CHAPTER 2: People and Parliament
Our inquiry
3. In January 2009, we decided to conduct an
inquiry to investigate how the House of Lords, in the context
of Parliament, could relate better to the public. The inquiry
had two aims:
- to evaluate progress made since
the reports of the House of Commons Modernisation Committee (Connecting
Parliament with the public, June 2004), the 'Puttnam Commission'
(Members Only? Parliament in the Public Eye, Hansard Society
Commission, May 2005), and the consequent first business plan
of Parliament's Group on Information for the Public (2006); and
- to consider improvements as to
how the House of Lords/Parliament can engage with the public and
enable members of the public to communicate with it.
4. We focused our inquiry on three issues:
(1) outreach;
(2) online communication and engagement, including
www.parliament.uk and channels such as social media sites; and
(3) press, media and broadcasting.
5. We held six public meetings between March
and June, hearing from 39 people. In addition, we canvassed comments
from people via the internet, by using a web forum on the parliamentary
website and the Lordsoftheblog website. Furthermore, we were the
first parliamentary committee to allow members of the public to
submit their views on video via YouTube. Our experience of these
online communication tools was positive: they enabled us to hear
from a wider range of people, and those views helped us in our
inquiry.
6. In July, we published our report Are the
Lords listening? Creating connections between people and Parliament.[3]
The report included recommendations on education, outreach, press
and media, broadcasting, parliamentary data and online communication
and engagement. The list of our recommendations, together with
identification of who is taking them forward, is set out in Appendix
2 to this report.
The Government's response
7. In the House of Lords on 3 June, the Leader
of the House, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, responding to a question
about the newly-formed National Council for Democratic Renewal,
said that the Government must "engage with the public. That
is where the gap is and it is where we have been failing in our
duty to date".[4]
8. The Government has responded in writing to
those recommendations which we addressed to them, and we publish
their response in Appendix 1 to this report.
9. We welcome the Government's response and acknowledge
the similarities that exist between the themes that emerge from
the Government's response and from the Government's approach more
generally to digital communications. We refer in particular to
the Government's report entitled Digital Britain (published
in June 2009) and to the Power of Information Task Force Report
(published in February 2009). We look forward to seeing the
Government's commitment contained in the response being translated
into a robust and costed action plan with a timetable for delivery,
to which all interested bodies are committed. Without that, there
is a risk of losing an important opportunity for change for the
better.
Actions the Committee has taken
since we published our report
10. Since we published our report, we have:
- written to the Controller of BBC
Parliament to invite him to bring forward proposals for the House
to maximise synergies with the BBC's 'Democracy Live' website
(paragraph 44);
- written to broadcasters to invite
them to propose how footage of House of Lords proceedings could
be made more engaging for viewers (paragraph 83);
- written to the Chairman of the
Press Gallery to propose that the House of Lords offers information
sessions to members of the press gallery (paragraph 99);
- tabled a motion for a debate in
the House of Lords Chamber on the language and terminology used
in the House (paragraph 104);
- tabled a motion for a debate in
the House of Lords Chamber on the impact of the ceremonial aspects
of the House on public understanding of its work (paragraph 109);
and
- examined the case for the House
producing an accurate and impartial summary of debates (paragraph
111).
3 First Report of Session 2008-09, published 15 July
2009 (HL Paper 138). Back
4
HL Deb., 3 June 2009, col. 217. Back
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