Website reviews

Review of the House of Commons website, and others with information about MPs and their performance

The Journal, August 2007, page 46

Ken Livingstone (MP for Brent East 1987-2000) once said: “Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help”. Fortunately, this rule of thumb does not seem to apply to the Commons website, which is thoroughly enjoyable…

House of Commons

The large part of the main House of Commons webpage is taken up with the day’s business in the House. Some hyperlinks here would make it more useful. For example, if I am told that MPs are to debate a Forced Marriage Bill this afternoon, it might be nice to be able to link directly to that bill and any amendments proposed to it directly, rather than having to conduct an independent search for that information.

On the right hand side of the page is a section headed “Commons Highlights”, which lists a few of the more popular features of the site. Chief among these, in my view, is the audio and video coverage of proceedings in the House. The related site at www.parliamentlive.tv allows the web user to access not only live coverage, but also archived footage from the Commons. Sadly the archived footage is only available for the previous 28 days (for some classic Commons footage, try YouTube.com, e.g. the late Robin Cook MP’s resignation speech can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2unf4g). Alternatively, why not present your carefully crafted Pepper v Hart arguments to the sheriff court in MP3 format on an USB flash drive? Think how much more parliamentary intention could be inferred by nuance, intonation and body language – all steadfastly ignored by Hansard.

Speaking of Hansard, if you can’t wait for it to be published online (8am the following morning), then you can get an (unofficial) report of today’s proceedings on the “Today in the Commons” pages, which are published remarkably quickly after the words are spoken.

If you’re concerned with keeping up to date, then the latest news section will be of interest to you as well, especially if you enjoy reading several government reports a day.

One of the features currently highlighted concerns the Act of Union, which celebrates its 300th birthday this year, and there is a diverting mini-site devoted to that topic (www.parliament.uk/actofunion), including an interactive guide to the Act of Union 1707 (which took me almost as many years to download). And, lest it stand accused of being in any way Anglo-centric, there is at least some discussion of Robert Burns’ famous accusation that Scotland was “bought and sold for English gold” by “a parcel of rogues”.

Courtesy of neighbourhood information website UpMyStreet.com, the House of Commons website offers a “Find your MP” function. Regrettably, this function will not help you to locate your elected representative in the event that they are appearing on a reality TV game show. It will, however, on receipt of your postcode, tell you who your MP is and give you their contact details. You can then use this information to check their listing on the Register of Members’ Interests, or to check what your MP (or indeed other people’s MPs) have been up to in parliamentary and committee proceedings, and view motions, questions etc.

The independents

Actually these last tasks are arguably performed better and with more finesse by a collection of independent websites including The Public Whip (www.publicwhip.org.uk) which gives attendance and voting statistics among other things; TheyWorkForYou.com which includes more information about your MP than you ever thought you’d need (speeches, questions, votes, use of alliteration (sic)); WriteToThem.com which allows you to contact your MP; and HearFromYourMP.com – “form a long term relationship with your MP”. While the latter sounds like a very specialised dating agency, in fact it signs you up for email updates from and about your local MP.

The pick of these sites is TheyWorkForYou.com, due to the excellent summary of MP data including comparisons with the average MP, yielding results like “Has spoken in 49 debates in the last year – well above average amongst MPs”. It’s also a quick and easy way to check things like the Register of Interests, expenses and allowances, and a voting record at a glance: e.g. “Voted very strongly against introducing ID cards.”

So, overall, the House of Commons website is a very good site with lots of interesting and useful features, and is both well presented and easy to navigate. However, for some more in-depth analysis of the work of the House (and especially its MPs) and more interactive participation, try TheyWorkForYou.com as well.

Next month… the other place