House of Lords: Use of Electronic Devices (AWC Report)

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I strongly support what my noble friend has just said. I must confess that I do not Google, Twitter, tweet or blog, nor do I have any particular desire to do any of those things, but it seems to me that to have handheld devices in the Chamber is not conducive to good debate and intelligent participation in it. The fundamental reason for my opposing the idea is that it is the beginning of what I would call electronic mission creep—if I can use some jargon. I am very concerned about how instructions could be monitored or enforced. The answer is that they could not be. Therefore, anybody sitting in this Chamber with a handheld device could do anything from googling facts to getting in touch with his bookmaker. I suggest that the committee consider once again the point that has just been made briefly but forcefully by my noble friend.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I very much look forward to using my new iPad, when I get one, on the Education Bill, which amends 17 Acts. I very much hope that the Chairman of Committees will confirm not only that we will have wi-fi access in the Chamber when we come to debate that Bill in May, so that I can get at those documents, but also that we will have easy access to statutes in force, because, as he will remember from his days as a Minister or a Back-Bencher, the Acts that one can have printed in the Printed Paper Office are nothing like those that we are amending. Such access would therefore be immensely useful.

I find rather strange the worry expressed in paragraph 8 about having access to things that are not generally available to participants in proceedings by other means. One of the great reasons why I come to this Chamber is that it is full of people who know things that I do not know and understand things that I do not understand. Are we not supposed to have an equality of arms in this place? The point about being here is that you have access to a lot of people who know things that you do not. If someone happens to know something because they have looked it up on the internet or consulted an authority, rather than having done it in the Library five minutes before, I really do not see the problem.

We should allow ourselves to think about how we are going to catch up with the Commons when it comes to allowing participation by the public. The Commons is now allowing public participation in its Committee stages. Committees accept outside briefing from all sorts of people; they often hold open days when people can come and give evidence in front of them. We cannot do that with our committee system, because we use Committees of the whole House, but lots of people watch our proceedings live on television. If they were submitting to a public site comments on what was going on, why not allow us to read them so that we might see what they were saying and pick up the ideas that they might have? I understand the noble Lord’s difficulty with having us quoting people whom we are picking up off Twitter or some blog, but merely to gain insights and intelligence from people who may have vast practical experience and happen to be watching us on television would be a good thing.

I am grateful to my noble friends for making me feel, for the first time in a while, that I am a member of the younger generation.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I support what has just been said. Perhaps I may suggest also that making a virtue of being out of date is really not helpful for this House. Let us transpose this debate to the time when writing came in. It was perfectly true that writing might have upset the person sitting next door—it might have taken your mind off the debate—but most of us now write to make notes in this House. Most of us use this electronic equipment—well, I hope that we do; those who do not perhaps are not really involved. It is silent; it is extremely helpful. I must say to my noble friend that the idea that it is better to be ignorant and make a speech where the fact is wrong than to look it up and make sure that you have got it right seems very peculiar. I am pleased that it will not matter, because we will all do it and nobody will be able to see. I hope that the privacy Acts and the Data Protection Act will stop people looking over our shoulder to see what we are looking up. We hear some speeches made in this noble House where perhaps playing Scrabble on our devices would be a better alternative. This House does itself no good in making a virtue out of obscurantism. We either do things properly, which means using the wonderful mechanisms that we have, or we must accept the likelihood of being thought to be out of date.