Broadcasting (Rules of Coverage)

HC Deb 05 February 2004 vol 417 cc305-26WH

[Relevant document: First Report from the Broadcasting Committee Session 2002–03 HC 786.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Jim Fitzpatrick.]

2.30 pm

Mr. David Lepper (Brighton, Pavilion)

It is many years since a report of the Select Committee on Broadcasting was debated in the House of Commons, and I welcome this opportunity to discuss our report on the rules of coverage.

At a time when media coverage of the business of this House, political events and politicians, especially by the broadcasting media, is a subject of daily controversy, our debate today has a narrower and—I suspect—less controversial focus. The rules recommended by the Broadcasting Committee on behalf of the House cover the shots that may be used in providing pictures of proceedings in the Chamber, Westminster Hall and Select and Standing Committees of the House. This is perhaps a less controversial broadcasting debate than some others, but it is especially topical following events in the Chamber yesterday afternoon, which I shall come to later.

Although the immediate focus is narrower, the Committee's report also touches on issues that I believe should be of interest to all hon. Members, and especially to those serving on other domestic Committees and the Modernisation Committee, which is considering the crucial issue of reconnecting Parliament with the people on whose behalf we are all here. I believe that our report is very much in tune with the important decision of the House of Commons Commission that improving access to and understanding of Parliament should be a priority in the strategic plan for House of Commons administration that was adopted in June 2002.

For many years, Parliament was wary of allowing its proceedings to be broadcast. Following the refusal of John Reith's request on behalf of what was then the British Broadcasting Company to broadcast the state opening of Parliament in 1923, some 55 years passed before the first experiment with radio broadcasting, and 67 years passed before regular television broadcasts began in July 1990.

In 1990, the Select Committee on Broadcasting, chaired by the then Leader of the House, established two main principles to govern those broadcasts, and those principles still underlie the rules that are the subject of our debate. They are that the House will at all times have the principal and final say in any matter concerning televising the House and that the dignity of the House will be protected at all times. The rules of coverage were devised to ensure that the House retained control over how it was portrayed. The statement of objectives in annexe I refers to a full, balanced, fair and accurate account of the proceedings, with the aim of informing viewers about the work of the House. The rules are essentially guidelines to help the television director to ensure that the shots that he or she selects preserve the dignity of Parliament and have regard to its function as a working body rather than as a place of entertainment.

The rules are set out in full in annexe 1 to the report. In essence, they require the camera to present a head-and-shoulders shot of the Member speaking, although cut-away shots are allowed to show the reaction of Members to whom the Member speaking has referred. Medium-angle shots, including over-the-shoulder shots, are allowed to show both the Member who has the Floor and another Member intervening or attempting to do so. There can be occasional use of group shots or wide-angle shots to show the reactions of a group of Members and to establish the geography of the House. Whenever the occupant of the Chair rises, the director should cut to show that that is happening. The Press Gallery and the Public Gallery, officials' and visitors' boxes and the area behind the Speaker's Chair should not be shown other than unavoidably in a wide-angled or other authorised shot.

If there is disorder on the Floor of the House, the shot should show the occupant of the Chair, although some use of wide-angle shots is allowed. As anyone who was watching BBC Parliament or the House of Commons monitor at approximately 1.10 pm yesterday or who saw the item on the news later will know, a similar rule applies to disorder in the Strangers Gallery or—the likelihood is remote, of course—in the Press Gallery.

There has been little substantive change in the rules since 1990, although the Committee, under powers delegated to it by the House, has from time to time allowed some relaxation of them. For instance, even though the Prime Minister might not refer by name to the Foreign Secretary when giving a reply on foreign policy during Prime Minister's questions, it is acceptable to cut to a shot of that Secretary of State during that reply.

Mr. Iain Luke(Lab) (Dundee, East)

One of the issues that was raised in the Committee's discussions arose during our visit to the Scottish Parliament, where there is a complete relaxation of the rules. We thought that the possibility of displaying graphic scenes of disorder in the Public Gallery did not enhance the stature of that Parliament. That is why we decided to consider some relaxation but to keep it to the minimum.

Mr. Lepper

My hon. Friend is right about possible events in the Scottish Parliament and about the Committee's conclusion. As the Public Gallery in the Scottish Parliament is shown, any disorder in it might also be shown, as it is acceptable to show the reactions of members of the public. Members of the Scottish Parliament seem comfortable with that arrangement. We wondered whether it exists at least in part because of the layout of the Scottish Parliament Chamber, which makes it difficult to avoid showing the Public Gallery from some angles.

Our report proposes no major changes. When the rules were devised 13 years ago, Members believed that it would be better to begin with fairly tight restrictions and to relax them if necessary as time went on, rather than begin with a looser framework of guidance and perhaps court controversy by having to respond to demands, possibly from Members, for more restriction.

We recommend adopting broadly similar rules for proceedings in Committees and here in Westminster Hall, taking into account the different geography of each location. As in the Scottish Parliament, however, that could make it difficult to adhere to prohibitions on showing the Public Gallery, for instance.

Why carry out an inquiry now? We felt that with so little change during the past 13 years it was about time to review the rules, to test whether they still fulfilled their original function and to ask whether consideration should be given to recommending their revision, especially in the context of technological changes in broadcasting during those 13 years and of the other legislatures that have come into existence in the UK and whose proceedings are broadcast. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke) said, we therefore considered the approach of the Scottish Parliament.

Further impetus for the inquiry came from evidence given by the BBC and Channel 4 to an earlier inquiry carried out by the Committee into the development of parliamentary broadcasting. We published a report in June 2000, although it was, unfortunately, never debated on the Floor of the House or in this Chamber. Nevertheless, several of its recommendations have been adopted. For instance, changes have been made in the composition of the board of the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Ltd., or PARBUL, to remove the potential conflict of interest that could arise from the inclusion of members of the Broadcasting Committee on that board.

Progress has also been made in providing coverage of the devolved legislatures on our internal video network. The new camera system and control units are in place in Westminster Hall. Live inject points where broadcasters can plug in to relay signals directly to their studio have been established for interviews in Central Lobby, so that whether there is sunshine, wind or rain, College green is no longer the only available location for an interview, although it is amazing how much broadcasters persist in using it. All of us know that when constituents see interviews taking place in Central Lobby, the reaction is very favourable, as they provide a visual and graphic impression of the House of Commons at work in splendid surroundings.

We raised in our earlier report the potential for webcasting proceedings. The initial experiment was successful and webcasting is now established, and it is expanding. Although that report did not deal directly with the rules of coverage, it recommended a relaxation of the restriction on the use of reaction shots. In giving evidence to the Committee in 1999, the broadcasters made a clear plea. Anne Sloman, then chief political adviser at the BBC, told the Committee that the rules established ten years ago are really desperately out of date. Comparing Westminster with the Scottish Parliament, Ms Sloman said that in Edinburgh, those involved took the view that the cameras were there as a surrogate for being in the public gallery, so anything you can see in the public gallery should be available on the electorate's television screens". She argued that the rules of coverage made the proceedings incredibly static compared with other serious outside broadcast events, for example party conferences. David Lloyd, then head of news and current affairs at Channel 4, also took up the concept of the surrogate Public Gallery in his evidence to the Committee: No wonder again that some of our viewers find so much of the coverage lacking in the very dynamic that they experience when sitting in the public gallery, and yet the objective, clearly states, that it was to have been a full and accurate account of proceedings. Mr. Lloyd continued: As a broadcaster I spend a great deal of my time thinking how to bring current affairs in general, and politics in particular, home to a younger under-35 audience. This is the generation that has an enormous visual literacy with an instantaneous instinct for anything that they regard as at all dull, stuffy, old-fashioned. If it is any of those things then they do not watch. He argued that a relaxation of the rules could help to bring a new audience to politics and"— as we hope— relocate a departed one. Those statements from the broadcasters are powerful, especially to those of us concerned with reconnecting the political process to the people, although as someone whom I hope has contributed to that visual literacy through many years teaching film and television, I also believe that real visual literacy extends beyond the obsession with the instantaneous and ephemeral.

At the beginning of our inquiry, the Committee asked the broadcasters whether they wished to update their evidence. Anne Sloman, on behalf of the BBC, submitted a further memorandum, which can be read as an annexe to our report. New issues that were raised included panning shots showing a Member being addressed or told off by the Speaker, a greater variety of shots during Divisions and the entry of the Speaker and Prayers. Ms Sloman argued that such arrangements would make sense of the day's proceedings, and she emphasised that she was not suggesting coverage of the Public Gallery. In general, she argued that the relaxation of the rules was appropriate for building on the spirit of trust which currently exists between broadcasters and Parliament". At the start of my speech, I referred to the often controversial nature of debate about the relationship between politicians and the broadcast media. Whatever the situation elsewhere, I believe that I speak for all members of the Committee when I say that we have the greatest admiration for the professionalism of Peter Knowles, the editor of BBC Parliament, and his colleagues in carrying out their responsibilities and using the clean feed from the House to provide BBC Parliament on satellite, cable and free digital terrestrial TV.

I congratulate BBC Parliament on its viewing figures. It had 270,000 viewers last Tuesday during the debate on the Higher Education Bill and 225,000 viewers on Wednesday when the Prime Minister made his statement on the Hutton report. Indeed, during the Higher Education Bill debate in mid-afternoon, BBC Parliament overtook all the other news channels for a half-hour period. It stayed ahead of Sky and ITV News for two hours. That suggests to me that it might well be the issues being debated that are important to the audience, rather than the formal style of presentation.

As has been mentioned, during our inquiry we visited the Scottish Parliament, and we also visited the Irish Parliament in Dublin. The Committee would wish to thank the elected Members, media representatives and parliamentary staff who welcomed us and gave us their time to discuss the issues. I suspect that other Committee members who took part in those visits might wish to say more about the detail of that aspect of the inquiry. The opportunity to view the coverage of the two Parliaments in situ, and especially the opportunity to discuss with elected Members and journalists their experience of the systems in Edinburgh and Dublin, were valuable, particularly where people had also had experience of the Westminster model.

Our conclusion, however, was that there was no case for major changes in the rules at Westminster. The Committee believes strongly that, whatever other purposes exist for the televising of Parliament, the prime purpose must be to provide an accurate record of proceedings, and that focusing mainly on the Member who has the Floor fulfills that purpose. We believe that the right of the elected Member, whether a Back Bencher or Minister, to be seen by his or her constituents, as well as by the wider public, when addressing Parliament or taking part in Committee proceedings is central, as the basis of ensuring an accurate record of proceedings. For those reasons, we do not accept the comparisons made by the broadcasters with other outside broadcasts or with party conferences.

It is also true that, on behalf of Parliament, Bowtie Ltd. provides the clean feed—the signal—from the Chamber through a single set of cameras. That clean feed is used by people in a number of ways and therefore should not contain mixes. For example, a TV company that wanted the clean feed of a clip of a particular speech could find that the precise moment in question was unavailable because the director had used a cut-away shot to provide a greater variety of shots. Similarly, panning shots away from the Member speaking distracts from what should be the primary focus—the Member speaking. The rules fulfill a necessary function and ensure that attention is focused on the proceedings.

It had been suggested by the broadcasters that the Scottish Parliament provided an example of the surrogate gallery model. On the basis at least of the technology that is currently available, we do not accept that the experience of the viewer at home can in any way approach the experience of the viewer in the Gallery. The viewer at home does not and cannot have available to them an infinite variety of shots of the Chamber from which to choose. The viewer sees what the director decides that he or she should see, whether it is the person speaking, the Speaker in his Chair taking advice from staff—which is prohibited at the moment—or Back Bench ribaldry or displeasure, which is on the borderline. The director makes the choice, not the viewer. Technology might change that, but we are not yet at that technological point.

We also felt that there was no case for showing the entrance of the Speaker or Prayers, not only because they have traditionally been private, but because they would not fulfill the function suggested by Ms Sloman—providing a context for the day's proceedings. In terms of dealing with disorder, as I said, the situation is somewhat different in Scotland, although all legislatures have rules that should be followed by broadcasters in the event of disorder. We also looked at the Irish tradition of welcoming and showing distinguished visitors to the Public Gallery. It was pleasant for us to be welcomed in the Senate, but we decided that that was an issue for the Procedure Committee rather than for us.

The conclusion that we drew from our experience was that, whatever more relaxed rules there might be elsewhere, and taking into account the different geography of different Chambers, televised proceedings look much the same wherever they take place. This is a function of the parliamentary system, rather than the range of shots that is available to the director.

As I said, we believe that our report has wider significance than its immediate subject. We agree with the broadcasters who have commented on the need to provide a clearer context for understanding the significance of what goes on in Parliament. We also believe that the broadcasters have the main responsibility for providing that context. Our responsibility is the clean feed—the signal. In the broadcasters' programmes, the pictures that that clean feed provides can be mixed with other content to provide understanding and context. We believe, for instance, that the excellent coverage of the Iraq debate last March and of last week's Second Reading of the Higher Education Bill show how, through showing a mixture of live events in the Chamber, interviews and studio discussions, Parliament can be presented in a way that engages viewers and increases understanding.

In its second report of the 2001–02 Session, the Modernisation Committee emphasised the importance of making the House more accessible, saying: It is therefore important that the House makes maximum use of the TV media to convey a sense of the Commons as a working environment and a forum of serious and challenging debate. We agree. We look forward to working with the Modernisation Committee and, indeed, the broadcasters to take that aim forward. We remain enthusiastic about the idea of a visitors' centre and the role that a live relay of Parliament and archive material could play in that regard.

From our discussions with the broadcasters, we also believe that we might need to reconsider the rules about the use of the clean feed signal, especially in the context of the more relaxed style of many current programmes about politics. A magazine programme with an occasionally irreverent tone can none the less be a serious platform for political debate. At the moment, the Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting has offered to use her discretion when dealing with requests for material from the broadcasters, but we may need to devise new guidelines to assist her in making those decisions. I am pleased to say that she has not so far had to recommend to the Committee that it should call before it call named persons to answer charges of contempt, as it has a right to do.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)

I am intrigued. It is not clear from the report what the exact relationship is between the broadcasters and Bowtie, the current contractor. Does the Committee get an opportunity to look at that contract and make any observations?

Mr. Lepper

The report does not deal with that issue. I refer my hon. Friend to our previous report. which we issued in the last Parliament. Put briefly, the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Ltd. includes representatives of Parliament and of the broadcasters. PARBUL appoints a contractor to provide the clean feed. That contactor is Bowtie. My Committee is exercising its right, halfway through the Bowtie contract, to review the way in which it is working. We will do that over the next few weeks. There is no direct relationship between the Broadcasting Committee and the contractors providing the clean feed.

We dealt with webcasting in our 2000 report and in the current report. The www.parliamentlive website began as an experiment in January 2002. I was quoted in The Guardian at the time as saying that it would be a powerful new tool in opening up Westminster. I said and the Committee shares my view: There is an audience there and more and more people will make use of it. The webcasting experiment, with our enthusiastic support, was put on a permanent basis in September last year. The figures for January alone show that 29,403 plays were requested from www.parliamentlive. The availability of webcasting of the Lords, the Commons and Westminster Hall is important and we hope that it will eventually redress an imbalance in the visual presentation of Parliament on which we commented in both our reports—the comparative lack of coverage of Select and Standing Committees.

Television broadcasters still tend to cherry-pick the Committee sittings that are likely to provide the most dramatic soundbites and confrontation. At present, Parliament Live carries material on seven channels, with the aim of eventually providing coverage of every Committee in sound or sound and vision, as well as coverage of the Chamber and Westminster Hall. We look forward to when that system is fully up and running and available to Members at their desks.

Mr. Luke

It was the Committee's view that webcasting was useful for the general public and an educational tool that would enable school children and college students to watch interesting live debates on points of procedure in Committees and the House. It would bring back the connection between Parliament and the people.

Mr. Lepper

I agree with my hon. Friend. The educational potential of the webcasting of Parliament is immense; it provides opportunities that are not available through the parliamentary channel.

Mr. Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)

On the educational issue, a programme on the 1964 election was shown during the recess. I was three in 1964 and I enjoyed watching the programme, especially in relation to what happened in Smethwick, which I had heard about. It was interesting to see live coverage from that election. It was educational, and it was a fundamental part of broadcasting history and the political process. As well as the broadcasting of Committees and the Chamber—

David Taylor (in the Chair)

Order. That is too long for an intervention.

Mr. Lepper

I welcome my hon. Friend's comments. He is right; we are at the beginning of considering how webcasting can be used by Parliament and by the general public to access live broadcasts from Parliament and archive material to make political events come to life more vividly.

Webcasting, rather than revisions to the rules of coverage, will be a major development to aid the modernising agenda and to promote the ambition to reconnect Parliament with the people. It is a major change to the way in which the public can experience what happens in the Palace of Westminster. It extends the range of coverage and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East suggested, it targets a new, potentially younger audience. It has the potential to develop into an integrated, interactive information service for Parliament.

I have no way of knowing when there will be another debate on a report of the Broadcasting Committee; I hope that it will not be as far away as the last debate on the subject. On behalf of the Committee, I put on record our huge appreciation of the work of Barbara Long, the Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting, her staff, the Committee staff and the staff of Bowtie, who provide the clean feed.

In the 13 years since the televising of Parliament began, technological change has evolved more rapidly than most of us would have imagined possible. The pace of change will increase and the Broadcasting Committee looks forward to working closely with other relevant Committees and the broadcasters in assessing how that change will widen the possibilities for re-engaging with the public on the work of Parliament.

2.59 pm

Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)

May I associate myself with the Chairman of the Committee's remarks and with his thanks to Barbara Long, the Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting, and to her staff, to successive Clerks who have helped us since the last report was debated—when God was a boy—and to Bowtie, the current Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit?

I hope that because it has been so long since we last debated this matter, it will be in order for me, as the Committee's then acting Chairman, to place on record my thanks to Brian Lamb of C-SPAN in the USA and Peter Milliken, the then Deputy Speaker and now Speaker of the Canadian Parliament, for the assistance that they gave us in the preparation of the report that was published, but not debated, in the 1997 to 2001 parliamentary Sessions. Without the assistance of all those people, our work would have been much more difficult, if not impossible.

The Chairman of the Broadcasting Committee, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), gave a thorough appraisal of the Committee's deliberations so far as most of the report is concerned. He outlined carefully the determinations that we made—I hope in the interests of the House and of the public—in reaching our decision not to extend the shot coverage of the main Chamber of the House of Commons. We came to that decision after painstaking thought and, as the Chairman said, after visits to the Scottish and Irish legislatures, to which thanks are also due. We found their coverage interesting, but we did not feel that it was best suited to the mother of Parliaments, for the reasons that outlined. Rather than rehearse arguments that have already been rehearsed and that have been set out clearly in the report, I shall confine my remarks to paragraph 5 on page 4 of the report, which concerns access to parliamentary broadcasting.

The Committee Chairman said—I entirely agree with him—that we have made major progress in the webcasting of Parliament. There has been considerable criticism that not enough of the work of Parliament has been properly covered. Although it is true that there is what the Americans call "gavel-to-gavel" coverage of the main Chamber, albeit in limited form, the real work of Parliament—the coverage of Select Committees and Standing Committees, where so much of our work is done and to which so much of our time is devoted—has received scant, if any, coverage.

The perceived way forward to deliver that at reasonable cost has been through webcasting. It is now technically possible to put a web camera into every Committee Room and, on a fixed shot basis, to offer through the internet wall-to-wall coverage of whatever is being debated, however obscure and esoteric it may be. However obscure and esoteric the subjects deliberated on in Select Committees and Standing Committees may be—sometimes statutory instruments; sometimes obscure bits of European legislation—they all affect the lives of someone in the United Kingdom. If they did not, we would not cover them. It seems to us that it is right that that handful of people—it may be only a handful—should have access to those debates, in a way that they otherwise could not if they live outside striking distance of London. That experiment, now converted into practice, seems to be working. I hope and believe that it will be expanded.

That, however, does not overcome the fundamental problem that I have attempted to address since I was a member of the Select Committee on televising the House, in its first form—I am sorry that I am the only dinosaur remaining from that time. In that Committee we argued not only over the merits of whether the House should be televised at all, which is now water under the bridge, but over how we were going to bring Parliament to the people. I have to say that this House—both Houses—have signally failed to do that.

In 1989–90, when I was the only member of the Select Committee to vote against Lord Wakeham's report, I opposed it on the ground that the arguments that had been rehearsed by the then Leader of the House, Tony Newton, and others, were that it would enhance democracy by bringing Parliament to the people. We all know only too well that there is scant interest in the work of Parliament: voting figures at elections reveal that. It seemed to us—it certainly seemed to me at the time—that if we wanted to go down this road, we had to do it properly. It was not supposed to be an exercise in providing news clips to sex up the "9 o'clock News", as it then was, and "News at Ten", as it then was. It was a serious attempt, first, to provide an electronic Hansard and, secondly, to make sure that as many people as possible could see Parliament working—not just Prime Minister's Question Time by the kids in the playground at break, but the real work of Parliament in all its forms, at its dullest, soundest, most genuine and most worth while.

In 1989, relatively few analogue television channels were available. I said that we should have a dedicated channel and was told, "No. There simply isn't the space." There were technical reasons that made that a reasonable argument. However, since then, we have seen the development of digital television: multi-channel broadcasting has burst out of our screens like there is no tomorrow. Soon analogue will be a thing of the past, and everything will be digital. It grieves me enormously, on behalf of both Houses of Parliament, that we, the legislators, have failed to take this opportunity to take some of that spectrum and make it available for the broadcasting of democracy.

In my opening remarks, I paid tribute to Brian Lamb of C-SPAN. Brian has been responsible, almost single-handedly, for developing not one but two channels of democratic broadcasting in the United States—gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate and the House of Representatives, interspersed with coverage of committees and with serious, in-depth and worthwhile current affairs interviews. If they can do that in the United States, we can still do it here. I am bored with hearing myself rehearse the arguments about who should do it. I have long felt that the Houses of Parliament should own their own broadcasting unit. If we want it and believe that it enhances the cause of democracy, we, the taxpayers, should be prepared to pay for it. We are prepared to pay for new offices all around the estate of Westminster—we are prepared to pay for all sorts of things—but we in the House have not been prepared to vote the relatively modest sum that would allow us to have our own broadcasting unit.

That is no criticism of Bowtie, which does a superb job, or of the BBC parliamentary channel, which also does a superb job. One of the suggestions that I have made, as colleagues know, is that the BBC should do the job, on the same basis as World Service radio does its job—by special vote—so that there would be a ring-fenced sum dedicated to that purpose and a Chinese wall between the work of that bit of the British Broadcasting Corporation and everything else. I almost care not how it is done, but it can be done and it should be done. Both Houses of Parliament should get to grips with the issue and insist that we, as parliamentarians, take the necessary steps to give the British people what I believe to be their right to full access to parliamentary broadcasting.

Were there to be two digital channels—two C-SPAN channels—most people would not have access to them, because at present the majority do not have digital television. Yet we all know that, in a few years. there will be analogue switch-off and we shall move solely to digital broadcasting. Channel after channel after channel is available. At that point, it is right that the public should have access to the work that we do. If we can achieve that, either in-house or by contract, and if we can offer the public a real insight into the work of the Chamber of the House of Lords, the Chamber of the House of Commons, the Committees of both Houses, the Select Committees, the Standing Committees of both Houses—and good commentary—and if we can offer, in addition, the facility to see the wall-to-wall work of the Committees through the website, we shall achieve what the original Committee set out to achieve. If we fail, I do not believe that we shall be forgiven.

3.10 pm

Mrs. Helen Clark (Peterborough) (Lab)

I am glad to have the chance to contribute to this debate on what everyone here understands to be a vital topic. Having the debate means, of course, that what we say and what I say now will be recorded in Hansard, providing a full record for any future use and therefore complementing our formal report.

Also, we are being televised according to the very rules of coverage that are the subject of the debate. That means that, unless I am interrupted, the camera will remain on me almost all the time, but not in close-up. Any viewer will not be able to see, therefore, what others in the Chamber are doing while I am speaking, unless—and perhaps one should experiment—something I say causes an abnormal reaction, which the television director decides warrants a panning shot along the Benches. That is not likely to happen, Mr. Taylor, I hasten to add.

There may, however, be an occasional group shot to show the reaction of a group of Members—I cannot predict that—or a cut-away to another Member to whom I refer, or who wishes to intervene. I do not think that anyone today, unlike yesterday, is expecting any disorder, but if any occurs, the camera will not show it.

All that may sound arcane, if not positively boring—I have bored myself by reading it out. Ten minutes watching one person speak does not sound like good telly, or a good advertisement for Parliament. It may even sound defensive. The introduction to the Select Committee report says that the television director should have regard to the dignity of the House and to its function as a working body rather than a place of entertainment. That might imply that if the viewer finds our debate boring or incomprehensible it is his or her problem, not ours.

I hope to use these 10 minutes or so to persuade the viewer—or later, the reader—of the proceedings that the rules of coverage protect a basic part of our democratic form of government. Crucially and in short, they enable those in Parliament to be shown fully and fairly, and they provide those outside Parliament with access to a full and impartial visual record of our proceedings.

I digress slightly, but I will get to the point. I think hon. Members will understand. During our careers as politicians, all of us here have attended hundreds of the dread party meetings. I cannot speak for other political parties, but I know that newcomers to Labour party meetings are often bemused, if not entirely put off. by the formal agenda, registering attendance or apologies for non-attendance, approving the minutes, points of procedure, having to speak through the chair and so on—not to mention the mystifying acronyms that refer to the hierarchy of committees and other bodies whose decisions are reported to and impact on the meeting in question.

Nevertheless, all those features are necessary if the meeting is to be accountable to others who are not present, and for the purposes of future decisions. They are essential if those present are to be given a fair chance to speak and to be listened to. If decisions are to be taken, it is vital that other criteria, such as valid membership and whether the meeting is quorate, are adhered to. If those matters are allowed to lapse, we will be on a slippery slope to secret decision making by an unknown number of unaccountable individuals with an undisclosed agenda—three men or women and a dog down the pub issuing statements claiming to represent the wishes of the organisation as a whole. Yes, it does happen, and not only on the so-called lunatic fringe.

Similar considerations apply to proceedings in Parliament, where fortunately we have the benefit of centuries, rather than decades, of experience to guide us. However, over the last decade we have had the additional visual broadcast and recorded dimension provided by television. The significance and control of those are the subject of the rules of coverage and of this debate.

Much has been said and written in recent years—we have probably said this ourselves in our constituencies—about the need to engage or re-engage the public with the processes of democracy. That concern informed much of the work of members of the Modernisation Committee under the previous Chairman, the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). In September 2002, when announcing several recommended changes to parliamentary procedures, he said: Public confidence in our democracy depends on whether the public respects Parliament as relevant to their lives and believes that its scrutiny of Government is effective. The strongest case for modernisation is to convince the public that the Parliament they elect does a good job representing modern Britain. Being able to see what goes on in Parliament without being in the Chamber, in this new and additional Chamber or in Select or Standing Committees, surely ought to be a jolly good thing. It is better than being able only to read or listen to the proceedings. It ought to reduce the distance between the public and their elected representatives, demystify the processes of legislating and scrutinising, and enable people—yes, the general public—to form their own opinions as to whether their Members of Parliament are worthy of respect and doing a good job.

Some proposals that the Modernisation Committee made in a recent questionnaire to Members would, I believe, help in those respects. I shall mention a few of the possibilities that it suggests: a short Commons newsletter for constituents; an introduction-to-Parliament pack for first-time voters; clearer explanatory notes for legislation or debates; and allowing more time for the presentation of petitions, which would perhaps include allowing the presenting Member to make a brief speech.

As an individual, I am in favour of maximum public access to Parliament. I have always encouraged as many of my constituents as possible to visit the House for a tour, thereby making an awful lot of work for my assistant, Isobel. I have met many visiting groups, especially school parties—one visited yesterday—and arranged discussion sessions and speakers for them.

Mr. Luke

I am glad to hear about the many suggestions that my hon. Friend is making to re-engage or reconnect voters with the political system. I had the privilege of visiting Russia as an official involved in the scrutiny of elections to the state Duma in December, and it was great to see the returning officer for an electoral district meeting young first-time voters aged 18 and presenting them with a certificate as well as little guide to electoral politics in Russia. I do not know whether that custom could be included in my hon. Friend's list of proposals, but it certainly gave the first-time voters a feeling of importance and—

David Taylor (in the Chair)

Order. That is a long intervention.

Mrs. Clark

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is an excellent suggestion, and I shall enjoy considering it when I read Hansard. It shows that Members of the Mother of Parliaments can still learn from the fledgling, emerging eastern democracies.

I am not sure what the mooted comprehensive citizens education centre at Westminster would look like, but the cafeteria in Westminster Hall has certainly made Parliament a much friendlier place for visitors. However, I do not support radical relaxation of the rules of coverage. I do not agree that the word "modernisation" is a euphemism for less democracy. That was the opposite of the intent of my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston, but it could be the effect of ill-considered changes if we are not careful.

No one would accuse the Broadcasting Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), of not being careful. We have recommended only minor changes to the rules of coverage for the Commons Chamber. We do not rule out future change—we are not total dinosaurs—and I support our Chairman's expressed wish to meet the Chairman of the Modernisation Committee to discuss matters of common interest. Meanwhile, I would be concerned if a relaxation of the rules meant that TV directors were enabled, or required, to make decisions on where to direct their cameras, with what focus and range, and on who and what to show in live broadcasts.

Like other hon. Members, I was interested to see a different philosophy in action on our visit to the new Scottish Parliament. There is more of an attempt to present a surrogate Gallery to the viewer, and a more dramatic and varied approach, which gives more of the experience of being there. However, it is not the same as being there, because what is seen on television is, in effect, the director's cut. That may be an intelligent and well-rounded version of events, but it does not give each speaker their full coverage. It picks out media stars or telly stars, and it will not serve as a future record for other purposes, or for other broadcasters to use on other programmes. It might not necessarily be what visitors to Parliament would choose to see, or what they would necessarily consider interesting and significant.

Some broadcasters told us that parliamentary coverage should be more like other major events, such as jolly old party conferences, using a shape that viewers are accustomed to". I am not too happy about the effects on full and free debate of unrestricted televising of the party conference, although I shall let that pass, because there is a crucial difference. The significance of parliamentary proceedings is not visual; it is not about what appears to happen; it is not about mood music. It is about what is said, and indeed how it is said. The meaning lies in the text, and to understand it requires a close scrutiny of that text. There is a place for commentary, illustration and other contextual material, but not while the proceedings are happening.

In a previous life, I was a teacher of English and it is tempting to draw a parallel with Shakespeare's plays. A lot of Shakespeare is not visually dramatic. We have all studied him: some of his plays are quite awkwardly crafted and have been heavily reconstructed in Hollywood-style script conferences. The enduring strength and relevance of Shakespeare, and the secret of his appeal then, were in the words—his audiences knew it. They knew that they had to listen hard to understand what was going on. Sadly, there are proposals from some quarters today to downgrade Shakespeare in our schools. Some people do not believe that students ought to make the effort to understand in detail what he wrote; it is enough to get the story, the narrative, the general picture.

I suggest that making the televising of Parliament more like other television programmes would have that same downgrading effect. Far from opening up parliamentary proceedings to scrutiny, less secretiveness and more accountability, what we do here would end up less comprehensible, more mystifying and more insulting to the electorate. In contrast to a Shakespeare play, or any other play or TV programme, Parliament is not intended primarily to entertain or to be a bear pit. We are at work when we speak to proposed legislation or Government policy, or draw a particular issue to Government attention. It is certainly better if what we are saying happens to be interesting, intelligible and audible, and if it engages the attention of listeners in and outside the House. However, we are not thespians or performers; nor are we elected to be so. Parliament is not a human circus to divert the public. It is not, "I'm a celebrity, get me in here or get me out of here". I hope that it is never allowed to become that.

3.24 pm

Mr. Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)

I greatly welcome today's opportunity to debate the Select Committee's report on broadcasting of the House. I join other hon. Members in thanking Barbara Long, director of broadcasting, and the other staff who assisted the Committee in compiling the report. As has already been pointed out, when television coverage of the House began over a decade ago, the rules of coverage were originally framed restrictively. That was done deliberately, because it was realised that it would be much easier to relax them than to tighten them later.

Changes made since then have allowed the television director more flexibility in shot selection. I support the Select Committee's view that there is no need for wholesale changes to the rules or for any significant lessening of the House's control over how it is portrayed. However, it is right that change should continue as part of an evolutionary and incremental process, so I welcome the extension of the rules of coverage to Westminster Hall debates and Select and Standing Committees.

I note that broadcasters have reservations about some restrictions that are imposed, but, as was pointed out, it is important to remember that the prime objective of televising the proceedings of the House is to produce a proper record of them and for that record to be made available to other broadcasters. If we were to allow the TV director to cut away to add variety to the live feed, that could disappoint other broadcasters if the clip that they wanted was unavailable because the director had unfortunately chosen the wrong moment to cut away to something else. A clean feed is essential to maintain a proper record of our proceedings. As long as other broadcasters stay within the rules, they have the opportunity to broadcast coverage of the House, along with interviews and discussions.

As the Select Committee Chairman has pointed out, today's debate is timely, given yesterday's rowdiness in the Public Galleries. Mr. Speaker clearly had no choice but to suspend the sitting and clear the Public Galleries. However, the presence of TV cameras meant that the proceedings of the House were recorded and available to the public. Yesterday's events confirmed that the Select Committee is correct to recommend that cameras should not cover the Public Galleries. I agree that allowing such coverage would only encourage disorder there.

The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas)

It would guarantee it.

Mr. Reid

As the Deputy Leader of the House says, it would guarantee it. The Public Gallery in the Scottish Parliament is shown. It is probably true that there have not been a significant number of rowdy demonstrations there, but there certainly have been some that would have been much less likely to occur had the demonstrators not known that they would be on the news that night. Covering the Gallery guarantees that the news will cover such a demonstration later the same evening.

My impression is that the behaviour in the House has improved since cameras were introduced. I was not a Member in the days before the cameras came in, but I well remember many incidents of hon. Members being suspended for bad behaviour—a certain Mace-wielding incident immediately springs to mind. Following the introduction of cameras, such incidents do not happen, because hon. Members do not want to be seen behaving badly in front of them.

I greatly welcome other developments, such as webcasting and the live inject points. The live inject points, which allow short interviews or pieces to camera to be done on the parliamentary estate, have done much to enhance the House's image and are a great improvement on shots in a studio or on College green.

The innovation of webcasting is to be welcomed; I believe that it has tremendous potential. I especially like the ability to search for a particular point in the proceedings. As Robert Burns mused in the kirk one Sunday: O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us! Webcasting certainly gives us the opportunity to see how we performed the day before.

With all new technology, however, one or two hitches have to be overcome. When I searched for my contribution to yesterday's Prime Minister's Question Time, the clip that appeared was of my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Opik), who was two questions after me. Fortunately, I knew that, so I was able to move the cursor back to find the right clip, although the way that the cursor is set up needs to be improved. It is very small and it is possible to move back only in quite significant stretches.

The technical hitches need to be overcome so that the search engine either finds the Member whom the viewer is looking for, or, if it is not possible to get to that exact point, takes the viewer to a previous point so that he can find the right place when the broadcast is played. Taking the viewer to a point after the one that he is looking for is not particularly useful. Those hitches have to be overcome, but this is still a tremendous innovation.

One disappointment so far is that no cost-effective solution has been found that will allow proceedings of the Scottish Parliament to be broadcast on the internal video network. Proceedings of the Welsh Assembly are available, so I presume that that means that there are no technical problems. Having broadcasts of proceedings in the Scottish Parliament available would be extremely useful to hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies, such as me. I hope that the difficulties can be overcome.

The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) gave us a vision of what could be achieved with digital TV. His suggestions are well worth investigating. The analogue switch-off will probably arrive in less than a decade and digital TV should be universally available. For the moment, however, it is important to remember that the prime purpose of the broadcasts is to provide an accurate record of our proceedings. I believe, therefore, that the Select Committee has adopted the correct approach of proposing only modest changes, and is correct in continuing the evolutionary and incremental approach taken by previous Committees. I commend the report.

3.32 pm

Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath) (Con)

I join the tributes that have already been paid to the Select Committee, to its Chairman, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), to all those who assist the Committee and to those who are responsible for parliamentary broadcasting.

When I found that I would be speaking on behalf of my party in this debate, I was particularly pleased because, over the past few years, I have got to know a constituent of mine, Mr. Bob Longman, OBE, who was the most senior engineer at the BBC at the time that the cameras were first installed. I am delighted to have this opportunity to pay tribute to him. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale), who also knows Mr. Bob Longman, for his endorsement of that. I am also fortunate in that one of the early producers of parliamentary coverage is a lifelong friend of mine and is married to another friend of mine. Therefore, I have personal and constituency connections with parliamentary broadcasting.

I was delighted to read the report that the Select Committee produced because it accords not only with the views of my party, but with my view that we need to ensure the continuation of parliamentary control—that term occurs several times in the report—over the way in which Parliament is broadcast. We need to retain the dignity of the House.

Reference has been made to the length of time since there was last a debate on the views of the Select Committee. I have another concern: the length of time that has passed between the Select Committee publishing the report in June last year and today. Will the Minister give an undertaking that, the next time there is a report from this important Select Committee, we will not have a six-month gap before it is debated? As the Select Committee makes clear in the report, under the powers that are delegated to it by the Speaker, as soon as it has made recommendations, they are implemented. We do not have to wait for this debate to take place for the changes to be made. I hope that the Minister and those who advise him will recognise that that makes it particularly important that there should not be a substantial length of time between a report by this Select Committee, above all others, and a debate, whether in Westminster Hall or the main Chamber. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mrs. Clark) is nodding.

Mr. Lepper

I, too, regret the length of time between publication of the report and this debate, but, in defence of the Minister, such issues are largely in the hands of the Liaison Committee, which recommends when debates should take place.

Mr. Hawkins

Of course, the hon. Gentleman is right, and I am sure that the Minister appreciates the defence that the hon. Gentleman offers. He and I are actually arguing the same thing—that there should not be delay. I am grateful for his confirmation of that. He will also know that if the Government and the usual channels are keen to avoid a delay, representations can be made to the Liaison Committee. I have no doubt that the Minister will be able to go through the usual channels to ensure that there is not such a delay in future.

I particularly welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet. Other members of the Committee also mentioned wider availability of parliamentary broadcasting, and it is mentioned in the report. As someone who has been concerned about the availability of the parliamentary channel via digital and satellite broadcasting, I wish to echo the concern on behalf of my party.

My hon. Friend and I are also concerned about another matter; namely, the need for greater coverage of Standing Committees. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is nodding. As he said, there is a degree of cherry-picking in that Select Committees are broadcast only if the broadcasters think that they will include something dramatic, confrontational or controversial. Standing Committees are hardly broadcast at all. Most of the people whom we represent do not have a clue as to which Committees do what. Even long-standing political activists in all the parties have no idea that the Standing Committees, which carry out line-by-line, word-by-word and clause-by-clause scrutiny of legislation, often have far more power over the law of the land than any Select Committee.

Of course, Select Committees are important. My party was proud to introduce them. I do not suggest that they should not be covered, but something has gone wrong with the balance. I hope that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion and his fellow Committee Members, many of whom have spoken this afternoon, will take that point on board. When they do their next inquiry, I hope that they will take it from me, on behalf of my party, that we would like them specifically to consider the need for broadcasting all Standing Committees.

Such broadcasts should not be through webcasts only. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) made it clear that there are technical difficulties with webcasting. The coverage should be like that of CSPAN—gavel to gavel—which my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet discussed. We should move towards broadcasting every Standing Committee and covering every Bill so that those who are interested in a Bill that may affect their livelihood, the company for which they work or the things in which they are interested can follow not just Second Reading and Third Reading debates in the Chamber but what is discussed by representatives of the different parties in the Standing Committee. I feel strongly about that.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion rightly referred to the fact that BBC Parliament coverage of the top-up fees debate—the Higher Education Bill—and the Hutton report debate in the past few days led to an increase in the audience of other news channels. He rightly drew the conclusion that what affects the size of the audience for Parliament is the nature of the issue being debated. I am sure that he is right about that. I know that previous debates—for example, the war in Iraq—received a much higher audience share because some of the mainstream news channels, in addition to the specific parliamentary channel, covered the whole of the debate. That is important. As the report says and as all the speakers have said, the prime purpose of parliamentary broadcasting is to provide an accurate record of proceedings. On behalf of my party, I say that we entirely agree with that. We also agree with the Committee about the importance of the single, clean feed.

I am glad that the Committee has decided not to change the rules in the way that some political journalists—Anne Sloman and colleagues of hers—had suggested and had sought to persuade the Committee. I am glad that the Committee has said that the rules should hardly be changed at all. It was right to reject the broadcasters' attempts to push the boundaries. I strongly agree, as the Committee has concluded, that there is no case for showing the entrance of the Speaker, Prayers and other private matters.

I also agree with other speakers that it is particularly timely, in the light of yesterday's serious misbehaviour that led to the suspension of the sitting and required Mr. Speaker to have the whole of the Strangers Gallery cleared, that the Committee reported—we should be debating the fact—that there should be no coverage of the Strangers Gallery and no coverage of disorder. I agree with the Minister's sedentary remark, at the time that the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute was speaking, that allowing coverage of disorder would simply provide those who wished to disrupt our tradition of parliamentary free speech and orderly debate, and who do not believe in proper parliamentary debate, with the oxygen of publicity. We do not want that to happen. We want to keep disorder in the Strangers Gallery to a minimum and preferably rule it out altogether. We certainly do not want the enemies of democracy to be given television coverage.

The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute talked in more detail than I am able to about the technical side of parliamentary webcasting. He has far more experience of that than I do, but he is right to say that if there is scope for a greater expansion of webcasting, the technical difficulties will have to be dealt with. I hope that those who are responsible for the technical side will continue to consider that.

I very much believe that the debate is timely and that the Committee has got things right. I want to end by reaffirming—in bold type—on behalf of my party what I regard as the most important single conclusion from the Committee's report: We do not, however, believe that there needs to be wholesale change in the rules or any lessening of the control that the House has over the way it is portrayed. We should make changes only when a compelling case can be made. The Committee has got the balance right and I am delighted to endorse its report.

3.43 pm

The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas)

It has been a pleasure to listen to the debate and to follow what has been said about the proceedings of the Committee. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) and the other Committee members on producing the report. It has clearly been hard work and a good job has been done. We have heard more information about the investigations that have taken place, and the whole House and the broadcasting industry will be grateful.

As has been mentioned, this is a timely debate not only because of yesterday's disruptions and the recent increase in television viewing figures, but because of the many changes taking place in other areas of the House through different modernisation processes. It has been fascinating for me to prepare for this debate and to consider the history of how the House communicates with the public, or rather of how it does not communicate with them.

It is interesting to note that 300 years ago, before Hansard, Parliament met in secret. Not only was no electronic recording available, but no minutes were kept. The reason was a desire not to keep Parliament out of the eyes of the public, but to keep it out of the eyes of the King, because that was where the threat lay. It was only as Parliament and the settlement developed that recording started. Interestingly, as has been said, the BBC first applied to broadcast proceedings from the House on the occasion of Winston Churchill's Budget speech in 1926, but it was turned down.

The issue was raised intermittently over the years and pressure from the broadcasters grew in the 1960s. Another former television producer who used to be a Member of Parliament, Tony Benn, first called for Parliament to be broadcast in an article in TV Times in 1957. The first microphones were installed in the Chamber in 1952, not for broadcasting purposes, but merely to enhance the sound—I guess that it was thought that hon. Members needed aid for their hearing. Recordings were also made to assist Hansard, but not for broadcasting. Tragically, those recordings were not kept, so the recordings of the great speeches of the Clem Attlees, the Churchills and so on are lost for ever.

In November 1966, the House considered a recommendation made by a predecessor body to the Broadcasting Committee that there should be a closed circuit experiment in sound and vision. That recommendation was defeated by one vote, but a proposal to make specimen sound programmes was approved the following year. It was not until April 1975 that an experiment in sound broadcasting finally took place. Regular sound broadcasting began in 1978, and it was Jim Callaghan, not Harold Wilson or Edward Heath, who was first heard by the British public on the radio. That was a tragic delay. No one would now say that radio broadcasting is controversial; people may say that some of the comment is controversial, but not the broadcasting itself.

The arguments about television continued. Television broadcasting began on an experimental basis in November 1989 and was made permanent in July 1990. As a young assistant producer for the BBC, I had the honour and pleasure of being the first assistant producer on the "Newsnight" programme to use the signal that was given to us. I certainly endorse some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) about the people involved.

Mr. Hawkins

I did not realise that the Minister had been in that position. He may have worked with my longstanding friend Suzanne Franks, or Mrs. Suzanne Bowers as she now is. I thought that he had guessed to whom I was referring, and in the light of his remarks, I should put that on the record.

Mr. Woolas

I also sat alongside a delightful and charming young correspondent from ITN who is now the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride). We had a cross-party agreement about the fact that, if we had been able to direct and edit the pictures as we wanted for BBC and ITN, the dignity of Parliament would not have been upheld. The then Member for Derbyshire, South, Edwina Currie, would have featured more on those programmes than Ministers or the Speaker. I can see that my point is clearly understood from the nods around the Chamber.

It is interesting to look back at the debates of 1989 and 1990, when the key decisions were taken. On 12 June 1989, some 98 votes were cast against televising Parliament. One of those who voted against was the then hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge, Sir John Stokes, who fiercely opposed the televising of Parliament, as some hon. Members may recall. He told the House: I have always felt that, in general, the coming of the television industry has been thoroughly harmful rather than beneficial to the nation. He continued: We must never forget that the public have no interest in whether the House is televised … I fear that the televising of our proceedings would utterly ruin the character of this great and famous Chamber, the most famous debating chamber in the world. I very much hope that this nonsense is thrown out. The moderniser in me disagrees with those dinosaur sentiments. However, my wiser head acknowledges that Sir John made a good point when he said: When television covers current affairs, it tends to distort, to trivialise and to sensationalise."—[Official Report, 12 June 1989; Vol. 154, c. 640–41.] That remark was quite prophetic. There is a balance to be struck. Nowadays, the idea that we would not televise the House is preposterous. Televisation seems entirely natural, and not merely beneficial, but essential to our parliamentary democracy and the way in which we communicate our proceedings to the nation and beyond. It is primarily through broadcasting rather than the written media that the public become aware of debates in this Chamber.

To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, there is a decline in parliamentary reporting in the printed press. Standing Committees are rarely covered, despite the fact that very important decisions are made there. That leads to disillusionment with politics when people think that they have seen a decision taken, only to find a few months later that it has been changed. Greater openness, using the electronic media to supplement the falling away of print media, is to be welcomed.

In the past, before the House was broadcast, people had no idea what their representative sounded like. In preparing for the debate, I discovered that when Gladstone, who was Prime Minister well before broadcasting, toured the country and spoke in public, people were amazed to discover that he had a Scouse accent. My constituents in Greater Manchester were heard to mutter to the local reporters that they would have never voted for the old so-and-so if they had known that he was from Liverpool.

The point that I am making about regional accents is relevant in the televised age. The fact that broadcasting has failed to lead to the dire consequences predicted by its opponents is testimony to the expertise and good sense of the broadcasters and to the careful oversight exercised by the Broadcasting Committee and by the Director of Parliamentary Broadcasting and her predecessor. Tributes have rightly been paid to them in today's debate.

In the report, the Committee recommended a number of modest changes in the rules of procedure that have now been implemented. By all accounts, the rules appear to be working. The Committee's report also explored whether the guidelines on the use of signals should be changed to allow new forms of programmes that would perhaps be more accessible to the public. It is right that we should impose certain rules on the use that the broadcasters can make of parliamentary proceedings, but we must also work with the broadcasters to ensure that these rules are not too restrictive.

Let me respond to a few of the points that have been made. The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) talked about his long-standing commitment to the idea of a dedicated channel. From reading the debates that occurred in 1989 and 1990, I can see that his consistency is remarkable. It also been suggested that the advent of webcasting is important, as television broadcasting and information technology broadcasting can thereby be brought together. I think that he will see his objective met, but perhaps not by the route that he hoped.

Mr. Gale

I agree in part that there is a tremendous role for webcasting, but I hope that the Minister will agree that there is a fundamental difference between a dedicated channel giving multi-camera coverage of main debates in the Chamber and the sort of information service that webcasting can offer.

Mr. Woolas

I think that that is true. With the advent of interactive television comes the idea that the viewer of such a dedicated channel could have the choice to dip into a Standing Committee to look at proceedings, which would be advantageous.

I thought that the Shakespearean analogy of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mrs. Clark) was very powerful, and I would endorse the Committee's report with the following remarks. If one considers the example of the televising of the US courts, one sees that there are a lot of parallels between televising courts and televising Parliament. The presence of the media and cameras, if they were uncontrolled, would change the coverage broadcast to the public, and it would change irrevocably and for the worse the behaviour of the participants in the debate. The way in which justice seems to be decided on the airwaves in certain cases in the US is a bad thing from the point of view of equity, because those who can influence television coverage through power and resources have a greater say than the ordinary person. I thought that her speech was a powerful case for the report.

We thank the Chairman of the Committee for his well-informed speech. He put the case powerfully, and in general, the Government agree with it. We point also to the many advances that we have instigated in the use of electronic broadcasting in local government, as well as in Departments and so on.

The development of new technologies presents exciting opportunities for Parliament both in terms of how we communicate our proceedings to the outside world and in terms of how we obtain information and views from the public. To that end, I am delighted to conclude this short but interesting and important debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Four o'clock.