Television (Live Subtitling and Signing) (Hansard, 9 May 1990)

§ Sir Geoffrey Howe

As part of its continuing review of the experiment, and in response to requests from hon. and right hon. Members as well as from organisations representing the deaf, the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House has organised separate trials of both the live subtitling and the signing of Prime Ministers's Question Time.

The live subtitling trial will take place in the weeks beginning 14 and 21 May. The subtitling itself will be carried out "as live" and unrehearsed, but for the convenience of the majority of Members who wish to attend Prime Minister's Question Time in the Chamber, it is proposed that only an unedited recording of the subtitled material will be shown on a special monitor set up in the No Lobby. Four separate Prime Minister's Question Times will be subtitled and the tapes will be available for viewing between 4pm and 5pm on each Tuesday and Thursday of the two weeks trial period. Copies of the tapes will also be supplied to organisations representing the deaf in order to give them an opportunity to submit comments to the Select Committee if they wish.

The trial with sign language insets will be conducted on the same basis, but will take place in the weeks beginning 4 and 11 June. The tapes will be shown between 5pm and 6pm on each Tuesday and Thursday of the trial period.

The purpose of these trials is to establish the acceptability to Members from an editorial and aesthetic point of view of the use of these two techniques for assisting the deaf. In the case of live subtitling, it will also be important to test the ability of the system (which involves the use of innovatory technology) to cope with the speed and specialist vocabulary of Question Time.

I should, however, stress that there is as yet no commitment on the part of the broadcasters to adopt these techniques as part of their parliamentary coverage and the Select Committee itself has not reached any conclusions on the subject.