Notes
Following the vote by the House of Lords last year that its proceedings should be televised for an 'experimental period', the Lords' Select Committee on Sound Broadcasting has just reported on how this experiment should be conducted. The main problems involve heat and light. One of the charms of the House of Lords is the sepulchral darkness in which it pro- ceeds. This will change. The report says: ‘• • . the light level at the Woolsack is at present about 60-80 lux . . . 300 lux is the minimum desirable level to allow accept- able pictures'. And since by no means all of the proceedings will be recorded, some will be conducted in the usual darkness, others in the literal glare of publicity. The associ- ated problem of heat may, the report admits, 'prove a greater problem than expected particularly if the Broadcasters decide to televise the whole of a long and well-attended sitting.' The Committee does not seem to have considered how the change in temperature will affect the con- duct of the peers themselves, shortening their tempers, encouraging them to take their coats off and perhaps, in the case of the elderly and frail (i.e. the vast major- ity), killing them. But the real problem, of course, is that the BBC and IBA are not Interested in broadcasting the Lords. The report recommends that they should have the freedom of what it calls a 'drive-in' system to record as much or as little as they like. In its submission to the Committee, the BBC specifically said that it 'does not believe it could justify televising the House of Lords alone on a frequent and regular basis'. Why, then, is it ready to take part? Sim Ply- because it believes that once it has raised the 'lux' level on the Woolsack it will eventually be allowed to do the same on the Speaker's Chair. As with most 'ex- perimental periods', the experiment is merely the cleverest method of achieving Permanently something to which there is strong opposition. When the six months run out next summer, we can be almost certain that objections to televising will be `teething by attributing difficulties to _teething troubles' and that the House of Commons, increasingly irritated with the limelight in which its elderly sister is This blinking, will vote to follow suit. the would be a disaster comparable with ,ine destruction of the Palace of Westmins- ter and its replacement with a 'rational' Modern legislature.
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