Parliament and the Public — Question for Short Debate

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 8:27 pm on 16 June 2009.

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Photo of Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, House of Lords, Leader of the House of Lords and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 8:27, 16 June 2009

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Renton, on securing the debate and on his thought-provoking introduction. I thank him and other members of the Information Committee for the effort and time that they have put into their work in this vital area on behalf of the House. I look forward to studying the committee's report when that work is concluded. I am proud of the work that the Information Committee carries out.

This has certainly been a wide-ranging debate. I have to confess that I was not expecting a discussion on electoral reform, and certainly not on electoral systems in the Church of England. Neither was I expecting a debate on the powers of the European Union, but such is the strength of this great House.

The Question is a particular and specific one about what steps the Government,

"are taking to increase the connection between Parliament and the public".

It is for Parliament as the legislature to increase its connection with the public, rather than for the Government as the Executive to take steps to improve that connection. That is the position based on appropriate separation of powers and has traditionally been the position that successive Governments have taken, but we have seen significant shifts in it over the last few weeks as the Government have intervened with proposals for Parliament in the wake of the revelations about allowances in the other place. Such an intervention is highly unusual. Government do government and Parliament does Parliament. Where the two meet, the conjunctions are complex and careful. Proposals for change in the voting system or in the powers and composition of this House, for example, can be brought forward by the Government, but it is ultimately for Parliament to decide on them. Parliament is not beyond government proposals, but all Governments tread warily in this area.

However, in the judgment of the Government, recent events have required this greater and different intervention. For example, it was the Government who referred MPs' expenses to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which took its first evidence earlier today. However, it will be for Parliament, not the Government, to take final decisions on any proposals brought forward. That is the right division of responsibility and the correct separation of powers. Parliament, not government, must remain sovereign. So there is a limit to what steps this Government—indeed, any Government—can and should take to increase the connection between Parliament and the public, but that is not to say that there is not a strong communality of interest between what the Government and Parliament want to see: great involvement, greater participation and democracy working better. I would still give three cheers for democracy.

In the modern world, both the Government and Parliament face the challenge of ensuring that we continue to engage with the public and increase transparency and so build and maintain the trust that we need to work on the nation's behalf. The noble Lord, Lord Renton, my noble friend Lord Puttnam and others are right to draw the link between information, transparency and trust. Both the policies and programmes of the Government and the decisions taken in this House affect the lives of millions of people, so the Government need to ensure that citizens have an accurate and impartial understanding about government policies, activities and services. Parliament needs to ensure that citizens have a full understanding of the scrutiny and work that it is doing on their behalf to hold the Government to account and to make legislation that sets the framework for our society, our economy, our public services and our place in the world.

That is the crux of tonight's argument. The committee's work builds on the excellent foundations laid by the work of the Hansard Society commission chaired by my noble friend Lord Puttnam and on which the noble Lord, Lord Renton, served. Rereading the work of the Puttnam commission, which was a delight, I was struck by how appropriate for both the Government and Parliament their fundamental vision remains four years on. I quote:

"We want to see a Parliament which is an accessible and readily understood institution, which people know how to approach, and when and where to make their voice heard, a Parliament which relates its work to the concerns of those in the outside world".

That is what Parliament wants and should want and it is also what Governments, regardless of their political stripe, should want for their Parliament, too. It is certainly what this Government want for Parliament.

The Puttnam commission's vision was not just about how we communicate but about how we listen. These days, people expect to be able to find information where and when they want to know it rather than to be told when we want to tell them. People expect to be in control rather than to be controlled. They expect to have information in terms of their everyday lives and interests, not in terms of the institutions that provide it. What is more, if we listen well, both the Government and Parliament can harness the knowledge and skills of citizens to help us in our work and to help us to improve public services. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, referred to the many young people working in this institution. We should be listening to them. By increasing engagement and participation, we can win broader consent and inclusion in our democratic processes. I believe that information is a prerequisite for democratic empowerment.

There is, therefore, a high communality of interest. There is also a communality in the challenges that we face as government and as Parliament: the challenges to connection are now unprecedented. But so, too, are the opportunities for us all in government and in Parliament: in communication, in engagement and in involvement in the way in which people now live and will live their lives in the 21st century. This debate is especially timely, given that the Government have today published their White Paper on Digital Britain, about which my noble friend Lord Carter of Barnes repeated a Statement to the House earlier. The challenges and opportunities of digital technology are not the only ones that we face, but they are of a scale that many of us are only beginning to comprehend and at which many of us marvel.

As the White Paper puts it, the changes that digital technology brings require us to develop a new level of participation for a competitive digital knowledge economy and a modern democratic and fair 21st century. The digital big bang will transform how we participate in a modern democracy, how we learn, how businesses operate, how we find jobs and how we do them, how we access our public services, how we develop our creativity and how we make the most of our free time and network with friends.

Both the Government and this House need to grasp the opportunities being offered up by the mass take-up of the internet. Good work has already been carried out to improve Parliament's website, as noble Lords have said, both with more information and by making it more usable and accessible. Similar work is being done in government through the creation of direct.gov and businesslink.gov, which focus on the needs of individual citizens and businesses, and through the introduction of minimum standards of usability, accessibility and accountability for all government websites.

However, the internet is no longer a one-way medium. It is a powerful means of engaging directly with the public and obtaining their views. In government, the e-petitions function of the No. 10 website has now had nearly 10 million signatures on 25,000 petitions. We have started to open up policy documents for open consultation online, such as the science White Paper, and we are making regular use of YouTube and other social media. We are determined to do more in this area. We have recently published and accepted the recommendations of the Cabinet Office's Power of Information Task Force on how to move forward. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has appointed Sir Tim Berners-Lee to help us to move forward on the openness of government data.

Many noble Lords mentioned the ways in which this House has been experimenting in this field. I warmly welcome the many innovations, such as Lords of the Blog and the YouTube video, which I watched with the noble Lord, Lord Renton. I also welcome the fact that Parliament Labs has published several trial versions of the Equality Bill online, bringing together the clauses and the Explanatory Notes side by side. That is a fantastic innovation.

For many young people in particular, the internet is now not just a way of life but a normal way of life. One of the recommendations of the Puttnam committee was that Parliament should do more to engage with young people. This House has made excellent progress. I pay tribute to the Lord Speaker for her role in developing and championing the outreach programme. The Peers in Schools programme has been fantastic, and I thank the many Members of this House who have already given their time to it and to the other outreach initiatives. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for her new ideas—thanks to the WI—and I share the enthusiasm expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for bringing sixth-formers in here. The more young people we see, the better. The Lord Speaker has personally sponsored an annual competition for schools every year since her appointment, and this year's competition, about young people's representation in the media, is currently under way. Young people are the future of our country and our democracy. Last month, I was in Oldham talking about the building of a new youth centre. The young people were involved in the decisions, which made them passionate and switched on to debate and democracy. They were also interested in the House of Lords.

We in government and in Parliament have made great progress, but there is still a long way to go. No one knows all the answers or what is consistently best, but in government and in Parliament we need to try things out, innovate and learn to know that some things will not work or will have unexpected consequences. We need to manage them and not be afraid of them. We need to open up our information so that others can find ways of using it. We need to use the skills of those outside Parliament who want to help.

Many of the proposals emerging from the work of the Information Committee will be matters for this House, rather than the Government, to decide and implement. Noble Lords will take a view about the pace of change and about how to open up our processes and information. On behalf of the Government, I can give the House an undertaking of support for its work. The newly appointed director for digital engagement in the Cabinet Office will work with the officers of this House to share knowledge about best practice and best technologies. We will look to how the needs of the House can be incorporated into the work that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has agreed to lead for us and we will work with the House to ensure that where information passes from the Government to the House and vice versa—for instance, on Bills or in Questions—it does so smoothly and in ways that support the open information objectives of the House.

I have greatly enjoyed this debate. I am sure that I have not answered all the questions. In response to the question about citizenship, I firmly support citizenship education and will take the question about future financing back to the department. I look forward to many future debates on this terribly important issue.