Angela Smith
Main Page: Angela Smith (Liberal Democrat - Penistone and Stocksbridge)Department Debates - View all Angela Smith's debates with the Leader of the House
(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberWith the leave of the House, I should like to put on record my tribute to the work of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), who discharged her duties in the House assiduously and will be a very hard act to follow.
We on the Opposition Front Bench support the motion on explanatory statements put forward by the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight). The Committee’s recommendation marks progress from a position already established, and as I understand it, Government Front Benchers have also adopted the recommendation, so I hope that it receives support from all parts of the House today.
We also support the sensible recommendation on written parliamentary questions, because there are alternatives to electronically tabled written questions, and if implemented the recommendation will not curtail the opportunities for Members to table written questions, as is their right.
We do, however, believe that the motion on a Select Committee’s right to table amendments to legislation should be sent back to the Procedure Committee for further consideration, as it has not been thoroughly thought out.
That recommendation was introduced by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in the previous Session; it was carefully considered by the Liaison Committee; and it has now been carefully considered and substantially modified by the Procedure Committee in order to meet those concerns. Do we have another case of the two Front-Bench teams conniving to stop Select Committees and Back Benchers having rights in this House?
Perish the thought.
My point is that, if we give Select Committees the right to table amendments to legislation, business relating to the Floor of the House and Public Bill Committees, will it not create the danger of Select Committees taking a much less consensual approach to their work? That is the real risk with the recommendation, and for that reason it should go back for further consideration.
I turn to the recommendation on hand-held devices. I do not need to repeat the background to the debate which goes back to the decision in 2007, because the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire outlined it very clearly. Suffice it to say that technology has moved things forward at a rapid pace—to the extent that we now have smartphones, iPads and other tablets, which have completely transformed the way in which Members conduct their business.
On top of that, we have new forms of communication. According to the Procedure Committee’s report, 225 Members tweet or have Twitter accounts, but in today’s debate we have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) state that the figure now stands at 300. That demonstrates how over a six-month period 75 Members have signed up for Twitter accounts. It also shows the popularity of the device as a means of communication, and for that reason alone Members increasingly see new forms of communication such as Twitter as making it easier for us to open up a dialogue with the world outside—with the people we serve. Those new forms of communication and technology have called into question once again how we conduct our business in the Chamber.
I was elected in 2005. At that point, I never thought that I would be standing here on the Front Bench making arguments about smartphones, iPads and Twitter accounts, but that in itself demonstrates how quickly the world is moving forward and how difficult it is for the House to keep up. It would be all too easy to step backwards and pretend that the world has not changed. We could pretend that Steve Jobs never existed and say to ourselves that the business of the House should stay true to the days of paper, pen and ink. However, to do that would be to deny reality and to deny the dynamic relationship that now exists between Parliament and the world outside. Even if we deny it, the media, quite rightly, will not. We cannot, therefore, fulfil our obligations as legislators effectively if we pretend that the world outside has not got smaller and smaller in terms of how quickly news travels.
There are advantages and disadvantages in allowing a more relaxed approach to the use of hand-held devices by Members on the Floor of the House and in Committee, for it is undoubtedly the case that members of the public sometimes object to seeing Members of this House using their phones or their iPads while here in the Chamber. If the Chair of the Administration Committee were in his place, I am sure that he would testify to that fact.
I very much welcome the hon. Lady’s remarks. While it is true that some members of the public object, it is also true that many of them like the fact that their MPs are on Twitter and on Facebook communicating what they are doing. Does she agree that that has come about partly because of the huge shift from paper to electronic mail and in how our constituents communicate with us?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is absolutely the argument that I am trying to make.
Although such behaviour is seen by some members of the public as discourteous and indicative of a lack of attention to the business of the House, and although on occasion that has proved to be true, and excessive and obtrusive use of such devices should be deplored, I would contest that excessive chatter and private conversations on the part of Members is equally to be deplored, and that it is those who persist in that kind of behaviour who bring the business of this House into disrepute. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree, who pointed out that Members who fall asleep in the Chamber while business is being discussed are most to be censured for discourteous behaviour. Indeed, it has been known on occasion even for Front Benchers to fall asleep or to snooze while the business of the House is ongoing.
We need to be pragmatic in our approach. Those who would continue a stricter approach to the use of hand-held devices in the Chamber on the grounds that it constitutes interference in parliamentary proceedings ought to bear in mind that we already allow the passing of messages and envelopes containing paper-based documents in and out of the Chamber for use in debate. On that basis, why cannot we allow the electronic transfer of such information for use in the Chamber? If a Member is given statistics relating to a debate via documents passed to her or him in an envelope brought to the Chamber by a member of his or her staff, then why should not that be done independently by the MP in the Chamber using an electronic device? Moreover, as the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire said, given that civil servants pass a fairly constant stream of notes to the Government Front Bench during debate, why should not other Members of the House be able to access information speedily and without delay?
We support the motion laid before the House by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire and other Members, and we commend the Procedure Committee for its work. We believe that it represents a pragmatic response to the challenges raised by the development of new technology and means of communication in that it requires Members to be sensible and discreet about their use of electronic devices in this Chamber and elsewhere. We also support the recommendations in the Select Committee report relating to Twitter and to tweeting, which are, again, sensible and pragmatic. As someone who has a Twitter account—and who is about to get her 1,000th follower—but who does not generally tweet in this Chamber, I nevertheless uphold the right to do so and the inevitable pragmatic need to give way on that point.
Our view is that we should give the approach recommended by the Procedure Committee an opportunity to work. We should bear it in mind that it is always possible to review the decision if it is felt that the recommended way forward is not working.