eurealist.co.uk

The Hansard Society committee a team comprising MPs, academics and journalists headed by the Labour peer Lord Puttnam. The commission was set up after the 2001 election, when the turnout plunged to 59%.In a report out today says:

“There is an extraordinary confusion between the role of parliament and the role of government. People genuinely now see parliament and government as one and the same. “We’ve got an executive with increasing and enormous powers but we don’t have parliament with sufficient self-confidence or [a] sufficient relationship with the public at large to check those power the report makes a total of 39 recommendations aimed at making parliament more prominent and relevant to people’s lives.”

As one might expect in a committee led by a film producer the real problems of parliament are swamped in a plea for more and better media coverage, more angles to shoot from, more areas to shoot in, more freedom for the TV crews to wander about the place, more intrusive coverage, almost as if democracy depended on a TV produces power to interpret parliamentary process in a way that they feel makes it more exiting.

“Parliament should relax its rules on TV coverage to allow voters to see “reaction shots” of MPs, also calls for more interviews shot in and around the palace of Westminster - which are currently tightly restricted - and an end to the ban on still photography. The report says: “The rules of television coverage in the chambers should be relaxed to allow, for example, further reaction shots, appropriate use of close-ups, more panning shots of back benches and a wider range of options during division.”

Other recommendations include a new website to replace the current, confusing, parliamentary portal - which Lord Puttnam dubbed a “anoraks’ site” - a new specific communications service to publicise the activities of the Lords and Commons, headed by a joint committee of peers and MPs, and an increase in the number of media passes allowed.

The report calls on ITV and the commercial sector broadcasters to reassert their commitment to regional and national news and current affairs, while recommending that the BBC integrate its Parliament Channel better into mainstream broadcasting, and report to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport on how it will provide “engaging, innovative and accessible” coverage of parliament.
The report also demands more filming of non-chamber parliamentary proceedings, such as select committees. TV cameras were first allowed into the Commons chamber in 1989 - barely a decade after audio broadcasts of debates on the radio.”

How any of this enhancing the power of the media to show what they want to show, and not to show what they do not, will help in the battle to make government accountable to the people via their elected representatives is anyone’s guess. I would hesitantly suggest that the fall off in support for our political process has gone hand in hand with the broadcasting of parliament, although it would be churlish of me to suggest that is the cause.

The idea is sound, that we the people should see how our laws are made and become involved in the process through television, but as we have seen the only coverage we are offered, are the sound bites the TV producers wish us to see, often with a journalist using the recordings to make the point they wish to make. The coverage of Prime Minister Question Time on Radio 5 live has become a joke and made so, not by the politicians but by the commentators who see it a battle of who is top dog each week, who scores the best points against whom.

Perhaps if the politicians we elect did begin to hold the executive to account, then we would see a revival in the peoples interest in politics, but that of course depends on the ability of the government to make the laws in the first place, as it stands at the moment with over 70% of our laws emanating not from Westminster, but from Brussels, the MP`s we elect to Westminster have no power to influence those laws whether they hold the government to account or not.

Lord Puttnam and his team can suggest ways of making the parliament circus more acceptable to the media hacks, but that ain`t going to make the goings on in Parliament more relevant to peoples lives, unless you are one of those who consider soaps to be relevant, or alter the basic problem with either parliament or peoples perceptions of the place, which seems to be about right, that it is an expensive waste of time, that has become no more than an enabling committee for the European Union.