Procedure Committee Reports

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman is laying out a clear case. Does he accept that one of the other functions of using hand-held devices in the Chamber is to let the general public know what is happening? Our procedures are not always clear to the casual observer. Many people are interested in what we do, and Twitter, for example, is a good way of letting them know what is going on.

[Mr Knight]

There is certainly a strong argument for saying that we should not rule out of order anything that increases public interest in the Chamber and our Committees. I agree, therefore, with the hon. Gentleman.

There is also the question of consistency. Written notes as well as books, newspapers, letters and research papers may be used as an aide-mémoire. There is no difference between allowing a Member to consult his or her speaking notes or necessary documents in hard copy and allowing them to use an electronic device. Indeed, as more material is published in electronic format only, it might soon be the only way in which some documents can be consulted, particularly if the House of Commons Commission pursues its quest for further savings and decrees that some of our publications, which currently we enjoy in paper format, should be available in electronic format only.

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[Mr Knight]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That makes my argument even stronger and the Government’s case even weaker, and I am grateful for his intervention.

Our proposal is merely intended to enhance the visibility of Select Committee issues, without in any way diminishing the position of individual members in voting for or against amendments on the Floor. This matter was not initially on our agenda, but the Liaison Committee asked us to look at it. We have done so, and this is our conclusion. I therefore hope that, even at this late hour, the Government will reflect on their opposition to it, which I feel is misplaced. We have given our view, and whether the proposal now proceeds further is a matter for the whole House.

I see the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in her place. She was one of the Members who supported the idea of explanatory statements, which is the subject of one of the other motions on the Order Paper today. The House has conducted a series of experiments with explanatory statements, and the Procedure Committee has assessed them. We decided that the overall effect was inconclusive, but it was put to us that carrying out a further experiment in a new Parliament—namely, this one—could be worth while, and that it would also be worth pursuing the experiment during the Report stage of a Bill. That is what we have decided to recommend to the House, and we are pleased to note that, in a debate Westminster Hall on 3 February this year, which the hon. Lady attended, there was complete consensus that it would benefit not only Members but those outside the House to have an accompanying explanation of what an amendment or new clause was designed to do.

I am rather more hopeful about this proposal, because the Deputy Leader of the House attended that debate and—it was a rare situation indeed—offered Government support for the measure. He said:

“Regarding explanations for amendments, we had the experiment in Committee and I am certainly happy, as far as the Government are concerned, for that experiment to proceed. Perhaps we ought to look at having such explanations on Report, too.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2011; Vol. 522, c. 384WH.]

I wholeheartedly agree with him, and I am glad that, on this issue, we are as one. I hope that he will confirm today that he now thinks it appropriate for us to trial the explanatory notes again in this Session and the next one. It would then be a matter for the House to decide in due course whether the facility was to be made permanent.

On the question of having a three-month trial quota for questions tabled electronically, the concern arose from evidence—mainly informal—from the Table Office. It found, when questioning the intended scope of some questions tabled electronically in Members’ names, that some Members appeared to know nothing about the questions and registered surprise that they had been tabled in their name. The Procedure Committee took the view that, in some cases, research assistants might be using the electronic procedure to table questions without the express authority of those for whom they work.

Questions are a proceeding in Parliament and should not be submitted without the express and explicit authority of a Member of Parliament. As the electronic submission method could be used without the Member’s knowledge, we decided, in this area only, to limit the number of questions to five in a three-month period to see what the effect would be. We are not recommending any restriction on the number of questions that a Member may take into the Table Office personally. This is a modest recommendation, and we hope that it will lead to Members being fully aware that a question is being submitted in their name.

[Dr Huppert]

Would an alternative be to encourage the use of electronic submissions and to introduce a system whereby, once a question had been received, it was automatically sent to the Member by e-mail? It would then be very hard for a rogue researcher to table questions without being noticed.

[Mr Knight]

That is a possibility, but we felt that, in the first instance, this three-month trial might lead to a small drop in the number of questions that a Member might deem worth asking. If Government Departments had smaller postbags to deal with, it could lead to better and quicker answers. We think that that is worth an experiment, but of course there are other options that we could look at. Indeed, as it is just an experiment, I would be quite happy to reflect on what the hon. Gentleman has said, should this motion proceed today.

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[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.

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[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I support the proposal ably put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight)—and he is my friend. He has recently printed an excellent book, “Dishonourable Insults”, in which I appear on page 163, and I thank him for that, too—[Interruption.] It is available in all good book shops and I wish him every success. When I intervened on him earlier, I suggested that in addition to his proposals we should ensure that we have wireless reception in the House of Commons Chamber. Not so long ago, when I was trying to live tweet during Prime Minister’s questions—I had advertised the fact that I would try to do so in advance—I failed completely because of the poor reception we sometimes get here for electronic devices. I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, if, in doing so and in making that admission, I was breaking some rules of the House at the time.

May I clarify one thing? I had a little contretemps in the Chamber earlier this year with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who told us with his characteristic modesty that he was the first MP ever to sign up for Twitter—

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I see I have provoked him into intervening, and I cannot say no after I mentioned him, can I?

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for praising my modesty—that is very kind of him. We did have that discussion, but I think things have moved on. I wanted to be clear in case I misspoke earlier: of the current MPs, I believe I was the first. I was certainly not the first MP on Twitter. I do not know who has that honour, although I am sure they will claim it later.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention because he has highlighted the fact that what I said about his modesty was meant to be ironic, and Hansard does not pick that up very well, so this gives me the opportunity to make that clear. Let me repeat a proposal that I have made in the past—that irony should be put in italics in Hansard so that everybody outside reading it can understand what exactly was meant.

The contretemps that the hon. Gentleman and I had was in relation to a point of order that I raised while you were in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. At that time, your ruling was interpreted as a ban on the use of Twitter in the Chamber, but I know, having had subsequent talks with you, that that was not exactly what you meant.