TellParliament .net - Defence Committee Consultation - 20 Apr, 2006

Select Committee reaches overseas with www.tellparliament.net/defcom.

From 18 April until 12 May, the Defence Committee will be hosting an online forum as part of its inquiry into the education of the children of Service personnel. This will be the first time the Committee has conducted a web-based consultation. Members of the Committee will respond to comments posted on the forum over its duration.

The Committee sees the forum as an opportunity to receive the views of people with direct experience of education of Service children: teachers, Service families and young people who are attending or who have attended Service schools. The advantage of running the consultation online is that most of these contributors live overseas.

As well as the online forum, the Committee would welcome submission of written evidence from interested parties. For more information visit www.parliament.uk/defcom.

The Hansard Society has an impressive track-record in providing independent support to Parliament in its use of online consultations. Recent online consultations include:

Human Reproduction Technologies and the Law - for the Science and Technology Committee
Connecting Parliament with the Public - for the House of Commons Modernisation Committee
Constitutional Reform - on the Draft Constitutional Reform Bill
Hate Crime - for Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Diabetes Dialogue 2005 & 2006 - for All-Party Group for Diabetes

All of these online consultations are available for viewing at www.tellparliament.net.

An evaluation report of the TellParliament project will be released at the end of April. For more information, please contact Ross Ferguson via r.a.ferguson@hansard.lse.ac.uk.