Q: You have had television cameras in the House of Commons for more than one year now and the results have received much praise. I have even heard that the experiment has aroused much interest in the United States, Japan and other countries. In Taiwan there is currently a debate going on among politicians over how to arrive at a more reasonable way of broadcasting our own parliament. You are Supervisor of Broadcasting for the British House of Commons and we would like to draw on your experience.

G: Over this last year I have had people from a number of countries asking about the televising--the United States, Canada, France. . . . they have all come. I am not very familiar with the situation in Taiwan, but when the French came they were very upset because, by tradition, cameramen have always been free to wander round in their chamber--trying to look into people's cases and catch them asleep or doing their hair or showing that someone has got egg stains on his tie. It is the same in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. The French didn't think they could stop these people coming in, so they decided to have a system like ours. Then they might possibly be able to say, "All these chaps wandering around, we don't need them any longer."

We were lucky in that the Commons already had very strict rules. Not only is it not allowed to interview people in the Chamber, but when they come out into the lobby it is not allowed either. If you want to interview Members of Parliament (MPs), then you have to do it outside the building. This tradition has been accepted for hundreds of years.

On the other hand we had a blank sheet to start from and we could look at what everyone else around the world was doing. It is very difficult to chuck reporters out from a place where they have already been allowed to wander around. Canada has this problem. If you come out into the central lobby, which is built like ours, the cameramen are all milling around. If a chap comes out he is interviewed immediately and the whole thing is ridiculous. There is no common sense about it. You have to get to some form of organization or some form of discipline.

Q: Perhaps drawing up strict rules is not the biggest problem. The problem is rather how to be fair under two party politics. I remember that fairness was one of the main problems raised in the debates on whether the televising should go ahead. To find out how you maintain fairness in your role as supervisor and how you won people's confidence, can I ask you first about your background?

G: In 1951 I went into the BBC and I was there for the best part of 30 years. I was a radio producer and I worked in Africa for three years building up the Nigerian broadcasting service. I came back again and went into television and did 14 years as a current affairs producer and editor.

I was the major political television producer at the BBC. I used to look after prime ministers and party leaders and produce magazine programs and things like that. Then I looked after the regional part of the BBC for five years. After that I went to New York as the American representative. Later I left the BBC and became managing director of the new Services Sound and Vision Corporation, which ran radio and television and a lot of other things for the forces around the world. In fact I had a very good English-speaking radio station in Hong Kong.

I retired from the BBC three years ago and the day they stopped paying me they rang up from the Commons and asked if I would go there as a specialist adviser to the Select Committee on Broadcasting. After about a year I became the first Supervisor of Broadcasting.

Q: Which aspects of your long experience have you had to fall back on most in your work?

G: I am lucky in that, forty years ago, I first came to know British politics in terms of television and radio. So, in practical terms, I had considerable experience as a political journalist, producer, editor and policy maker. The second thing that is extremely important is that because of my television experience, I know a great number of politicians, particularly senior ones because they are all old now, like I am. I have also spent a lot of time in Whitehall, government departments and places like that. I also have considerable experience of managing things--I am an executive manager of a firm--and therefore the idea of doing things in a business-like way has been fairly simple.

There are a lot of journalists dealing with politics who are very contemptuous of politicians and regard them as a fairly low breed. I do not take that view. I rather like them. I think they are a peculiar breed of people but it is no use being superior, either morally or mentally, because they are doing a certain rather necessary job. So I like them, I get irritated with them at times but the great majority of good journalists are very fond of people. They like politics, like politicians and understand how they go about their business.

The other thing is that it does help a good deal if you have been 40 years in either radio or television because there are a whole lot of technical things you need to know.

Q: Before you became supervisor and when the debate over whether or not to allow television into the House of Commons was in progress, what were your own feelings about televising?

G: I have always thought that televising was really an essential part of news coverage. I mean look at this debate [pointing at the debate over revising an unpopular poll tax which was introduced last year, which can be seen in progress on his office monitor]. This may well decide the result of the next election. If you want to make programs about these issues then you have to have the basic material!

Q: It sounds like you came down on the side of increasing the rights of television. Now that your work leaves you sandwiched between the politicians and the media, do you have to be more objective?

G: I am employed by the House of Commons to do their will. I have a select committee of nineteen people and I regard it as their job to set policy while I will act as the chief executive. They have the last word. Of course, you are very vulnerable, because there are 650 MPs and any one of them is allowed to stand up and criticise the work I do. So it is very important that we always work very strictly within the rules laid down.

Q: When you started, what did you expect the main problems would turn out to be and how did you solve them?

G: You have to realize that there have been many votes on the issue over the years, and although there was a substantial majority of 318 to 264 in favor of televising, there were a considerable number of MPs who were against it. I was reluctant, at my age, to be the sandwich in a political battle. But that has never been a problem. As soon as the broadcasting began the opposition to it literally faded away.

In a sense we had to do a sort of selling job because people, rightly or wrongly, were very worried about the televising. Seeing as I was quite well known around the place, people felt they could be more confident about it and it did not cause any of the problems they thought it would. Also, it was extremely popular with people, so it became unimaginable to turn the thing off.

We had assumed that we would have problems about the rules of coverage; before we started, the Select Committee published the rules and everyone went absolutely dotty. You were only allowed to show head and shoulders shots and only of the person speaking and not the reaction of the person being addressed. The press complained that this was going to be dull and so on.

For example, they said you could only use close-ups of the person speacking and could not show the reactions of other people. So there was a problem with the twice-weekly Prime Minister's Questions, when the Speaker can call anybody and it takes time, even with our systems, for the cameras to find that person. So we had to go to the wide angle.

It was also said that you could only take a head and shoulders picture. Now, the first thing we discovered wa s that that was nonsense. [pointing at the MP speaking on the monitor] Now he is absolutely stable, his arm is on the dispatch box and he is absolutely stuck there, If you watched the Prime Minister earlier this afternoon, however,he will lean forward then step back and turn around. Now you cannot have a head and shoulders shot, so you have to have a bigger picture, which in itself is quite interesting. They then agreed that we should change the rules slightly and could use what is called the "group shot." [pointing at the monitor which is showing the Environment Minister speaking with a number of MPs sitting behind him] There you have got a very good wide-angle shot of a minister with his supporters behind him.

Q: Are those supporters "doughnutting"-- trying to get in the picture by crowding around the person speaking?

G: No, doughnutting does not happen now and it was really very silly because, once we started showing wide angles, you could see that the House was nearly empty and there were six chaps all close round the one pew. So they gave that up. You will find both parties tend to put one or two women in the picture though.

Q: One of the biggest worries expressed by opponents of televising was over the question of whether or not it would encourage disorderly behavior. What has your experience been over the past year?

G: According to the Speaker, the place is better behaved than it was before. He has been sitting in there for seven years and he ought to know. There were genuine worries that people would use the cameras to get themselves publicity, and one of the reasons that it has not happened is that we have these fairly strict rules. It is very simple. If there is a disturbance in the House the cameras have to go on to the Speaker, so all you see is the Speaker. Not only do you have to go on to the Speaker but if he is standing up you may not cut away from him. So if there is a real disturbance--if they were fighting--you would not see it because the cameras would be on the Speaker and he would be on his feet.

There were also worries about people who might set up messages or throw things in from the Strangers Gallery. There has been a great history of such incidents. Now they are talking about whether they ought to cage people in upstairs--when the suffragettes were around they were actually put behind screens so they couldn't throw things.

Q: During the recent debate on the Gulf crisis it seemed as though someone threw red powder paint from the Gallery while a Labour MP was speaking. You could see this because the MPs behind the man speaking were brushing the powder off their suits. Yet what impressed me most was that the evening news and the newspapers did not mention the matter. I wondered whether I might have been mistaken?

G: You were not mistaken. The Prime Minister was speaking and sat down to allow the Labour MP David Blunkett to come in. He was standing up when this red stuff came down. He is in fact blind, so he did not know what was happening. He sat down and they cut away to the Speaker.

The simple rule is that you are only allowed to show the proceedings of the House of Commons. By convention, what goes on in the galleries is not proceedings of Parliament, therefore you never show the galleries. That is one way that people who make an exhibition of themselves will not go on television. But you did see all the MPs sitting behind Blunkett brushing the Paint off their clothes.

Q: In the debates on televising some MPs said disorder was one of the essential ingredients of Parliament. In fact, they argued, disorder has a long history as part of the democratic process. If you do not show it then you are not showing the truth.

G: I think you can counter that by arguing that the purpose of the democratic process is to reach conclusions after argument and not by playing the fool--like the famous case in Canada when someone produced a stinking salmon and threw it across the chamber. There is certainly a conservative element worried about the dignity of this place.

There are certain things you can do and you know that you will be thrown out, such as if you call somebody a liar. They used to calculate when it would be a good time, you know, "there are local elections coming up so we'll get thrown out." Most of them have now reached the conclusion that it would do them harm to be seen disobeying the Speaker, who is a very distinguished gentleman liked by everybody. Television has given him a new quality of authority, and a member who might have been tempted to get thrown out would be very careful now because he thinks it will do him harm with his conshituents if he plays the fool.

Now there is a problem that politics is to some extent theater and you can argue to some extent that by coming here we have cut down on the drama of the place, the big gestures. Who am I to judge whether that is good or bad?

Q: Some people think that the televising is destroying the theatrical color of ment,while others are worried that it will turn Parliament into a variety show. Some countries have too much fighting in their parliaments, while in other countries, such as the United States, it is said that when they see your broadcasts they complain that their own Congress is too subdued. What a dilemma!

G: You are absolutely right. Take the Canadian place or the German Bundestag--it is the one of the most boring places I have known. Also the American Senate--there is no debate. The theatrical aspect is in teresting. Clearly it was a considerable feature of Mrs Thatcher's premiership.

If you remember Callaghan [Prime Minister 1976-1979], he did not have the same sense of theater really. He was a very clever man in the House but did not have this pugnacious style that Thatcher had. Every Tuesday and every Thursday people watched Prime Minister's Questions because it was a show. Now if you are watching Mr Major today, he is clearly a different character and it will be interesting to see how he develops. After all, politicians have to learn to make use of the opportunity.

Q: What about the actual design of the Chamber itself? It seems to be an ideal theater.

G: Yes. It was very tense the other afternoon during the debate on the Gulf. Because it is a small Chamber they were sitting on the steps and you got a great feeling of concentration. What you never get in either American houses is this sort of leaning forward to hear, with these two sides facing each other.

[pointing at monitor] Here is the Opposition spokesman facing the Environment Secretary, one of the major figures of our time. There is that sense of drama and it does undoubtedly give appeal to Prime Minister's Questions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A lot of my friends who have television sets in their offices tend to turn it on. People are also very keen on it at home and it is a marvellous thing for older people.

Q: People were very concerned about the Gulf debate but they were also annoyed when, just as it was reaching a climax and not long after the leader of the Opposition had begun speaking, it was interrupted by the BBC to show the film Bundle Of Love. Do you or the Select Committee have any powers or responsibility over such scheduling by the broadcasters?

G: No, I do not and I think it would be quite wrong if the House of Commons had any control over it. If you read the original interim report last year, you will see that they keep on saving they hope the broadcasters will do certain things. But they have no power. Broadcasting in this country is controlled by independent organizations. Where it does have regulatory functions, the government department that handles it is the Home Office and the Select Committee has nothing to do with the Home Office at all.

Q: We have spoken a bit about the nature of the television and the broadcasters, but what about the "operators"--the people whose job it is to actually operate the cameras and provide the feed of pictures to whoever wants to use them. What is your relationship with them?

G: Fundamentally, the House of Commons decided it would not have its own unit, for which there were many reasons. This place is not very well equipped for getting a cameraman at the last moment. The security clearance takes something like three months, so you could hardly get someone in if somebody was sick, for example. Or if you have a debate that is going on until three in the morning, you do not want to have rules that are too rigid. It is also since the House only works for 37 weeks every year and it gives people a chance to get other jobs in the vacations and things like that.

We had a public tender and selected two different companies, one to cover the Chamber and the other to do the select committees. They are under my supervision and I can warn them if there are any problems and even fire them. That is very unlikely as it happens. I am very friendly with the manager and we work very closely together. I have absolute confidence in him and he does not want to lose the contract. Actually, he and his staff are a very high-grade professional lot, anyway.

Theoretically the broadcasters are not even allowed to talk to the operator but that was silly. They all go and drink in the same bar afterwards so there is not really any point in making rules about things like that. But if anybody is trying to bring pressure to bear on the director, then I step in. There was one occasion when I did step in.

I would allow cooperation between people, for example, but no more. If at 10 o'clock the ITN news people are watching for the vote on some issue, then I wouldn t mind if they gave a shout down the telephone to say when they are coming over, just so that they don't come over when the cameraman is moving the shot. That seems to be perfectly reasonable for one of the main broadcasters for the main news. On the other hand, we cannot have people ringing up, as we did on one occasion, saying they must have a picture of some guy!

Q: You said that the operator doesn't want to lose the contract and that public television is committed to the televising. However, in some other countries the commercial and public stations lack interest in providing such a service.

G: Yes, I can see that. But that is when you get in something like C-Span in America, which was started by the cable people. They wanted cable to be respectable and to be associated with Congress. It payed off.

Q: What is happening about the idea of a dedicated channel that would show non-stop, unedited coverage of the Commons?

G: The Select Committee is hearing evidence from people who have got plans. I am a little skeptical as to how much of it will ever hit the screen. The House of Commons is very keen but at the moment it doesn't seem that the government will be putting in the large amounts of money needed. Anyway, there will always be a very limited audience for this sort of thing and people will mainly see Parliament on their news bulletins.

Q: One of the arguments for televising the House was that it would encourage people to take more interest in the Commons. You yourself have had long experience in politics and have been working here for some time now. What do you get out of the experience yourself?

G: Well, I probably do not get much. The interesting thing that I have learnt is how the House of Commons works, rather than what goes on in the Chamber. I know a lot more about the committee system and how that works, and I know more about the various posts in the system and what they do. But if you really want to know, one of the perks of this job is that I can go and sit in the Chamber. And I prefer sitting in the Chamber to watching it on the television. That is a terrible confession to make but it's true!

[Picture Caption]

The first Supervisor of Broadcasting at the House of Commons is an old BBC media hand. (courtesy International Broadcasting)

Remote controlled cameras, microphones beneath the gallery and "spacelights" suspended from the ceiling--all are newcomers in this old parliament.

Television cameras might be allowed into the House of Commons but the only way get a photograph of the proceedings is from the television screen.(coutesy House of Commons)

Inside the control room the director uses a centralized management system to control up to eight cameras through the touch of a screen.

Only the most advanced technology has made the televising possible.

Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster has become a symbol of democracy throughout the world. (photo by Christopher Hughes)

Remote controlled cameras, microphones beneath the gallery and "spacelights" suspended from the ceiling--all are newcomers in this old parliament.

Television cameras might be allowed into the House of Commons but the only way get a photograph of the proceedings is from the television screen.（coutesy House of Commons）

Inside the control room the director uses a centralized management system to control up to eight cameras through the touch of a screen.

Only the most advanced technology has made the televising possible.

Big Ben at the Palace of Westminster has become a symbol of democracy throughout the world. （photo by Christopher Hughes）