Speaker of the House Trevor Mallard has ordered all political parties to remove online videos which feature MPs in the House which do not have the expressed consent of the MP being featured.
His ruling follows National using a video of Labour MP Deborah Russell in the House last week in an attack ad the party ran on social media.
Mallard this afternoon ordered that all such videos be removed by 5pm tomorrow.
National Deputy Leader Paula Bennett called the ruling "censorship at the extreme".
Mallard told the House he received a letter from Labour MP Kieran McAnulty complaining about videos using official recordings from the House for political advertising without the authority of the member featured.
The letter claimed that the video showed "a false and misleading account of proceedings".
"Mr McAnulty's letter has highlighted the existence of a range of videos posted by different parties that use footage of members for political advertising.
"I would be very surprised if those members had given permission, as the rules currently require."
Last week National posted a video, featuring Russell, which showed her making a speech about wellbeing, but trailing off-topic by talking about Greek mythology.
Before the video, text read: "Still not sure what Labour's Wellbeing Budget means?"
"While there has been some discussion about what constitutes a 'political advertisement', it is clear to me that videos that support one party or to aim to reduce support for another party are the sorts of items covered by [Parliament's rules]," Mallard said.
"That view is further reinforced by the description of the video as an "attack ad" in the material [National Leader Simon] Bridges referred me to."
According to Parliament's rules, footage from the House – by Parliament TV – is not allowed to be used for political advertising or election campaigning (except with the permission of all members shown).
It also states that reports that use extracts of coverage of proceedings and purport to be summaries must be fair and accurate.
If an MP uses footage from the house in ads without the permission of the MP it features, they will face contempt – a serious offence in Parliament.
Mallard asked Bridges and his office are to "refrain from editing official video footage of MPs and posting it".
Speaking to media after Question Time, Leader of the House Chris Hipkins said the rules around video in the House were clear.
"The National Party's current use of video footage of Parliament does breach those rules."
He said MPs shouldn't have their quotes in the House clipped and portrayed in a way that is used for political attack.
Bennett said Mallard's ruling was "censorship at the extreme" and said the ruling would affect hundreds of Labour, Greens and National ads.
It would affect NZ First but "they can't master technology", Bennett said.
Labour has posted similar types of videos when it was in opposition.
In a letter to the Speaker, Bridges said National rejects that the video of Russell was false or misleading.
"The video uses relevant extract of Dr Russell speaking in the first reading debate on the Public Finance (wellbeing) Amendment Bill. It makes no commentary on the extracts other than to introduce them with the worlds: 'Still not sure what Labour's Wellbeing Budget means?'"
