Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-175)
PROFESSOR JONATHAN
DRORI CBE, MR
PETER RIDDELL,
DR LAURA
MILLER, MS
KATHY BUCKNER
AND MS
ELLA TAYLOR-SMITH
30 JANUARY 2008
Q160 Mr Chope: The e-consultation
which this Committee has been doing provides some evidence that
security of personal information is a major concern for potential
users. Would it be possible to offer a recognisable "secure"
site similar to the sort used for online purchasing?
Professor Drori: Yes.
Q161 Mr Chope: Would that be very
expensive or complicated?
Professor Drori: I do not think
it is a particularly hard thing to do. There are a lot of organisations
that offer secure services. It is a matter of deciding on the
level of security you need and what information is going to be
collected, about whom, and where it is going to be stored, and
so on. Those kinds of decisions need to be taken, but technically
it is not a problem. There are quite a lot of recent examples
of information about people being lost by people carrying CDs
across the country, and so on, and posting them. Generally, these
are cases where information has been lost because of contravention
of guidelines, and so on, so in the end if Parliament or Government
has data about people it will probably leak out and it will probably
be leaking out because of human beings doing what human beings
do, which is make mistakes. The website itself can be made pretty
secure.
Q162 Mr Chope: So you would be in
favour of doing that, having that as part of the system?
Professor Drori: Having something
that is secure, yes. I think that legally you are likely to be
bound to because of the Data Protection Act.
Mr Chope: Yes. Thank you.
Q163 Chairman: If we were to recommend
a system whereby a Government minister could have up to two replies,
rather like the Number 10 system, and that also the constituency
MP could respond, do you think there would be any negative effect
if the constituency MP was then allowed to correspond with the
petitioner on other issues?
Mr Riddell: Yes.
Dr Miller: Absolutely.
Mr Riddell: I think it should
be very specific. It follows on from Mr Chope's question. It is
the other side of security. I think it is very, very important
that it is not used for other purposes.
Dr Miller: Yes.
Mr Riddell: That really is important,
however legitimate those purposes are. We are all aware of these
issues, so I think it is very important it should not be.
Q164 Chairman: So it is about the
point of the data being held centrally and the MP being asked
to give his response, which would then be sent out by officials
here probably?
Dr Miller: Yes.
Mr Riddell: Absolutely.
Q165 Chairman: Do you have any view
on whether it is better to have an opt in or an opt out, "Tick
here if you do not wish to hear from your MP"?
Professor Drori: The default condition
should be that you do not get spammed.
Q166 Chairman: Right, so "Tick
here if you do want to hear from your MP on this issue" is
the way you would prefer to see this point handled?
Professor Drori: Yes.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q167 John Hemming: How much do you
think it will cost, and what other resource implications are there?
Ms Buckner: The costs are not
just the system itself.
Q168 John Hemming: That is why I
said money cost. If you did what I think is the sensible approach,
which is to go out to tender to a supplier, an undefined supplier,
what would you expect to pay for the hardware and the system build,
and things like that, ideally what would you pay for the running
costs, and what other resource costs within Parliament would you
think there are?
Dr Miller: As the Hansard Society,
we never do build, so I could not advise you about what you would
expect. I would advise, though, that you would not necessarily
assume that—you know, you do pay for what you get, but also
expensive is not necessarily better. You have to find a way of
knowing what you are willing to, I suppose, let go of in terms
of healthy system development, but I think the other costs are
paramount to consider. So the costs would be in terms of process,
hugely, so whether it be about changing certain processes you
have in Parliament, whether it be about ways of ensuring that
ministers, and so on and so forth, are in contact with the people
who are petitioning, all these kinds of things, so therefore the
communication with the petitioners is massive. As a cost, I would
not say it is necessarily a huge cost, but it is a matter of priority
in terms of budgeting for the cost. The other thing is that there
is a Government standard for piloting, which you are probably
all aware of, about making sure there is an evaluation built in.
This goes back to the question about transparency also, but the
more that it is audited and checked, the more pleased people are
going to be with the result, so as long as the process is fair
then there will be more public support. So I think that has to
be built into the cost also. It is not just about the system,
in other words, but it is about all the things which tie into
the use.
Ms Buckner: I think there will
be some other costs which will be perhaps more hidden as well,
like education of Members about how they are going to use the
system, which will be much harder to put a real figure on, but
it will be a cost. Then there will be the other costs, which probably
will be staffing of people who are moderating the petitions and
seeing whether they are valid petitions or not, which you will
also have to take into account. But as regards the system, without
knowing what it is going to be specified as you cannot estimate
at this stage.
Professor Drori: I agree with
what you have said. I think that education of the public is another
thing you need to think about costing into this, so I would see
it as a sort of total project. Technologically, from what I have
heard today, there is nothing very unusual here, there is nothing
that is not routine for some company somewhere, in all the parts
of this, and I think in this country there are plenty of organisations
that could bid to do this work. So that is a good sign. I would
say the technology part of it is not tens of thousands and it
is not millions, it is somewhere between the two, so I would not
be surprised if it was hundreds of thousands. It is that sort
of level. I would also add the important caveat that there are
relatively small decisions you might make which could make a big
difference to the cost. For example, the level of data security
or the sort of ruggedness of the system. Do you want it to be
working 99% of the time or 99.999% of the time? That makes a big
difference to the cost, those sorts of things. I think actually,
from what I know from your parliamentary web team, they would
probably be able to sort out a lot of those things and be able
to come back to you with a much closer quote based on the way
you direct them. I think, from what I know of them, they would
be able to give you a tighter estimate.
Q169 Mr Chope: If you have a secure,
centralised system, then it means that MPs will not know the names
and addresses—they may know the names but they will not
know the addresses of the petitioners. That may not matter in
a national petition, but in a local petition it might be absolutely
fundamental to the relevance of that petition, for example over
a school closure, over a post office closure, over a road development,
and in that situation the idea of having a local petition would
be rather negated unless there was some system for enabling the
Member to know who had been petitioning. So we have been thinking
about the idea of saying, "This is a local petition. It must
be limited to people from particular postcodes." Have you
got any other ideas as to how we could overcome that problem?
Ms Taylor-Smith: I think you could
look at things, rather than looking at limiting something to certain
postcodes. We talked about this earlier. There is a real danger
with somebody deciding for you whether a petition is too local
for you. For example, many of us work in one constituency and
live in another, so rather than restrict the signing of a petition
to a constituency or a postcode, perhaps some sort of map could
be made available which had an indication of the volume of signatures
from each postcode.
Q170 Mr Chope: That could be done
quite easily, could it, on the technical side?
Ms Taylor-Smith: Yes.
Mr Riddell: The postcode seems
the balance between anonymity and information, the most effective
one.
Professor Drori: When we are talking
about whether you opt in or opt out of email, and so on, I think
we are all agreed that it was best to have a default condition
where you opt out of receiving email from your MP. I just wonder
whether keeping your address secret from your MP is actually a
different thing, is it not? It is one thing having someone just
know who you are and there is another one about just getting email
that you do not want for evermore and being told to cast my vote
in a particular way, which I would not want. So one might allow
the public, perhaps with a note of why they might want to allow
it, particularly on local issues: "It would help your MP
to know your address. Is that all right?" But you would then
have to opt in then to receiving mail or anything else from your
MP, so they would not be allowed to send you anything, they just
would have the information.
Dr Miller: I am hesitant about
this. I think it is a good idea generally to use postcodes as
a way of adjudicating where people are coming from, and so forth,
but obviously people can abuse that system in any case, so you
have not got anything foolproof there. There is another question—and
I am not saying this because I am saying anything definitive,
but there is another question about whether or not you do definitely
want to limit it to postcodes. For example, I cannot think of
a concrete thing where something is happening in Cornwall and
I, living in London, care about it, but there might be cases where
that is happening, that a particular area of the country is affected
by a particular issue.
Professor Drori: If you have a
parent living there.
Dr Miller: Yes, you have a parent
living there or you just care about the issue. Although it is
a local concern, it is a concern of national interest, so would
you want to limit it? I think use postcodes, yes, but not necessarily
limit petitions to the postcodes. Then the MP can see, because
of the backend data, there is a map which can be brought out which
shows how many people signed from a particular constituency. You
can see whether it was 80% from their constituency, 20% from other
constituencies around the country, and therefore what the weight
of local opinion is, but you cannot even extrapolate from that
particularly to say, "Therefore, 80% of my constituency feels
this way." I do not know how necessary it is to limit. I
just think use them, but do not limit them.
Chairman: Okay. I hope to finish in five
minutes.
Q171 Rosemary McKenna: Just quickly,
we all go onto sites and they crash and we get terribly frustrated
and annoyed. Do you think it would undermine public confidence
when the site fails or crashes?
Professor Drori: Yes.
Dr Miller: Yes.
Q172 Rosemary McKenna: Is that a
danger?
Dr Miller: That is why I said
you get what you pay for. You definitely do not want to have a
bargain basement system which is not reliable because it could
be dealing with huge amounts of traffic, and the things people
could do to that system if they wanted to. I think you would need
to make sure that you had a system which gave you some guarantees
on that.
Q173 Rosemary McKenna: It would have
to be very robust, would it not?
Dr Miller: Yes.
Q174 Rosemary McKenna: So what level
of delay would you find acceptable, if people are waiting to get
onto the site? I personally think that people would not accept
any delay, they would want it to happen the minute they decide
they want to sign the petition, or get involved. They find out
what it is about and they would want it instantly.
Professor Drori: There are many
possible delays and I think if you were specifying such a system
to a supplier you would need to unpick these. What kind of delay
is acceptable if you type in the web address before the page comes
up? What kind of delay is acceptable if you submit a petition
before you get an email back saying, "We've got it"?
All those things. There are general standards of good practice
in usability which are generally accepted for these things, how
many seconds, how many milliseconds, and so on. Again, I would
say those are well understood by your web team.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q175 Mr Gale: Very briefly, unless
you are a fully paid up Luddite this is one of those things it
is very difficult to oppose because everybody wants greater access,
do they not, except me? Does anybody know of anywhere where it
has actually achieved anything, other than perhaps a useful safety
valve for allowing the public to let off steam? Has e-petitioning
led anywhere to a change in law?
Professor Drori: Switzerland,
I believe. Actually, I am not sure about e-petitioning, but certainly
if you get a certain number of petitions, signatures, that forces
a referendum, I believe, in Switzerland.
Dr Miller: Yes. I think it is
perhaps an achievement that it changes a law, because I think
that that law would probably change anyway under public pressure
through different mechanisms over a longer period. So perhaps
what you could say is that where MPs or parliaments come under
pressure to revise decisions, or Government itself has come under
pressure to revise decisions, then petitions can only have speeded
up that process. But if that is not anything you are trying to
achieve, law change that you are trying to achieve, engagement,
there are lots of other things and petitions are one step in that
direction.
Mr Riddell: I would make two points.
I think one has got to take the "e" and the petition
and treat them slightly separately. The "e" bit is modern
technology and the opportunities we now have. The petitions part
I think reflects much more a political question of disenchantment
with representative institutions, and Hansard is absolutely devoted
to strengthening representative institutions and Parliament representing
democracy. So I think one has to take the two factors, the political
change and political culture, which is pressure, and the "e"
bit, which makes it much more easy to communicate. I think those
are the two answers. We operate in a political culture where Parliament
is under more pressure and more scepticism. The "e"
bit gives you a much better opportunity to communicate. That is
my answer to that so far. I think you can point in Scotland to
some positive results. One should not overdo it, but from the
reports I have read and the people I have talked to in Edinburgh
it indicates, without being starry-eyed and all of that, that
there are positive results from it and properly handled, as your
inquiry is doing, it can be done without either resulting in parliamentary
graffiti or exaggerating what will happen initially.
Professor Drori: I think I would
turn your question the other way round and say that according
to Parliament's own papers the right to petition the Crown and
Parliament to air grievances is a fundamental constitutional principle.
Why not just limit it to writing it in blood with a quill? If
you have got a medium which can attract more people, why not use
it?
Chairman: Thank you, Professor, Doctor,
ladies and gentlemen. Is there any issue which you would like
to make by way of a comment or statement which you feel we have
not covered before we close the session? Then can I thank you
all for giving up your valuable time. I know how busy you must
be. We have found this session very helpful to us. It has been
informative and interesting, and I think you have helped us to
make a more enlightened decision when we finally reach our conclusions.
Thank you for coming.
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