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Parliament and the Public

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton, because I have so often been stimulated by his views on these issues in the past. I am also delighted to have witnessed the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. I know that Members of this House will recognise that she was held in huge respect for her integrity and judgment in the other place, and I am sure that that will now transfer here. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, on this debate and on the fruitful leadership he gave to the commission on which I was delighted to serve. I want merely to emphasise and underline some of its findings and recommendations. First, as many noble Lords have said, it must be time to have a joint strategy for the whole of Parliament to communicate what we do in this building. That was identified by the Modernisation Committee in the other place as a real weakness. Surely, it must be time that the two Houses together demonstrated to British citizens not only what we are doing but how we intend to ensure that it is more visible and transparent. Surely, it must be a basic essential for a healthy parliamentary democracy in the 21st century that Parliament develops an effective communications strategy and also has an effective mechanism for its delivery. I wonder whether noble Lords have examined the organisation chart on page 33 of the report. The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, will recall the difficulty with which we extracted that information from the officials in the House. The Group on Information for the Public—I wonder how many noble Lords are aware of the GIP—is composed only of officers of the two Houses. There is no Member involvement or Member ownership. I believe that without Member interest and accountability, this vital activity will never receive the resources it requires. Incidentally, I very much endorse the views earlier expressed about the Information Office in this House, which is a great deal more effective than its comparable organisation at the other end of the corridor. And of course this House pioneered the televising of debates. I hope that in this matter, too, we will be leading the other end of this building. Secondly, and flowing immediately from that lack of accountability, the commission believes that the priorities for expenditure need to be reassessed urgently. Spending many millions of pounds on a super visitors’ centre, which has been mentioned, will be greatly appreciated by visitors from Tokyo and Texas. But, frankly, I do not believe that it will be much help to British students of politics of all ages, from Tintagel in Cornwall to Tayside in Scotland, who find it extremely difficult to come to London at all during their studies or when they are interested in an issue that arises here. Surely, it would be far more cost effective to ensure that we take advantage of a unique opportunity to re-engage the electorate with the new electronic communication tool that is to hand—a really effective website. I entirely endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said about that. Incidentally, such a website also provides an unrepeatable chance of reducing our reliance on the conventional media to communicate what Parliament is doing. The distinguished journalists on our commission, to whom reference has been made, warned us that editors are rather better at dishing out advice than they are at taking it. We were therefore told that perhaps we should concentrate on what we are doing rather than concentrating too much on the media. In any case, there never was a golden age when parliamentary debates were assiduously followed by huge numbers of our fellow citizens. The daily full report in the Times was read by an elite sitting in leather chairs in London clubs. Today, we have a real opportunity, with the electronic communication to hand, to change that and to make it a public interest. Already, the Parliament Channel and the parliamentary website have a far larger audience than ever existed in the written press and they far outnumber those who ever bought Hansard. Thirdly, like other noble Lords, I believe that our website is woefully inadequate. It totally fails to keep up with technological change or public expectation. In that context, we must move very fast and very effectively. Let me give one example. In one of my several failed careers, I was an architect—to be strictly accurate, I worked in an architect’s office and never achieved qualifications. Therefore, I yield to no one in admiration for this amazing building, which works extraordinarily well 150 years after it was designed. But of far more relevance and value than the conventional ““Line of Route”” tour of the building must be to demonstrate that it is a working democracy. I believe that all British citizens, not just students, will be far more interested in what happens here rather than simply seeing what it looks like. Therefore, as a small initiative in that direction, I have set up on my own website a simple virtual tour to demonstrate how a Bill—naturally, called ““Billy””—makes its way through the legislative process in this building. I have already been told by students that that is of far greater value than being shown the way in which Pugin and Barry designed for our predecessors. A useful by-product is that it demonstrates to the electorate how and where there is a point of entry into the legislative process—where the interactive communication referred to may be of value. Fourthly, I emphasise what has been said in the commission report and by Members today, that we must make a special effort to communicate with younger age groups. My noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter referred to the depressing drop in turnout of the 18 to 24 age group—from 39 per cent to 37 per cent—in the recent general election. The chairman of the Electoral Commission, who drew this to our attention, warned that some people are now out of the habit of voting, with a generation apparently carrying forward their non-voting as they get older. That is doubly depressing. Finally, I have a specific suggestion which I touched on in the commission but which did not appear in the report. The fifth of November marks one day in the year when, at least in theory, the nation celebrates the survival of parliamentary democracy. Why not make that a focal point of a Parliament Week? Scandinavian parliaments which I have visited take their message to the electorate. They involve local parliamentarians in events. Schools and community groups are invited to put forward projects of all kinds to indicate the extent to which parliament is, or should be, acting on an issue of concern and interest to them. Surely, that would be a typically British way—and perhaps delightful in its own way—to demonstrate that Parliament is a critical part of national life and by building on the tradition of Guy Fawkes night we could perhaps enjoy ourselves at the same time.