Tessa Jowell found herself out of her depth when she was cornered by the student who set up the original petition for Freeview HD on Number 10's website.

Kieran Kunhya had the luck to catch the secretary of state for culture, media and sport off-guard when she made a speech about the Olympics at his college in London.

When she opened the floor to questions, he asked: "Why have you not defended our broadcasting industry by intervening in the sale of their spectrum especially in regard to HDTV services?"

Kieran, a student at City of London School, said: "Her response was absolutely astonishing:

"She claimed that the way they would solve this problem was to use something 'they use in China called MPEG-12 that fits a lot of channels into a small space (gesturing the compression with her hands) as opposed to the MPEG-4 that we use in Britain...'

"She also said that she 'has been working on this for a past few weeks.' I suppose this shows me that Freeview HD isn't really an option to her because she was happy to give a completely strange response. I suppose she did look a bit surprised by my question...

"I have recently asked on forums whether MPEG-12 exists and am waiting for a response. I think that MPEG-12 is a complete fabrication and I'm sure that people will agree with me on these.

"She might have meant MPEG-21, which would also explain the connection to China [Ed - it was developed at a Shanghai meeting of digital TV experts in 2002]. This is nevertheless, not a video compression standard but some form of licensing audio/video standard.

"She did, however, say that the decision has not yet been made and is still an ongoing process."