Podcast: Beyond the Chamber

Parliament has started producing podcasts as part of its programme of utilising new media to explain what it does.  It has produced one on how MPs and peers go about their work away from their respective chambers.   Though the media focus is on the chamber, most time of parliamentarians is taken up with committees, correspondence, meeting with other members and representatives of outside bodies, and - in the case of MPs - spending time in their constituencies.

The podcast includes interviews with two MPs and two peers - I declare an interest as one of them (Lord Dholakia is the other) - and lasts for thirteen minutes.  Apart from being downloaded, it can be listened to on a PC.  For anyone interested, it can be accessed at:

http://www.parliament.uk/about/podcasts/beyondthechambers.cfm

In Defence of Expertise

 Lord Tyler’s post touches upon a question variously raised in class discussions on the Lords: why do members need to have expertise in a particular field when you can call experts to give evidence?  There are several fairly straightforward reasons.  They apply with particular force to committee work but are relevant also to debate in the chamber.

The value of having members who have some knowledge or expertise in a particular subject is that they know what questions to ask, know the value of the answers and know how to assimilate the evidence for the purpose of reaching conclusions.   They can engage in a proper dialogue with those who are called to provide evidence.  Otherwise, the danger is that the experts will be on top rather than on tap and that there will be capture by a particular interest represented by one or two experts. 

Apart from drawing on research, I speak as someone who not only serves on committees but has also appeared as a witness before committees in both Houses (and in other parliamentary assemblies).  It is fairly obvious when members of a committee are the creatures of their specialist advisers, reading out prepared questions, unable to follow-up with informed supplementaries, and either haven’t read or haven’t understood the written submissions.   Having a number of members with expertise in different aspects of the committee’s work makes for informed inquiries and avoids capture. 

Witnesses may be a little daunted by the membership of a committee but it ensures that they take the committee seriously and an informed committee may be a somewhat more friendly environment than one where members may feel they have to prove themselves.

Being an expert on one topic, of course, does not make you an expert on other topics.  You can thus serve as an intellegent layperson for the purpose of discussing most issues.  There is value in having those who take a detached view, though one has to be able to distinguish between common sense, prejudice and an inability or unwillingness to engage with research.  For my own part, I often find debates in the Lords highly educative: I sometimes go into the chamber expecting to be there for only a few minutes and end up staying for two or three hours because of the quality of the debate.  I have certainly been swayed in my voting behaviour by listening to informed argument. 

I would argue that the need for the Lords to be a House of experience and expertise is greater now than ever before for two reasons.  One is that there has been a growth not only in the volume but also the complexity of legislation.  Some regulatory measures are extraordinarily complex and one needs members with a good knowledge of the subject matter for the purpose of detailed scrutiny.   The second reason is the growth of the career politician in the Commons (as so ably chronicled by Peter Riddell in his book Honest Opportunism).   They enter Parliament earlier than their predecessors and make a career in the House.  That, coupled with the growing demands of constituency work, make them full-time politicians.   As members of the elected chamber, they engage in the grand debate and the battle between the parties.  They don’t necessarily have the time or the political will to engage in sometimes detailed, highly technical scrutiny.  That is where the Lords comes in.   It complements the work of the elected House in a way that I think is effective.  We could do even better but what we do we do well.  I would like us to build on strength.

Committee day…

I have been appointed to serve on the Joint Committee on the Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill.  (Lord Tyler is aonther member.)  The Committee has to examine the draft Bill and report by mid-July.  The Bill contains several provisions, covering the Civil Service, the role of the Attorney General, ratification of treaties, appointment of judges, and demonstrations in Parliament Square.  It is not so much a Constitutional Renewal Bill as a Constitutional (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. 

As a Joint Committee, the membership is drawn from membership of both Houses, with several lawyers and members with a particular interest in constitutional affairs; it includes three professors.  The timetable for us to take evidence and report in a couple of months is a tight one.  We met for the first time yesterday (Tuesday) and are meeting again today.

Indeed, today is very much a committee day for me.  I have a meeting of the Constitution Committee this morning - we have several scrutiny items to consider - and then this afternoon, after a party meeting, I have a meeting of the Trustees of the History of Parliament, Sub-Committee E of the EU Committee (we are examining the initiation of legislation in the EU) and the Joint Committeee.  This evening, I have a seminar with my students on placement at Westminster.   The time-consuming aspect of committee work, though, is not so much attending the meetings as going through all the paperwork in preparation for them. 

Tomorrow, I shall be in Brussels with Sub-Committee E: we are taking evidence from various officials there. 

When I posted some diary items on an earlier post, I was asked if I was choosing my busiest days to blog about.  My busiest days aren’t spent in Westminster.  They are usually the ones spent in Hull teaching or engaging in academic research.  My busiest day this week has been Monday.  I know it was a Bank Holiday, but student essays don’t mark themselves!

Committee work

Much of the work of the House now takes place away from the chamber.  The past thirty years have seen a significant growth in the number of select committees.  The increase in the active membership of the House, with many of these members having expertise or experience in particular areas, has enabled the House to become much more specialised in its investigative work.

The extent of the committee work is evident in the Weekly Bulletin detailing the current inquiries, programme of meetings and the reports of the committees.   It can be read at:

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/LordsWeeklyBulletin.pdf

On the back page is a contact number and e-mail for anyone wishing to receive copies electronically. 

The Bulletin is a mine of information for anyone interested in what the committees are doing and, indeed, for anyone with particular interests or expertise who may be considering submitting evidence to a committee.  When I chaired the Constitution Committee of the Lords, one of the points I stressed was that we did not wish to confine our evidence-taking to the usual suspects.  Committees want to hear from anyone with relevant information.

The Bulletin lists not only current inquiries but also recent reports and those reports that are to be debated in the House.   When a committee publishes a report, it does so either for the information of the House or for debate.  If it is for debate, then time is found to debate it.  Among reports awaiting scheduling for debate are two from the Constitution Committee - one on relations between the executive, the judiciary and Parliament, and the other on pre-legislative scrutiny - and one from the Economic Affairs Committee on the economic impact of legislation.  A report from the Science & Technology Committee on allergy is to be debated on 8 May.  

The parliamentary package

The work of the House of Lords should not be confused with sittings of the House. A great deal of work takes place in committees - indeed, committee work can be much more time consuming that participating in debates in the chamber - and in peers’ offices. Committee work entails not only attending meetings but also working through the paperwork for them, which can be extensive. Before the House sits at, say, 2.30 p.m. many peers will already have done a full morning’s work.

The work does not end either when Parliament is not sitting. As one parliamentarian once observed, letter writers don’t take holidays. The mail continues to flow in during recesses. We notify the Attendants’ Office prior to a recess where we want our mail redirected. Each day’s mail is then put in a parliamentary parcel and despatched. I had two packages arrive this morning. People continue to lobby, invitations flow in. The work carries on.

Interested in Parliament 2….

One of the best sources of information about Parliament is the Parliament website (www.parliament.uk). This now has a mass of useful information and is invaluable not only for learning about the institution but also about subjects debated or investigated by either House or their committees. Just browsing through the official report (Hansard) for each House, you can learn a lot about a range of subjects, not least in answers to written questions. However, for the subject specialist, there is little to beat the reports published by select committees in the two Houses.

The Lords has select committees on Communications, the Constitution, Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform, Economic Affairs, the European Union, Intergovernmental Organisations, Merits of Statutory Instruments, and Science and Technology. The EU Committee works through seven sub-committees, each covering particular sectors of public policy. As each sub-committee has about 10-12 members, this means that most weeks there are more than seventy members of the House engaged in EU scrutiny.

Committee work

Some of the most important work of the Lords takes place off the floor of the House. More Bills than before are being taken for committee stage (that is, detailed consideration) in Grand Committee. More work is also being done through select committees, established on a continuing or ad hoc basis to consider specified issues. To ensure we do not duplicate the work of departmental select committees in the Commons, Lords committee tend to be cross-cutting in coverage (for example, economic affairs, the constitution) or specific to some aspect of detailed scrutiny (such as the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee). One of the most established committees is the European Union Committee, working through seven sub-committees: each sub-committee has 10-12 members. The result is that each week over 70 members of the House are engaged on scrutiny of proposed European legislation.

Peers are appointed to committees on the basis of their particular experience and expertise. I am presently a member of the Constitution Committee (which I chaired 2001-4) and a member of Sub-Committee E (Law and Institutions) of the EU Committee. In the Constitution Committee, we are engaged on an inquiry into the impact of surveillance and data collection upon the privacy of citizenas and their relationship with the state. We have already taken evidence from a range of witnesses, including senior police officers. This week we took evidence from the human rights policy director of JUSTICE, the director of policy at Liberty, and a senior fellow of Privacy International. One of the fundamental questions - one I pursued with Dr Metcalfe of Justice - is the extent to which public interest can take precedence over the individual’s right to privacy. His view, with which I tend to agree, is that they are not mutually exclusive and that the right to privacy is a public good. This, to my mind, means that the threshold for allowing the right to privacy to be violated has to be a high one.

In Sub-Committee E, in addition to the usual task of considering particular EU documents, we deliberated on a draft report on the area of freedom, security and justice (that is, the third pillar of the EU) and the changes proposed by the Treaty of Lisbon. The changes proposed by the Treaty are, to put it mildly, controversial, and our task has been to tease out the implications and to do so in a relatively short space of time. (The Treaty is already been considered by the House of Commons.) As with most reports, there is value not only in the recommendations but in the amount of evidence that is put in the public domain. Reports have to be evidence-based, and the evidence is often substantial and valuable in its own right.