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Parliament and the Public

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, on securing this debate and thank him, his very distinguished commission and the Hansard Society for this report. Speaking as the chairman of Ofcom, I was pleased that Ofcom was able to play a role in sponsoring and supporting the work of the commission. It has done an excellent job in looking at the relationships between the public, politics and the media, and I support the report’s recommendations, which we urgently need to consider adopting. I do not need to remind noble Lords that the citizen is at the focus of all that we do at Ofcom. We debated that long and hard during the passage of the Communications Bill and the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, played a special role, with others, in placing the obligation to look after the citizen at the heart of what we do. This report takes the same position—that we have a somewhat alienated public and that we need absolutely to put the citizen back at the heart of what we do in Parliament to make a start on reconnecting with the public. When we set up Ofcom, we thought long and hard about how we should communicate with citizens, consumers and the general public. We did that for three principal reasons. First, if we had a communications regulator that communicated badly, it would quickly become a laughing stock. Secondly, Parliament rightly placed considerable obligations on us to be transparent and open in all that we do, and to explain what we do in as clear a way as possible. Thirdly, I believe that the authority and reputation of a regulator is crucially dependent on communicating effectively so that its work is understood. That gives us many significant influences that go beyond the formal powers with which Parliament has vested us. So we have worked hard to communicate what we do. In all our major reports concerning communication with citizens and consumers on the key issues, we aim to produce a plain-English version that is crystal-marked by the Plain English Campaign. In even the more complex areas of spectrum that are very technical, we seek to explain in simple terms. I am sure that we are not wholly successful in our endeavour to explain clearly, but it seems to me that that urgency of communication, that clarity of explanation, is something that we in Parliament should also seek to do. We often have highly technical debates about complex issues, but those issues can be communicated in more simple and straightforward ways. At Ofcom, we reduced the size of our communications department from the size that we inherited from the former five separate regulators, but we have greatly enhanced the quality of our communications department. The quality of people in the communications area is fundamental to getting messages across. The report makes important recommendations with regard to what we as individual parliamentarians could do in both Houses and to what we can do as an institution. We should pursue that as a matter of urgency. In our review of public service broadcasters, we at Ofcom acknowledge the need for PSB providers to ensure that their content responds to the needs of modern British society, and engages with people. As the noble Lord, Lord Holme, pointed out, the Communications Act requires public service broadcasters to enhance civic understanding of the democratic process. Our recent research into attitudes to television coverage of the election produced some interesting results. The general view was that that coverage was ““quite”” well done or ““very”” well-done. But there was a marked contrast with the views of 18 to 24 year-olds. In general, the young felt that television did not explain party policies and party politics at all well. The one thing I have learnt in the communications area is that if we want to see the future, we should observe the behaviour of the young. They are doing now what all or most of us will be doing in five years’ time. We must focus on communicating to the young, who are the current voters, and, indeed, to those below voting age, to ensure that our messages are getting across. We need to consider how we can make use of new technology more effectively. Increasingly, the young obtain their information in an ambient way. They do not sit down and watch news bulletins, they gather news from many different sources. Increasingly, they obtain such information on the move, and the question of content via the mobile attracts huge commercial interest. We as an institution need to take that seriously. Could parliamentary highlights be flashed on your mobile in a similar manner to highlights of football games? Ubiquitous digital connectivity makes many things possible. The way in which we communicate both ways can be hugely enhanced in this world of instant connectivity. I receive many e-mails on Ofcom business, to which I am able with my Blackberry to respond quickly. We have online chat rooms at my business school for our alumni and students that allow us to keep our finger on the pulse of what people are thinking. Could we set up parliamentary chat rooms for similar purposes? The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, referred to Amazon. Perhaps I may refer to another online phenomenon which I think is relevant. The online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, is maintained by ordinary people. It is, if you like, a democratic encyclopaedia. Economists might ask why people would want to keep it accurate and up-to-date and why they would not corrupt it. The answer is that most people seem to have a wish to maintain that type of social phenomenon online. Perhaps there are ways in which we could use the same kind of phenomenon to aggregate the views of ordinary people in innovative ways, using the new technology to enhance what we are doing. If we do not look ahead in the use of technology, we will surely fall behind. Therefore, I make two pleas. The first is that we communicate better and more effectively, and the second is that we ensure that we use all the technology, including the new technology that is coming down the road towards us. Communication cannot be at the sidelines of what we do here in Parliament. It must be at the forefront, and that is why Ofcom was delighted to be associated with this project from the outset. Hence, the report provides us with important ways forward which we should take very seriously.