§ 105. Mr. Swinglerasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what steps he has taken to increase the use of films about Great Britain and the British people by the information services abroad; and with what results.
Dr. HillDuring 1958, excluding weekly newsreels, 21,353 prints of information films were dispatched by the Central Office of Information to 130 overseas posts. The corresponding figure for 1956 was 7,851. This considerable increase is due largely to the plan, announced in Cmnd. 225, to develop the supply of film material for use in television overseas. Including a regular weekly newsreel, films with a total running time of over 2,500 minutes were commissioned or acquired for overseas television during 1958. Our posts overseas are thus now in a position to offer an hour a week of new programme material to the television stations in their areas. A catalogue of the 500 films which are available for television has just been published by the Central Office of Information and a copy has been placed in the Library of the House.
The increase in the amount of film material about Britain which is being seen on television abroad is particularly marked in the United States, Canada, Australia, Latin America, Persia, Finland, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, Bermuda and Cyprus.