Procedure Committee Reports

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Knight]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. If I may, I shall return to his point when I address the terms of the amendment.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is wrong if Members decide to have a little snooze? The motion states that we should behave with decorum. Is that not the point? We should use electronic devices sparingly, but the option to use them should be available.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in robust support of the main motion and strongly against the amendment. The main motion seeks to allow Members to use hand-held devices in a way that does not impair decorum. We are all adults, and we are all mindful of how we are viewed in the eyes of the public and of the importance of being respectful to each other. It is therefore right that we use our phones and our tablets with discretion. It is also correct that laptops should be banned—they conceal people’s faces and make a noise—and it is right that any smartphone or tablet should be in silent mode when used. It is always regrettable and often embarrassing when a colleague’s phone beeps or rings in the Chamber.

I cannot support an amendment that allows Members to receive and send only urgent messages. According to an e-mail that explained this amendment, the intention behind using the term “urgent messages” is to ban tweeting, among other things, from the Chamber. Twitter started five years ago and now has more than 100 million active users. More than 300 MPs use Twitter. It allows us, in a bite-sized 140-character nugget, to talk to people outside this place. While it is not a replacement for traditional forms of communication, it is a very useful way to connect with the communities we were elected to represent.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I am a user of Twitter myself. One of its advantages is that messages have to be condensed into 140 characters to communicate with the outside world. Does the hon. Lady agree that we could learn from that, and try to condense more of our contributions to 140 characters?

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That point has been made by many people engaged in the discussion about whether we should be able to continue using Twitter from the Chamber. I shall go on to refer to some of those contributions.

Many of us have a function whereby our tweets are listed on our websites for people to read, particularly for those who do not access the main Twitter website. Some MPs have been lambasted for using Twitter solely to publish press releases or to state what they are doing. Others use it to engage in debate. A conversation on a topic can unfold on Twitter via a hashtag. I started #keeptweeting to initiate an online discussion and identify what the public thought about tweeting in the Chamber. I was careful to ask what people thought about using Twitter in this place, not outside it.

The fact that the amendment has been tabled at all has provoked anger from some. For example, @RichSwitch said:

“No wonder people think Politicians are out of touch”.

There were many tweets offering reasons why Chamber tweeting should continue. I will not read them all, but I have picked a few relating to a number of themes. Some see it as a means of engagement. For example, @LeamingtonSBC said:

“Surely anything which widens public participation in the democratic process is a good thing!”

Similarly, @NHConsortium said:

“Parliament already seen as cut off & static, don’t amputate it further.”

Others shared why Twitter was important to them in understanding what is going on. Thus @maggieannehayes admitted that

“parliament can be such an alien place. MPs tweeting enables us, the voters, to get a sense of what’s happening”.

[Mr Gray]

Does the hon. Lady agree with me that she has taken a somewhat self-selecting sample? She has asked the twitterers whether or not they like twittering. I would have thought that they probably would do.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I shall come on to the responses of people who thought that we should not continue tweeting. I have a selection here. To continue, @PercyBlakeney63 said, “Citizens deserve transparency”, while @Daisydumble said, “Censorship of MPs now”.

[Claire Perry]

Does the hon. Lady agree that tweeting helps MPs to stay informed, in touch and accountable to their constituents, and that to ban it would be an inexplicable step back in time? That is 138 characters.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Lady for her succinct, pithy and tweetable intervention of 138 characters, and I wholeheartedly agree with everything she said.

All too often we are accused of being inward-facing. The public say that we are out of touch and inaccessible. Twitter allows us to make politics relevant, and makes us as individuals accessible.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was in the Chamber when we discussed whether we should able to discuss whether the UK Youth Parliament should be allowed to sit here on a Friday for the second year running. It was a debate on whether to have a debate on that subject. Many MPs were here into the early hours of the morning. It was important that we could tweet and explain to people, particularly young people, what on earth this charade they were watching on the BBC Parliament channel was all about. Many young people wanted to know what we were talking about. I think that was the best use of Twitter in the Chamber that I have encountered so far. I think people valued the fact that their MPs were prepared to explain to them what was going on.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and wholeheartedly agree with everything she said. That was a good example of something embarrassing—the prospect of not allowing the Youth Parliament to sit in this place. We debated it for many arduous hours and came to the right decision in the end. The fact that we were able to communicate with the public, particularly with those young people who wanted the opportunity to come here, was a fantastic use of Twitter. Twitter also enables us to offer an immediate reaction to a debate, to signal when we are going to speak—as I did just before I began my speech—and to inform our constituents how we are voting.

[Dr Huppert]

I have the great honour, I believe, of having been the first of all current MPs to join Twitter. It has been useful. [Interruption.] I was not an MP at the time I joined; I do not claim that. I, too, have received a number of comments about this debate. A number of people said that they had become interested in politics as a result of following Twitter and receiving tweets from myself, the hon. Lady and others. There are also people who actively tune into debates because they know what is happening; they can quickly understand what is being debated in this place. The TV and online audience for Parliament goes up because of Twitter. Another point is that deaf people have no better way of following a debate in this Chamber as it happens.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who makes two points on which I shall elaborate in a few moments. As I said, I believe that Twitter, for the reasons I outlined, allows our constituents to hold us to account better.

A number of Members have said that if the public want to know what is going on, they should watch our proceedings on television. However, as @Scarletstand said, people “can’t all watch” it “on TV”. Not everyone has access to a television or a computer for internet TV, although they may have internet access to sites like Twitter on their mobile phones. It also less likely that the public would choose to watch the Parliament channel. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) expressed in an earlier intervention his worry about what people might think as they watched us on television, but according to BARB—the Broadcasters Audience Research Board—the average weekly viewing per person of BBC Parliament is just one minute.

[Kevin Brennan]

That much?

[Luciana Berger]

That much. I think it is when they flick through to get to another channel. As @Scarletstand went on to say, tweeting from the Chamber

“helps voters gauge mood & tone”.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady aware of any evidence relating to MPs like me who do not tweet to suggest that our constituents are less satisfied with us than other constituents are satisfied with their MPs who do tweet?

[Luciana Berger]

I am not aware of any evidence to suggest that constituents would be less happy with their MPs if they did not tweet. I am saying, as I have said before, only that Twitter enables us to reach out to a wider audience. It should not be a replacement for traditional forms of communication, but for younger constituents and people who go on to our websites and want to see some pithy little updates, Twitter provides that opportunity. As I said earlier, it also enables people to gauge the mood and tone of this place, which they might not be able to pick up by watching television.

One aspect that had not occurred to me until I opened up the debate on Twitter is the fact that, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) mentioned a moment ago, it has positive benefits for people with hearing impairments. The BBC parliamentary channel is not subject to the BBC’s 100% subtitle commitment, and pledges just 800 hours of subtitled content a year. As @TimRegency observed, Twitter is one really useful way for deaf people to get involved in political discussion and debate.

Some objections were expressed. @JimSpin said that we could not concentrate and tweet. However, I would argue that we can, and that tweeting is equivalent to sending a text message, which takes just seconds. I agree with the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) that both women and men are able to multi-task.

@Donna_Smiley asked:

“Can surgeons tweet from operating theatres, policemen in a raid, jurors from courtrooms, teachers from classrooms?”

I would argue that the audience for each of those individuals—the surgeon, the teacher and the juror—is immediately in front of him or her, whereas we are accountable to our constituents, who are a long way from this place.

Do not get me wrong. I am not advocating constant tweeting, or tweeting while we are talking. As @TrojanFanl969 said,

“mp’s to use common sense. 50 tweets an hr bit silly, but selective use v good, engaging with electorate etc.”

Just two countries in Europe have banned tweeting, and I do not think that we should join them. @RichSwitch said:

“A ban on Tweeting in the chamber would be unconstitutional”.

I am not sure that I agree, but I do believe that—as he also says—it would be

“anti-democratic, regressive and bemusing to the public”.