THE SPEAKER’S CONFERENCE:SEEKING A MORE JUST, CREDIBLEAND EFFECTIVE PARLIAMENT

The Speaker’s Conference (onparliamentary representation)was set up by the House ofCommons in November 2008.We were asked to inquire intothe under-representation ofwomen, disabled people andpeople from black and ethnicminority communities in theHouse. Currently thecomposition of the House ofCommons does not reflect U.K.society: women constitute 52per cent of the U.K.’s populationbut only 20 per cent of theCommons’ membership.Approximately one in 13 peoplein U.K. society come from ablack and minority ethnic (BME)community, but only one in 43

MPs have a BME background.One in five people in GreatBritain acknowledge some formof impairment, but only a handfulof MPs identify themselves asdisabled. We were asked to find

ways in which this under-representation could beaddressed and to find ways inwhich people from these groupscould be encouraged andsupported to stand forParliament.

Some people questioned whyit was necessary to carry out thiswork. After all, they said, theprinciple that an MP representsall his or her constituentsregardless of their background,their circumstances or theirpolitical allegiance is stronglyadhered to by MPs. Does theindividual MP’s own background,therefore, matter?

Our view is that while, at theindividual level, it does not

Ms Anne Begg,MP, in London.Ms Begg, a teacher, wasfirst elected as a LabourMember of the UnitedKingdom House ofCommons in 1997. She became Vice-Chairof the Speaker'sConference in 2008. MsBegg is also a Memberof the Chairmen’s Panelwhere she deputizes forthe Speaker inWestminster Halldebates and on PublicBill committees.

The Vice-Chair of the current Speaker's Conference outlines recommendations abouthow the U.K. House of Commons can increase the representation of women, ethnicminorities and disabled people.

DIVERSITY IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS

14 | The Parliamentarian | 2010: Issue One

Ms Anne Begg, MP.

Begg:Layout 1 19/03/2010 13:36 Page 14

matter, justice requires thatthere should be a place withinthe House for individuals from allsections of society. We alsoidentified further advantagesfrom a more representativeHouse. A socially diverse Housewould be able to draw upon awider range of experiences andinsights when scrutinisinglegislation, and government

policy; and, in a House whereindividuals from many differentgroups are able to be seen andheard, the decisions made wouldbe likely to benefit fromenhanced legitimacy.

Our main task, therefore, wasto consider how to create a“level playing field” for anyonewho knows that they wish torepresent their community as anMP: how to ensure that equalopportunities are available to allwhatever their gender, familybackground or personalcircumstances. As an extensionto this task we recognized thatwe should also take a step backto ask how people becomepolitically engaged in the firstplace – for unless people of all

backgrounds have anunderstanding of what can beachieved through politics, theywill not use the opportunities tostand for Parliament which maybe available.

Engaging the publicIt was with the issue ofengagement in mind that wedecided upon a programme of

visits outside Westminster.These would enable us to talkdirectly to people who either donot have easy access to ”theWestminster village”, or who areunaware of how to becomeinvolved. Between March andJune 2009 we visited EastLondon, Manchester (in NorthWest England), Cheltenham(South West England), Cardiffand Leeds (in Yorkshire).Representatives of the ScottishParliament and Northern IrelandAssembly joined our discussionsat the National Assembly forWales. In Manchester,Cheltenham and Leeds we alsoconducted open meetings.These were opportunities foranyone with an interest to come

along and ask questions, or tellus their ideas andrecommendations for improvingdiversity within the House ofCommons. We established anonline forum where individualscould discuss the issues. Webroke new ground by filming ashort video, which can be seenon YouTube atwww.youtube.com/UKParliame

nt#p/a/u/2/LN8tung8jo4. Wealso took substantial formal andinformal evidence from disabledpeople’s organizations,campaigning groups, frompolitical party officials andprospective parliamentarycandidates.

Conduct of meetingsThe vast majority of MPs areMembers of registered politicalparties and it is thereforereasonable to describe theparties as the gatekeepers to

the House. Inevitably, we had toengage substantially with thedifferent cultures andprocedures of the variousparties represented atWestminster.

Much of this discussion wassensitive, with the certainprospect of a general electionlooming. We had also to bear inmind the absolute requirementthat the office of the Speaker bekept “above the fray” of partypolitics. In pursuit of this goalboth Speaker Martin andSpeaker Bercow issuedstatements confirming theprotocol that, when chairingconference evidence sessions,they would act “in the manner ofa wholly neutral Chairman of apublic bill committee, exercisingcontrol and ensuring discipline,rather than as a conventionalselect committee Chairman whoputs questions to witnesses”. AsVice-Chairman it was myparticular role to chair meetingsand visits which the Speakercould not attend owing to hisresponsibilities in the Chamber,and also to act as theConference’s rapporteur.

A normal select committeeinquiry at Westminster will spendseveral weeks gathering theopinions of interested individualsand groups before concludingwith questions to the relevantgovernment minister. It wasapparent to us very early in ourwork that, in this case, whilethere would be actions forgovernment arising from ourinquiry our most significantrecommendations would bedirected to the political parties.We therefore chose to concludeour evidence-gathering byinviting the leaders of the threemain political parties atWestminster – the PrimeMinister, Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown,MP, the leader of the Opposition,Rt. Hon. David Cameron, MP,and the leader of the LiberalDemocrats, Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg,MP, to appear before us. We

The Parliamentarian | 2010: Issue One | 15

Left: The Houses ofParliament in London;Above: The clock tower whichhouses Big Ben.

DIVERSITY IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS

Begg:Layout 1 19/03/2010 13:52 Page 15

were delighted when they eachagreed to attend.

Evidence from the PrimeMinister and other majorparty leadersOur session with the party leaderstook place on 20 October 2009and was televised live. After someintensive discussions it was agreedthat each of the leaders wouldcome to the table separately, toanswer questions on the individualposition and views of their partyrelating to diversity in the House ofCommons.

With barely 20 minutes witheach of the leaders, it required usto be extremely disciplined andefficient in our conduct of themeeting. The witnesses wereescorted into the room through theMembers’ door, and exited by thepublic door; while somecommentators interpreted this as ameans to avoid potentiallyawkward encounters between theleaders of the different parties thesimple reality is that this practiceshaved precious seconds off the”changeover” time betweenwitnesses, which could then bedevoted to discussion.

The evidence given to us by theparty leaders, while brief, made animmensely valuable contribution toour inquiry. Each of the leaderstook the opportunity to stress apersonal commitment toincreasing the diversity ofrepresentation in Parliament. All ofthem equally, were willing toexplore the difficulties which lie inchanging long-established partycultures and procedures so thatthe barriers of discriminationagainst certain groups can beremoved.

Monitoring candidateselectionsWe were particularly pleased tosecure consensus on the subjectof monitoring. We had been toldthat monitoring of the parties’candidate selections bycandidates’ sex, ethnicity, andpersonal identifications of disability

would provide hard evidence as tothe relative success of differentstrategies to promote diversity.Monitoring could also help toincrease the speed of change. Wehad already secured somepreliminary reports from the partiesabout their candidate selections sowe were pleased that each of theparty leaders agreed to continuereporting to us in the run up to the2010 general election.

At the same time we wereaware that our ability to act asmonitors would be limited: ourconference will cease to exist atthe dissolution of the 2005Parliament. Therefore, when werealized that the Equality Bill whichwas going through the Housepresented an opportunity topropose a statutory monitoringprovision, we were anxious to useit.

Attempt to amend theEquality BillAccordingly, in early December2009 we tabled a new clause andnew schedule for the considerationstage of the Equality Bill.Recognizing that the politicalparties already monitor thediversity of their candidateselections for their own purposes,our proposal simply required theparties to put such information into

the public domain, and created aformal mechanism for them to doso, in a common format and onspecified days, so that the recordof the parties on equality could becompared.

Our amendments wereaccompanied by an interim report.This explained to the House therole monitoring could play insecuring diversity ofrepresentation, and set out thesupport expressed by the partyleaders in their evidence to us. Weargued that publishing thisinformation would enable everyone

to see what numbers of candidateswere coming forward fromdifferent groups for selection. Itwould also allow analysts to workout how successful potentialcandidates from different groupswere, in being selected forwinnable seats; and whether therewere particular points in theprocess at which different groupstended to fall out of thecompetition.

Our amendments wereselected for debate (theChairman of Ways and Means,rather than the Speaker,

16 | The Parliamentarian | 2010: Issue One

“Our view is thatwhile, at theindividual level, itdoes not matter,justice requiresthat there shouldbe a place withinthe House forindividuals fromall sections ofsociety.”

DIVERSITY IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS

Begg:Layout 1 19/03/2010 13:55 Page 16

presiding over the relevantselection conference) butunfortunately were not reachedbefore the debate ran out oftime.

Nonetheless we secured agovernment commitment to takethe matter forward, and we arecurrently watching the progressof the Bill in the House of Lords.

The historic tradition of theSpeaker’s ConferenceHistorically the Speaker’sConference is, in limited degree,a joint enterprise of Parliament

and Government: it takes placeat the request of the PrimeMinister of the day, and the roleof supporting the conferencehas been shared betweenParliament and Government.This co-operation has beenmanifested throughout our workas demonstrated by thewillingness of government torespond to our suggestion foramendment of the Equality Bill.If parliamentary business allows,we look forward to agovernment-sponsored debateon our report to mark

International Women’s Day inMarch.

There have only been sixSpeaker’s Conferences in thehistory of our Parliament. TheConference was designed toprovide a politically neutralforum in which the politicalparties might discuss pressingconstitutional issues on which a

consensus was required. Themost prominent of theseconferences was the first, whichwas chaired by Speaker Lowtherin 1916-17, and which concludedthat the right to vote should beextended to women. Throughoutour deliberations in this sixthconference – the first of the21st century, and the first for 30years – we have been aware ofthe expectations which arefostered by this record but alsoof the unique authority which thestatus of a Speaker’sConference accords to our work.

Our final report, published on11 January 2010, sets out thereasons why diversity ofrepresentation is important. Italso asserts the importance ofhealthy local political partieswhich have the vitality and theresources to connect with localcommunities and to identify andnurture potential MPs from awide variety of backgrounds.

We have expanded further onthe importance of monitoring,target setting and continuedparliamentary scrutiny, and wehave raised the possibility that inthe future all parties may needto adopt some form ofprescriptive quota to promotewomen’s representation, andmay wish similarly to use someform of quota also for black andminority ethnic representation.We have made a series of verypractical recommendationswhich are designed to improvedisabled people’s access topolitics, and to Parliament itself.

The public response in the lastcouple of days has been positive, iflow-key: one national paper, TheGuardian, has pleasingly describedour report as “a clear programmeof action…that should transformthe appearance of politics over thenext 20 years” if ourrecommendations areimplemented. It may take thatmany years or even longer todetermine whether thisConference has lived up to thereputation of its predecessors.

The Parliamentarian | 2010: Issue One | 17

Above: Women in the U.K.constitute 52 per cent of thepopulation but only 20 percent of the Common’smembership.

DIVERSITY IN THEHOUSE OF COMMONS

Begg:Layout 1 19/03/2010 13:56 Page 17