Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 318)
WEDNESDAY 3 JUNE 2009
Mr Peter Knowles, Mr Peter Lowe, Mr Toby Castle and
Mr Simon Mares
Q300 Baroness Billingham:
My point is a follow-up about the access. Our meagre offer at
the moment is a bit of a hole in the corner in the Peers' Lobby.
I do not know how you feel about that. I am always embarrassed
when I see people being interviewed there. Perhaps you could tell
us what you think about that position and how it is managed at
present. What else would you like?
Mr Castle: It is a great step forward. I cannot
be too rude about what is offered because we have got it and that
is a great step forward. When I first came down here, there was
nowhere we could do such a thing. Obviously it has become clear
for all broadcasters that we can broadcast from there live. That
is something that has developed from the submissions certainly—that
there is now no problem, which is fantastic—but we would
still like to be able to show this Place also. There are some
fantastic places where we might be able to go. We cannot go on
the terrace, for example.
Q301 Baroness Billingham:
I was going to ask you about that.
Mr Castle: I do not know if any of you saw this,
but the BBC did a report last night and the reporter had to take
a boat on the Thames to show it because we are not allowed to
go there and film.
Q302 Earl of Erroll:
On the subject of where it might be possible to film, I have had
this problem in the past. Last summer, particularly, when there
was a whole lot of stuff about privacy and data sharing, because
the House was not sitting we were allowed a bit more flexibility
because it was not interrupting anything. It does occur to me
that maybe the Queen's Robing Room, while the House is sitting,
is somewhere that does not have a lot of public access. Would
something like that be suitable? A second thought is if there
could be a smallish room kitted out with a camera, so that a peer
could go there quickly, where there would not be the whole business
of bringing kit into the place—a bit like the BBC's remote
studio just across the road in Millbank—somewhere you could
go and be interviewed, probably remotely, without having the interviewer
there on site. Would that help for doing these quick, sharp interviews?
You talked about this quarter of an hour, that you want to get
something and you only have a quarter of an hour. You presumably
do not need to have your own kit there.
Mr Knowles: I think these are terrific ideas.
It is wonderful to hear you coming at it from this point of view,
as to what can be done rather than what should not be done. There
is a gap at the moment. We get coverage of the ceremonial and
the art and architecture, and there is wall to wall coverage of
the chamber and of certain hearings, but in between the two there
is hardly a glimpse of what this Place is like. When Dan Cruickshank
made his hour long film about the Palace, he filmed it in very
strange conditions, in which all the people had been made to disappear.
It was only at times when there was nobody there that he could
film, and so that sense of a place of bustle and of work being
done is just missing. By comparison, look at the coverage of Holyrood.
There the broadcasters and the journalists operate under rules,
it is not a free-for-all, but all the time you have a sense of
meetings going on, of people moving around and doing work. It
is a totally different feel that you get from watching that coverage.
It is wonderful to hear your suggestions as to how we can move
in that direction.
Q303 Earl of Erroll:
Would it help, also, to film all-party groups if there is a meeting
of specific interest?
Mr Mares: Yes. I would not say we would do it
very often, but I would love to be able to, yes. I have filmed
in the Royal Robing Room. It is a lovely room. There is that lovely
Royal Gallery as well, which would be fantastic for interviews.
Mr Lowe: I support what my broadcasting colleagues
have said about the desire for greater access. I suppose the question
for Your Lordships is: What difference will that make? I do not
think it will be turning on a light switch and suddenly everybody
watching TV thinks that the House of Lords is no longer a serious,
arcane place, but I think it is a subtle and subconscious thing
which will develop over a period of time, and, as some of my colleagues
have said, without undermining the traditions and reputation of
the House, it will show it to be a modern working place and not
just a place they see once a year for the Queen's Speech.
Q304 Lord Methuen:
ITV have commented that there are problems about filming press
conferences unless they are organised by select committees publishing
their reports. I have suggested that perhaps you could make more
use of select committee hearings at this end. I do not know to
what extent you do that, but they can be quite lively and interesting
to the general public. Would you welcome being able to cover a
wider range of events taking place in the House other than parliamentary
proceedings? I would include all-party groups in that too.
Mr Mares: Yes, we would like the option.
Mr Knowles: I think you would be surprised for
me to recount to you the meetings to which we have been denied
access, even up to and including an event run by the Hansard Society,
whose President is Mr Speaker. The title of that event was: MPs:
A Class Apart? and we were not allowed to film that. There
is a very simple request here that we would make to the House
authorities: that events to which the public are invited in should
be accessible to cameras. At the moment there is a lot of wheeling
and dealing, and sometimes we are allowed in and sometimes we
are not. It is terribly disappointing that events run by groups
as eminent as the Hansard Society are not always available to
us, and, similarly, with Groups. There is not a huge demand for
their events, but the All-Party Football Group did a very interesting
series of informal hearings about the Premier League football
club finances.
Chairman: What about the House of Lords
Bridge Team?
Q305 Baroness Billingham:
It is on everybody's lips!
Mr Knowles: We would have loved
to have been able to use the filming infrastructure that is offered
here for select committees to do that, but were not able to do
so, so it became really quite difficult. Yes, we would love to
see progress on that.
Q306 Lord Kalms:
I would like to raise the issue of the broadcasting that you do
within the chambers. I have a note here that ITN are happy with
the extra coverage they are allowed, and the BBC are also grateful,
but they seem to be extremely modest in what they want for additional
facilities. They seem to settle for lower camera angles in the
chamber—which presumably means you want to look at the girls'
ankles!—and unrestricted access to the second feed. It seems
to me when looking at your programmes, which I do a lot, that
they are horribly sanitised. There is the occasional shot of the
Speaker and for a fraction of a second a shot of the person who
asked a question or is responsible. The whole thing is so cleaned-up.
There is no drama. There is the speech and a very modest couple
of other shots. I just wonder whether you cannot get any more
drama into it. That would be one of my concerns. The other one
is that when there is a vote and the House divides, you have something
like 15 minutes of silence, which seems an extraordinary waste
of time. If you really want to wait for the outcome of the vote,
you are not going to if there are 15 minutes of looking at a blank
screen. There is no effort to reconstruct some of the arguments;
there is no effort to be a bit creative. I would like to see,
for instance, panning shots, so you can see who is in the House,
or a few seconds longer on facial reactions, so that if you are
listening to the Minister denying, blue blind, when you have just
said the blatant truth, you should have the look of rage, irritation
or affection. In other words, bring some life into it. Particularly
I thought your demands for just lower shots were extraordinarily
modest. If you are going to make demands, in my view, in the field
of negotiations, make big demands rather than small demands.
Mr Knowles: Let me respond by saying that I
believe some of the officials sitting behind me will be smiling
wryly at this point because they know how long our shopping list
is and I picked on one element of it. The one element I picked
out there is not unimportant. The point of it is this: in the
chamber the fixed cameras are sited quite a way back and quite
high up, the effect of which—and I will try to demonstrate
it to the camera—is as though I am addressing this meeting
with my head down, so that all you can see while I am talking
to you is the top of my head. That is really an unflattering shot.
It would be a major step forward to be able to see people's faces
much better. It is not unimportant but, you are right, there is
much more that could be done and should be done. Reaction shots
are really important. We have made great progress with that and
there has been a real loosening of the understanding of the application
of the rules, but there could be further progress. There could
simply be further encouragement to the directors of both chambers
to show more listening shots/reaction shots. We would really welcome
that. We have asked and been turned down for access to the Division
Lobbies. I would love to see the Members pouring through on the
big votes, on the important votes. There is quite a long shopping
list, but perhaps I have been beaten back too many times and I
came up with this modest approach.
Q307 Lord Kalms:
You cannot allow 15 minutes of silence, whatever you do.
Mr Knowles: We are not going to. There is a
major investment in our production facilities which will take
place in the autumn. At that point we will either remove the divisions
on recorded coverage—because who would want to sit through
them—or play highlights from the debate. It is long overdue
and I am delighted that the investment is coming through to us
to enable us to do that.
Lord Puttnam: In Peter's defence, I was
involved a lot in the negotiations and what Peter is referring
to in terms of the lower angle is the very obvious shot across
the despatch box. That is the one that is missing. That is the
one you expect if you are watching. The problem we have, frankly,
is a problem with the Liberal Democrats and the Cross-benchers:
we have failed so far to come up with an equivalent shot and they,
quite reasonably, feel disadvantaged by that. That is the shot
that is missing. That is the shot that gives life to the debate.
The audience are very sophisticated: they know that shot should
be there and when they do not get it, they know that something
fake is occurring.
Chairman: On coverage on the internet—an
important question—Lord Errol.
Q308 Earl of Erroll:
More and more news is now delivered out over the internet, the
web. There is huge restriction at the moment on what you can and
cannot do. All the submissions have said they want more access
to webcast what is out there and, also, access to better data
behind it so that they can index properly. I think the BBC is
doing a certain amount itself and I wonder whether they could
have a co-operative relationship with Parliament where, if Parliament
does not have the facility, you might be able to link it backwards
and forwards, contextualising the shots so that you get some background
on the speakers and, also, the ability to download stuff for inclusion
in other broadcasts and for the public to be able to do the same
on their own websites, so that they could, without all the copyright
issues, take those bits and incorporate it with other things.
What are your general feelings about this area, to try go make
the internet more accessible?
Mr Knowles: We have a hugely ambitious project
which will launch in September called Democracy Live. That will
place this House, along with the Commons, along with the devolved
Parliaments and Assemblies and the European Parliament, all on
one broadband portal, live and on-demand coverage. The search
ability of text against video is the key to it. It will enormously
improve access. It will mean it is much easier to relate that
which is spoken in the chamber and hearings to news stories, because
the two can be associated far more easily and be much more "findable".
But at the moment—and this is a straightforward piece of
lobbying on my part—we are being told that we cannot embed
that video from Westminster to third-party websites. We will be
able to do that from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Brussels,
Strasbourg, but not from here. The one thing I would ask of this
Committee—I think your voice is going to be influential
in this—is if you think it is a good idea that such video
could be embedded, to ensure that voice will be listened to.
Q309 Earl of Erroll:
What reason is given for not permitting it?
Mr Knowles: There is concern over copyright,
that the current terms of trade do not allow us to pass video
on to a third party. I have a different interpretation of what
is going on here. I think that what we are proposing to do does
not pass the video on; it stays rooted on our servers but people
can window into it. I think that concern can be answered.
Mr Castle: In terms of the workings of this
Place and the internet, obviously streaming, effectively cutting
out us broadcasters, is a way that you get direct to the public.
Availability of debates and select committees online, on Parliament.TV,
for spreading the message of what this Place does is obviously
absolutely crucial. In terms of our use of the internet, the ability
to be able to embed clips from the chamber on our website would
obviously be something that would be welcome.
Q310 Earl of Erroll:
Presumably that would help if it was indexed properly.
Mr Castle: Yes.
Q311 Chairman:
Peter Lowe, do you want to add to that?
Mr Lowe: I have nothing particular to add, except
that I do find it extraordinary that the BBC is not allowed to
embed this video in this system which Peter has explained to me
before.
Q312 Earl of Erroll:
Are you charged for doing it?
Mr Knowles: We all of us here pay for the coverage
of the chambers as a lump sum, which we pay annually as shareholding
members of PARBUL. Then we also pay as you go for every committee
that is filmed.
Q313 Earl of Erroll:
So there is in fact a financial inducement not to broadcast.
Mr Castle: This was one of the points that I
wanted to make. In these rather constrained times, for example,
for this very select committee, for ITV to take it into our offices
in Millbank, it has cost ITV £100 to get those pictures.
That is the arrangement that we have with Bow Tie television for
providing the service for that. We are making not only editorial
decisions in terms of news value but also, on a daily basis, when
we get, say, the list of Lords Select Committees, we will decide
which ones we take that are televised—and obviously not
all are—and for those that are televised, we have to pay.
The more broadcasters that go in on that, the cheaper it is: the
more popular, the cheaper. There may be a select committee that
we wish to go into to get pictures for use on our news content,
for which we have to pay up to £150/£180 per committee.
Q314 Earl of Erroll:
Does this apply also then to the webcast material?
Mr Castle: I do not know the exact financial
arrangement, I am afraid.
Mr Knowles: There is no further charge beyond
our access for the pictures. The form of words I have been given
as to why currently there is a view that embedding should not
happen is that: "Currently Parliament takes the view that
allowing third party embedding of parliamentary material is allowing
the material to be copied into another website and that the Parliament
licence does not permit such copying to third parties". The
reason for this is the risk that it could be misrepresented on
websites which do not have any licence or have not reached any
agreement about conditions of use. I think we can satisfy all
of these, I would love to have the opportunity to. I do not want
to see this House left behind—as it will be in the autumn—Holyrood,
Stormont, Strasbourg and Cardiff Bay.
Q315 Chairman:
Now we must move on with our last subject which goes back to promoting
the role of the House unless there is something you particularly
wanted to say.
Mr Mares: Yes, on the committees I wanted to
say that the charging is a disincentive and you have to take a
choice as to whether you are going to opt in. Sometimes if it
is a fairly close thing, you think, "I won't", a really
good story comes up and then you have to pay search fees and everything
else. There is a double whammy, as it were, that if you decide
not to pay the first submission fee to pick it up in retrospect
is even more expensive and you find the news desks saying, "All
right, we'll just go on and use another website".
Q316 Earl of Erroll:
Yet we are hoping you will take this material.
Mr Mares: Yes.
Q317 Lord Selsdon:
Mine is only a question of promoting the House worldwide and I
have a lot to do with the international community. I think many
of you may not even appreciate how the parliamentary channel,
because it is 83 next to Sky News, is suddenly picked up instead
of Sky and how many people of all nationalities watch it. What
I would like to ask is, it has been suggested we might try and
do greater amounts with the Commonwealth over these territories
and how do we go about that and infiltrate their own television
systems in their own domestic countries because there is willingness
to receive more?
Mr Mares: I do not think that it is just about
television coverage in domestic countries, there are lots of specialist
channels now in this country, for instance serving the South Asian
diaspora, which are running news. ITV used to run specific programmes.
At one stage I was tasked to be the correspondent for a programme
called "Spotlight Asia", I was the only correspondent
covering Asian politics in Westminster. At that time I did a lot
of coverage from the Lords: Baroness Flather's campaign for the
Commonwealth Games and Lord Ahmed talking about the Muslim Awareness
Day. There were a lot of things going on then that I covered which
no-one else was covering. I do not think you have to go abroad
necessarily to look for those audiences, a lot of those audiences
are already in this country. It is having a proactive press officer,
someone who is going to make sure that there is access for those
broadcasters who are going to be interested in those very, very
specific programmes that affect the communities that they serve.
Mr Lowe: My Lord Chairman, I think I am right
in saying that channels like that which are not members of PARBUL
phone up imagining that they can get footage from the House of
Lords free of charge or next to nothing only to discover that
they have to pay a lot of money for it, which they cannot afford,
which is part of the current PARBUL arrangement. Your Lordships
may know this already but I will say it just in case, the whole
basis on which PARBUL operates, which was described earlier, whereby
each of the broadcasters pays an equal amount per channel into
the club, as it were, has been brought into question recently
and the current arrangement only lasts now until 2011, by that
time it is acknowledged that the arrangement will have to be different.
Chairman: We do know about it and I do
realise that negotiations are just starting on this difficult
issue at the moment.
Lord Jones of Cheltenham: How can we
work more proactively with outside organisations and you to promote
coverage on specialist interests? Perhaps the Gurkhas' campaign
is one recent example of that. There are other issues which are
long-running where there are outside organisations which come
and talk to us. How can the three of us work together to get that
on the box?
Q318 Chairman:
Peter, do you want to start?
Mr Lowe: I am not sure that I can answer about
specialist interests necessarily but I think one thing that has
changed enormously over recent years is the way in which all of
us as broadcasters are able to interact with our audiences because
of the internet and the way in which people can send in material,
the enormous amount of emails we get to programmes and because
of the way people blog and then respond to blogs on our websites.
You have a much more sophisticated clue these days about the issues
which people are really interested in and then obviously we do
pick up on that kind of thing. If you take, for example, the Gurkhas'
campaign, there was an enormous response from the viewing and
consuming public to that story and, in a sense, that then spurs
us on as news-deliverers to do more on that story.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Any further
comments from you four? Thank you very much indeed for your time.
We have overrun on your hour but we really appreciate it. I would
add that if you think of something really important you have not
told us here, do send us it by email or whatever and we will look
at it. We greatly appreciate your help and thoughts this afternoon.
Thank you very much.
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