Mark Pritchard – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the House of Commons Commission

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mark Pritchard on 2016-02-09.

To ask the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington representing the House of Commons Commission, if the Commission will discuss with the BBC Parliament channel improving the provision of (a) subtitles and (b) an in-vision interpreter for hearing impaired people.

Tom Brake

The audience share for BBC Parliament is below the Ofcom threshold for Access Service provision. However, we have committed to subtitling 100% of live Commons on the channel by 2019. We will reach this figure by increasing the amount of subtitling by 5% each year and this year will subtitle 85% of live Commons sittings.

The year to date figure for the total provision of subtitling on BBC Parliament against the total broadcast hours of the channel is 12.05%.