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Government Departments: Press Conferences

Asked by Steve DarlingLiberal DemocratCabinet OfficeTabled Answered 10 June 2025UIN 55336

The question

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a signer being present at Government news conferences.

Answered by Sir Stephen Timms

This Government is strongly committed to making our communications accessible and inclusive, and to reducing the barriers Deaf people face in their everyday lives.

Since we have come into power, we have endeavoured to ensure as many of the Prime Minister's speeches as possible have BSL interpretation in vision during live streams. This can be found on the Prime Minister’s social media channels - X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. Where speeches do not have political content, the interpretation is also made available afterwards on gov.uk.

I pay tribute to the outstanding work of the Government’s BSL Advisory Board. We will continue to work with them, and with other members of the Deaf community, on how we can improve further the accessibility of our communications.

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