§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Lord President of the Council if he will list all the individuals and organisations who currently have access to the live feed of television pictures of the House.
§ Mr. MacGregorThe information requested is as follows:
The organisations and individuals within the House and its outbuildings who receive a clean television feed from the Chamber are: Mr. Speaker; Mr. Speaker's Secretary; the Chairman of Ways and Means; the supervisor of broadcasting; the parliamentary sound archive unit; and the Press Gallery (within which some broadcasting organisations have made their own separate arrangements). There are also monitors in each of the Division Lobbies. Although some Government Departments have arranged through the Central Office of Information to take the clean feed, this facility does not apply to Ministers' rooms in the House. The Select Committee on Broadcasting has considered on a number of occasions whether Members should be allowed to receive the clean feed in their rooms but, hitherto, has taken the view that that would be costly and intrusive, and might discourage attendance in the Chamber. The Committee has said, however, that it will keep the matter under review.
580WSo far as organisations outside the House are concerned, all the main broadcasters within the United Kingdom (that is, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, BSkyB and cable companies) are entitled under the terms of the first report of the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House of Session 1988–89 to receive the clean feed. As regards foreign-based broadcasters, BBC and ITN make available on the daily Eurovision news exchange extracts from the clean feed of up to two minutes, whilst House of Commons Broadcasting Unit Ltd. (now Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit Ltd., PARBUL) has licensed WTN and Visnews to supply overseas customers with material from the House of Commons of not more than five minutes duration. In addition, a large number of foreign broadcasters have been licensed to take longer coverage, including:
Country Company Australia ABC Channel 9 Canada CBC Germany ARD ZDF Hong Kong TVB News Asia TV Ireland RTE Japan NHK United States ABC CBS CNN C-Span NBC The Press Association has been licensed to provide newspapers with still photographs of the Chamber. These are made, using a freeze-frame technique, from a clean feed supplied for the purpose.
There are a further 26 organisations, mainly in broadcasting or the press, who are already authorised to take a clean sound feed and who on the basis of a policy decision taken by the Select Committee are also entitled, without the need to seek separate permission, to take a clean television feed if they wish. Very few of these organisations have in fact exercised their right to receive the television feed, although precise information about their identity is not readily available since, as indicated, they do not need the further approval of the Select Committee to do so. The full list of 26 is as follows:
- British Forces Broadcasting Service
- Manx Radio
- South African Broadcasting Corporation
- National Public Radio (USA)
- Radio stations affiliated to the National Association of Hospital Broadcasting Organisations
- Scandinavian Broadcasting (Danish [DR], Finnish [YLE], Norwegian and Swedish radio and television)
- Voice of America
- Falkland Islands Broadcasting
- Associated Press Ltd.
- IBS News Ltd.
- Radio and Television Hong Kong
- Radio Basildon
- London Broadcasting Co. Ltd. (who are authorised to supply the feed to national newspapers)
- Israel Broadcasting Authority
- Norddeutscher Rundfunk Hamburg
581 - Westdeutscher Rundfunk Cologne
- Deutsche Welle, Cologne
- Wall Street Journal London Bureau
- Reuters Ltd.
- Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB)
- Sound Productions (Overseas Promotions) Ltd.
- TV Asahi
- Christian Science Monitor
- Telerate Europe/Gulf
- Bank of England
- New York Times London Bureau
§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Lord President of the Council if he will list those individuals and organisations who received the live coverage of the House in the period when it was covered by satellite.
§ Mr. MacGregorI assume that the hon. Member is referring to the period of a few weeks at the end of 1989 when continuous coverage of the House's proceedings was broadcast on an experimental basis on a temporarily spare channel on one of the Astra satellites. The service was accordingly available to anyone with suitable equipment for receiving the transmissions direct from the Astra satellite or via a local cable network carrying the relevant Astra channel. This did not, however, apply to the House or any of its outbuildings, since the Services Committee had not at that stage approved the principle of access to satellite and cable services.
§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Lord President of the Council (1) if he will list those individual organisations within the precincts of the House which can receive the cable or satellite signal of the sittings of the Commons and, in each case, by what authority they are permitted to do so:
(2) by what route hon. Members can be authorised to receive the cable or satellite signal of the proceedings of the House;
(3) if he will make a statement on the installation of a cable television service to cover the proceedings of the House and the access which hon. Members will have in their offices to the service.
§ Mr. MacGregorAt present, no one within the House or its outbuildings is either authorised, or has the technical capability, to receive cable or satellite television channels, whether or not they might carry live, continuous coverage of the House's proceedings. United Artists, for instance, intends to incorporate such a dedicated channel, from January 1992, into its local cable services. Special access to CNN's news service was, however, provided on a temporary basis, and at a single viewing point, during the Gulf war.
A study to determine the cost and feasibility of installing such facilities on a permanent basis is being carried out by the Parliamentary Works Office and will be considered in the near future by the relevant domestic Committees established as part of the Ibbs recommendations. If the hon. Member has any specific query about this matter he should take it up direct with the appropriate Committees.