UK Parliamentary Footage Law

I do like watching Last week tonight and come across this interesting piece:

Last week, a section of the programme had to be cut due to UK Parliamentary Footage Law:



Question is should this be changed.

For the benefit of a pretty poor segment by John Oliver? No. In general? Yes.

Isn’t there also a time limitation by PARBUL of seven days limit for footage to be broadcast?

If the BBC had more guts then it would use Have I Got News For You to challenge this. Run with some footage one week and wait to see what happens. Treat it as any other archaic law which gets flouted. I seriously doubt any action would be taken as it would scream censorship.

I remember it being mentioned on HIGNFY a few times in the past.

In this case I think we got the better end of the deal with the Gilbert Gottfried segment that went out only on Sky.

Charlie Brooker's Wipe shows fell foul of this, as you'd imagine. Usually he obtained his TV and news clips from off-air recordings through fair dealing, and he wasn't allowed to use parliamentary footage. He memorably lampooned this in 2011 Wipe (see below from 10 minutes in):



In later series of Weekly Wipe he used clipped online streams from parliament but was then blocked from doing that as well.

As luck would have it, his sister in law is the MP for Ealing and (following Brooker's suggestion) she attempted to get this law changed in 2016: https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/culture/opinion/house-commons/73341/rupa-huq-mp-satire-dead-parliament

This subject was raised in the House of Commons back in March 2016 by MP Rupa Huq who at the time said...
"My constituent Charlie Brooker has raised with me that he … is unable to use it in his programme, Screenwipe – whereas other not dissimilar broadcasts are allowed to us it."
...ref https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/parliament-satire-ban-house-of-commons-charlie-brooker-tories-a6909391.html.
(Probably worth noting that MP Rupa Huq's sister is Konnie Huq, who is married to Charlie Brooker.)

EDIT: madmusician beat me to mentioning the House of Common's question.)

It's hardly archaic - some of us can remember when the only coverage of Parliament was sound-only... The rules that were created to allow for parliamentary TV coverage were considered very seriously, and still are.

And, to be honest, it’s not like we’ve been worse off for comedy shows not being able to show footage. I don’t mind the ban being lifted or not, but I don’t think it’s ever severely hampered a show like HIGNFY.

(By the way I’m pretty sure Jon Stewart already brought this up on his very similarly formatted show a few years ago!)

Which "not dissimilar" broadcasts was she referring to?

Based on the clip above, This Week. And actually, I think he's got a point. Much of This Week is satire.

Other people have cited it in their arguments against the law and I agree 100%. It is archaic in a democratic nation to have it on the statute books. The quality of the comedy potential isn’t a factor in any rational debate on it.