House of Lords: Coronavirus

(asked on 22nd April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Senior Deputy Speaker what assessment he has made of the impact of the decision to not broadcast the Virtual Proceedings in the House of Lords live online on democratic engagement with the House.


This question was answered on 6th May 2020

Since the 21 April the House of Lords has conducted virtual sittings of the House, and the broadcasting unit have been developing the necessary infrastructure to enable high quality live broadcast of these proceedings. In the interim period, all virtual sittings were made available online as video or audio files as soon as possible after the proceedings concluded. The Hansard record of proceedings for each virtual sitting has also been made available online from approximately three hours after each sitting. On Tuesday 28 April and Thursday 30 April the virtual sittings of the House were broadcast live on parliamentlive.tv.

As of this week, the House of Lords has begun to use the same system as the House of Commons to enable high-quality live broadcast output via parliamentlive.tv. As well as virtual sittings of the House, House of Lords committees have been continuing to meet remotely, and last week the first virtual evidence sessions with witnesses were broadcast live on parliamentlive.tv. Throughout this period the House Administration has used social media channels to promote democratic engagement and publicise the channels through which members of the public can continue to follow virtual House of Lords proceedings.

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