Both Houses of Parliament are fairly transparent institutions. They meet in public, transcripts of proceedings are published (and published promptly), and how members vote is a matter of public record. Division lists are published in Hansard. However, working out the party break-down of a vote is another matter. I speak from experience, having analysed over 3,000 Commons’ division lists – and more than a million names – as part of my doctoral research.
For anyone wanting to finding out the party breakdown of a vote in the Lords, there is now help at hand. The analysis of each division has been available electronically for some time in the House and is now accessible online to anyone interested. You can find it here.
It is particularly interesting for checking the party configuration – how often do the Liberal Democrats vote with the Government (or with the Opposition)? How do the cross-benchers divide? It is also interesting to see the extent to which the Government has persuaded others in the House to support it and those occasions when it is clearly isolated. One particularly good example of isolation is the first of the three votes on the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill last Wednesday on which the government was defeated. In that division (to remove the clause conferring the power to require people in places such as the Channel Islands to carry passports when travelling to the UK) the breakdown of the vote was:
Contents: Conservative 106, Crossbench 32, Liberal Democrats 53, Labour 1, Other 1
Not Contents: Labour 103, Crossbench 3, Bishop 1
The Government failed to mobilise its own supporters to the extent that would be expected and found itself opposed not only by the two opposition parties but also by the overwhelming majority of cross-benchers who voted. It was also isolated in the two further divisions that it lost, even losing the support of the Bishop (of Chester) in the last one. Not only the size of the majority but also the configuration of the vote sends a clear message to the Government.
In addition to the political breakdown, you can also view the names of those in each category.
While this is useful, perhaps I am being somewhat dim but don’t appear to be able to switch easily from the debate to the votes or vice versa i.e. like much on the parliament site the information is there but not joined together in a fashion conducive to ease or usability. e.g.
Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]
Lord Glentoran moved amendment 54, to leave out clause 48. The House divided:
I can’t be the only person who hoped for a link to the text of amendment 54 &/or clause 48 or at the very least a direct link to the page of Hansard giving the debate where that clause was discussed. I could have missed something otherwise here’s hoping the parliament site, failing which theyworkforyou et al, can enhance the interoperability.
Croft: I am afraid that you are not missing anything. There is no link from the data to the debate on which the vote took place. At the moment, one has to have recourse to Hansard to find out what the issue was. It is a point I will pursue. Now that the data are publicly accessible, there is clearly a case for providing a link to the Hansard debate.
It’s amazing that the government even mobilised its own supporters in favour of internal passports. We used to criticise the Soviet Union for such authoritarian measures. It seems appalling that there wasn’t a larger rebellion from the party line over this one, but I suppose nothing is a surprise from the Labour Party at the moment.
Have you seen http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/ which does all this, and more, for all Lords (and Commons!) votes back to 2001, and has done for a number of years now? It includes links to the division source, the relevant part of the debate on TheyWorkForYou as Croft is asking for, and so on. The vote you refer to is at http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2009-04-01&number=1&house=lords (the totals difference is because it excludes the teller votes).
McDuff: The figures suggest that quite a few Labour peers absented themselves from the division.
Matthew: The Public Whip does not display the names in quite the same helpful way. Also, in the Lords – unlike in the Commons – tellers are included in the vote and therefore count towards the final figures.
Lord Norton: It displays the names in the same way? Simply click the “all votes” link to get a table of all votes, sorted by your choice of name, party, or vote.
Matthew: It realise that but I don’t find it that easy on the eye. The Lords one allows for an easier display. The Public Whip I find more useful for accessing data for individual peers, though there are methodological problems in ascribing the labels of ‘loyal’ and ‘rebel’.
Matthew: My ‘theyworkforyou et al’ was very much including publicwhip. However, while I’m all for such sites I don’t think their coverage is a good enough excuse for the parliament site to be quite so clunky.
It genuinely puzzles me that it is not more intuitive, it is the sort of basic website testing and design process anyone who has been through establishing a commercial site would go through. I’m not sure if it is lack of funding, time or vision. Some of the remarks, including those by peers, on the use of open data formats and accessible licence terms for parliamentary content does suggest a level of suspicion and lack of a sure grasp of the technical issues involved. I wonder how many peers have actually sat down and used the publicwhip or theyworkforyou and compared it to parliament’s own resources.
LordNorton: Definitely worth pursuing, who’s ultimately in charge of the parliamentary site? The house authorities or Lord Renton’s Committee and it’s commons equivalent?
On the vote itself the government does seem to be having some real problems in getting their Lords to attend and vote. It can’t be the best of tactics to simply rely on overturning votes in the commons.
Croft: I take your point on the intuitive linkage. When I published data (in the days before the Internet) on MPs’ dissenting votes, I included details of each debate so that the context was clear. I’ll be pursuing the issue. Even a link to the relevant Hansard page would be useful. On you last point to Matthew, I am a regular user of theyworkforyou.com and also the Public Whip, mainly because (which is essentially the point you are making) the data are not available from the Parliament website. The authorities would, I suspect, be wary of creating a database that labelled an MP or peer as being ‘loyal’ or a ‘rebel’ in a particular vote, but in many respects there is no need to add a label: showing how members vote can be (as we see from the data now made available) sufficient. Having more data about members and their behaviour, of the sort on theyworkforyou.com, would be useful and add to the value for members of the public wanting to find out about the activities of particular MPs and peers. It is also useful for individual members wanting to know about their own behaviour!
On the vote, the Government may be wary of seeking to overturn it in the Commons (though much may depend on the attitude of its own MPs). As Meg Russell’s research has shown, what is interesting about defeats in the Lords is that the Government accepts about 40 per cent of them; what is counter-intuitive is that it is the more important defeats that it accepts, utilising its majority in the Commons to over-turn the less important ones.
lordnorton: I rather think the fact we’re talking now self-selected you into the peers who ‘get’ the internet. I like the idea of members wanting to know about their own behaviour! I suppose peers notice to an extent but sometimes the ‘voting friends’ stats produce some surprising groups.
Did Meg Russell offer a hypotheses as to why the overturn pattern was as it is? I can perhaps see that the Lords might vote against a minor matter but if the commons overturn it feel no great needs to defeat it again. Conversely on a major matter the fact the Lords has defeated it once perhaps suggests a level of determined opposition that will stay at subsequent votes. The government presumably has little to lose in overturning minor votes as even if they lose again it is of little consequence. Losing major votes in the Lords presumably involves a certain amount of political damage as even if eventually successful the need to re-fight it in the commons expends a limited resource of political capital and/or the various ‘gifts’ within government hands.