, I take a close interest in the interaction between the broadcast media and democracy. I have seen it from both sides—poacher turned gamekeeper, if you like—and while I cannot claim ever to have reached the exalted heights of editorial management at the BBC in which I would have been responsible for anything so important as a televised national election debate, I was involved on a regional level in organising debates between candidates in individual constituencies, and many of the arguments run across the piece.

I will admit to having been slightly torn when I heard about this petition, because fundamentally, now as a democratically elected politician and before that as a broadcaster, I want us to do everything possible to engage more people in the democratic process. That is vital. My problem lies in the fact that I remain to be convinced that televised leaders’ election debates are the way to achieve it. I will go on to give a few reasons why I do not believe that to be the case.

I was also torn about the precise merits of this petition as it is written, until I looked at it in detail. The coverage that Sky News has been giving it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk made clear, has made one think that it is simply about who should be organising a debate—an independent electoral commission, in other words—but when one actually looks at the wording, one sees that it seeks to go far further, which is where I have the problem.

The petition says:

“Amend election law to make party leaders take part in a televised debate.”

That, I am afraid, is where the petition lost me, for a number of reasons. First, it is not a matter for legislation to make party leaders take part in an election debate. The second problem I have is this: without wishing to be facetious, supposing that in a parallel universe a Parliament were to pass this law and make it mandatory for party leaders to take part in an election debate, how would they be forced so to do? As I say, I do not wish to be facetious, but if a party leader, the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition declined to take part in such a debate, what would happen on the night of the debate? Would an independent commission send beefeaters with spears to force them into a carriage and take them to Television Centre to take part? It just does not seem plausible to me that such legislation could possibly work.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, but if it were the law of the land that the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister attend these debates, they would do so. To do otherwise would be outrageous.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I do not see that that would be enforceable, although I take my hon. Friend’s point that it would probably be outrageous not to take part so far as electoral ambition was concerned. The point was made eloquently earlier that there is some sign that not taking part in a debate probably does not do a leader any good, but I still stick to the point that I am not clear how one would force a party leader to take part in such an event. I am not convinced that the petition is calling for something that could be delivered in reality.

Generally speaking, although I have said clearly that I welcome any moves to make the democratic process more accessible to our constituents, I am not convinced that TV debates are the way to do that. They have not historically been part of our democratic process. Other hon. Members have said this, so I will not develop the point at length unnecessarily, but only in 2010 did the first leaders’ election debates occur.

We spoke earlier about the figures and, using the wonders of new technology, I have the figures for the 2010 debates here. They are substantial viewing figures, it is true. For the first debate, hosted by ITV, 9.9 million viewers watched. The second debate, hosted by Sky News, had 4.2 million viewers and the third, hosted by my former employer the BBC, had 8.6 million. Those numbers are not insubstantial, but nor are they massive. For comparison’s sake, about two weeks ago on Christmas day, “Call the Midwife” was watched by 8.7 million people.

The broadcasters shot themselves in the foot somewhat after 2010 by trying to make the point that if we added up those three figures, a total of 22.7 million people watched the debates. That is a bit like saying that, because I am speaking in this debate in this Chamber and I also hope to speak later in a debate in the main Chamber, somehow, miraculously, there are two of me. That is not what those viewing figures show at all, and the organisation Full Fact, whose website I have just accessed, makes that point as well. It is debatable how popular the debates are and how much they are relied on by members of the public to make their decisions.

We do not have a presidential system, as has been described. People may think we have moved towards one whether we like it or not, but constitutionally the voting public do not vote for a Prime Minister.