Blog

"You can look, but don't touch!" Making the legislative process more accessible

24 Nov 2016
Acts of Parliament in the Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament, Westminster. (© UK Parliament / Parliamentary Archives)
Acts of Parliament in the Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament, Westminster. (© UK Parliament / Parliamentary Archives)

Can technology help change the culture and practice of parliamentary politics, particularly around the legislative process?

Luke Boga Mitchell, Communications & Digital Manager, Hansard Society
,
Communications & Digital Manager, Hansard Society

Luke Boga Mitchell

Luke Boga Mitchell
Communications & Digital Manager, Hansard Society

Luke manages the development and co-ordination of the Society’s digital communications strategy, including the website, social media and e-newsletters. He also manages the Society’s varied programme of public events and supports the implementation of its fund-raising and development plan.

Luke joined the Hansard Society in 2010 as an intern on the Scholars Programme, having previously interned as a writer for a politics and culture website. He graduated with a BA in Philosophy (2007) and an MA in Social & Political Thought (2009) from the University of Sussex, and a PG Cert in Journalism and Web Development (2013) from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Get our latest research, insights and events delivered to your inbox

Subscribe to our newsletter

We will never share your data with any third-parties.

Share this and support our work

That was the theme of our recent Parliament Week event exploring how technology and innovation can increase the capacity, strengthen scrutiny and improve public engagement with Westminster, drawing on findings from our involvement in the EU Sense4us technology research project dedicated to developing new tools to help support the policy and legislative process. Over the course of three posts we will look at some of the main take-aways from the event. You can view the full agenda and list of speakers on our events page here.

"Parliament scores highly on transparency," said panelist Liam Laurence Smyth, Clerk of Legislation. People can very easily witness the legislative process close-up. They can watch all three readings of a Bill from the public gallery, attend select committee hearings where policy is scrutinised and sit through the line-by-line deliberation of a piece of legislation as it passes through a public bill committee. But what Parliament is not so good at is promoting a shift from sitting and viewing to acting and doing.

So how can Parliament begin to encourage a more meaningful interaction and open the legislative process to a wider public?

Research commissioned by the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS), and also borne out in our annual Audit of Political Engagement, has found there is an appetite among citizens to get involved in decisions that matter to them. The problem, however, is they don't know how or what impact their contribution will have.

Social media has made communication channels more direct - as Stella Creasy explained, in the four days following the Syria vote she received 12,500 tweets and as many Facebook comments, a level of instant contact with MPs unheard of 10 or more years ago. But it is also helping to drive the broader disconnect between Parliament and the public, not least because MPs are struggling to cope with the volume of communication that washes over them like a tidal wave each week. So too, MPs are burdened by both the volume and complexity of legislation.

Our research looking at the challenges facing parliamentary staff for the Sense4us technology research project also highlights the difficulties posed when, for example, select committee consultations generate a large volume of material that has to be analysed within a very tight deadline.

But whatever the form of communication, as Emma Allen, Head of Digital Development at PDS explained, a significant barrier to effective engagement remains the perennial problem of the language used within Parliament. Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, agreed, admitting that even after six years in Parliament she still stumbles across obscure procedural phrases, highlighting the level of expertise required to successfully navigate and contribute to the legislative process. While terms like 'second reading', 'committee stage', 'third reading' and 'Statutory Instrument' are common among those working in and around Westminster and the devolved legislatures, this vocabulary is far removed from everyday language.

Progress has been made in reducing 'alien' language over the past 10 years since Parliament implemented many of the recommendations of the Society’s Commission on the Communication of Parliamentary Democracy chaired by Lord David Puttnam. But as Laurence Smyth explained, introducing plain, accessible language to the legislative process is not an easy task. Precision and concision may be sacrificed in legislation that is easy to follow.

Up to the point of a white paper, issues are often fudged and lines blurred in order to gather the greatest amount of support for a legislative proposition. But then the drafters "spoil the party"; when it comes to the statute book, precision is critical if ambiguity is to be avoided. "Clarity in legislative drafting," the Clerk explained, "forces [legislators] to make choices so they can't blur the lines in what they mean."

Nonetheless, technology could play a part in augmenting the technical aspects of the legislative process to open it up to more people, as was tried with the Public Reading trial of government bills. And earlier this year, PDS began prototyping a Jargon Buster, which offers definitions for technical phrases on Parliament's website by hovering over text. Initial testing reports 58% of users saying they would find it useful rolled out more widely across Parliament's services.

A vast array of structured data lies behind the power of tools such as these. So, as Allen put it, PDS has "a democratic duty to get the data in really good shape and released to the public”.

The new CommonsVotes app is a good example of how they are trying to do this. Recently launched by PDS following rigorous user research, it utilises 'well-shaped' data to provide the results of House of Commons' divisions within 20 minutes of MPs having voted, visualising the information in a clear and engaging way, in a well-crafted interface. But despite strides like this - PDS is still a relatively new unit within Parliament - Allen acknowledged there is still plenty of parliamentary data that needs to be organised and published, and then packaged neatly within similarly well-designed interfaces to meet user-needs.

Quality data is therefore key to meeting the challenge of making parliamentary information and language more publicly accessible. To this end PDS has commissioned two new initiatives. The first is in collaboration with the Open Data Institute (ODI), who are looking at the quality of parliamentary data, whether it is fit for purpose, who is using it and what steps need to be taken to improve it. The second, a UK-wide user-research initiative, is aiming to tackle the interface side of things - the immediate relationship between Parliament and its digital services and the public.

Digital development projects like this are crucial to Parliament’s future engagement with the public. But, as Allen explained, if parliaments are truly to improve what one audience member described as ‘the customer experience’ then they will need to be much more adaptive - constantly responding to technological changes as well as the needs of users. This will require a potentially sharp cultural shift to bring about closer integration of resources and deeper engagement with service users both internally and externally.

In order to encourage members of the public to make a more active contribution to the legislative process and overcome the challenge presented by a 'look but don't touch' façade, the panel concluded that Parliament must lay the groundwork for people to understand what is happening in a way that is meaningful to them. Part of this in turn is understanding how people themselves want to engage with Parliament and, as we shall see in the next post, in conversations with each other.

Sense4us is a project funded from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (contract number 611242)

News / Parliament Matters Bulletin: What’s coming up in Parliament this week? 19-23 May 2025

Stella Creasy MP and Richard Tice MP will lead a backbench debate on the EU–UK summit. The Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a joint session with its Ukrainian counterpart on Russian misinformation. MPs will question the Defence Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Northern Ireland Secretary. Scrutiny of seven Government bills will continue in both Houses. Debate topics in the Commons will include an e-petition on transgender self-identification, and support for local pubs. On the Committee corridor, highlights include sessions on the security of undersea cables and the accessibility of the parliamentary estate. Michael Gove will be formally introduced to the House of Lords as its newest member.

18 May 2025
Read more

Submissions / Status and rights of independent MPs in Parliament – Our evidence to the House of Commons Procedure Committee

Our evidence on the status and rights of independent MPs has been published by the House of Commons Procedure Committee. Our submission summarises the direct and indirect references to political parties in the Standing Orders and whether they might apply to groupings of independent MPs, analyses whether small parties and independent groupings face disadvantages, particularly in relation to committee membership, and considers whether parliamentary publications should distinguish between the many different kinds of independent MP.

12 May 2025
Read more

Blog / The Planning and Infrastructure Bill: What happens when detail is deferred?

The Hansard Society has long raised concerns about the Government's increasing tendency to present undeveloped legislation that lacks detailed policy and grants ministers broad delegated powers to fill in the gaps later. This practice undermines effective parliamentary scrutiny, by preventing MPs and Peers from fully assessing how powers may be used, (or misused), in the future. The weak system for overseeing delegated legislation—especially in the Commons—exacerbates the problem. Several powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill currently before Parliament highlight these ongoing issues.

14 May 2025
Read more

News / Assisted dying bill: Special series #12 - Parliament Matters podcast, Episode 93

Is Kim Leadbeater's Assisted Dying Bill now "over the hump?" The Bill's supporters got it though its first day of Report Stage consideration in the House of Commons unscathed, with comfortable majorities in every vote. So, with debate on the most contentious set of amendments disposed of, will it now coast through its remaining scrutiny days in the Commons? Please help us by completing our Listener Survey. It will only take a few minutes.

17 May 2025
Read more

Submissions / Evidence to the House of Commons Modernisation Committee: Priorities and strategic aims

In response to the Modernisation Committee's call for views on 17 October 2024, we submitted evidence outlining key areas we believe the Committee should prioritise. Our submission recommended a focus on: strengthening legislative scrutiny, with particular emphasis on reforming the delegated legislation system; enhancing financial scrutiny, especially in relation to the Budget and the Estimates; addressing strategic gaps in parliamentary scrutiny; making more effective use of parliamentary time; and reviewing the Standing Orders, language and rituals of the House of Commons.

01 Apr 2025
Read more