I thought it may be worthwhile repeating a comment just contributed to my earlier post on engaging with the public:
‘Not many people know that they may write to any lord about an issue that concerns them. I did this recently and my reward was a full debate arising from my letter. I was able to go and hear it and sit at the bar of the house. This was thrilling and a wonderful example of democracy. It was all without party point-scoring and therefore much more convincing than the sort of speeches and responses usually made by politicians and which cause them to lose credibility and respect.’
Though we cannot guarantee all letters will have quite this effect, it does illustrate the point that it is worthwhile writing to parliamentarians. We are engulfed by glossy brochures and well-presented briefings, but letters from individuals do get read and can make a difference. Sometimes the issue may be pursued by correspondence with a minister, a parliamentary question, or exceptionally – as in this case – through debate in the chamber.
Given one can write to any Lord, how does one go about choosing one though? What one would need is a kind of “register of interests” that shows what kind of things particular Lords have an interest or speciality in…
A debate in the Upper House is a good example of a parliamentary state rather than a democracy, surely.
I have been making more use of the excellent WriteToThem web-site to engage
in correspondence with my MP. Of course I can only write to the one MP
as they are directly associated with where I live as *my*
representative.
The site does offer an opportunity to write to Lords although it’s
less than clear who you should write to. They offer a basic search
through the They Work For
You’s debate archive but it’s less than ideal. For example I have
yet to find Lords who would be interested to hear my views on the
dangers of electronic vote counting as recently used in the London
elections. Perhaps the noble members could be persuaded to put up a
list of their interests somewhere on parliamentary pages? Dare I
suggest a Facebook-like directory of members listing interests and
contact details?
I am however enjoying engaging with the Lords that post on this blog
and find it especially gratifying when they respond in the comments to
address points that have been made. Of course that process is more
reactive than proactive, but useful never the less.
Jonathan Hogg and Alex Bennee: you both touch upon a very important point that has come up in previous postings. People would like to write to peers and peers are usually happy to hear what people have to say. The problem, as you mention, is knowing which peers to write to. Dod’s Parliamentary Companion does list peers under their interests (education, defence etc) but it may be that we could arrange for this type of information to be more readily available online. I will pursue it to see what can be done.
Jonathon Hogg, Alex Bennee and lordnorton: The search facility on TheyWorkForYou allows you to narrow results by House so, for example, this link will take you to a list of Lords who have mentioned “electronic voting”:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?s=%22electronic+voting%22&o=p&house=2
All you have to do is:
1. Enter your search in the normal way and click on “Go”
2. Select “Show Use By Person”
3. Select “Lords” to filter out MPs
Hope this helps 🙂
Sheila Thomson: That certainly helps narrow the list. The only problem with using TheyWorkForYou is that you need to refine your terms, as use of generic terms brings up people who have are not necessarily experts or who would not even regard themselves as having a particular interest in the topic. Looking at what they have actually said, though, can identify useful contacts. Much depends on how widely one wishes to cast one’s net.
howridiculous: the reference is not to the debate as such but rather what prompted it.
Yes, we had precisely this difficulty when we wrote http://www.writetothem.com/lords
We’re quite open about the fact that searching Hansard is by no means a perfect or even very good way of picking a Lord to contact, but it’s the best we could come up with – we can’t expect members of the public to have to buy Dod’s 🙂
We do have some anecdotes of people picking a Lord who shares their birthday meeting with success 🙂