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Legislative Process

I do not think that holding the conferences at the same time would be the solution, but all the parties seem to be making an effort to make them shorter. Therefore, even if they took place consecutively, the period devoted to them could be over more speedily. As has been noted several times today, the widely observed problem of disconnect between Parliament and the public might be a contributory factor to lower turnouts at elections. The Hansard Society published a report that challenged Parliament to up its game in its relations with the public. We have started to do that. Our Select Committees, and the House itself, employ press officers to explain our work to the public. More outreach officers go into constituencies and local education authorities to explain the work of Parliament. The education unit has expanded its programme of school visits and produced new films about our work, while its work books are part of the national curriculum. In addition, a major overhaul of the parliamentary website is under way, although it is still very much a work in progress. I welcome the efforts that the House as a body corporate—if I might use the phrase in this context—has made to up its game. However, if those communications are to work we have to recognise that the work of the House is the work of its Members. It is ridiculous for us to think that we can sit back and let the House and its Officials explain what is going on and that we do not have a greater part to play in the process, not least because opinion polls and, I think, the report of the Hansard Society note that when the public are asked what they think about MPs in general they have rather a derogatory view, but they usually take quite a benign view of their own MP. There is a challenge for MPs to take more of a role in their constituencies in explaining their own work and the work of the House. There is nothing illegitimate in an MP making a report, in non-partisan terms, about what the MP is doing and about what Parliament is doing. The existing arrangements are profoundly unsatisfactory, however. As the House knows, during this Session I have been serving on both the Members Estimate Committee and the Committee on Standards and Privileges, so I have seen the issue from both ends. Concerns about the current arrangements have been knocking around for a long time—certainly longer than I have been involved—and it has taken two or three years for a constructive proposal to be put on the table. We have one before us today, in the shape of the recommendation from the Leader of the House for a communications allowance. I commend him on having taken the initiative in trying to address such a tricky issue. Members have already touched on the anomalies in the existing regulations. I will start with pre-paid post and House stationery, to which Members have unlimited access at present. In the year running up to the election, we reached a ridiculous situation: Members’ average spend on those two items put together was about £3,500, but in one or two cases there were some outrageous expenditure totals, one of which stretched to more than £50,000. The system cannot be working properly when some Members, seemingly within the regulations, can spend up to 15 times the average. Clearly, that has to be addressed.