Parliamentary outreach, as a concept, is relatively new. The UK Parliament was one of the first parliaments to develop and implement in the early 2000s an ambitious strategy to engage with citizens, and it is generally regarded as a leader in the field.

The aim of the public engagement strategy was to reach beyond the tens of thousands who were already engaged with Parliament to the hundreds of thousands who were not. To deliver the strategy, it was acknowledged that activity was required simultaneously on various fronts, what became known internally as the “three-legged stool” approach:

• E-reach – radically improving Parliament’s website and online offering and making use of emerging digital communication and social media channels;

• In-reach – increasing the number of school groups and visitors to Westminster and professionalising the visitor services operation; and

• Outreach – going outside of Parliament to where people are and engaging with them on the issues that concern them, in language and in places they feel comfortable in.

The strategy, necessarily, covered both Houses of Parliament. The communications, media, information office and web teams in both Houses were therefore all involved in significant development programmes. The small (bicameral) visitor services team was significantly expanded according to professional industry standards to provide a well-informed welcome to visitors and the tours on offer to the public were expanded. School children were, rightly, a priority target group in the public engagement strategy. The small Education Unit at Parliament was expanded to be able to offer more school visits to Parliament, curriculum-linked teaching resources, dedicated webpages, and (initially) two Education Outreach Officers. So, embracing all three legs of the stool.

Parliamentary outreach, as a service, was a completely new element in the strategy. Independent research into different outreach models was provided by the Hansard Society to inform the development of a regional outreach service to engage with adults and community groups across the UK. Pilot schemes were trialled in two regions in 2007. After evaluation as to the effectiveness and value for money of these community outreach activities, the service was subsequently scaled up to cover each of the nations – Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland – and the nine administrative regions in England. The outreach service sat alongside the individual relationship MPs have with their constituencies. The purpose of the parliamentary outreach service was to explain the work and role of the institution of Parliament and look for ways to bridge the gap between citizens and parliamentary business and processes.

Regional outreach officers lived and worked in their region, getting to know local networks, organisations, issues and concerns. They targeted seldom heard sectors of the community and groups that had had no connection with Parliament and were often disillusioned with politics. Outreach officers delivered workshops on how Parliament works and explored ways in which groups and individuals could raise their concerns and get their voices heard. They also worked with select committees, using the knowledge of their regions to suggest useful voices and experiences for committee inquiries.

Regional outreach addressed head-on the Westminster-centric nature of Parliament and helped bring it closer to people, showing that it was relevant to their everyday lives.

Internal feedback and evidence over the years consistently confirmed that taking Parliament out to the people was extremely powerful and changed how participants viewed Parliament. The tried and tested outreach principles were proved valid time and time again:

• go to where people are (physically, digitally, conceptually);

• meet people in places where they feel comfortable, in language that is accessible;

• engage on issues that people care about;

• get to know regional/sector networks;

• seek out strategic partnerships and foster long-term relationships of trust within civil society;

• work with trusted intermediaries, tap into with existing communities and networks;

• employ the multiplier effect; and

• use relevant communication channels – listen! – and feed back.

House of Commons committee inquiries have themselves recently confirmed the value of the outreach team’s work and the need to further strengthen engagement. The report of the 2023 House of Commons Administration Committee’s inquiry into parliamentary communications and engagement, highlighted the value of the outreach team as one of the key elements of the UK Parliament’s approach to engagement, commending the breadth of work done by the House’s communications and engagement teams, and noting that the work is seen as “sector leading”.

The 2025 House of Commons Modernisation Committee report into accessibility highlighted the critical need for Parliament to strengthen engagement with all communities and not just those who already understand how Parliament works.

The report recommended that Parliament strengthen engagement in particular with those communities that face additional barriers with engagement, such as disabled people and people with learning difficulties. It highlighted “the potential of engaging with groups which are less well represented in Parliamentary engagement.”

Academic research over the years also shows that it is exactly the type of work the outreach service has delivered since 2008 that leads to meaningful engagement. Its focus on communities (through local organisations, charities, schools, colleges, libraries, etc) where people are, can lead to engagement that is more relevant and suitable to a wider range of people. Professor Cristina Leston Bandeira’s study in 2023 about breaking barriers to engagement identified the need to strengthen the work of the outreach service in working with local and, particularly, seldom-heard communities. This study showed that seldom-heard communities, such as those from low socio-economic backgrounds, had very low trust in Parliament and struggled in particular with digital engagement.

Internationally, the importance and innovation of the UK Parliament’s regionally-based community outreach service has also been recognised. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) 2022 Global Parliamentary Report on Public Engagement identified outreach in the UK Parliament as best practice and a particularly effective way of reaching those communities that are most difficult to engage with. It highlighted the UK Parliament’s “leaving no one behind” approach, where the outreach work is a key component in “meeting people where they are” and “working with local partners”. Likewise, the 2025 IDEA – IPEN Guides on Citizen Engagement for Parliaments, drew from the UK example for best practice examples, such as the work the Outreach team did in 2019 with a disabilities group in Sunderland.

The development of the UK Parliament’s public engagement services in the early 2000s required vision, leadership, financial resources and political will. Putting financial resource and political will into developing an outreach service that engages with citizens and demonstrates the relevance and value of the institution to their lives is, however, not a one-off exercise.

Trust in politics continues to be low. Increasingly people’s views are shaped within echo chambers of virtual networks structured around the pull of social media algorithms. Investing in democracy has never been more important and parliamentary engagement services have a critical role in restoring levels of trust and understanding; particularly those services that have direct contact with local communities.

Concentrating engagement efforts in London and digitally will mean that Parliament is not able to reach out to those who do not usually engage. It will simply reinforce the engagement divide between those who are already engaged and those who are not. It will deepen the distance between Parliament and the public throughout the country.

Instead of cutting the outreach team, a strong case could actually be made for increasing the number of outreach officers. Nick Smith MP cited, in support of the decision to abolish the outreach team, the fact that in 2025/26, 32% of constituencies had received no outreach visits at all. With only 12 (fte) outreach officers, our reaction was that covering 68% of constituencies (442) in a year was pretty impressive! It is true that ideally all constituencies should see some outreach activity. It is also no doubt true that some MPs aren’t aware that there is an outreach officer covering their region. Given the evidence on the effectiveness of regional outreach, this is surely an argument for more outreach officers, not fewer.

But it all costs money. The proposal to abolish the outreach team arose from the House of Commons Savings and Improvement Programme. It is right that public bodies, Parliament included, should be conscious of the public money they spend on running their organisation. The House of Commons conducting a savings programme demonstrates good governance, and difficult decisions will have to be made. However, considering the size of the House of Commons Administration budget overall (excluding MPs’ pay etc.), cutting the outreach team really is small fry. It is not going to deliver significant savings. The PQ answer from the spokesperson for the House of Commons Commission indicated that it would save £550K per annum shared with the Lords, the Commons’ share amounting to £385K. This equates to only 0.05% of the 2026/27 House of Commons Administration resource budget (£723.6m). But in practice these savings will be reduced by the cost of investment in a new education room, software licensing costs for the planned new digital platform and training and provision of staff to run it.

The budget of the outreach team is largely made up of staff costs. So any salami-slicing budget exercise at a team level is going to mean staff cuts. Is this the right way to achieve budget reductions? The Hansard Society’s Parliament Matters podcast presenters have also questioned the proposal (in episode 145 - Parliament Matters, 4 June, from around 51 minutes) – challenging both the methodology used and the evidence cited to justify abolishing the outreach team.

The podcast also referenced the rise in headcount at Parliament and a 10 Year Workforce Data publication. This publication reveals that the team in which outreach sits (the Chamber and Participation Team) has had the lowest percentage increase in headcount over the last 10 years at 4.9%. For comparison, the Office of the Executive and Speaker's Office has increased by 407.1%, the Governance Office by 274.5%, Finance Portfolio and Performance by 196.2%, and People and Culture by 62.8%.

Any budget savings realised by discontinuing the small, but crucial, outreach team will be negligible. The impact on Parliament’s image may not be measurable, but without its outreach leg, Parliament’s public engagement and communications strategy – that three-legged stool, giving people a leg-up to participate in politics – falls over. What a sad end that would be to an activity in which the UK Parliament had established itself as world-leading.

Leston-Bandeira, C & Walker, A, The rise and fall of the parliamentary outreach team: Why cutting regional engagement is a mistake (Hansard Society blogpost, 17 July 2026)