§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Lord President of the Council if he will make it his policy to buy transponder space on the television satellite to be launched in October 1990 in order that a dedicated satellite channel for Parliament can be established; and if he will make a statement.
§ Sir Geoffrey HoweNo, Sir. The establishment of a dedicated channel for coverage of parliamentary proceedings is an objective whose desirability has been underlined both by the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House and its report, and by many other Members. For this reason, the recent experiment with continuous broadcasting of the House's proceedings, using some of the spare channels on the Astra satellite, was widely welcomed. I understand, however, that this experiment, which depended on the donation of facilities by the organisations involved, has now come to an end. For the longer term, as the Select Committee made clear in its report, any such development must be a matter for the commercial judgment of the broadcasters, in the absence of public funding. So far as the Government are concerned, that remains the position.