People and Parliament: Hansard Society gives evidence to the Lords Information Committee

The Hansard Society has given oral and written evidence to the House of Lords Information Committee's inquiry on People and Parliament, which is looking into how the House of Lords can improve public understanding of its work and role, and how people would like to interact with the House of Lords and Parliament. The inquiry was prompted by a debate in the Lords initiated by Lord Norton of Louth, for which we produced a briefing paper, and during which the Hansard Society's work received many favourable references.

Dr Ruth Fox, Director of the Parliament & Government programme, Dr Andy Williamson, Director of the eDemocracy programme and Michael Raftery, Director of the Citizenship Education programme all appeared before the Committee at the first oral evidence session. They argued that Parliament has made significant improvements in its work to communicate and engage with the public since the recommendations of the Puttnam Commission in 2005, but that there was still plenty of room for improvements to be made.

Recommendations for improvements included:

• A Communications Service should be established for Parliament and that Parliament’s communications strategy should be subject to regular consultation, review and evaluation in relation to optimum principles of accessibility and transparency, participation and responsiveness, accountability and inclusiveness.
• Further work on the parliamentary website to make it more accessible and intuitive in relation to users’ interests. Parliament should also promote open data standards for all its content and make digital content free and easy to virally circulate and re-post elsewhere. 
• The commissioning of a rigorous evaluation of the Parliamentary Outreach programme's three pilot regional projects as it transitions to a national programme, to ensure that the work is as effective as possible. 
  

The session can be viewed online and a transcript is available. The Hansard Society's written evidence can be downloaded here.

Update: The Committee's final report has now been issued, and can be downloaded here (Part 1 / Part 2). The Hansard Society has welcomed the report as 'far reaching' and 'comprehensive'. For more details, click here.

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