To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport pursuant to her answer of 5 November 2002, Official Report, column 194W, when the BBC will convert its quarter-screen service for the parliamentary channel to the full screen version envisaged in its original bid. [125207]

The BBC has no plans to offer its BBC Parliament in full-screen. I understand that it did not, as part of its bid to the Independent Television Commission for the former ITV Digital Multiplex B, make a commitment to broadcast BBC Parliament in this way.In its application for some of the ex-ITV Digital capacity, the Corporation proposed a change in transmission mode which improved the reliability of reception for many DTT viewers but at the cost of reducing capacity overall. This left insufficient capacity to offer a full-screen BBC Parliament service. However, sufficient capacity was available for the BBC to propose, as part of Freeview, an improved version of BBC Parliament with quarter-screen pictures and accompanying context-specific text.