The so-called ‘doodle door’ barring journalists from the Hansard area of the parliament, could be removed, Speaker-designate of the House Delroy Chuck indicated yesterday.

Chuck said he was giving full consideration to removing the door that was hastily erected last year by former Speaker of the House, Michael Peart after a fit of anger by then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who was photographed doodling during a debate on a no-confidence motion against her Government.

“It is something that is under consideration,” Chuck told the Observer. “It is definitely being looked at.”

Saying he would need to have further discussions with the Clerk of the House, Chuck disclosed that he had raised the matter with the clerk last week.

“It is something I mentioned to her last week and I said we will discuss it further this week,” he added.

As the non-confidence debate raged on October 17, Simpson Miller drew stickmen on a sheet of paper, oblivious to the fact that a keen photographer, the Observer’s Michael Gordon was watching from the Hansard Gallery directly overlooking the government benches.

The photograph which was published on the newspaper’s front page the next day, triggered a frenzied controversy, in the midst of which Peart hurriedly erected a door restricting journalists to the cramped press gallery that adjoins the Hansard area.

The then Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Opposition failed in its bid to get the door removed, on grounds that the door limited news cameras to only capturing the back of the heads of Opposition members, as against the full frontal view of the Government members.

The photograph won Gordon the Press Association of Jamaica’s news photograph of the year prize.