Ministers take to video

TIME may be running out, but Hong Kong, host last week to Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Hanley, may be spared visits by British ministers in future thanks to video-conferencing.

The Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, often the bug-bear of the British Government over its recommendations on right of abode and other issues, is advising the use of video-conferencing to reduce the travel burden for ministers after an experiment involving Governor Chris Patten.

Under the scheme, British ministers would come face to face with their counterparts around the world by television screen rather than meeting them in the flesh.

In a report, the committee, chaired by MP David Howell, urged the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to investigate the potential for video-conferencing, presumably with governments with whom it is already on the best of relations. The move came after an experimental link-up with Mr Patten in June - the first such session in the Commons.

'We found it a most useful medium and had a most useful exchange of views,' the committee said in a report on Foreign Office spending.

'In our opinion there may be potential for this technology to be used for bilateral ministerial exchanges, subject to confidentiality considerations,' it said.