Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make an assessment of the impact of the dramatisation of true crime events in television and film on the privacy of victims' families.

The Government is committed to a free and independent media and does not intervene in what can and can not be broadcast, or in the regulation of how content is made.

Ofcom is required by legislation, and accountable to Parliament, to independently draw up and enforce a Broadcasting Code for television to ensure that audiences are adequately protected from harm. Within this, there are rules in place on fairness and privacy, which are designed to ensure that broadcasters avoid unfair or unjust treatment of individuals and avoid any unwarranted infringement of privacy in programmes.

Ofcom has responsibility for the Broadcasting Code, including for any amendments, and the Code is kept under continual review. In making any decision, Ofcom has to strike a balance between ensuring freedom of expression and protection from harm.

Under Ofcom’s Code, broadcasters should try to reduce the potential distress to victims and/or relatives when making or broadcasting programmes intended to examine past events that involve trauma to individuals, including crime, unless it is warranted to do otherwise. This applies to dramatic reconstructions and factual dramas, as well as factual programmes.

In particular, so far as is reasonably practicable, surviving victims and/or the immediate families of those whose experience is to feature in a programme, should be informed of the plans for the programme and its intended broadcast, even if the events or material to be broadcast have been in the public domain in the past.