People and Parliament

The Committee would like your views on how you think people should be able to interact with the House of Lords. You may want to consider and comment upon activities that are already taking place within Parliament or online, or submit new ideas.

• Would you like to be able to contribute to the work of the House of Lords?
• Are there any ways in which you think people could be more involved in the work of the House of Lords? How could this be achieved?
• Members of the Lords differ from MPs in the House of Commons in that they do not represent constituencies. How would you like to interact with the Members of the Lords?

Currently, the only way to have ones say in the formulation of laws and amendments is by lobbying an MP or Lord; all well and good, but this can be a tedious process.

The world is so connected now by means such as the internet, so surely the House of Lords could embrace this by allowing people to comment on legislation and even recommend possible sensible amendments using an online facility.

Doing this would connect the Lords with the people even more than that of the commons! It is taking democracy to a new level and i'm sure a majority of the population are all for it.

Setting aside e-mail if peers wish to raise their profile today then they will be more effective communicators by having an online presence with a proper allowance to fund it. I'm thinking here of blogs more than websites as the latter can be too easily a broadcast not a conversation. For those peers with limited time that may mean forming a group of occasional bloggers on one single site. We have a well functioning template with 'Lords of the Blog' which has some guest blogs at present. For a younger audience (<30) in particular a blog about a particular matter before the Lords or topical political issue is far more likely to get read about there than any speech in the house itself. With suitable links to parliamentary sites, acts, consultations etc it gives a way to pull a wider audience into the process.

The House of Lords (and Parliament in general) will benefit from a free legal web similar to that proposed at [legalweb.wordpress.com] In particular, a change of law similar to Section 27 of Copyright Act 1994 (New Zealand) will help in the discussion of Bills before Parliament and other legal material:

No copyright in certain works

(1) No copyright exists in any of the following works, whenever those works were made:
(a) Any Bill introduced into the House of Representatives:
(b) Any Act as defined in section 4 of the Acts Interpretation Act 1924:
(c) Any regulations:
(d) Any bylaw as defined in section 2 of the Bylaws Act 1910:
(e) The New Zealand Parliamentary Debates:
(f) Reports of select committees laid before the House of Representatives:
(g) Judgments of any court or tribunal:
(h) Reports of Royal commissions, commissions of inquiry, ministerial inquiries, or statutory inquiries.

(1A) No Crown copyright exists in any work, whenever that work was made,—
(a) in which the Crown copyright has not been assigned to another person; and
(b) that is incorporated by reference in a work referred to in subsection (1).

(1B) Except as specified in subsection (1A), nothing in subsection (1) affects copyright in any work that is incorporated by reference in a work referred to in subsection (1).

(2) Subsection (1) of this section shall come into force on a date to be appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council; and one or more Orders in Council may be made appointing different dates for different paragraphs of that subsection.

Parliament is already using a number of tools that enable it to engage with the public, apart from the Lords of the Blog. This includes UK Parliament channels on Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Last time I checked, the twitter feed alone has over 4000 people following its updates.

Although social media isn't the answer to everything, they allow direct communication with members of the public. The House of Lords should use these established tools regularly with, for example, inquiries. Parliament as an organisation also needs to allow staff greater access to Peers and the parliamentary estate to facilitate a constant stream of content to these channels.

A good example of the success of implementing these social media tools is the Number 10 website (http://www.number10.gov.uk/), where an access-all-areas policy allows for regular, quality content (images, video, twitter) and the success of this attitude is demonstrated in the huge numbers of followers of this content: the Twitter feed alone has almost 300,000 followers.

Here is a list of social media sites Parliament is already using: [sandbox.dius.gov.uk]

May I bring up the accessibility to those who are visually impaired, since they are a group that can most easily be enabled to join in such blogs as Lords of the Blog.

There are many free widgets that will allow posts, and comments, to be heard, as well as the simplest tools of allowing enlargement of point sizes. At present, there is little attempt to make the layouts of keyboards compatible so I suggest an addition of a separate key, and such keys should incorporate automatic translation for as many languages as possible.

Consultation Processes

There should be some attempt to draw the attention of all obviously affected by new laws, or codes of practices.
There should be a minimum length of time for people to put their opinions on record.
There should be some discussion forum to draw attention to 'hidden' facts.
If there is a conflict on interests on, say, a sugbject between local gvt and businesses, contributors should be allowed to be anonymous except to those on Committee.

My first (and probably last) attempt to put forward my thoughts on the Codes of Practice on Cats (ditto Dogs) has not been acknowledged as being received, has not answered a separate and basic question on how certain establishments were short-listed then, subsequently, invited to make such ridiculous recommendations, nor has it explained why a) the expected secondary legislation became Codes of Practice and, b) why on earth DEFRA expected those living outside of Wales to have read the 'widely' distributed info and, c) why the sudden rush of from 'unknown' schedule to an announcemnet in November last year that the consultation process would end 31 Dec, inc. of all public holidays. This is a typical shambles, from beginning to end.

I challenge you to ask a random member of the public to actually find the Codes of Practice, via the DEFRA site, under 5 mins. Or 15. Or ever.

Quote:

Parliament Moderator
• Would you like to be able to contribute to the work of the House of Lords?

As it's set up now, probably not. Given that the current fad is doing everything at a local level, it's probably better to deal with my MP.

However, if the Lords were elected, had constituencies, and had a true power to review and reject legislation, then it might be more worthwhile.

Quote:

Parliament Moderator
• Members of the Lords differ from MPs in the House of Commons in that they do not represent constituencies. How would you like to interact with the Members of the Lords?

I think that the Lords should be elected and that they should have constituencies.

The answer is partly about removing barriers to participation. This consultation process is a wonderful example of how to get it wrong: You have to register before you post, discouraging lots of people (best practice is to ask for details at the end, after someone's written their thoughts down), the signup process didn't work for me first time either, (which could explain why there are so many views, and so few comments). Next, you have to select your specific topic for discussion, which could freeze out comments and insights that sit slightly outside of your questions. Most unwise.

In short you haven't sat down and thought about the user experience from the perspective of the outsider or the layman and have decided you don't want general insights, no matter how good they might be. You are at least using social media channels like twitter that avoid the traps you fall into, but there's a lot of basic things you are not doing. Thus, it's tempting to see your attempts to 'consult' the public as hard work for users, superficial in intention and overly constrained in the scope for comment- a further discouragement for a cynical public.

In terms of compulsory registration data, this is too pushy. Not one of my details was correct except an email address, which I use if i suspect I'm about to be spammed by the registrar. I lied about my name, age, gender and chosen media sources. You may as well have assigned the field values randomly. This sort of data-mining is a discouragement to participation, anathema to the online preferences of most people and ignorant of recent progress on participation techniques within both the public and private sectors. I do wonder why you would try to gain this data anyway- is this a consultation or a data-mining exercise? If you want to consult me, consult me, and I may or may not give you my data, if I choose, at the end of the process but it must be optional. What I choose to give you will be true, rather than you forcing incorrect data from me.

Beyond this, you still use esoteric language to describe the work of the Lords. This is exclusive to people who aren't familiar with the terms, and those who struggle with complex language or complex sentence structures. And in case you're wrestling with stereotypes of who this might be, people who famously struggle(d) with this include Richard Branson, Albert Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci.

An example: under 'Making Laws', the HoL website says it involves "proposing, revising and amending legislation." without explaining that legislation means law, or what the difference between revising and amending might be. The line "...flexibility to scrutinise an issue in depth means the Lords makes a significant contribution..." is similarly affected. A website description couched in language requiring a high level of verbal reasoning to comprehend is as inappropriate as one written by Ali G, and risks alienating users and discouraging those with at least the wont to visit the site. The aim should be to make the site accessible, which means making oneself understood to the maximum number of people which means speaking in plain English.

I will be interested to see if this post is moderated, as this will be a further clue as to how successful this process is proving.

I know about this because I do it all the time by the way, and in all my work, high participation is desirable. Please direct any questions to [post edited to remove personal email address].



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit was april 15, 12:53pm by Parliament Moderator.

Citizens time (and energy) is not free, though the way some of our services are provided would seem to pretend otherwise. So if Parliament wants more people to take time to send in a comment to these message boards we should make sure people can do just that without our needing to spend time and energy “logging in”. Perhaps this Committee should reflect more carefully on who benefits from these time consuming and complex registration/logging in type processes.I do not believe it’s “necessary” that citizens should adopt some pretentious “username” for the purposes of communicating with our elected or appointed Parliamentary representatives. If our information may be used as evidence for Committee reports then whatever name we want to use should be recognised and we should receive thanks for our contributions openly, please.

I'm sending this copy of a previous comment I submitted earlier because at my end I can't be sure it was safely acknowledged;

"Citizens time (and energy) is not free, though the way some of our services are provided would seem to pretend otherwise. So if Parliament wants more people to take time to send in a comment to these message boards we should make sure people can do just that without our needing to spend time and energy “logging in”. Perhaps this Committee should reflect more carefully on who benefits from these time consuming and complex registration/logging in type processes.I do not believe it’s “necessary” that citizens should adopt some pretentious “username” for the purposes of communicating with our elected or appointed Parliamentary representatives. If our information may be used as evidence for Committee reports then whatever name we want to use should be recognised and we should receive thanks for our contributions openly, please."

P.S We could do with a little "change this image" facility alongside the Spam prevention code box.

About these questions;

Yes I would you like to be able to contribute to the work of the House of Lords?

Ways in which people could be more involved in the work of the House of Lords might be achieved by direct and easy access to the most user friendly and efficient electronic message boards or other communications facilities.

Members of the Lords differ from MPs in the House of Commons in that they do not represent constituencies. Therefore to interact with the Members of the Lords may be difficult without some sort of citizen’s charter to remind everyone who the Lords are ultimately working for.

I would agree with comments regards use of the internet,blogs can appear to be more personal,and probably provide a better insight,but to reach a younger audience then facebook or twitter.

The problem still remains that many do not understand exactly how and why the Lords functions,not only,but in particular the young,and for the majority in society,I think they view it as an elitist club.

Unfortunately The House of Lords and Commons,all seem to have lost touch with the citizens of this country,and we are unbelievably patronised,consequently I do think reassessment and a view to education, and interaction with the public is imperative,this forum is a step in the right direction,but more is needed.

Go into the schools,the younger the better,how many schoolchildren have actually met a "lord",especially one who has explained the work they do,interact with the public,and make it common knowledge that parliament is accessible to all,not just a few.

Our country has a rich heritage,in particular parliament, and every citizen of this country should be aware,that they too, are part of it.

As if to reply to my previous message, Lord Mandelson commented this morning on the BBC "Today" programme that in his opinion he see's absolutley no reason why our P.M can't use "You tube" telling us that what's important is not the type of "media " chosen by the P.M but what he chooses "to do" ( on it). ( We can check this out on the BBC website page entitled "It never rains but it pours".)

Therefore by way of this further contribution to this dialogue, may I point out my view that the use of IT technologies such as "you-tube" is all very well and even trendy but in practice the burdens of logging in and all the rest falls entirely on the citizen who is supposed to be being served.This is made worse when such technologies are effectively set up in a way which disables our rights to comment even if we are prepared to do so publicly. Currently the use of " you tube" is a poor substitute to being able to send messages in confidence ie with our rights to privacy, dignity and autonomy fully respected. Further, because the Office of the P.M.s website at No. 10 no longer contains our usual "e-mail the P.M. facility" which normally provided citizens with a direct way to inform the P.M and be acknowledged (by way of a "read receipt"), we seem to have lost a viable valuable " alternative" mode of communication which enables all our rights to be respected.

So how we communicate with Lord Mandelson, in his capacity as a member of the House of Lords of the relatively new so- called department BERR, might be another point for this Committee to consider, please.

A very important and innovative contribution to the work of the House of Lords as "part and parcel" of this Committees effort may be to help Lord Mandelson account for his roles and responsibilities as both a "Lord" and the person in charge of BERR.

The Office of the last P.M enabled citizens to send e-mails according to the specific departmental areas we may have been concerned about.
Unfortunately our current P.M's office web-site at No 10 no longer contains the "e-mail the P.M" facility which enabled citizens to send a message from the privacy of their own homes with confidence our submissions would be acknowledged directly by a "read receipt".
So this way of perhaps informing Lord Mandelson of the BERR of our concerns may have been permanently disabled unless we can resurrect it, so to speak.

Perhaps we need an IT systems equivalent of these "retro-fitters" the President of the USA was on about in the New York Times the other day.. a team who are able to give our current IT service provisions a good going over with a view to making them much more efficient and inclusive of everyone, including Lord Mandelson or any other elected representative who, without a decent "two way" electronic information facility, may otherwise be viewed as "preaching" to the public.

Anyway, alongside this wonderful idea which I'm happy to freely donate here "because I can", the most important job I think is to help bring Lord Mandelson and any other associates who may be sadly lonely or “isolated" back into the land of real, open, transparent, responsibility and accountability. Our Lords need working e-mail facilities, please.

Does the House of Lords actually need to improve this at all?

If it was easier for people to communicate with members of the House of Lords, then they might easily find themselves on the receiving end of a firehose of incoherent contradictory emails from every Tom, Dick or Harry with an axe to grind.

The whole point of the House of Lords (I thought) was to be able to calmly examine Government legislation and try to weed out (or at least delay) the more egregious excesses of the elected members; that lot already respond like grasshoppers on speed to every passing whim and fancy of the electorate.

I'm tempted to say that if it isn't broke, then we shouldn't fix it. The one obvious brokenness now of the House of Lords is that increasingly we seem to be collecting "Lords" who are just best mates of whoever is currently Prime Minister. It's no longer obvious that such people can be trusted to do the calm dispassionate bit. This can be solved by moving to an all-elected House of Lords (but on a *much* longer timescale than the grasshoppers). Alternatively, if the grasshoppers don't like the idea of competition, go back to choosing members based on who helped out whom five hundred years ago - given that the whole point is that these people exist to stop the Government getting carried away, it really doesn't matter that much that they are not terribly "representative". That's actually a plus point.

The importance of the House of Lords is that they are not subject to the pressures of the majority. It is important to have the elected politicians, but it is equally important to have the Lords which are free from the pressures of elections. It is not like they are randomly chosen. The House of Lords contains members elevated by both parties. Most importantly, the Lords are not bound by party affiliations. Indeed, if you look at the issues on which they oppose the Commons, they do seeem to represent an important ethic that representive officials can not.

If I were to say how Lords could better interact with the public, I would suggest that it is important that the public know members of the house are willing to speak at even small publc functions, and share the work that they care about with the public. I do not think the Lords should change to meet the times, just be more available to demonstrate to people why what they represent is important.

Once again, I think introducing elections to the lords would almost immediately bring increased interaction with them.

The work of committees could include a greater say from the people and the internet seems to be the best way to achieve that. I was surprised to see that you are the first committee to be using youtube. I dont mean to be rude but you are a bit behind the times there. The BBC puts lots of videos on its news pages.

The forums like this one are a good idea but not very topical and it doesnt look like any MPs or lords actually respond to what any one says. I know you must be busy people but if you want people to interact with you more you do actually have to spend some time doing just that.

What about letting the public vote on line on what subjects could be debated in the chamber or investigated by committee? Not all the time but one debate a week or something. You might get some daft suggestions but you could leave those out and let the public decide on the more sensible ones they want MPs and lords to look at.

I looked at the lords of the blog mentioned above. Its quite a good idea but why is it not part of the actual parliament website? Doesnt that make it just another blog? It looks like only a few lords are actually writing anything anyway. It also doesnt let me to do much apart from comment on the stuff a politician has written which doesnt seem to actually result in anything at the end of the day. What about having it the other way around and having politicians responding to posts by the public?

Quote:

Parliament Moderator
The Committee would like your views on how you think people should be able to interact with the House of Lords. You may want to consider and comment upon activities that are already taking place within Parliament or online, or submit new ideas.
• Would you like to be able to contribute to the work of the House of Lords?
• Are there any ways in which you think people could be more involved in the work of the House of Lords? How could this be achieved?
• Members of the Lords differ from MPs in the House of Commons in that they do not represent constituencies. How would you like to interact with the Members of the Lords?

As the person who wrote the vast majority of the wikipedia entry on "reform of the house of Lords", I have read a vast amount on the subject of the House of Lords from the press, MPs, Lords and most importantly ordinary people.

Would I be able to contribute to the work of the House of Lords ... I am quite capable, however I am a reluctant public speaker and to be quite blunt I don't photo well and don't relish the limelight. But, to be honest I think in that way I'm far more representative of the vast bulk of people in this country than any MP or Lord!

Yes, I do think there is a very easy way for ordinary people to get involved in the House of Lords and that is by forming the appointments panel from ordinary people selected at random (at which point every Lord and MP stops reading!)much as we select a jury. Forget the "politics" of such a move, the thing that ought to be obvious to everyone is the way ordinary people respect the jury system and feel part of the legal system, no more than that, they believe it is "their" legal system because they are part of the jury.

Now if you want the public to get involved there is no better model than the jury to create that feeling of "ownership", and that doesn't necessarily mean a House of Lords full of plumbers, nurses and shop assistants!!!!

Now there are reasonable concerns whether ordinary people would be able (or have the boredom threshold) to sit in the Lords, but I don't believe anyone can believe a jury can convict someone "on the evidence" for life but could not decide "on the evidence" who is suitable to go to the House of Lords/Upper House!

By bringing in ordinary people to do this very simple job of selecting members, which is quite within any jury's capability I think it would completely change the public perception of the Lords whilst still bringing in very much the same people with the skills, experience and lifetime's commitment in politics, business, charities etc. which makes the Lords such an asset to the UK.

To be very honest, I believe that the jury selection would basically select very much the same people (with perhaps a few "additions" of "interest") and would leave the Upper House looking almost the same as it is now. What would change is the public interest in the selection and the public "ownership" of the House. I also think forcing Lords/MPs to propose their candidates to the panel of ordinary people would force them to interact with ordinary people in a way that would help to communicate to ordinary people the problems of law making in very much the same way as the jury communicates to ordinary people the problems of balancing justice with locking up criminals.

How often do you hear the public saying: "juries must lock up more criminals"? How often do we hear the public saying: "there is too much/too little law". By trusting the judgement of ordinary people the legal system of the UK has very high levels of support. Compare that to our politicians who aren't trusted by their electorate, and who patently don't trust their electrorate (e.g. to decide who goes to the upper house!)

How would I like to interact with the Lords?

- well you could pay for my ticket and the overnight stay in London and arrange to meet with me to discuss House of Lords reform. But to be brutally frank, I don't believe anyone in the House of Lords will ever talk to some pleb like me, .... or like my neighbour, ... or like anyone I know because we simply don't have any role in parliament except as voting fodder for the commons.

- I would forego that "free meal" with members of the House of Lords, if only I knew that once every so often the members of the House of Lords and Commons were forced to meet with ordinary members of the public on an equal basis and treat them and what they have to say with the respect ordinary people deserve from Our parliamentarians. And granted that happens to some extent with MPs at elections where they have to treat us with respect for a few weeks, but not for Lords (who are probably more respectful of the public because they also have to deal with the commons!)

- Or perhaps there could be a "citizen's assembly" with a final veto (the veto is more a way to give them power and force parliamentarians to talk to them) ... Note: Unless ordinary people have real power they will never be treated with the respect they deserve.

And to be honest, I completely gave up listening to MPs and Lords when I discovered that for all their talk they really weren't interested in listening to people like me. The truth of yet another "consultation" with the public, is that parliamentarians really want the public to listen to them, but they don't want the hassle of having to listen to the public. And from my experience of previous "consultations" on renewable energy and House of Lords reform and innovation, etc. parliament run consultations as a PR exercise trying to delude the public into believing they are being listened to whilst all along proceeding with the plans they always intending to implement.

Ian88 – the Committee discussed your idea about allowing the public to comment on legislation at its meeting on 6 May. We talked about some of the practicalities involved, and I expect that the subject will come up again this week when the Committee meets Tom Watson MP, Minister for digital engagement. I would certainly like our report to include a section on how the House communicates with the public about bills.

LadyTizzy – you raised the issue of those who are visually impaired. I will ensure that this is something that the Committee thinks about when it publishes its report.

Towerhil and Lucky – I was interested to read your comments about the registration process for this forum. We’re the first Lords committee to use such a forum, so I hope that we’ll learn from this experience and hopefully those committees that follow us will benefit from your feedback. I can see that the process can be improved.

Merlin Erroll

The House of Lords has a lot of interesting conventions which have historical significance and can often be a barrier to some people seeing and understanding the place the House of Lords has to play in todays society. This could in part be overcome by hosting a series of short TV programmes which could show how the House came to be and what they get up to these days. Choosing an interesting and varied group of people to narrate the stories and be part of the programmes could add interest. DVD's, short books and other information can be produced and held in local libraries and a link to different websites providing insidght to a potential worldwide audience. The BBC are good at this kind of thing, get them on the job!