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Information Committee: Visitors to Parliament

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Renton of Mount Harry on securing this debate, and on the report his Information Committee has produced, which has made a positive contribution towards the debate about raising the profile of Parliament in the eyes of the public. We must not forget that turnout at the 2001 general election was less than 60 per cent. That represented the lowest turnout for a Westminster parliamentary election since the advent of universal adult suffrage. It gets worse: among 18 to 24 year-olds, turnout was less than 25 per cent. The noble Lord, Lord Jones of Cheltenham, referred to the imperative of the need to address that. There was not much improvement at the 2005 election, despite the creation of the Electoral Commission with a specific remit to increase turnout. It is not just about turnout. Nearly 4 million people who are eligible to vote are not even registered to do so. It is too easy to put this down to a general feeling that all the decisions are taken in Europe, or that people's votes do not matter. To put this right we have to start at a young age. We must enthuse children and young people with the process of Parliament. Today's young people need to be aware of how fortunate they, and we, are to live in such a democracy. They see, daily, on the internet and television, the horrifying examples of countries such as Zimbabwe, Burma and Darfur whose citizens have lost, or never had, the benefits we have. We and they must not forget what the suffragettes suffered for. For hundreds of years only a small elite could vote. Disraeli, with such forethought, started the process of widening the franchise. What would his generation have thought of today's apathy? Let us not forget either, how fortunate we all are to work in this wonderful place, with its history and traditions, and to have a chance to influence our country's affairs. While our excellent tour guides, as my noble friend Lord Renton explained, draw out the historical aspect, it must be our duty to ensure that the working Parliament is explained and that an awareness is passed on of its real benefits to future generations. If Parliament is to continue to carry out its functions properly, future generations must learn to understand how it works, to love it and to enthuse about it. They need to know how both Houses and their committees actually work; what a politician does; and about the huge amount of knowledge and talent there is, especially in your Lordships' House. As we have heard from my noble friend Lord Renton, his committee's report draws attention to a key recommendation in the other place's Administration Committee's report that an off-site parliamentary visitor and information centre would not provide value for money and would be unlikely to focus on educational visitors interested in the Houses of Parliament as a working legislature. The Administration Committee concluded that the most effective route forward would be to create a dedicated facility for school visitors. While endorsing that, we must not allow it to happen in isolation. Education has to become a state of mind among us all. The Lord Speaker's initiative of Peers going into schools, to which other noble Lords have referred today, is an excellent example, and the students' debating competition in May, which the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, mentioned and which my noble friend Lord Hunt and others worked so hard to achieve, is another example, of which we need many more. Educational visits to Westminster are undoubtedly of huge benefit to students and to the institution of Parliament, and are in high demand, with a waiting list of two school terms ahead. According to the most recent annual report of the other place’s commission, nearly 11,000 students and teachers visited Parliament last year; that figure is up nearly 40 per cent on the previous year, so the appetite is there and it is growing. We must seize the opportunity represented by this demand. The reports from the Commons Administration Committee and from our Information Committee are valuable contributions to the debate on exactly how we can accommodate our guests, although I hope I am wrong to wonder whether I detected some reluctance in the wording in the Commons report. The recommendation in paragraph 7 of my noble friend’s committee's report urges more detailed work and planning, which we must strongly support. What is going to happen in the classrooms? How will that be made to happen? Exactly what resources are needed? Who is going to do the teaching? And how will the teachers be trained? The answers to these and many more questions need to form part of that detailed planning work. So we must surely endorse this report wholeheartedly and ask what action will be undertaken to take it forward, so that a precise and costed proposal can be presented.