The speaker of the House of Commons organised a “commission” to look into how digital technology could be used to reinvigorate our democracy. The group of the “great and good”, received 102 submissions, gained 225 facebook likes and 2,655 twitter followers and launched their report on the 26th of January 2015.

The report does not reflect the views of the speaker, it’s just some recommendations and ideas from an appointed group who’ve achieved a relatively modest level of public engagement but they’re ideas those in a position to change things will be reading so perhaps it’s worth commenting on what they’ve produced.

Erskine May

I have been lobbying, and campaigning through activism, for some time for the rules the House of Commons follows to be made freely available. The current position where the book, edited by a public servant, is sold at an exorbitant price currently £311 and is not made openly available online is astonishing.

One of my hobbies (and form of activist campaigning) is to watch for mentions of Erskine May in the House of Commons (using TheyWorkForYou email alerts) and to use TheyWorkForYou’s annotations feature which lets anyone scribble in the margins of Hansard to quote the sections of Erskine May which MPs are referring to. I obtain my quotes from an illicit electronic copy of the work distributed by by pro-democracy and pro-transparancy hackers in 2011.

It is excellent to see recommendation 32 of the commission is:

32. We recommend that Erskine May, the definitive guide to parliamentary procedure, should be freely available online by the time the next edition is produced.

My own recommendation, as I first suggested in November 2011, would be to abolish “Erskine May” and replace it with a “A Guide to the Workings of the House of Commons”. For a nod to our history and to aid the interpretation of historical House of Commons proceedings there could be a note underneath the title saying “formerly known as “Erskine May””. The guide could be modelled on the Companion to the Standing Orders and Guide to the Proceedings of the House of Lords, and provided online with a unique link to each section.

See also my main article on this subject:

• Parliament Blown Open by Hackers – November 5 2011

MPs’Voting Records

The report suggests MPs “smart identity cards”, along with an electronic system, should be used to count the votes during a “division” in the House of Commons.

Using a computer to add up the votes would save time, and would result in the public being able to find out which way their MP has voted almost soon as the vote had taken place rather than having to wait, as now, three hours, for the publication of Today’s House of Commons debates. Even this only provides lists of who has voted which way, and doesn’t make it easy to find out which way your own MP has voted or what exactly the vote was on.

Parliament releasing the detailed voting information in a timely and structured manned would enable others to work on presenting the votes, interpreting them, and making them accessible.

Currently detailed division results are sometimes released to the Press Association before being published online. I think this creates an inappropriate releationship between MPs and some elements of the media. All those seeking to report on, and comment on, MPs’ activities should have the same access (otherwise those reporting may find themselves self-censoring out of fear of losing their privileged access). In any case it is generally not the mainstream media with the access who currently often report, and promote, the details of which MPs have voted which way, it is more often political commentators, campaign groups, and sometimes political parties.

Plain English

In Chapter 3 the commission’s report proposes reducing jargon and making parliamentary language more accessible. Obviously this would be a good thing. I agree with the comments that we need not to try and help people interpret the archaic language of Parliament but to change it so it operates in a less remote and more accessible and comprehensible manner.

There is a suggestion that “amendments could be voted on in plain English”.

The majority of MPs voted against requiring MPs to provide explanatory statements to accompany amendments they propose to Bills when an idea like this was put to MPs in November 2013.

The proposals in the commission report go further and appear to suggest that MPs should only operate the plain English and leave the detailed technical drafting of laws up to lawyers. I think it’s very important that MPs deal with, debate, and vote on, laws themselves and not some abstraction of them. Already though MPs comments during debate, indicating what MPs intended to do are already taken into account when courts are struggling to make sense of ambiguous laws. I think we could just write clearer laws.

While the intent of the comments is positive; I think some elements such as proposals for “more bite-sized content” do risk dumbing-down how what goes on in Parliament is presented.

Services for MPs

There is a suggestion In Chapter 11 that Parliament should “improve facilities to assist MPs in their work for the public”. I think while it needs to be up to individual MPs how they use them, tools for MPs to engage with their constituents, in public where appropriate, for example when suggesting questions to be asked in the House of Commons, or suggesting changes to proposed laws, should be provided by the institution of Parliament.

Electronic Voting

Chapter 10 of the report contains a recommendation that:

By 2020, secure online voting should be an option for all voters.

This could be seen as a challenge to the prime minister who has announced he wants to ban effectively encrypted communications; without which operating such a system securely would be very challenging.

I can see that perhaps we will one day be able to devise an electronic voting system which isn’t a “black box” and which people understand and have confidence in.

One good system is that used by Cambridge University Students’ Union; the description of that explains:

Part of the security model of the system is that the list of votes cast (but obviously not the connection with who cast them) is revealed after the closure of the election. This is so that people can verify that their vote was saved correctly, alongside other checks and balances that seek to ensure this.

However while you can see your own vote has contributed towards the result although votes still have to have significant amounts of blind-faith in the system, for example believing that all the other voting tokens they are showing really do relate to others’ votes.

Tom Scott has recently produced a video on why electronic voting is a bad idea:

Additional Elements I’d Have Liked to See

• There’s no mention of introducing an electronic system for collecting “subscribers”; making it easier for people to stand as a member of Parliament.
• Recommendation 11 in Chapter 5 states the ban members of the public taking mobile electronic devices into the House of Commons chamber and Westminster Hall debates should be removed. I think this is positive and recognises that many of those attending Parliament in person will be there to report on proceedings and not just passively observe. I would have liked the recommendation to have gone further and to recommend opening the press gallery to all those seeking to report on proceedings.

Report Presentation

It’s great each chapter of the report has a webpage however there are no obvious URLs for each subsection and recommendation which would have aided citing in tweets etc. commenting & debating.