House of Commons - Administration

Select Committee on Administration First Report

3 What should Parliament provide for its visitors?

31. Despite an apparent public perception of Parliament as an exclusive institution,[31] current visitors to Westminster have a number of different opportunities to see the work of Parliament first hand. The House of Commons Commission Annual Report estimates that there were approximately 800,000 visitors to Parliament in 2005/06.[32] It should be taken into account that figures for that year were affected by the General Election and the July bombings and therefore were lower than expected. The latter event caused a drop in visitor numbers for all major visitor sites in London.Table 3: Number of visitors to Parliament

Total number of visitors 800,000

of which:

Tours organised by the Central Tours Office 187,000

Visitors to the House of Commons Chamber galleries[33] 100,287

Student visits organised by the Education Service 11,170

Summer Opening 79,170

Source: Twenty-eighth Report of the House of Commons Commission for 2006-06, HC (2005-06), para 169

32. As records are not kept for other categories of visitors, it must be presumed that the majority of visitors attend committee meetings and business meetings with Members of either House or officials; or are guests at official functions and events taking place on the Parliamentary Estate. There is currently no facility also to calculate the proportion of UK visitors to overseas visitors.

33. A full list of areas and events open to the public throughout the year can be found at Annex 1.

34. In addition to services for general visitors attending meetings or booked on tours, the Parliamentary Education Service (which works of behalf of both Houses) provides the following programmes and training days for school groups and teachers:

Parliament Explained Visits—Year 3-13 students (age 7-18);
Student Parliaments—Year 7-13 (age 11-18);
Teacher Seminar Days, and
Outreach Programme.

35. Approximately 15 schools visit a week at the moment, with space for a potential maximum of 20 schools. Groups of up to 32, including teachers, can be accommodated.[34]

What is not available

36. Evidence to us suggests that the current service for visitors, if it continued as it is, could not achieve the level of engagement and connection with the public that the Houses of Parliament have agreed is necessary, for the following reasons:

a) Facilities available for the Education Service are limited:

i. There is no dedicated teaching space but only the temporary use of two meeting rooms. As there are only two rooms available (the Macmillan Room in Portcullis House and Room A in 1 Parliament Street) and the Service only has the use of the rooms until 5pm, there is limited capacity. Consequently, there is a waiting list of two terms. As a result, considerably more school groups (five times as many) come on a tour organised by the Central Tours Office than on a programme tailored specifically for school children by the Education Service.

ii. Whilst Visitor Assistants, who conduct two Members' tours for school groups a day, are "curriculum trained",[35] the majority of tour guides are not.[36] Members' Tours are not tailored for young people: they tend to be half an hour longer than Education Service tours and concentrate on the history and development of Parliament and its art and architecture, rather than on what Parliament does.

iii. The lack of space and dedicated facilities for the Education Service mean that it will be difficult for the Service to expand its current activities for visiting schools groups beyond 28,000 children a year despite strong demand. The Education Service is already competing with Members for space in meeting rooms to cope with the demand from schools for programmed visits.

iv. In addition, the Education Service is unable to cater for students with special needs, informal learners, adult learners or community groups. We return to the limitations faced by the Education Service in its current facilities in part three.

b) Efforts to provide visitors with information are uncoordinated and disparate. Andy Martin from MORI, who undertook visitor research for the Houses of Parliament, told us:

c) He said that nine out of ten current visitors were satisfied with their visit to Parliament but felt the welcome and levels of information available should be improved.[38] Although some brief pamphlets are provided for visitors, not enough information, interpretation and interactivity is available about the work of Parliament, and what happens in the Chamber and in Committees. The bookstall in St Stephen's Hall, which sells basic guide books and postcards amongst other items, is unable to carry a large amount of stock due to the lack of space; and the Parliamentary Bookshop on Parliament Street, which sells parliamentary and government documents, is not immediately obvious to visitors to Parliament due to its tucked-away location.

d) Members Tours along the Visitor Route are almost at capacity. The increase in the overall number of visitors walking through the Houses of Parliament each year on tours in general has added to the wear and tear on the building. However, visitors who are not on an official tour have no alternative to queuing for seats in the viewing galleries if they want to learn more about Parliament.

e) There are also limited facilities available on the Parliamentary Estate to provide public exhibition space or to display art from the Palace of Westminster collection.

f) Whilst we understand from the MORI research that the public recognises that security is an issue for the building, the entry process remains unfriendly and the public feel in the way.[39] The introduction of Visitor Assistants, to provide information and guidance to visitors as they queue up to enter the Palace of Westminster, has helped provide a more professional and pleasant welcome to the public. The reception of visitors to the building should be improved once the Visitor Reception Building has opened.

37. The Palace of Westminster is not a museum; it is the home of a working Parliament. Visitor facilities should not compromise the efficiency and effectiveness of Parliament's work. The United Kingdom public is entitled to see their Parliament in action and to expect an open welcome with guidance and information to make their visit productive and memorable. However, the severe pressure on accommodation within the Parliamentary Estate means that it is necessary for us to prioritise among our visitors.

Proposals for a Parliamentary Visitor and Information Centre

38. As both Houses had approved the principle of a full-scale interpretative visitor centre to provide information for visitors to explain Parliament's role and how it works,[40] a Feasibility Report and options appraisal was prepared at our request showing options for a Parliamentary Visitor and Information Centre (PVIC) outside the Parliamentary Estate, but within a 250m radius of the Palace of Westminster, on the same side of the river Thames and within a clear sightline to the Palace.

39. In preparing the Feasibility Report the following assumptions were made: the centre would be a destination in its own right to complement existing services for visitors and Members; and its objectives and target audience were those identified by us, together with the House of Lords Information Committee.

40. The four options assessed at our request were:

A full-scale "ideal" centre that would provide all facilities identified as desirable, including an exhibition space, shop, education centre and café;
A reduced-scale centre with more limited facilities;
An education centre only—which would provide for up to 100,000 learners a year, or
Do nothing.

41. The four options were assessed based on outline illustrative concepts provided by architects and an environment and transport appraisal. A shortened version of the Feasibility Report is appended as evidence to this Report.[41]

42. We judged the four options in terms of :

a) how they would support the core strategic aims of both Houses;

b) the recommendations in previous Committees' reports;

c) the limitations in possible growth of current provision of visitor services;

d) the needs of the target audience we had identified, and

e) value for money.

43. We acknowledge that to "do nothing" is not an acceptable option. The Houses' core objectives of promoting public knowledge and understanding of the work and role of Parliament could not be achieved in the context of current services provided to visitors, particularly those provided by the Parliamentary Education Service which are already at capacity. As Parliament promotes the limited facilities and resources it has to offer, the demand for visitor services provided by the website, Education Service and Information Offices is likely to increase beyond current capacity. The Education Service in particular will not be able to continue to expand its services without a dedicated teaching space.

44. To do nothing would bring into question Parliament's commitment, through its strategic plans, to improving the public's knowledge of its work. In our judgment, such an approach would fail to respond both to the scale of the physical challenge we face at Westminster in handling the large number of school visitors, and to the political task of re-engaging with school groups and other young people for whom Parliament may be remote and difficult to understand. Some improvement in services is necessary in order to provide both a signal of commitment and an opportunity to deliver substantial change. It is important that Parliament is not seen as exclusive, unwilling to open up and welcome the citizens who pay for its upkeep. This could be damaging to the reputation of Parliament.

45. We considered that the options presented to us for a new-build centre on either College Green or Victoria Tower Gardens were unacceptable due to the likely scale of the capital and revenue costs of each option (over £80 million for the "ideal" PVIC)[42] and to the probable opposition from the planning authorities. Whilst most Members who responded to our survey thought that better facilities should be provided for visitors, we thought it unlikely that Members would support the creation of a centre at the cost estimated by the Feasibility Report. Several Members who responded had concerns over the potential disruption to services to Members and also the prioritisation of funding for a potential new visitor and information centre over facilities for Members.[43] In addition, Professor Victor Middleton, an independent academic and consultant on tourism, suggested that a visitor centre might not be the most cost effective method to achieve the Houses' core objectives, particularly if a large proportion of its visitors were overseas tourists.[44]

46. Evidence we received from Westminster City Council and English Heritage expressed serious concerns over the use of parks and open spaces as sites for a major building project. Both College Green and Victoria Tower Gardens are on the ancient sites of Ludenwic and Thorney Island and are therefore archaeologically sensitive.[45]

47. We consider that at the cost estimated by the Feasibility Report and Options Appraisal, published as an appendix to this Report, a new build visitor centre would not represent value for money. In reaching this conclusion, the Committee agreed to look again at the prioritisation of visitors to Parliament and to decide how best to improve visitor facilities without the construction of a new building.

Who should be the focus of Parliament's visitor services?

48. Both Houses have agreed that they must do more to improve the public understanding of the work and role of Parliament. In particular, all visitors should leave Parliament knowing more than when they came.

49. Parliament attracts various groups of visitors to the viewing galleries, tours and programmes already available. Some are visiting the area already and want to see inside the building; others are interested in the business of Parliament. We do not want to discourage people from coming to Parliament. However, to attempt to improve services to all visitors would either require excessive resource, or would leave that resource so thinly spread as to make no real difference. We are most likely to be successful in engaging with the public if we focus on those visitors we most want to reach and on what Parliament already does well. The Chairman of GIP described to us how this would combine with the three elements of a strategy for connecting with the public: reception of visitors at Westminster; explanation of Parliament across the country in schools and communities and provision of information in virtual form through Parliament's website.

YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOL GROUPS

50. The Puttnam Commission found that there had been a recent drop in participation among specific sections of society in electoral turnout - in particular, younger adults were disengaged from the political process and not getting into the habit of voting as they grew older. This had led to a "creeping and more firmly entrenched disengagement moving up the generations."[46] The Puttnam Commission argued that the introduction of citizenship education in the national curriculum for secondary schools in England presented Parliament with a historic opportunity to communicate its value to young people and involve them in its activities.[47]

51. The Parliamentary Education Service already provides specific links to the national curriculum in its programmes. It currently arranges programmes for children from the ages of 7 to 18. In Wales citizenship is part of the statutory provision for Personal and Social Education at Key Stages 1 to 4; in Northern Ireland "Local and Global citizenship'" will be a new statutory subject in 2008; and in Scotland "Values and Citizenship" is one of the five national priorities in education. Citizenship studies in England at Key Stages 3 and 4 (ages 13-15) emphasise the importance of Parliament and cover events such as the Gunpowder Plot and the English Civil War.[48] However, young people aged 16-24 are widely regarded as a particularly disengaged group (and as a result are one of the main targets of the Electoral Commission's outreach strategy) and therefore likely to benefit from participation in Education Service programmes, whether or not they are in formal education.[49]

52. We understand that, in future, the role of Parliament may well become a more important part of the citizenship curriculum. The Parliamentary Education Service needs to plug into this by providing schools with programmes that will encourage and develop students' knowledge of Parliament inside and outside the classroom. Philip Ginnings, of Ounsdale High School, has suggested to us that Parliament should "provide an interactive set of tools that would engage young people with the political process."[50] The Association for Citizenship Teaching evidence thought that in developing its visitor services, Parliament could be:

53. The Puttnam Commission found that many young people were interested in political issues, particularly broad social issues, but were unaware of the role that Parliament played.[52] In its evidence to us, the Hansard Society said that in their Connecting Communities programme, young people had responded positively towards the visitor centre at the Scottish Parliament which they had felt was welcoming, informative and made them feel involved.[53]

54. The Education Service told us that teachers can sometimes lack confidence teaching citizenship and politics to their pupils. An important strand of what the Service is trying to achieve is to work with teachers, particularly PGCE students and trainee teachers, during the Service's Teacher Seminar Days to ensure they have a better understanding of Parliament that can be passed on to their students. The Association for Citizenship Teaching suggested that all Citizenship PGCE students should be taken around Parliament as a matter of course.[54]

55. There is a growing sense within Parliament that education could provide the most effective means by which young people can be helped to understand the work of Parliament and become interested and engaged in the democratic process and continue to be so in later life. However with its current level of resources, the Education Service is not able to meet the current demand for its programmes or reach out to those schools which are either unaware of its services or unable to visit Parliament. It is important that we engage voters of the future in the work and role of Parliament in order to promote a lifetime's interest and participation in the democratic process. The best way to reach most young people is within an organised learning environment, with direct relevance to what they are being taught every day in the classroom.

56. The House of Commons Commission has stated that in terms of visitor services: "visits conducted under the auspices of the Education Service should in principle be prioritised":[55] we agree. We believe that the highest priority for an improvement in visitor services must be to provide dedicated facilities for educational groups.

57. At our request, a paper was prepared illustrating how education facilities might be developed to provide a greater range of activities and programmes for learners of all ages. The paper is appended to this Report.[56] We return to this in Part Four.

YOUNG PEOPLE INDIVIDUALLY, WITH THEIR FAMILIES OR WITH YOUTH GROUPS

58. The Feasibility Report prepared for us envisaged that, if there were improved visitor facilities at Parliament, young people would also visit outside of arranged school visits as part of family, community or youth groups.[57] This reflects the experience of other London sites such as the Churchill Museum which some of us visited. Such activities should be both educational and enjoyable. New educational facilities should be designed principally for school groups. But providing facilities flexible enough to be used for activities involving young people visiting other than through schools could allow for a fuller use of the space outside of term time.

PEOPLE INTERESTED IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS AND HOW PARLIAMENT WORKS

59. MORI told us that, in demographic terms, people who are interested in Parliament are likely to be aged 45-59 of AB social class living in London.[58] This group tends already to be engaged in the political process. Rather than trying to provide dedicated on-site facilities for this group, we believe that they are best catered for through the Parliamentary website and through the existing opportunities to visit, which they are well placed to take advantage of. Dedicated educational facilities may provide opportunities for some adult learners to learn more about Parliament through participation in seminars, discussions and workshops at times when the facilities are not being used by school groups.

TOURISTS

60. Tourists from both the UK and overseas visit Parliament either because they have serious cultural and historical interests in the Palace of Westminster or because they are in the Westminster area and want to visit the building. The latter's needs are already met to some extent through areas already open to the public, the Jubilee café, the souvenir shop and the wide range of printed and online information available on Parliament.

61. There is scope for Parliament to provide better facilities for all those interested in visiting. However, in the current climate of pressure on accommodation and in the interests of concentrating resources where they are most needed, we do not favour the allocation of a new dedicated space to any category of visitor other than educational groups.

VIRTUAL VISITORS

62. Currently the Parliamentary website is being radically overhauled to improve the information provided online. Heather Mayfield, Deputy Head of the Science Museum, told us that everything that appeared on the floor of the Science Museum appears in the same form on the web—including games and activities.[59] A redesign of the website will provide the opportunity for a review of the range of information about the role and work of Parliament, as well as the cultural and heritage aspects of the Palace of Westminster, which people can access remotely. It should be possible for example to enable the virtual visitor to see more of the Palace interiors and offer an opportunity for as the public to leave online comments. Select Committees have already begun to experiment with e-consultation. The Education Service has found that teachers prefer to access teaching materials online rather than be sent documents in hard copy. Therefore, guidance for teachers, classroom resources and the full range of educational publications are already all available in electronic downloadable form. If the Education Service is to expand its activities and programmes at Westminster it should also reproduce these new activities online. The redevelopment of the Parliamentary website provides an ideal opportunity to make information more accessible for people interested in the democratic process and how Parliament works, and in the cultural heritage of the Palace of Westminster, particularly for those who are unable, or disinclined, to visit Parliament.

Visitor Services at other Parliaments

63. We wrote to a selection of other Parliaments and discovered that there was a varied provision of facilities for visitors. Most Parliaments aim to provide the general public with useful information about the parliamentary process, but those with more substantial facilities have dedicated provision for school groups. We also asked these Parliaments whether they provided subsidised travel costs for their visitors. Information from each Parliament is contained in an Annex to this Report.[60] It is clear from the information provided to us that provision for visitors at Westminster has fallen behind other Parliaments and Assemblies, both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

64. We note with interest the subsidies provided by some Parliaments for transport costs of visitors - in particular for those countries aiming to encourage visits from schools in areas furthest away from the Parliament itself. We make recommendations on this matter in the next part of this Report.[61]

31 Ev 27 Back

32 Twenty-eighth Report of the House of Commons Commission for2006-06, HC (2005-06), para 169 Back

33 An equivalent figure is not available for the number of visitors to the House of Lords galleries in 2005-06; however there were 56,585 visitors to the House of Lords public gallery in 2004-05. Back

34 Figures provided by the Parliamentary Education Service. Back

35 "Curriculum trained" means they have received training in delivering tours geared towards the needs of young people and school groups as well as attending a Parliamentary Education Service workshop on how Parliament links to the National Curriculum. Back

36 There are 15 Visitor Assistantsand approximately 59 guides conducting tours of the Palace. Figures provided by the Central Tours Office. Back

37 Qq 47-48 Back

38 Q 57 Back

39 Q 50 Back

40 See para 23 Back

41 Ev 67 Back

42 Ev 77, 84 Back