Filming of private deliberative meetings
31 March 2014
The Liaison Committee has published a short report proposing that the select committees should be permitted to allow their private meetings to be filmed (PDF 178KB) for a BBC documentary on the House of Commons.
The Committee has been considering how select committees will participate in the Inside the Commons documentary currently being made about the work of the Commons by Michael Cockerell for the BBC (approved by the House of Commons Commission last year). In order to enable the filming of committee deliberations – and subsequent broadcast of illustrative segments – there needs to be a derogation from the rules around the confidentiality of private proceedings. The Liaison Committee has therefore recommended a Motion to the House to allow this to happen:
The Committee will consider detailed terms of engagement in due course."That, notwithstanding the practice of the House, a select committee may, with the unanimous consent of all its members, permit the filming of private deliberative meetings for the purposes of the documentary which was approved by the House of Commons Commission on 15 June 2013."