Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
LORD PUTTNAM
CBE, MR ANDREW
LANSLEY CBE MP, DAME
PATRICIA HODGSON
DBE AND MS
CLARE ETTINGHAUSEN
29 MARCH 2006
Q40 Chairman: I am less worried about
the editors of the tabloids than the editors of the broadsheets.
Mr Lansley: I would like to say
something on that because you will recall Enoch Powell's epigram
that, for politicians to complain about the media is like sailors
complaining about the sea. We just have to make headway, frankly.
The truth of the matter is that every organisation from government
downwards in this country has to push itself through the media.
There is nobody to whom a free ride is given into the pages of
the press or on to television. So, we are going to have to push
ourselves and I suppose that part of the point we are making is
that actually that does happen: government pushes, political parties
push, constituency Members of Parliament push but Parliament sits
back and says, "Are they reporting us?" No, you have
to push and a communication strategy is about that push.
Q41 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Surely
you are not reporting Parliament, you are reporting the Members
of Parliament.
Mr Lansley: No.
Q42 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Yes.
Mr Lansley: The point we are making
is that there is a life for Parliament beyond the activities of
political parties, government or constituency Members of Parliament
in acting individually, that Parliament is greater than the sum
of its parts. The point is, that is not reflected in the public's
understanding of the nature of Parliament. To them, Parliament
is a place where things happen, not an institution—
Q43 Sir Nicholas Winterton: And it
happens because of Members of Parliament.
Mr Lansley: Of course.
Q44 Chairman: Would everyone take
their turn, please.
Mr Lansley: Of course it happens
because of Members of Parliament but the Members of Parliament
acting together . . . As I was saying earlier, as constituency
Members of Parliament, we become much more familiar for what we
do as constituency Members of Parliament than what we do acting
collectively as Members of Parliament, for example, scrutinising
the Executive.
Q45 Chairman: Your report rightly
places a great deal of emphasis on narrow casting on the web,
on the ability that individuals have today to secure far more
information about Parliament far more easily than they have ever
had before. That is an enormous advantage, particularly if people
want information unmediated through journalists. So, today, a
modern, informed citizen can actually get at more information
than at any time in history. That is tremendous. What the broadcasters
say in response to that—and I think there is some element
of this also in our newspapers—is that because that information
is available to those who want to look at it, they then do not
need to make it available in a mass communication form. So, they
say, "Actually, informed citizens can get this information
if they want it and we therefore are relieved of our obligation
to broadcast that through mass media". To some extent, I
think that the fragmentation of the media is weakening the coverage
of Parliament, not actually strengthening it.
Dame Patricia Hodgson: The public
needs a hook; they need the editorial process which tells them
what is going on in the world. So, the first challenge is to get
at least the sound bite or the hook for the listener to know that
they can go elsewhere if they want to hear more. Journalists are
both lazy—and I do not mean the people who cover these operations
but in general—and are seeking maximum audience or readers
and they are under pressure of time, which is why government have
become enormously slick at grabbing the agenda setting headlines,
supplying the press release with the quote in it and, by and large,
nothing else happens. At present, you do have the advantage that
the BBC is obliged to do some coverage, which is why I think we
have emphasised the need to ensure that is updated and continues
as appropriate to the changing balance of the media but with the
hooks in the popular channels over the next 10 years, and then
the point that we have all made about the website is that, if
the hook is there that you go to your website, you will not find
a quick and helpful way through to an issue and the red top journalist
is not going to do that but quite a lot of the broadsheet journalists
will and at the moment they have nothing to help them except the
government handout.
Q46 Mrs May: I entirely take the
point that you have made about the opportunity in the BBC Charter
Review and that is fine but, just setting that to one side and
stepping back, if I may, my contribution may reflect Nick Winterton's
intervention. I am finding it a little hard to get a grip of what
exactly it is you think Parliament is and what exactly Parliament
is going to be saying. I jotted down a few phrases that were used
in your introductory remarks. Lord Puttnam, you said, "Parliament
is a public facing business but who speaks for Parliament?"
Patricia Hodgson said, "Parliament is not setting the agenda".
Actually, Parliament as an institution does not set the agenda;
the elements of Parliament set the agenda; the Members of Parliament,
the Government, the Opposition and the political parties within
Parliament. I am trying to find exactly what it is that you think
Parliament is that should be speaking to the people rather than
individual Members of Parliament or the groupings within Parliament,
ie the political parties.
Lord Puttnam: I will try to answer
your question but I am sure there will be other views. It comes
back again to the value of the website. Take an issue like pensions.
There are not thousands but probably millions of people in this
country who are passionately interested in their pensions. It
is all but impossible to find out on a daily, weekly or even monthly
basis what is happening in Parliament on pensions, who within
Parliament is really interested in this issue, which Committee
is handling it, when the last Bill or when the last Committee
meeting was. As an individual, you ought to be able to become
part of a community that is, if you like—and this may be
a misuse of the word—almost obsessed by what is happening
in Parliament on pensions. There is a very interesting point here.
It is inconvenient to aspects of the whipping system because what
will inevitably happen is that coalitions will be built, as indeed
we have in the Lords. For example Jack Ashley, together with members
of the Tory Party and the Lib Dems work as a coalition on disability,
and many members of the public and certainly the NGOs know that.
I think what will inevitably happen, if we get it right, is that
larger and larger coalitions will be built around these big issues,
and members of the public will become far more familiar with the
very good work that is being done by individual MPs, as Nick has
suggested, and indeed by Parliamentary committees in moving this
agenda forward. At the moment, you are denying them access to
that information.
Q47 Mrs May: With due respect, I
entirely agree that the website needs changing, which is happening.
It would be nice for Members of Parliament to be able to interrogate
the website and actually get the information that they need to
get easily and successfully, let alone members of the public,
and work is taking place on that. However, there is a very great
difference between providing a website which has information about
what is going on in Parliament, so that anybody who is interested
in a topic, be it disability issues, pensions, education or whatever,
can interrogate that website and find out what is going on and
who is involved in that and somebody speaking for Parliament underneath
a communication strategy.
Lord Puttnam: This may be a diversion,
though I hope it is not, but I went to a speech yesterday by President
Clinton in which he made a point which is self-evident, but it
was very interesting to hear it made by someone like him, that
we are now dealing with issues, and the public know that we are
dealing with issues, for which we do not actually have the democratic
processes in place to adequately address: climate change being
one, an international health pandemic would be another. How does
Parliament create a sense of confidence among the electorate that
in its constituent parts it can handle issues of that scale? How
can we ensure that they do not just get broken down into party
sound bites? I think the challenge that President Clinton made
is a very interesting one, and it is interesting because it is
about the long-term health of the democratic process. Can we ensure
that the public develop confidence that here within Parliament—and
we are using that word absolutely correctly—lie the competencies
and the interests and the resolution to deal with problems which
many people find absolutely mind boggling?
Dame Patricia Hodgson: The simple
way of reinforcing that is to say that the legitimacy of government
rests in Parliament because of the elective representation system.
That is becoming invisible to the voters. They understand government
because of high-profile, well-managed spin, by and large, and
they do understand what their MPs do in their surgeries. There
is this invisible activity which is actually the legitimacy of
the whole process and it is thinking about how to ensure that
your work here has at least some visibility. You are right, I
should not have said "set the agenda", I should have
said "describe the agenda". Government sets the agenda;
there is nowhere you can go if you want it described and there
is no other resource in the nation that I know of that could do
it as you could do it here.
Mr Lansley: There is a firm tendency
on the part of the media to try to convert everything into conflict.
We have to understand that that is what happens. That of course
means that even those things which we do here which are not intended
to be party political often are described in party political terms.
So, a chairman of a select committee or even the Chairman of the
Public Accounts Committee will be described as the Labour Chairman
or the Tory Chairman, as if it has to be put into this box of
party political terms. That is quite interesting because, in Parliament,
often many Members of Parliament devote an enormous amount of
their time and energy to tasks which are not geared to a party
political outcome, whether it is all party groups or select committees,
even sometimes as we did on the passage of legislation. Yet, it
is very difficult actually for that to be communicated outside.
I was trying to make a distinction between the work of individual
MPs and the work of constituency MPs. The point about the individual
Members of Parliament is that their work in that context is a
large part of what happens in Parliament but, in media terms,
it is constantly being described as, the Government is doing this
or political parties and we are described as doing it as partisan
Members of Parliament. If we are going to escape from that to
an extent and reflect accurately what goes on in Parliament, there
just needs to be a communication strategy which enables all that
to happen and, at the moment, with honourable exceptions like
the appointments of certain press officers for select committees
and so on, it is not happening, by and large.
Ms Ettinghausen: I would like
to add that people are more, in an academic sense, constantly
having to distinguish between Parliament, government, parties
and committees and it is quite difficult, and I think that the
Commission found it quite difficult to describe Parliament as
an institution. I agree with what you are all saying, it is the
sum of parts, but they are also not naive on the Commission to
think that party politics does not play a big part. It is not
about consensus politics in Parliament, that is not what British
democracy is about. It does go back to what I said at the beginning;
it is about linking this discussion about communications with
other discussions about procedure and reform within Parliament
because it is about how MPs view their role as well. Obviously,
speaking as an outsider—I do not want to say that this is
how MPs should view their role and I am not trying to say that—it
is about MPs seeing themselves as members of a political institution
rather than only as members of either a political party or as
representatives of a constituency. I think that is a slight mindset
shift and there is a limit to what the parliamentary officials
can do even if there is a fantastic whiz-bang communications strategy,
it is the kind of mindset shift that Members start speaking in
a slightly different way and we think it will have a play-out
in the media as well.
Q48 Ann Coffey: What you are saying
is very interesting because you are right: there are a number
of issues out there which are very important to people, particularly
the ones you identified and particularly pensions. I sense a growing
frustration with people in that they cannot get access or they
do not feel trust in the information they are actually being given
because any information that has been given by a political party
is seen by the public as having a certain spin on it and they
are right to think that because that is actually the fact of the
matter. What is happening is that they are getting information
on this via lobby groups and the information that lobby groups
have is also becoming politicised. So, I think there is a very
overwhelming case for people being able to access information
from Parliament which they can trust because it is parliamentary
information and which actually gives them facts, whether it is
a fact about the issue, a bit like the library research briefings.
One of the things that would concern me is, how do we make sure
that that kind of access is available to everybody? How do you
get that information to people who cannot use the internet, who
cannot access the website, who are not particularly articulate
or who may be unable to even frame what it is that they are asking?
How do we make sure that in dressing the website with that information
we are not creating a further difficulty which is inequality of
access to that kind of information? How do you think we could
overcome that?
Lord Puttnam: If we were having
this discussion 10 years ago, I think I would be quite stumped
by your question and I am not sure that I would be able to come
up with any answers. I think that we have been handed an extraordinary
weapon in web based technology. It is democratising; tremendous
steps are being taken to ensure community access to it. I visited
one recently in Liverpool which was quite extraordinary; it was
particularly aimed at old people and particularly focused on helping
them understand pension issues. Frankly, my advice would be to
accept that this is a 20-year job, that it is not going to be
cheap or easy, that there are no magic answers, but we happen
to have been handed an opportunity which is extraordinary. Last
week, using the BBC News as an experiment, the Commonwealth Games
offered something quite extraordinary. I happen to be very interested
in athletics. It offered you a complete menu of all the sports
in the Commonwealth Games. You then went into the sport that most
interested you and you were offered re-runs of the finals, in
the case of athletics, of the individual races. If you try and
extrapolate that and imagine that in a parliamentary context,
pensions are the issue that you could go into, but then you would
be able to subdivide that. I do believe that, well within 20 years,
it will be absolutely normal for 90% of the population to get
access to this type of information, but I do not think there is
an immediate short-term answer.
Q49 Ann Coffey: I think you are right
in saying that, in 20 years, we will be living in a transformed
world, but 20 years is a long time and the decisions that people
are being asked to make are not 20-year decisions. Parliament
sits for four or five years and the decisions that they wish to
make are not, particularly on the pensions debate. So, although
I accept your argument, I still come back to my question as to
how we make that access to this trusted organisation, Parliament,
which gives the facts, which they believe Parliament gives and
political parties do not necessarily give. How do we make that
available to people who now, in the next five years, are not going
to have access to the internet? I agree with you entirely about
the internet but the fact remains that not everybody has access
to it at this present time.
Lord Puttnam: I think that you
have posed a hugely difficult question. I suppose our reason for
being here is to try and ensure that, through this Committee,
Parliament is ahead of the curve, that is to say that, as each
opportunity becomes available, Parliament has seized that opportunity,
optimised that opportunity and is not, which I am afraid is the
case at the moment, seen as being three, four and five years behind
the potential opportunity that is on offer. Frankly, Parliament
can take a first-mover position; you must accelerate your ability
to do it and you may well find that technology is the greatest
weapon you have. It is a fairly unsatisfactory answer I'm afraid.
Mr Lansley: We have not really
talked much yet about the whole question of access to Parliament
for the media and for journalists, but I think this is relevant
in this context. Pensions would be a very good example but, from
my point of view, the one I know best is health. There are political
journalists, many of whom are accredited lobby journalists here
and who work at Westminster, who do understand but they, by their
nature, will tend to report those aspects of health issues which
give rise to a direct political controversy. I know that there
is an enormous amount that goes on here which is relevant to wider
health issues which is actually probably not of interest to most
political journalists who work at Westminster. I do not pretend
that the thousands of journalists out there who work on health
in newspapers in particular are going to suddenly come and start
working at Westminster, but we have to find a way in which we
do communicate directly with them because they are reporting and
you can see it in any newspaper any morning that probably the
comparison of health stories to political stories with a health
angle is four or five to one. I do not mean that Parliament has
to have a view on every health story—a new drug is discovered,
it does not need a parliamentary aspect—but, for example,
a clinical trial and the poor young men at Northwick Park. It
happened and there are pages and pages of newsprint; there is
one written ministerial statement and a series of parliamentary
questions. There is no output at Westminster for that. This is
to do with topicality, it is to do with the ability to bring issues
to Parliament and it is to do with acting on those issues even
when there is no party political aspect to it.
Q50 Sir Nicholas Winterton: When
David Puttnam published his report, I attended the press conference
and I think David will remember what I said. I did not think that
it was Parliament that was failing, I said that the problem was
the political parties. Not Parliament. Although David is in the
other House, he knows that political parties control Parliament.
I very much agreed with what he said a little earlier this morning
when he said that on matters like pensions and international pandemics,
avian flu etc, you could get Members of Parliament/politicians
across the spectrum working together. I have to say that I entirely
agree with that; it is something that I see now as my raison
d'etre for being in this place, to try and get Parliament
to be a more meaningful place by politicians working together.
David, you know and your colleagues on the Commission know that
parties do not like that. Parties dictate to their Members to
a far too great an extent. People are not voting today because
they say to me—and I am sure that they say this to my colleagues
around this Committee, whatever their party—"Why should
we bother to vote because it is not our Member of Parliament who
is important any longer? He is told what to do and which way to
vote. If we believed that he or she would actually seriously represent
our views, I think more people would vote." I have to say
to the Leader of the House that I asked a question yesterday to
his Deputy with regard to wanting to put the management of this
place back in the hands of Members of Parliament and not just
the Government of the day, to which I received a complete dismissal
answer! Do you not believe—your Commission and colleagues,
Patricia Hodgson, Clare and my parliamentary colleague as well
as you and I think you do deep down, David, though I am not sure
about the others—that we can really connect the public to
Parliament and to politicians unless the public have a trust in
Members of Parliament who actually comprise Parliament and control
Parliament?
Lord Puttnam: I could not agree
with you more. The interesting thing is—and the Chairman
knows this—that the person who fingered me most quickly
when we delivered our report was the Chief Whip who quite reasonably
said, "The problem with people like you is that you are trying
to take the politics out of politics" and my only answer
is, "Yes and so is the rest of the electorate"!
Q51 Sir Nicholas Winterton: I agree.
Lord Puttnam: That is the issue.
Politics as perceived from this place—
Q52 Mr Shepherd: No, they are trying
to take the party out of politics.
Lord Puttnam: I have not quoted
precisely but that is what the Chief Whip made clear.
Ms Ettinghausen: I just want to
add that there is this perception by the public that the MPs are
just following, they just do what their whips say and there is
no independence anymore. Factually, that is completely incorrect.
Parliament today or the Commons today and Parliament generally
is more independent than it has been for years and years and there
is academic study after academic study demonstrating that. However,
there is a problem because the public do not see that. They see
the kind of descriptions that we all know and there is a gap between
perception and reality and I think that what the Commission was
trying to do was find a way to bridge that gap. I suppose that
there is a limit to what they can suggest. That is really my point:
that there is this gap between perception and reality.
Q53 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Do people
not say to you, "We don't bother to vote because we do not
believe it matters any longer because our Members of Parliament
are no longer free to do what he or she believes is right?"
Do you not believe that this is one of the problems, that people
no longer trust Members of Parliament? If that is the case—and
I personally believe it is the case and you say that it is not
the reality but, even if it is not the reality, it is what people
perceive—how can we reverse that? How can we redress that?
Ms Ettinghausen: If we had a discussion
about why people do not vote, we might be here for another few
years! There are many, many reasons for that. I think, as Andrew
said before, there is a difference between people's perception
of their own individual MP, which is quite favourable, versus
MPs and politics and Parliament as a class, if you like. What
we are trying to do is to find ways to bridge that difference
and try to get people to be more familiar with Parliament and
the political process in order that they can understand that there
is this kind of independence, there are MPs with independent minds,
there is a great deal of work that goes on in committees and there
is a great deal of work that individual MPs do beyond going through
the lobbies. I think there is this gap between the public understanding,
as I think was said before, in that they understand surgeries
and they understand Prime Minister's Questions, but the bits in
between are not there. It is largely the fault of the media but
there is some role that Parliament can play in making that more
accessible to the media. One of the things that one of the political
editors said to us was that they are sold stories all the time,
they are sold stories, stories, stories, and what they are sold
from Parliament is lists and it is no wonder that there is that
difference.
Q54 Liz Blackman: The central proposition
that you have come forward with this morning is a communications
strategy and I buy into what you were saying about how we very
poorly describe the process and the living process, not just how
Parliament works but how it deals with particular issues of great
concern to the public. Going back to this communications strategy
which is the main idea on the table, what would be the absolute
central features of this communications strategy which you think
would begin to crack open this problem we are all facing about
parliamentary credibility?
Lord Puttnam: The report is quite
detailed on this and we have made a series of suggestions as to
the way forward.
Q55 Liz Blackman: If you had to start
the ball rolling, what would be the absolute central part of this
or is it very, very complex?
Lord Puttnam: No.
Q56 Liz Blackman: And multifaceted?
Lord Puttnam: Actually, it is
the present strategy that is complex and multifaceted. I would
like to highlight something which is far and away the most amusing
part of the entire report. We illustrated a flowchart of the way
communications is handled in Parliament and it is frankly impenetrable;[2]
it is funny but, as yet, no one has been able to claim that it
is inaccurate. We also suggested another way of doing it which
is rather more simple and sensible.[3]
It is not difficult to create a visible strategy with clear lines
of communication and clear lines of demarcation for the whole
of Parliament. However, there has to be the political will to
demand that this happens because it is unlikely to just bubble
up from within the organisation itself.
Mr Lansley: There are certain
sorts of process aspects of communication strategy. One is relating
to what Nick Winterton was just asking. One of the recommendations
is that such a communication strategy and its pursuit needs to
be administered independently with Parliament by Members of Parliament
but not at the behest of political parties. Also, it needs to
be agreed. The House of Commons and the House of Lords need to
agree the strategy and the principles that underlie it and indeed
in that sense give explicit sanction to the way in which the officers
of the House need to work because they need in that sense leadership
from within Parliament for it to happen. So far as the substance
is concerned, not only the principles need to be set out but actually
in substance and my personal view—and I think it is reflected
to some extent by what is said in the Commission's report—is
that there needs to be an understanding that the job of Parliament
is to scrutinise the Executive and having legitimised government,
Parliament then needs to examine and scrutinise and have a critique
of government, and that is as true for a government Member of
Parliament of the governing party as it is for an opposition Member
of Parliament and it is the fact that you, as a member of the
Labour Party, scrutinise and offer a critique of your government
on its actions, like the Hansard Society's Counting House document
where the scrutiny of public expenditure is concerned. There is
progress being made on all these things but there is no reflection
in the communications activity of Parliament itself sufficient
to reflect that happening. Even free votes. We have more free
votes and I was an advocate of free votes, for example, on smoking—the
first person to say it. We had it and it was in that sense, in
parliamentary terms, a substantial success, but I still think
that actually it was quite difficult for the public—
Q57 Sir Nicholas Winterton: I was
still in a minority!
Mr Lansley: Yes, but that is the
nature of democracy, is it not? I think it is quite difficult
for the public to come to terms with what was actually going on
and how it was going to work. They find that quite difficult still.
Dame Patricia Hodgson: It is about
purpose and about you, who are Parliament, owning the purpose
and then the professionalism of the structure. I think it is perhaps
hard to remember now but, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the
political parties used to say many of the things that have been
said around the table: the media is impossible; we are always
on the back foot; there is nothing you can do about it; we must
somehow stop them. Then, actually what the political parties did,
largely New Labour, was simply to decide that there was something
they could do, they could professionalise their system. You may
not like the content of what they do but it is terrifically professional
and, as I was saying earlier, the government machine really sets
the agenda. Now, you are never going to set the agenda in quite
the same way but you can inform the agenda and it is about not
saying, "It's the sea, we can't do anything about it",
it is saying, "Okay, let's build a ship".
Mr Vaizey: It will not surprise you to
learn that I agree with every word that has been said by you.
I think it is fantastic.
Chairman: Every word?
Q58 Mr Vaizey: Every single word!
Even that the amended communications strategy is to describe the
agenda, not set the agenda. I agree with the amended words as
well. I shall make a few remarks and end with a question. First
of all, I have just spent two days with the army in Shrivenham,
which is in my constituency, talking about defence policy and
of course the media is now a central part of defence policy, if
you like, and one of their blue sky thinkers who apparently advises
the Secretary of State for Defence was talking about this new
environment that we have to come to terms with and he put a figure
on this, a third of which is the media, that is the environment
in which the armed forces operate. So, when you think about an
organisation that is set up to, as it were, kill the Queen's enemies,
they are thinking very strongly about the media and are also thinking
about judges and the law and so on and how barristers now speak
to the media at the end of their cases when they were not allowed
to do so before. So, everyone is adapting and changing and I think
it is barking mad for us to think that we can just carry on ignoring
what is going on. I completely agree with the website points and
I really wanted to make that point because the website is completely
and utterly impenetrable. It is absurd and all we do want to do
is look at the website to drill down into issues and to navigate
easily and that is something that is becoming incredibly urgent
and I note even from our own evidence that it is a five-year programme
plan to get the website up to date, which again is boring. Just
on the Communications Bill, I see the Communications Bill as being
a defender of Parliament, both in the grand sense but also in
the very trivial sense. It should not surprise us that MPs get
a good kicking on a whole range of issues simply because there
is no objective spokesman to defend MPs. So, we will get the traditional
stories over some select committee junkets with no one putting
that into context; we will get in October the traditional stories
of MPs spending a fortune on their parliamentary allowances with
nobody putting that into context; and we will get the stories
about MPs' pensions with no one putting them into context but
maybe there is no context to put that into. The short answer to
Ann's question actually should have been, in an ideal world, "Ask
the Communications Director". By having a communications
director for Parliament, you can take the problems of how you
access Parliament if you do not have access to the internet and
say, "What are you doing about it?" There is one person
to whom you can go and say it. The question I want to ask—and
I do not want to interrupt what is quite a free-flowing discussion
and perhaps you could leave it to the end—is, I suspect
that, as with almost everything, Parliament in Britain is highly
respected abroad by other countries and I would be interested
to know what other parliaments are doing in terms of their communications
strategy and also the issue about respect for parliament as opposed
to respect for the political process, whether there is any way
there can be any comparison made with other similar countries
about how they view their Parliaments and whether you have worked
out if there is any correlation between a pro-active parliament
having greater respect from its public.
Lord Puttnam: I will ask Clare
to answer the substance of that question but I will just take
one slither of it because, in a sense, it is an answer partly
to Ann Coffey's earlier question. You mentioned defence and indeed
Andrew Lansley touched on this. It became very clear when we were
taking evidence that there was real tension within the media whereby
the specialist media feel themselves severely disadvantaged in
terms of access to Parliament when compared to the lobby correspondents
and the sketch writers. Lobby correspondents and sketch writers
seem to have the ability to grab the attention of their editors.
That is where the passes tend to go; that is where access goes
to; and, on individual issues, it is surprisingly difficult sometimes
for a specialist journalist to get into even a committee hearing
on their own subject. There are a number of excuses for this and
you could say that they are just not trying hard enough, but it
is absolutely clear that there are tensions within the newspapers
themselves where specialist coverage is concerned and the sketch
writer wants to handle the issue. It is only part of the story.
If we could enable specialist trade magazines and people like
that to get in and feel welcome and informed, we would probably
go some way towards answering your question. Clare, would you
handle the international aspect.
Ms Ettinghausen: I can try. I
thought what you said about who speaks for Parliament and what
happens during recess was interesting. It was not so long ago
that I had a call from the Evening Standard saying that
they had measured how hard MPs worked based on expenses, how they
turned up, what committees they sat on and I was asked if this
was a fair analysis, to which of course I said that it was obviously
not. They asked who they could telephone in Parliament who was
not an MP to give them an assessment and I said that I could not
think of anyone. I was asked if I would give a quote that said
"MPs are not such a bad lot after all" which obviously
I was more than happy to do, but I thought it was quite interesting.
The Hansard Society is very happy to say things like that, but
why is there not someone in Parliament who can say that MPs actually
work quite hard? I thought that was quite interesting. In terms
of what other parliaments do, I think it is quite hard to find
a direct correlation between having a fantastic communications
strategy, very high turnout, respect for politics and individual
politicians or parliamentarians. It is very complicated. We do
know that, for example, in the US, which albeit with the separation
of power is a different system, Congress is taken much more seriously
and what happens in committees is taken much more seriously both
by the public and the media, albeit for slightly different reasons.
Even within the UK, I think that what happens in Scotland is quite
interesting and, going back to the questions about the communications
strategy, the principles adopted by the Scottish Parliament when
it was set up has enabled them to review everything they do according
to those principles, whether it is about access and participation
or equal opportunities or transparency. Everything that the Parliament
does—and the Parliament has a corporate body to see that
through—can be reviewed according to those principles. One
of the things that the Scottish Parliament does do is to have
a media officer who puts news stories on the parliamentary website.
I said that, in Westminster, there was concern about officials
perhaps taking a party line and queried whether the corporate
body had ever been called up before the relevant parliamentary
committee. They said that no one had ever questioned them in the
time that they had been doing that and no one had ever said that
they had made a party political point. I think it is worth stressing
that officials can see which stories are newsworthy, they can
be as independent and non-partisan as they have to be and that
having some principles according to which they decide those stories
makes that an easier process. The Puttnam Commission did set out
some principles according to which a communications strategy could
be built upon which if that is decided politically by MPs and
peers, that enables officials to have a structure within which
to do all the activity that they would need to do on a daily basis.
Mr Lansley: Part of the euro barometer
includes questions about distrust of national parliaments reported
in para 2.16 which found in 2004 that 61% of UK respondents said
that they did not trust their national parliament compared with
an EU, this is EU15, average of 54%. So, we are not vastly worse
but, given the nature of your question and the respect in which
the British Parliament is held abroad, actually it is not reflected
well in terms of trust inside the UK and indeed the knowledge
of Parliament in this country has, on a long-term trend, declined
and continued to decline—
Q59 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Not in
the Commonwealth where we are highly regarded.
Mr Lansley: No, no, I am talking
about in this country. Knowledge of Parliament in this country
has perversely been falling slightly at the same time as knowledge
of the institutions of the European Union and local councils has
been rising. So, insofar as knowledge is trust, Parliament in
this country with our electorates has been losing ground rather
than gaining ground.
2 Members Only? Parliament in the Public Eye,
diagram p 33. Back
3
Ibid, diagram p 34. Back
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