Supporting the House and its committees
A calendar of sitting days was published for the
first time for the 2002-03 session
Introduction
32. The work of the House and its committees has
been dramatically affected by the reform of recent years. Further
reforms were agreed by the House in 2002-03, many of them on a
trial basis until the end of the current Parliament. Key changes
include revisions to sitting hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and
Thursdays, so that the House sits earlier in the day and, usually,
concludes its business earlier than before; a reduction in the
number of sitting Fridays; changes to questions procedures (see
paragraph 41); and the establishment of a common agenda of 'core
tasks' for select committees (see paragraph 68). Other proposals,
such as the introduction of September sittings and for the carryover
of bills from one session to the next, will be implemented during
2003. Managing the introduction of these changes without disrupting
the business of the House and its committees has been a major
challenge for many House staff.
33. The publication of a 12-month calendar of sitting
days commencing in November 2002 has helped all departments and
staff plan their working periods and holidays. This has been particularly
important for the Parliamentary Works Services Directorate (PWSD),
which must arrange for vital maintenance and construction projects
to take place at times when the House is not sitting. But the
calendar remains subject to change. Emergency recalls are particularly
challenging: staff need to be called in, business papers must
be produced and plans for works projects often need to be changed,
all at very short notice. The House was recalled during the 2002
summer recess to discuss Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
on 24 September; and the House sat on two days originally announced
as part of the 2003 Easter recess to complete debate on the Budget.
Offices
34. The Clerk's Department, the Library and the
Department of the Official Report are mainly engaged with supporting
the business of the House and its committees. The Clerk's Department
principally comprises offices which each focus on different aspects
of the work of the House. These include the:
- Journal Office, which produces the daily and
permanent record of the proceedings of the House, receives papers
and public petitions, and advises on parliamentary privilege and
procedural developments;
- Table Office, which receives and edits questions
and early day motions, and advises Members on their content, prepares
the daily Order Paper and advises the Clerks at the Table during
sittings;
- Legislation Service, which supports the work
of the House and its committees in considering public and private
bills, statutory instruments, EU documents, and regulatory reform
proposals;
- Committee Office, which provides the secretariat
of each select committee;
- Overseas Office, which provides the secretariat
of the delegations of the House to international assemblies and
also provides expert advice and support to other Parliaments and
assemblies and their staff (see pages 21-22 and 40); and
- Vote Office, which supplies the House and Members
with documents.
35. The Library provides an information and research
service to the House and its committees both in support of this
core task, and in relation to the support of individual Members
and their staff in their multifarious roles. Since the work of
the Library in relation to these two core tasks cannot easily
be differentiated, the main Library services are all covered in
this section. The Library combines a reference and lending library
in the main building and outposts in the Derby Gate building and
Portcullis House, with an extensive research service. The Library
also includes the Information Office and Parliamentary Education
Unit, which are covered later in this report (see pages 36 and
39).
36. The Department of the Official Report produces
edited verbatim reports of the proceedings of the House (including
sittings in Westminster Hall) and its standing committees. It
also processes and prints written answers to parliamentary questions,
and written ministerial statements. Select committee proceedings
are provided not by the department but by a private firm, WB Gurney
and Sons LLP, under contract to both Houses of Parliament (see
paragraph 71).
Sittings of the House
Levels of Activity
37. The table below gives information about the number of sittings,
and the average duration of sittings days, in each of the last
five years.
Sittings of the House: levels of activity
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Number of sitting days | 157
| 157 | 159 | 143
| 152 |
| Number of sitting days (Westminster Hall) |
- | 44 | 99 | 88
| 95 |
| Average length of sitting days | 9 hr 08
| 8 hr 53 | 8 hr 21 | 6 hr 38
| 7 hr 51 |
In 2002/03 more than 24,000 pages of reports on debates were published
in daily parts, more than ever before
REPORTING PROCEEDINGS OF THE HOUSE
38. The edited verbatim reports of proceedings in the House and Westminster
Hall - the Official Report, or Hansard - are printed overnight
and published on paper and on the internet on the day after the
debates to which they relate. In 2002/03 more than 24,000 pages
of reports on debates in the House and Westminster Hall were published
in daily parts, more than ever before. Demand for Hansard on paper
continues to decline, although there has been increasing demand
for the publication on-line (see paragraph 161).
39. The Department of the Official Report aims to make not more
than one significant error per 13 columns of the final version
of text on proceedings in the House. The table overleaf shows
how the department has performed against this target in recent
years, and gives an indication of recent activity levels.
Reporting of proceedings in the House: activity levels and
performance
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Total number of pages of daily parts published
| 20,420 | 21,706 | 20,918
| 20,058 | 24,118 |
| Average number of pages published per day |
128 | 96 | 130 |
136 | 145 |
| Number of columns per significant error (target = 13)
| 15.0 | 18.0 | 16.0
| 13.8 | 14.3 |
| Average daily print run | 2,823
| 2,536 | 2,458 | 2,387
| 2,132 |
40. The reporting system for the Chamber was upgraded during the
2002 summer recess. Another significant change was the introduction
of written ministerial statements, which are usually printed daily.
This also required the addition of a new section of the Order
Paper, to list the written ministerial statements to be made each
day. The flexibility of the staff responsible for reporting House
proceedings was further demonstrated when they reported additionally
on four sittings in Westminster Hall, so that Westminster Hall
reporters could be diverted to standing committee work.
Questions
The average number of questions dealt with each day was 463,
an all-time record.
41. The continuing high volume of questions put pressure on the
Table Office and the office of the Editorial Supervisor of the
Vote in the Clerk's Department, and the high number of written
answers continues to present a challenge to the Official Report
and to POLIS indexers in the Library.[9]
42. Dealing with questions forms a major part of the work of the
Table Office. The average number of questions dealt with each
day was 463, an all-time record as the table overleaf shows. Other
office activity measures increased by over 20 per cent and the
office also had to develop systems and working practices to meet
the new questions procedures agreed by the House.
Questions and Answers
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Average number of questions dealt with by Table Office per day
| 349 | 303 | 302
| 460 | 463 |
| Total number of written answers published |
36,630 | 31,398 | 32,821
| 42,088 | 51,978 |
43. On 29 October 2002, at the same time as agreeing new sitting
times, the House agreed to a package of proposals to make oral
questions more topical and to make tabling more convenient for
Members. These changes included reducing the notice period for
oral questions to three sitting days in most cases, bringing forward
the time of the 'shuffle' of oral questions to 12.30 pm (to allow
Government departments to receive them on the day of the shuffle),
permitting Members to table oral questions ahead of the date of
the shuffle and (with effect from 1 January 2003) a new facility
to permit Members to table questions electronically via the Parliamentary
Network. For the first time a limit was set on the number of questions
a Member may table each day for answer on a named day.
44. To manage the introduction of these changes and to deal with
the high volume of work, the number of clerks in the Table Office
was increased from four to five in autumn 2002. The technical
work to provide the electronic tabling facility, which is linked
to the Vote Bundle Project system (see below), was completed within
three months for less than £25,000.
45. Taken together with the new sitting patterns, these changes
intensified the pressure on the Table Office which nonetheless
achieved its overall objective of dealing appropriately with each
notice of question or motion on the day of receipt in 99.92 per
cent of cases. By the end of the financial year 115 Members had
registered to table questions electronically, of whom 52 had used
the new facility. A total of 1,252 questions (oral and written)
had been received in electronic format, some 5.5 per cent of the
total received during the three-month period.
46. Oral question sessions may now be held from time to time in
Westminster Hall and, under the authority of the Chairman of Ways
and Means, the Office set up new arrangements for the receipt
and shuffle of questions. Two sessions had been held by the end
of the year, with a third planned for mid-April, all on cross-cutting
themes with Ministers from several departments attending to answer.
47. The move of the Editorial Supervisor's Office to Westminster
has improved the working environment for staff formerly based
at the printing press in Bermondsey. Additional checking procedures
were put in place to manage the flow of work during the questions
phase of the Vote Bundle project and an intensive programme of
IT training for the Editorial Supervisor's team began shortly
before the end of the year in preparation for implementation of
the final switch of responsibility for producing questions to
the House.
48. The increase in written answers led to delays in their publication
in the Official Report and unexpected reliance on The Stationery
Office (tSO) to typeset answers on a regular basis. To re-establish
the Department of the Official Report's objective of producing
all written answers in-house for electronic delivery to the print
contractors, a method of scanning answers received from Government
departments was introduced in November 2002. This has allowed
for more answers to be processed each day, though publication
is still dependent on tSO work loads. Earlier sitting times for
the House have also led to earlier delivery of written answers
to the department, which has aided timely production.
49. An innovation during the year was that the Official Report,
at the request of the Leader of the House, began to publish 'recess
editions' of volumes of written answers given by Ministers during
periods when the House was adjourned. There were two such editions
during summer 2002, one at Christmas and one during the February
break. Their publication has significantly reduced the number
of "I will write" answers from Ministers to Members
in the run-up to recesses, which has reduced in turn the quantity
of separate letters which have to be collated and bound by Library
staff.
50. With the agreement of POLIS user groups, the Library's targets
for indexing questions were amended to accommodate the high number
of written questions and answers. Staff turnover and the loss
of some experienced indexers prevented these targets being met
in full but the effect on users was mitigated by the electronic
capture of Hansard references and a link to the full text of Hansard.
These are available, through POLIS, on the day after publication.
There have been some problems caused by the supply of electronic
text which has required extra checking on receipt to ensure that
the quality of the database does not suffer.
51. PIMS, the new information management system, described on
page 64, is expected to lead to different methods for dealing
with written answers, including a partly automated indexing process.
The departments of the Clerk of the House, Library and the Official
Report will be working closely together to ensure that PIMS and
the Vote Bundle project and any systems developed in Government
departments for the electronic transmission of written answers
to the House are fully compatible.
Legislation
Bills
The average number of amendments, new clauses and new schedules
tabled per day during the 2002-03 session to 31 March was 69
52. The volume and complexity of Government legislation, the continuing use
of programming procedures for most Government bills, the introduction
of the revised sitting hours, and high staff turn-over combined
to put considerable pressure on the Public Bill Office during
the year. The period from January to March, traditionally a busy
time for the Office because of the number of bills in standing
committee, was particularly difficult because it coincided with
the introduction of the new sitting hours. Staff had to adjust
to early committee meetings, and committees tended, on average,
to sit for longer in the afternoons than had been the case in
the last two years under the old hours. The average number of
amendments, new clauses and new schedules tabled per day during
the 2002-03 session until 31 March 2003 was 69, 73 per cent more
than the average in the 2001-02 session. Despite this substantial
increase, there was no significant disruption to any standing
committee proceedings.
53. Private bill work remained at a low ebb, although an opposed
bill committee (the first since November 2000) sat in January
and February 2003 to consider the Mersey Tunnels Bill. The Private
Bill Office clerk is now integrated into the work of the Public
Bill Office.
54. The table overleaf provides an indication of the workload
of the Public and Private Bill Offices over the last five years.
Legislation Service: activity measures[10]
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Government bills | 35 | 40
| 34 | 34 | 35 |
| Private Members' bills | 105 |
111 | 97 | 76 |
105 |
| Private bills | 11 | 13
| 7 | 9 | 5 |
| Standing committee meetings[11]
| - | - | 450 |
352 | 477 |
Further information is published in the Sessional Returns, the
most recent of which covers the 2001-02 session.[12]
55. The House decided in October 2002 to continue the arrangements
for programming bills for another session. Almost all Government
bills are now subject to programming. The programming of standing
committee proceedings has helped with planning the work of the
Public Bill Office, but there have also been implications for
workload. Preparatory work is required for programming committees
and sub-committees, which may sometimes be convened at very short
notice, and the operation of programming often gives rise to complex
proceedings in committee and on the floor of the House on which
the Chair may request urgent advice, which has routinely been
given without undue delay.
56. The committees which scrutinise draft bills are usually supported
by staff from the Committee Office, but the Public Bill Office
supplied the clerk to the Select Committee set up to scrutinise
the draft Communications Bill, and he was later clerk of the Standing
Committee on the Bill. Effective scrutiny of the Government's
legislative proposals was enhanced by this example of staff flexibility,
although not without putting some strain on the resources of the
office.
57. Further versions of the new FrameMaker software for the production
of bills were introduced during the year, providing greater reliability
and functionality. During session 2001-02 only one bill out of
204[13] had to be reprinted
as a result of error attributable to the office. Further developmental
work, initiated by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, but into
which Public Bill Office staff have considerable input, will be
carried out in 2003/04.
58. The corporate records classification scheme (see paragraph
201) was successfully applied to the extensive sets of procedural
files in the Private Bill Office and to the bulk of the material
in the Public Bill Office during the year. The Private Bill Office
also sent to the Parliamentary Archives a large quantity of pre-1945
volumes and files, ahead of its planned co-location with the Public
Bill Office in summer 2003, which will thus complete the merger
of the two offices.
Reporting of standing committees59. The total number of
pages of standing committee debates published in recent years
is shown in the table below.
Reporting of standing committee proceedings: activity levels
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Total number of pages of standing committee debates published
| 7,812 | 9,214 | 8,135
| 6,501 | 9,036 |
60. The volume of Government legislation and longer afternoon
sittings since the introduction of the revised sitting hours were
major factors in the 28 per cent increase in the number of pages
of standing committee debates published in 2002/03 compared to
the previous year. Also significant was the flow of delegated
legislation relating to Northern Ireland resulting from the suspension
of the Northern Ireland Assembly: such measures were often debated
at length in standing committees on delegated legislation. During
the busiest period of standing committee sittings it proved difficult
to produce reports of the proceedings of all committees overnight,
even with the assistance of reporting staff who work primarily
in the House itself.
61. During the year, the majority of committee reporting staff moved from
the Palace to 7 Millbank. The digital audio system used by reporters
based in Millbank to transcribe committee proceedings continues
to operate successfully on a trial basis. It is planned to be
established on a permanent basis from the 2003 summer recess.
Regulatory Reform
62. The replacement of the deregulation procedure with that instituted by
the Regulatory Reform Act 2001 was completed in May 2002. The
Regulatory Reform Committee reported on nine proposals for regulatory
reform orders and nine draft orders in 2002/03. Seven orders passed
through their parliamentary stages during the year. The Committee
maintained its dialogue with the Government about the development
of the regulatory reform procedure, including prospects for achieving
the Government’s target of passing 63 regulatory reform
orders by April 2005.
European Scrutiny
63. The work of the Convention on the future of Europe, which commenced in
February 2002, has been a major feature of the year. Staff of
the National Parliament Office (NPO) in Brussels have attended
many of the key meetings of the Convention and its working groups
and provided information on proceedings to the European Scrutiny
Committee in particular. The NPO, Legal Services Office and Overseas
Office have also provided support for the UK’s national
parliament representatives to the Convention in carrying out their
work.
64. The Standing Committee on the Convention was set up in June
to enable the UK's national parliament representatives to report
back on the work of the Convention. The Committee's work is supported
by the Public Bill Office and it sat on four occasions during
the year. The European Scrutiny Committee has taken a close interest
in the work of the Convention and sought to influence the Convention
by publishing a Report, which concentrated on the role of national
parliaments and included a summary translated into French and
German.[14]
65. Further details of the work of the European Scrutiny Committee
can be found in its annual report for 2002.[15]
Select committees
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee at work
66. The high level of activity by select committees has continued,
and has been increased by the creation of a Committee on the Lord
Chancellor's Department and by ad-hoc committees on draft bills.
The table below shows the numbers of select committee meetings
and reports over the last five years.
Select committees: activity levels
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Total number of formal meetings | 1,199
| 1,067 | 1,104 | 666
| 1,037 |
| Total number of reports published by departmentally-related select committees
| 136 | 120 | 160
| 130 | 201 |
67. In the financial year 2002/03, there were 497 public sessions
of oral evidence, up 31 per cent compared to last year, when work
was interrupted by the election. The table includes both substantive
reports and 'special' reports, which are usually the means by
which Government replies to substantive reports are published.
The number of substantive reports published increased from 72
in 2001/02 to 134 this year.
68. The debate on the Modernisation of the House of Commons Committee's
Report on select committees in May 2002 led to the approval of
core tasks for committees, which were issued by the Liaison Committee
in June.[16] Their purpose
is to improve the focus and coverage of committee scrutiny, including
financial and pre-legislative work for which the Scrutiny Unit
(see below) will provide assistance. Further information on the
recent work of select committees can be found in the Liaison Committee's
annual report for 2002.[17]
69. Concern that committees were under-resourced for the level
of activity which they were now expected to undertake caused the
Commission to establish a review by the House's Internal Review
Service, assisted by the National Audit Office, to assess the
need for specialist and other support staff for select committees.
Its recommendations are likely to create a substantial reinforcement
of committee staffs, including extra staff for the Library to
help provide some of this additional support. Implementation will
be phased, with the first tranche of staff arriving from autumn
2003 onwards.
Scrutiny Unit
70. Pre-legislative and financial scrutiny work of committees is already receiving
help from the new Committee Office Scrutiny Unit which began work
in November 2002. Although the Unit has been in existence for
only a few months, it has already established itself as a useful
source of support. It is comprised of ten staff at present and
will expand during 2003 to the full complement of 18 approved
by the Commission. The Unit has already undertaken some 40 tasks
of varying size for 13 select committees, including providing
briefing material on the 2002 Winter Supplementary Estimates,
advising individual committees on the format and content of departmental
annual reports, and assisting with the formulation of questions
on public expenditure. The Unit has also provided briefing on,
and analyses of, draft bills, as well as staffing for ad hoc committees
set up to scrutinise draft legislation. A substantial number of
further draft bills are expected later in the year and the Unit
expects to provide help to the committees which consider them.
Transcription Services
71. Following a competitive tender conducted in accordance with EU procurement
rules, a contract and service level agreement was signed by the
Clerks of both Houses in September 2002 with WB Gurney and Sons
LLP, which has been providing transcription services for Select
and private bill committees of both Houses for over two centuries.
The contract runs until 1 August 2005, when it may be renewed
for a further one or two years. Pamela Woolgar, Senior Partner
since 1993 and the Official Shorthand Writer to the Houses of
Parliament, retired on 31 March 2003 and has been succeeded in
both offices by Janet Littlewood.
The new look committee reports, available from May 2003
Printing and Publishing
72. With the assistance of a professional design
consultant, a new layout has been developed for select committee
reports, using two modern typefaces, and a second colour - green.
It has been in use from 1 May 2003. It is intended that the additional
costs attributable to use of a second colour and of better quality
paper will largely be covered by savings made in other areas of
the committee printing budget.
Accommodation
73. Following the Commission’s decision to allocate Norman Shaw South
for offices for Members and their staff, the Committee Office
staff based at 7 Millbank have completed a reorganisation of the
space they occupy in that building. The Committee Office, including
the Scrutiny Unit, will now occupy the first and second floors
and parts of the ground and sixth floors, having taken over most
of the rooms vacated by departing Members. The additional space
thus acquired will enable each committee to be equipped with one
extra work station. This will help to absorb the expansion of
the staff complement resulting from the recent staffing review,
although opportunities for accommodating more staff are limited.
Delegations to Overseas Assemblies
74. The House is represented on the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Assembly of the Western
European Union (WEU), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation
for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly by delegations of Members. The European Section of the
Overseas Office assisted the 66 Members and Peers on the delegations
who attended a total of 236 committee meetings and 11 plenary
sessions during the year. The office also made arrangements for
inward visits by committees of both the NATO Parliamentary Assembly
and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and is
making preparations for the UK delegation to host the 2004 Annual
Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE in Edinburgh.
75. The UK delegation continues to play a leading
role at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and
at the WEU Assembly. Delegation members lead two of the Council
of Europe Assembly's political groups. The debate on the evolving
institutional architecture of Europe has occupied both Assemblies,
and the WEU Assembly has been particularly concerned with discussion
of the future of the parliamentary dimension of the European Union's
European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). The coming year will
see developments that will determine the form of any future inter-parliamentary
scrutiny of the ESDP.
76. The Rt Hon Bruce George MP was elected President
of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE during its Annual Session
in Berlin in July 2002; he will be running for re-election at
the Rotterdam Annual Session in July 2003. In addition to the
OSCE's Winter Session in Vienna in February 2003, a number of
visits to OSCE Missions and several missions to monitor elections
in OSCE states have involved UK delegation members.
77. Members of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly now chair two of its five subject committees; the delegation
as a whole has been active in the Assembly's work over the year,
key themes of which have included the transatlantic relationship,
NATO-Russia relations and NATO enlargement.
78. The Overseas Office also provided support to
the Deputy Speakers when attending meetings of the European Conference
of Speakers and the Commonwealth Speakers' Conference and has
recently become involved in the arrangement of bilateral visits
by the Deputy Speakers.
Providing information for the House and its committees
House of Commons Library
The Members' Library
79. The Library’s operations have traditionally supported both the work
of the House and its committees and that of individual Members
and their staff, without necessarily making any clear distinction
between the two tasks. Thus the Library’s rich resource
of Research Papers and Standard Notes may be of value in supporting
Members’ work in their constituencies as well as in informing
the legislative process or other types of debate. The increasing
emphasis on making pre-prepared information available on-line
has blurred the distinction still further.
Research Services
80. The Library provides an impartial and confidential information
and research service for individual Members and their staff. The
department answers considerable numbers of specific enquiries
arising from the wide range of Members' parliamentary duties.
The total number of requests in 2002/03 for written and oral briefings
and reference information was in excess of 80,000; these ranged
from requests for specific documentation or basic facts to substantial
briefings on policy matters. The Library aims to respond to all
these enquiries within the stated deadline or, for those requests
without a deadline, within two weeks. Performance against these
targets is measured for the more substantial and specialised enquiries
and is summarised in the following table.
Research Enquiries
| Year | Total
| of which |
| | With deadline
| | without deadline
|
| | Number |
Answered by deadline | | Number
| Answered in two weeks |
| 1998/99 | 15,017 | 10,454
| 95% | | 4,563
| 80% |
| 1999/00 | 14,947 | 10,347
| 97% | | 4,600
| 86% |
| 2000/01 | 13,345 | 8,743
| 96% | | 4,602
| 87% |
| 2001/02 | 10,851 | 6,116
| 97% | | 4,735
| 87% |
| 2002/03 | 11,540 | 6,650
| 98% | | 4,890
| 90% |
81. The Library's policy in recent years has been to manage demand
and provide a more flexible service to its users by providing
more ready-made briefing information, both in paper form and electronically.
During the year, 96 research papers were published, providing
background and commentary on bills and other topical issues along
with regular statistical bulletins. These included papers produced
before the Commons second reading of 31 of 32 major bills. Research
papers are available on the Parliament website as well as internally;
during the year such papers were downloaded on some 670,000 occasions
and many users remarked on their topicality, comprehensiveness
and clarity.
82. Standard Notes are more informal briefings, held primarily
in electronic form and made available on the parliamentary intranet.
They have proved popular with Members and their staff as they
can be easily updated and generally address issues of current
interest. By the end of the year 1,368 Standard Notes were available
on the intranet with a further 397 offline, and were
accessed from the intranet on 58,000 occasions during the year.
Network Services
83. Research Papers and Standard Notes form the backbone of
a much wider range of briefing material available to Members and
their staff via the intranet, which includes subject-specific
links to parliamentary and other material and useful external
websites; an increasing number of constituency and other local-area
statistics; 'bill information pages'; and other databases.
84. Access to the information on the Library's intranet pages
has not been as easy as it should be. A full solution to this
problem will need to await the implementation of PIMS (see page
64) but during 2002/03 the Library has done a considerable amount
of work on its intranet pages. This work has resulted in more
user-friendly pages with enhanced search and retrieval facilities.85.
The POLIS database continues to be the key source for references
to parliamentary information and in 2002/03 142,462 items were
added to the database compared with 124,939 in 2001/02. As elsewhere
in the House, the rise in the number of written questions has
put a considerable strain on the resources of the POLIS Section
(see paragraph 50).
Reading Rooms
86. The reading rooms in the Members' Library (primarily for
Members' use) and in Derby Gate (primarily for Members' staff)
continue to be valued by those wishing to use the Library's services
in person rather than online or by telephone. The increasing availability
of material online means, however, that fewer people now need
to come to the Library in person. Derby Gate has two reading rooms,
the Current Affairs Room and the Official Publications Library
(OPL). A management review recommended in September 2002 that
the OPL should no longer be an enquiry point but it was agreed
to defer a final decision until the Change Project (see overleaf)
is complete, as that may well have implications for staffing of
enquiry points.
87. As the table below shows, book loans continue to decline,
reflecting the increasing availability and use of network resources.
The increase in missed deadlines for inter-library loans partly
reflected the greater number of requests for specialised materials.
Book and video loans
| Year | Book loans
| | Tapes and transcripts acquired
| Deadlines missed for items obtained elsewhere
|
| Total |
| From Library stock |
| | |
| |
| Number | | Per cent
| | | |
| 1998/99 | | 4,433
| | 3,755 | |
85% | | 298 | 17%
|
| 1999/00 | | 4,312
| | 3,617 | |
84% | | 391 | 7%
|
| 2000/01 | (a) | 3,837
| | 3,292 | |
86% | | 343 | 14%
|
| 2001/02 | | 3,186
| | 2,670 | |
84% | | 280 | 11%
|
| 2002/03 | | 3,487
| | 2,903 | |
83% | | 305 | 22%
|
Note: (a) The service was closed for three months
for reclassification of stock.
Change Project
88. The Library has always
been conscious of the need to match its services as closely as
possible to the changing needs of Members individually and the
House collectively. During the summer of 2002, a team of Library
staff, with the support of an external consultant, carried out
a functional review of many of the Library's services. That review
revealed a wide range of business process and other issues that
needed to be addressed, especially if the department was to take
full advantage of the opportunities offered by the House's investment
in the PIMS project.
89. The scale of the development needs identified
in the review led the management team to conclude that the most
effective way forward was to initiate a Change Project which started
in November 2002 and which will be implemented within the PIMS
timetable. The first stage of the project, substantially complete
by the end of March 2003, has been to work with the Library's
customers to establish, on the basis of much more comprehensive
evidence than has been available in the past, what they most value
about the Library's services and how their needs might be met
more fully in future. Subsequent phases of the work will produce
proposals for a revised operational and business architecture
which will deliver services which best meet the needs of users
more flexibly and with less duplication of effort.
Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
90. The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
(POST) operates as an independent unit with its own Parliamentary
Board, composed of members of the Commons and Lords. Its purpose
is to provide advice to Members of the two Houses and to select
committees on current and anticipated issues of scientific, technological
and medical concern. It is funded from the House of Commons Administration
Estimate, 30 per cent of the cost being recovered from the House
of Lords.
91. POST regularly provides a wide range of support
to select committees, on request. Its regular publications programme
also feeds into committee activity, including stimulating decisions
to hold an enquiry. Both Houses have requested POST to keep them
informed on public dialogue activities in science and technology,
and POST has pioneered the use of on-line discussion to help Parliament
consider a broad spectrum of views on current issues.
92. During the year, POST conducted 27 different
types of work for a total of 13 Commons and Lords committees.
POST also published 19 'POSTnotes' - parliamentary briefings,
on a wide range of subjects. All POST's publications are available
on the Parliament website, and through the Parliamentary Bookshop.
93. POST also organised seven parliamentary seminars
and conferences. The most significant of these was the Annual
Conference of the European Parliamentary Technology Assessment
network (EPTA), of which POST held the Presidency in 2002. Over
100 parliamentarians and officials from across Europe participated
in the largest such event in the 12-year existence of EPTA.
Vote Office
94. The work of the Vote Office centres around the
provision of documents needed by the House in order that it can
conduct its business. In addition to the papers that the House
itself generates, Government papers and memoranda, delegated legislation
documents and European documents are all required to be made available.
The table below shows the average number of pages of the daily
Vote Bundle, which is made up of the key working papers for the
House, published over the last five years.
Vote Bundle: average number of pages
| 1998/99 | 1999/2000
| 2000/01 | 2001/02 | 2002/03
|
| Average number of pages of the Vote Bundle
| 268 | 159 | 254
| 255 | 271 |
95. The Vote Office sets a 'no-fail' standard for the provision
of papers and while this was met during the year, on one occasion
a standing committee on European legislation had to suspend because
the Minister had the incorrect version of the required document.
This incident highlighted the difficulties caused by split responsibilities
between Government and Parliament for the provision of documents.
The Vote Office, in conjunction with the Clerk of the European
Scrutiny Committee, the Clerk of European Standing Committees
and the Government, devised a new system for the supply of documents
in which the Vote Office took over responsibility for circulating
copies of documents to everyone involved with the sittings of
European Standing Committees, including Government Ministers.
The revised system has operated since the beginning of the 2002-03
session and so far has worked well.
96. A second initiative this year has been to implement the decision
of the Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons
that Ministers' Statements should be distributed in the Chamber
rather than requiring Members to call at the Vote Office to collect
them. With the co-operation of the doorkeepers and the office
of the Leader of the House a procedure was developed to ensure
the adequate supply of copies in good time and a system of circulation
that was efficient and unobtrusive in the Chamber. This initiative
too seems to have settled well and has attracted little attention.
97. The Vote Office oversees the contract with The Stationery
Office for the printing and distribution of the House's own papers.
This year has seen some exceptional demands compared with previous
ten year highs of production: large numbers of questions led to
a 9 per cent increase in the pages of Hansard produced and a 10
per cent increase in pages of Business Papers, when measured against
this standard. Pages of early day motions increased by 45 per
cent over the previous ten year maximum annual requirement. Pages
of bills increased by 37 per cent, although much of this could
be attributed to the very large (over 1500 pages) Tax Law Rewrite
Bill on Income Tax and the need to reprint it after amendment.
Nevertheless, overall expenditure on printing has been contained
within the estimate for 2002/03 of just under £9 million.
The chart overleaf shows the House's annual expenditure in recent
years on printing and publications.
98. The Print Services section of the Vote Office has renewed
its equipment during the financial year with a greatly increased
emphasis on digital work flow. As a consequence, holdings of papers
have been reviewed with the intention of reducing the amount of
stock held 'just in case' so that more efficient and economical
use can be made of Print Services' 'just in time' capability.
The procedures for the production of uncorrected evidence published
by select committees on the internet have also been reviewed,
in order to cope with the increased amount which can now be published
in this form. Print Services continues to be called upon for the
rapid production of bill amendments during the final stages of
the legislative process, when bills may move rapidly between the
two Houses before agreement is reached.
Vote Bundle Project
99. The main activity of the Vote Bundle Project - which
aims to improve the production methods of House papers by bringing
origination and pagination under House control - has been to complete
work on the questions phase of the project. Final testing of the
questions process is taking place with papers now being generated
in-house in parallel with those produced externally under existing
arrangements. Once the accuracy and reliability of the process
has been established, production responsibility will switch entirely
to the in-house unit so that both early day motions and questions
will be generated on site. The early day motion part of the system
has proved particularly robust despite the unusually high quantity
tabled this year and has generated savings of nearly £150,000
in 2002/03, compared to the previous printing method.
100. Preparations for the next phase of the project - the capture
of amendments to bills - are under way and detailed proposals
for completing this task are now being developed.
9 POLIS is the Parliamentary Online Indexing Service Back
10
The figures for bills in the table overleaf shows the numbers
of bills read the first time in each financial year. Bills carried
over from one parliamentary session to the next are recorded more
than once Back
11
Information was not recorded on a financial year basis prior to
2000-01 Back
12
HC 1, 2002-03 Back
13
A bill may be reprinted as it is amended during its passage through
the House Back
14
European Scrutiny Committee, Democracy and Accountability
in the EU and the Role of National Parliaments, Thirty
Third Report, 2001-02, HC 152-xxxiii-I Back
15
European Scrutiny Committee, Eighth Report, 2002-03, HC 63-viii Back
16
Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons,
Select Committees, First Report, 2001-02, HC 224-I and
Liaison Committee, Select Committees: Modernisation Proposals,
Second Report, 2001-02, HC 692 Back
17
Liaison Committee, Annual Report for 2002, First Report,
2002-03, HC 558 Back
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