| House of Lords Media, Broadcasting, Communications and Outreach Services
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| 8. In our view, Members are the greatest ambassadors for the House. The Committee calls on more Members to participate in the 'Peers in Schools' programme and to talk to groups outside Parliament (paragraph 29).
| The recommendations in this section are being progressed by the House of Lords Information Office working with the Committee Office, Black Rod's Department and the Department of Facilities.
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| 9. We recommend that the House of Lords administration should draw up options for a shadowing scheme to allow members who wish to participate to have a range of people shadow their work (paragraph 32).
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| 10. We recommend that there be a pilot exercise in which an online debate, promoted with a targeted section of the public, would be run in parallel with a debate in the Lords Chamber (paragraph 56).
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| 11. The Committee welcomes the Lords of the Blog website. We encourage members to contribute to the website and suggest that Committee Chairmen consider posting a blog at the launch of a new inquiry (paragraph 37).
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| 12. We recommend that the administration continue to build relations with regional and local media as well as national media (paragraph 97).
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| 13. We recommend greater use of online media (paragraph 97).
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| 14. We recommend that the House experiment with offering information sessions to members of the press gallery, and our Chairman will write to the Chairman of the Press Gallery to take forward this recommendation (paragraph 99).
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| 15. We recommend that the administration explore possible links with journalism courses (paragraph 101).
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| 16. We recommend that there should be greater access to the House of Lords for factual filming. The presumption should be that meetings and events to which the public are admitted without invitation can be filmed and that Members can be interviewed in public areas (paragraph 89).
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| 17. We recommend that the administration revise the leaflet setting out the regulations governing filming photography, filming, sound recording, painting, sketching, mobile telephones and pagers so that the regulations can be readily understood. (paragraph 89).
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| 18. We recommend that a more appropriate room be assigned for [media] interviews (paragraph 89).
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| The Website—Improvement Programme
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| 19. The Committee welcomes the many improvements to the parliamentary website and stresses the need for the improvement programme to continue (paragraph 34). Whilst Parliament does well at using its website to inform people, it needs continually to develop the way in which it uses the internet actively to engage with people (paragraph 48).
| The recommendations in this section are being progressed by the bicameral Web and Intranet Programme.
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| 20. We recommend that the House of Lords administration invite officials in the Commons to work with them to develop a Parliament-wide strategy for improving access for people with disabilities (including learning disabilities and mental health issues) to parliamentary information (paragraph 114).
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| 21. We recommend that the administration work in partnership with already established websites catering for interest groups (paragraph 46).
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| 22. We recommend that from each Member's biographical page on the parliamentary website it should be possible to access directly a much greater range of information about that Member's parliamentary activities (for instance, through links to the Member's voting record, the questions and amendments the Member has tabled, and the Member's entry in the register of interests) (paragraph 73).
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| 23. We have invited the Director of Information Services to bring forward proposals by the end of the year for establishing a database of members' areas of expertise and interest [for the website] (paragraph 119).
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| 24. We have asked the Head of Online Services to examine whether the parliamentary website could include more links between parliamentary terms and the glossary (paragraph 104).
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| 25. We recommend further integration of the various information sets (such as Bills, Hansard, records of divisions, the register of Lords' interests) on the parliamentary website (paragraph 73).
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| Legislation | |
| 26. We recommend that pre-legislative scrutiny committees should invite the public to submit comments via the parliamentary website on the draft bill being scrutinised (paragraph 60).
| The recommendations in this section are being progressed by the House of Lords Information Office, Committee Office, Legislation Office and the bicameral Web and Intranet Programme
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| 27. We recommend that the presentation of Bills on the parliamentary website be developed so as to make the legislative process more transparent (paragraph 76).
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| 28. We recommend that it be possible online to look back and see how a Bill has been amended as it moves through Parliament (paragraph 76).
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| 29. We recommend that the House of Lords administration invite officials in the Commons and PICT to explore with them the feasibility of creating an online system where people can sign up to receive electronic alerts and updates about particular Bills or portions of Bills relevant to their interests (paragraph 77).
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| 30. The Committee will later this year examine how the House might best inform the public accurately and impartially about how the House amends particular items of legislation (whether by press release or by other means) (paragraph 111).
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| 31. We have asked the administration to provide information on whether other parliaments produce such press releases or summaries and to prepare samples to show what such documents might look like for the Lords (paragraph 111).
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| Hansard and Proceedings |
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| 32. People should be allowed to embed the House's proceedings on their websites, so that our proceedings can have as wide a distribution as possible on the internet. We recommend that a trial start as soon as possible (paragraph 44).
| The recommendations in this section are being progressed by the House of Lords Official Report and Information Office, the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit, Black Rod's Department and the Department of Facilities, House of Lords.
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| 33. We have invited the BBC and the House of Lords administration to bring forward proposals for how the House can maximise potential synergies with the BBC's forthcoming 'Democracy Live' website (paragraph 44).
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| 34. We recommend that the parliamentary website provide contextual information alongside webcast House of Lords proceedings (paragraph 92).
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| 35. During our inquiry, we looked at a pilot demonstrator integrating video of Lords proceedings with Lords Hansard, which would enable users to watch, listen to and read a past debate at the same time. The Committee welcomed this advance and decided that development should continue with a view to offering a full service to the public by summer 2010 (paragraph 72).
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| 36. The Committee is impressed with development in the printed Hansard and welcomes recent developments in the online presentation of Hansard. We stress the need for the online improvement programme to continue (paragraph 69).
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| 37. The Committee will examine the case for the House producing an accessible accurate and impartial summary of debates and consider the various issues involved (paragraph 111).
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| 38. Later this year, we will review the arrangements for broadcasting Lords proceedings to make the footage more engaging. As a first step, we recommend that there should be a trial period in the 2009-10 parliamentary session during which divisions in the Lords are recorded from within the division lobbies. The images could be broadcast accompanied by the atmospheric sound feed from the Chamber which broadcasters currently use when covering a division, so that specific conversations are not picked up (paragraph 83).
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| 39. We recommend that all public meetings of Lords committees be webcast with video as well as audio (paragraph 92).
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| Open Data Standards and Streamlining Information Flows between Government and Parliament
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| 40. We recommend that information and documentation related to the core work of the House of Lords (including Bills, Hansard, transcripts of public committee meetings, evidence submitted to committees, committee reports, records of divisions, expenses and the register of Lords' interests) should be produced and made available online in an open standardised electronic format that enables people outside Parliament to analyse and re-use the data (paragraph 66).
| The recommendations in this section are being progressed by the bicameral Procedural Programme working with the Cabinet Office on behalf of the Government.
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| 41. The Committee welcomes the fact that officials in both Houses have agreed that parliamentary systems creating, holding or publishing data about the core work of the two Houses should be developed to deliver the information outputs required both internally, for the efficient working of members and officials, and externally for members of the public. The Committee stresses the high priority that should be given to this work and will periodically review its progress (paragraph 67).
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| 42. The Government should work with Parliament to implement common standards for data shared with or transferred from government, so as to improve the flow of information between government and Parliament and to enhance the public's ability to re-use that information (paragraph 78).
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| 43. We call on the Government to start producing Bills in an electronic format which both complies with "open standards" and is readily re-usable (paragraph 79).
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| 44. In relation to Bills, we also recommend that, for each Government Bill that significantly amends an earlier Act, the Government should produce an accompanying informal document to show the original legislation and how the Bill would change it (paragraph 80).
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| 45. We recommend that the Government produce these documents as a matter of course before the Second Reading of a Bill in the House of Lords and that the House make them publicly available via the Bill pages of the parliamentary website (paragraph 80).
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| 46. We ask the Government to explain how and within what timescale our recommendations will be incorporated into the work that Sir Tim Berners-Lee will lead on opening access to data (paragraph 81).
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| Strategic and House Issues |
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| 47. We welcome the House of Lords outreach and engagement programme, championed by the Lord Speaker. It is three years since the House elected its first Lord Speaker. If the House at some point reviews the role of the Lord Speaker, we recommend that outreach and education remain priorities for the role (paragraph 28).
| The recommendations in this section are being progressed by the Chairman of the Information Committee (Lord Renton of Mount Harry).
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| 48. The Committee recommends that Lords members of All-Party Groups encourage those Groups to consider how they could contribute to the outreach and educational work of Parliament (paragraph 29).
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| 49. We recommend a review of the parliamentary language used in the House of Lords to make it easier for people outside the House to understand our proceedings. Our Chairman will, after our report has been considered by the House, seek to initiate a separate debate in the Chamber on the language and terminology used in the House (paragraph 104).
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| 50. We decided that our Chairman should, after our report has been considered by the House, seek to initiate a separate debate in the Chamber on the impact of the ceremonial aspects of the House on public understanding of its work (paragraph 109).
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