Visitor Access and Facilities in the House of Commons

Written evidence submitted by Helen Donoghue, Managing Director,

Central Lobby Consultants (VA 02)

I am writing on behalf of Central Lobby Consultants in response to the Administration Committee’s invitation to make a submission to its inquiry into visitor access and facilities provided for visitors to the House of Commons. We understand that streamlining visitor access is a topic under consideration as part of this inquiry and we would like to comment on the present situation and how we believe it could be improved.

We provide the secretariat for three Parliamentary groups: the Associate Parliamentary Corporate Responsibility Group, the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum and the Inter-Generational Futures Group. As a result, we regularly have to visit the Houses of Parliament for working meetings with MPs and Peers, to attend Select Committees and for meetings and conferences that we have organised on behalf of the Groups.

At the moment it often takes visitors without passes to the Parliamentary Estate well in excess of 30 minutes to gain entrance to the Palace of Westminster, because of the large number of visitors and tourists, and the bottleneck formed at the security checkpoint. As organisers of meetings for MPs and Peers, we have found ourselves in the difficult position of being caught in the general queue whereas civil servants attending the meeting that we are responsible for organising have fast-track access. This can result in the start of the meetings being delayed. We have also found on occasions that Associate members of the groups have been held up for so long that they never actually get to the meeting, which diminishes the value of the meetings for the MPs and Peers who attend them.

Last week, for instance, during a conference that we organised for the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum it was necessary to leave the Palace of Westminster to return to our offices to print handouts at the request of one of the speakers. Queuing on returning to the meeting took 20 minutes and the handouts only just arrived in time for the start of the speaker’s talk. Even so, our colleague was allowed through only after a request to the policeman at St Stephen’s Entrance for an unofficial queue-jump - which he was under no obligation to allow and to which he agreed purely out of good nature. Such incidents could be avoided if access to Parliament were made easier for those who regularly have business there.

We would suggest that those who provide secretariat services for All Party Groups are in a somewhat different category from leisure visitors and those attending receptions and would like to propose a separate type of ‘frequent working visitor’ pass which allowed faster access. We fully understand the need for tight security and control of access but it would be very beneficial for those who regularly have official business in the Palace of Westminster to have priority for clearing security ahead of the many tourists and visitors to the Palace.

On a number of occasions we have been offered Parliamentary passes by members of both Houses who recognise the problem and wish to assist us – but we have declined on the grounds that we do not believe, as a matter of principle, that the staff of public affairs companies should hold research passes when they are not fulfilling that function. However, were a system of regular visitor passes to be introduced, we believe that it would prevent some of the problems associated with the present system.

We appreciate that access to Parliament is an extremely sensitive matter. We would certainly only use this privilege with the greatest discretion and would expect Parliamentary security to subject the members of our organisation with regular business in Parliament to some sort of vetting process before granting such a pass. We should also emphasise that we are not asking for full access to the corridors of Westminster, only for faster access to the public areas where we already have regular business.

We hope that the Committee will give careful consideration to whether a pass of this sort could be a viable option, given the considerable amount of time that it would save those in our situation.

July 2011