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Parliament and the Public

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, on securing this debate and on the report that gives rise to it. I am extremely grateful to him for his opening comments about my own work. It is also a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, and to agree with the views that he expressed. As is clear from what has been said already, this is an extremely important debate. Parliament is the pivotal body in our political system. It is the one authoritative body that stands between government and the people. It is the body that sustains government, but it is also the body that calls government to account for its actions in between general elections. It is the body through which the people speak to government. This valuable report recognises that we have to address not only what Parliament does in relation to government but also how it communicates with the people. It is a two-way relationship. We have to consider how Parliament reaches the people. We also have to consider how the people reach Parliament. For people to pay attention to what Parliament is doing, Parliament has to be seen to be fulfilling the functions expected of it. If it is fulfilling important tasks, relevant tasks, then the media will pay more attention to it. I do not necessarily share the view embodied in this report about the terminology employed by the two Houses. I recognise that there is an issue here, but I do not regard it as crucial. What is vital, as my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon said, is the substance of what we do. The terminology employed in Select Committees is not particularly obscure or archaic. What is important is ensuring that the work of committees in both Houses is relevant and attracts media attention. One flows from the other. The report makes a number of important recommendations on how to communicate with people, but these, as the report stresses, must come as a consequence of a culture change within the Palace of Westminster. We still have a blinkered view of our relationship with those outside the institution. The media are still viewed with suspicion. They have been allowed into parts of the palace previously deemed off limits, but the attitude is still extremely restrictive. The more we allow the media into the palace, the greater will be the coverage of what we are doing. Media coverage is vital to ensure that people can see what we are doing. So too, increasingly, is our use of the Internet. The Parliament website is a major repository of data. It is invaluable for people like me. Yet, as the report makes clear, it is not geared to members of the public who want to know what is going on. Contrary to what many people think, people have not lost interest in politics. Rather, as has been said, their interest has been displaced, from mainstream party activity to issue-based activity. As we have heard, the website is not geared to those interested in issues. Although there have been some notable improvements, it remains based on the institutional structure of Parliament. If you are interested in, say, animal welfare, and look to see what Parliament has done in this area, you will likely give up in despair. I know, as I tried it this morning and that is exactly what I did. Not only does there need to be a radical redesign of the website; there also needs to be more central coordination. Perhaps the Leader of the House can confirm that, before the new website is introduced, there will be consultation to ensure that it meets the needs of people outside Westminster? Given that the communication should not simply be one-way, will there be an interactive capacity? I teach, in an MA online, that there is an interactivity which is core to that. It is not rocket science but it is essential. In terms of communicating with the public, we need to be more outgoing and entrepreneurial. Take this House. We have an excellent Information Office which produces first-class material. It publishes a booklet on the work of the House. The print-run is 40,000. The number of visitors to the Palace of Westminster each year exceeds 400,000. Most of those visitors will leave with admiration for the building but, as my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon said, with no real understanding of what the institution does. The Information Office puts together information packs. These are excellent for students. If students visit the palace, we can give them the packs. If we go to schools and colleges, we can take packs with us to distribute. The material, however, deserves to be disseminated much more widely. The Information Office lacks the resources necessary to distribute it on a more extensive basis. This may seem a small matter, but it is illustrative of the problem we face. As this report states, what we do here is a public good worth investing in. We must change our attitude and ensure that the emphasis is on communicating effectively, not on penny-pinching. We must invest in communicating with the public. Similarly, we must ensure that people can communicate with us. I welcome what the report says on that. I agree that committees should go out more and take evidence from people in different parts of the United Kingdom. I have argued the case for petitions to be taken more seriously. Although petitions presented to the other place are now referred to the relevant departmental Select Committee, there is still a case for a dedicated petitions committee. Such a committee exists in the Scottish Parliament and in most parliaments of western Europe. As the Constitution Select Committee noted in its report last year, there is also a cogent case for committees engaging in more online consultation as well as commissioning opinion polls. It would be churlish if we did not acknowledge changes that have taken place in recent years—some of them have been extremely valuable. I am very impressed with the work that the Law Commission is doing in investigating the capacity for post-legislative scrutiny. However, we need to go further to reach a new plane. The health of the political system depends on us achieving that. The Leader of the House, in replying, can make a signal contribution by committing herself to achieving that necessary culture shift and by agreeing that we need a much more cohesive communications strategy within Parliament. Responsibility, as this reports makes clear, is too diverse. If that means knocking heads together, then so be it. We must put Parliament first.