Business of the House

Debate between Kevin Foster and Thérèse Coffey

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I am not aware of this matter. If the hon. Gentleman writes to a Treasury Minister, he may get an answer more quickly, although Treasury Ministers will be in the Chamber on 19 April.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

For those of us who believe that our four nations are greater together than the sum of their parts, today could have been the sad day of separation. May I therefore join the calls from the hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) and the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh) for a debate on the merits of the Union and on how all four countries are stronger within that Union than they would be apart?

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend may be joining the campaign alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies). We spent quite a lot of time debating such matters during the passage of the Scotland Bill. If my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) were to apply to the Backbench Business Committee for a debate, I am sure he would look upon his own recommendation favourably.

Digital Democracy Commission

Debate between Kevin Foster and Thérèse Coffey

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Stringer, and to contribute to the debate secured by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier). She is a member of the Speaker’s Commission and has spoken with passion about its work and her views. I thank her for the update on the progress made, including that reported at a meeting of the commission earlier this week.

The commission outlined five key targets, but as the hon. Lady has already stated those, I will not repeat them. There are further recommendations in the report, many of which are for the House to consider and debate. To some extent, a large part of that should be done, in my view, via the Procedure Committee. I will try to highlight key areas where, in particular, the Government can contribute to that debate.

Promoting public awareness of the role of Parliament and of Members of Parliament, and increasing public participation and engagement, are both worthy aims. Much has been achieved, particularly in recent years, as a result of the efforts of many hon. Members and our dedicated House staff—the service and the Clerks—and undoubtedly, that engagement will continue to increase.

The attempts to engage the public in different formats are very valid, as there are several recognised ways of learning and engagement, and people will have a natural tendency towards one or two. Traditionally, people have always had the written word, in the form of Hansard, legislation and business papers, accompanied by the occasional visit to Parliament to see how it works in practice, elements of which are open to everyone in this country. Aural transmission through radio and the screening of proceedings has been a step change. Further elements such as videos explaining Select Committee reports and the use of social media have continued to reach different audiences and interact with people in different ways. They are to be welcomed.

I will try to address the points raised by the hon. Lady and by other hon. Members during the debate. Turning to some of the commission’s recommendations, particularly focusing on the targets, the House service continues its work on engagement and outreach, guided by its strategy—I believe that was praised at the commission the other day—although I think it has found the feedback from the commission helpful, in that it was not necessarily achieving all that it thought it had and had a higher bar to reach. That said, I congratulate those involved in some of the improvements. Improvements to the digital service for both internal and external users are a key priority but there is still a considerable way to go.

The Commission made some useful recommendations about engaging the public. Some aim to improve understanding of Parliament and the work of MPs— for example, simplifying language, clarifying online publications and improving the website, including for people with disabilities or sensory impairments. Much has been achieved in these areas already, but I am sure that there is further to go. Making it easier for people to track specific areas of interest to them is one example of how we could improve interaction. I think some MPs are not aware of some innovations that would be useful to them. I am an evangelist for the apps for tablets and smartphones that have been created and help both MPs and the public in their daily work and to access documents that can be read alongside debates.

The public inquiries team has reviewed and rewritten every Commons glossary entry on the Parliament site and about 400,000 users access this. Content now focuses on explaining in clear, plain English the word, phrase or acronym, and includes links to further learning and business content to extend users’ knowledge. Previously, content had been overly long and often unclear.

A recommendation that cuts through to the legislative process is the commission’s suggestion for a new procedure for amending Bills so that amendments are written in plain English. In my view, this is where the role of explanatory notes comes in. We saw in the last Parliament, and see it more and more now, that Members are encouraged to add explanatory notes to the amendments they table.

The Government are committed to ensuring that the legislation they put before Parliament is of a high standard, but I know we can always do better. It is vital that Parliament has the necessary means by which to perform its scrutiny. Further recommendations to change that process further are for the House to decide, but I suggest to the hon. Lady that we are creating law, so to some extent, the clarity and the explanation come from the debate on Second Reading and the examination in Committee, where the Minister and the Opposition—any Member in fact—can to talk to amendments. We could do more and, in my role on the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee, I often push for further detail on the explanatory notes when I do not think they are clear or we need to be more explicit in stating the intention of amendments and clauses.

One recommendation is to improve the search engine. There are other search engines, but many hon. Members use Google to find information on the external parliamentary website. That is a shocker and apparently work is being done on it, but perhaps we should just leave it to the market. If Google and other search engines have already cracked the issue, we may want to use the House’s financial resources for other matters.

[Kevin Foster]

The Minister is rightly talking about how better to explain legislation, but sometimes we need to explain better to the viewer what is going on. For example, the most common question I am asked on school visits is why MPs are standing up and sitting down.

[Dr Coffey]

That is an interesting point, and new Members often ask that question when they arrive. To some extent, the induction process helps with that. There are matters not covered by the commission that many Members would like to see changed but—dare I say it?—some of the more traditional people, and I include the Speaker in certain elements of this, are resistant to that change. Examples include speaking lists and understanding how to participate in a debate. Perhaps we can do more on the video front and if we stop trying to improve our own search engine, it could free up a bit of cash to do that.

On crowd sourcing questions, the party leader of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch is doing that for PMQs, which is an interesting experiment. I will leave it to hon. Members to draw their own conclusions on whether it is successful, but I am sure it is good for the Labour party’s communications database. It is an interesting approach and some Select Committees have considered it as part of their reviews. I seem to remember the use of #AskGove to generate questions for a Select Committee. It is for Members to decide how best to use that and to manage expectation without just using it as a gimmick.