§ Mr. BerryTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what plans his Department has to introduce an independent monitoring process for television subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing people across all forms of television broadcasting, including cable and satellite. [80081]
§ Janet AndersonNone at present. The Independent Television Commission requires all Channel 3 licensees, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to provide information on provision of subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing to ensure that licence requirements are being met. There is no similar licence requirement on cable and satellite broadcasters. We will be taking into account their proposals to consider further how we might encourage the cable and satellite broadcasters to improve on a voluntary basis the current provision of subtitling on their services and if they can be independently monitored.