I love the Chamber of the House of Commons, I'm a
Chamber devotee or a Chamber fanatic. I suppose really I regard it
as the cockpit of our democracy. It is the heart of Parliament and the heart of
democracy
for this country
and it's a great example to the world.
That's why the Chamber is so important.
The Chamber is really the heart of our Parliament. It's the one place where Members all
gather together to ask questions, to debate,
to legislate.
So this is the House of Commons Chamber.
It's said that Churchill himself got involved in the discussion about how big
the Chamber could be
and it was felt it would make it more intimate
and a bit more argumentative if it was smaller, so that people
were packed in for the big debates.
The Government sits on this side, or to the right of the Speaker.
The front bench is for Government ministers and on the left hand side the
opposition and the shadow
ministers sit
on these benches here.
[MP speaking]
So if a Member wants to reserve a seat for the day,
other than the front benches which are reserved for ministers or shadow ministers,
Members would have to write their name on a prayer card,
put it in the prayer card holder,
and that would reserve their seat for the day, as long as they're here for prayers, which
is always the first business of the day.
On Prime Minister's
Questions,
it's amazing how many seats are reserved and how many people come in for prayers.
So, synonymous with the sitting on the House is the Mace, which is always present whenever the House is sitting.
The Mace is carried in the by the Serjeant at Arms each day,
and is placed either on the Table or below the Table if the House is in committee.
Maces belong to the royal household.
The current mace was made for Charles II
and when the House dissolves at the end of its term they actually go back to the
royal household where they are stored safely.
This is called the government despatch box, so any minister, including the
Prime Minister,
that is making a speech to the House or replying to questions from other members,
would stand at this despatch box.
It can be incredibly intimidating,
particularly when the House is very busy,
as is the opposition box.
If we look back in history,
we've had these great politicians that have been at that
despatch box, banging away, making statements.
So this is the Speaker's Chair, where the Speaker sits
and he is here
to keep order in the House,
particularly during very rowdy and busy debates. [Speaker calls for order]
In front of the Speaker's Chair
are the clerks who advise the Speaker and Members on procedural matters.
The Clerk of the House usually sits in this chair
and the Clerk Assistant there.
When Members are asked to decide on a particular issue coming through the House
of Commons
the Speaker will call a division.
The division lobbies run parallel to the Chamber on either side.
We have the ayes behind the government side and the noes behind the opposition side.
So if you're a Member of Parliament and you want to vote for a particular amendment or bill
you will go through the aye lobby.
Or if you're against it you'll go through no.
This is the Serjeant at Arms' chair.
We are there to represent the authority of the Speaker.
Up here we have the Press Gallery, which is where the media
sit and
Hansard, the official reporters, and they record everything, so there is a record
of what is said and done in the House of Commons.
In the other galleries around either side is where the public sit.
A very important element to parliamentary business is that
it doesn't only sit but is seen to sit.
The other very special thing about
the House of Commons Chamber
is you get a sense of the power of it;
how the decisions that are taken in this place affect everybody's
lives.
The stakes are always high. It's always a big occasion.
Order!
In Westminster we start with prayers where the Speaker processes through Parliament,
arrives, the doors shut
and what's interesting is that that's the only time where it is all MPs
and then after prayers are over the doors open, the journalists come in,
the gallery fills up.
It will then be followed by Question Time.
Ministers have to come to Parliament
to account for their departmental activities.
It might be Home Office questions,
it could be
Foreign Office questions or Education questions or Defence questions.
The interrogation of Ministers
is something that takes place
every day, Monday to Thursday.
[MP addressing the Chamber]
MPs have to put in in advance what they want to ask
for part of the session but there is a bit at the end called Topical Questions where people can ask
anything they like we're there to give some answers.
We then move onto Statements or Urgent Questions
If something critical happened, perhaps the Prime Minister needs to report back on a big
international conference
then he will give a statement.
A Member can ask permission from the Speaker
urgently to question a Minister
on a matter that has arisen on which for whatever reason the Minister hasn't
offered to make a statement to Parliament.
[Member questioning Minister in Chamber]
Then we'll get into the main business of the day, which typically would be
perhaps the second reading of a bill,
so for the first time Parliament is looking at the the scope of a particular bill.
Somedays, it will be an opposition day so the opposition will actually choose what's being discussed in the Chamber
There is accountability,
the opposition can have their debates on their choice,
so can the back-benchers too so I think it works really well.
Members of Parliament can present petitions and
any Member of Parliament is entitled to do that
and then the the last thing that happens in Parliament would be an
adjournment debate. An adjournment debate is where parliamentarians want to raise
particular issues. It raises its profile because
the government that has to send a minister to respond to the back-bencher
on the adjournment debate and therefore that Minister needs a speech, needs to research
what they're saying and and make sure that they are
effectively up to date on whatever the issue happens to be.
My role
as Speaker,
as is true of my work in the Chamber more widely when chairing debates,
is not to take sides. Not to be on one side or the other. Not, in other words, to be
a player.
It is to serve as
as the referee of the match. Everybody wants to get the attention of the Speaker,
whoever's in the Chair, whether it's the Deputy, whether it's the Speaker themselves.
People, to get noticed, stand up.
It's very much
for the Chair to choose who to call.
Members will stand up each time someone sits down.
I'm looking around to see
who's standing up
and I then have to decide who to call. How do I decide? Well I go back and forth
from one side to the other so there's a mix between Government and Opposition.
I'm looking to call Members of Parliament from different intakes, not just from people
who came in forty years ago, but
from people who came in two years ago.
I'm looking to get a geographical spread
and to some extent I'm looking
to call people
expressing a range of different views. The Speaker and the people in the Chair
are referred to as Mr Speaker or
Madam Deputy Speaker/Mr Deputy Speaker.
There's very little use of individual surnames. That's because only the Speaker
will call
a Member by name.
Other Members will refer to people on their benches as my Honorable Friend or
the Honorable Member for a constituency.
[MP referring to his Honorable Friend]
The Members opposite are normally the Honorable Lady or Gentlemen
or again by constituency.
Votes in Parliament are often referred to as divisions.
At the end of a debate,
typically the Speaker will say:
"The question is as on the Order Paper. As many as there are of the opinion say aye?"
People will yell "Aye".
"Of the contrary no?"
And very often Members will yell "No".
At that point the Speaker in the Chair says: "Division. Clear the lobbies."
Voting is really exciting and
first of all we have the division bell ringing.
We have that all around the parliamentary estate so wherever you
are in Parliament you hear the division bell going. You have eight minutes
until the doors are shut. The doorkeepers who keep the doors open,
after the eight minutes have finished,
shout "lock the doors" if you haven't made it you've missed
the vote.
We divide
and you are either in support of whatever the issue happens to be so you go
to the aye lobby or
you're against it so you go into the no lobby and that's how we divide.
We physically divide by the way,
i.e. we walk through the
division lobbies and have our names noted off
a big list of paper of all the MPs.
At first when I came to Parliament I thought that this is a cumbersome
and clunky way of doing things but actually now after being here for two years I
find it an incredibly useful way
for being able to get hold of a minister because if I have a particular issue
that I would like to raise with that minister,
that my constituents are concerned about, as a backbencher
it's one of the useful,
less formal tools.
Parliament sits on a sessional basis
and each session there is a Queen's speech and that Queen's speech sets out the
Government's main legislative programme. The first thing that normally happens
is there might have been a draft bill published that everybody can have a look at
even before it comes into the chamber to be debated. Once they appear on the order paper
the Clerk will read out the title of the bill. It's the formal first
reading of a bill
and that starts the whole process off. The next thing that
is a debate in Parliament
and it is called a second reading debate and what that really means is
in principle
what do we think this bill is about. Members from both sides
will
indicate what they like about it what they don't like about it.
At end of that process
it will then go to to a Committee
Basically, it's just like a project team
of MPs
from across all the different parties. They go away and they literally go
through the the bill line-by-line, it's a bit like editing a book.
Then, it comes back to
Parliament
and the chamber looks at this revised bill and then have that final debate.
At that stage the Commons has really had it's say it goes over to the House of Lords they do
pretty much the same process they then throw it back to the Commons, we debate that
all over again
and then generally
we reach a conclusion about what it should end up looking like.
The way you introduce legislation
as back-bencher
is there is a
presentation bill
that you can ask for,
there is a ten minute rule bill that you can again request
or
enter the ballot.
[MP addressing Chamber]
I always look at the Chamber and think the
Chamber is the great place of the House,
this is to me what belongs to the back benchers. The vast majority of Members of
Parliament on not ministers
and the responsibility of Members of Parliament apart from handling casework
for their constituents
is to come to the Chamber and to probe, question, scrutinize, challenge
[Member of Parliament addressing Chamber]
One of the main functions of Parliament is to scrutinize
government
Members will do that through questions,
both written and oral so it's not just the questions on the floor of the House
Often MPs have
their own one-to-one meetings with Ministers if they have got a particular local interest.
MPs are on select committees
and they hold inquiries and then of course is the Backbench Business
Committee.
Since this Parliament started the government has given backbenchers
thirty five days
of the Parliamentary calendar to schedule for themselves the debates that they
want to raise so that's been a really exciting development and has really
changed the way that Parliament is working. Of course there can be emergency items that can be
brought to the House, at times, there could be an emergency statement,
big issues that really affect the country, quite rightly, Parliament has got to reflect
something not next week but
something that's immediate and that's the power of the Chamber.
[Member addressing the Chamber]
The Chamber clearly is the focal point
and it's what people know best
but we also have a secondary chamber called Westminster Hall.
That chamber is used for
debates where, for instance, an individual Member of Parliament
might be pushing a particular issue.
So what it's provided is really a new forum in which Members of Parliament can raise
issues and critically get a minister to respond because that's the important
thing. The debates that happen in Westminster Hall have actually got exactly the same status,
are equally reported, as is
an event in the Chamber.
The difference is you cannot have a vote in Westminster Hall, so as long as it's something
where you just want to have a general debate about something. The
minister still comes in to Westminster Hall who gives answers. You've still got
the shadow minister as well asking questions
and making speeches. It is exactly the same, reports in exactly the same way.
The only difference is that you can't have a vote. [MP addressing Westminster Hall debate]
Members sit round a hemicycle
rather than facing each other as they do in the Chamber.
It has the advantage that it's more intimate than the Chamber. The public
sit on the same level which does, for some debates if you're talking about
something that the people listening are very concerned about, makes them feel
more connected to the people speaking.
[MP speaking]
You see the Chamber packed for
Prime Minister's Question Time and of course for the big statements;
the Budget statement
and so on,
the Chamber is cramped.
At other times
my constituents will say to me: "Where are you?" because the chamber is
either half empty or actually pretty empty.
Actually what MPs do
outside the Chamber is really important. Members of Parliament have a very busy life I think.
Many are members of select committees so they will be attending meetings, probably
at least once a week usually. Quite a few will be on something called public
bill committees, which are the committees which go through legislation.
Or they'll be on committees looking at secondary legislation or on European
documents. If we're not in committee we will have
lots of all-party groups that we may be members of, that have subject matters
that we are concerned about. Also you're obviously back in your office,
working with your researchers, because we field about a thousand emails and
letters a week from constituents. The job is so varied and one of
the things about being an MP that is fantastic is
every single day you arrive and you absolutely have no idea
what's going to happen that day. It's always completely different.
If anyone wants to
make contact about what is happening in the Chamber, I think the first port
of call would obviously be their constituency Member. Constituents have a
number of of ways in which they can first of all contact their Member of
Parliament and then ask their Member of Parliament to take up an issue. As many
Members of Parliament do, I hold regular surgeries in the constituency
in terms of by email, by Twitter, by Facebook, in person, over the phone
If it is an issue which a select committee is looking at then they can write to the
committees
they can petition, ask the Member to lay a petition.
E-petitions
there's no guarantee that an e-petition would get a debate but it's
certainly one of those things which the Backbench Business Committee
would look at very seriously, and of course they can ask Members if something is
problem which they've been unable to get resolved they can ask them to raise it in the
adjournment.
I think a lot of people are not conscious that they can
come watch the proceedings, in fact they didn't have to ask their Member of Parliament,
people can turn up
and queue
and get in to watch the proceedings of the House. If people wanted to visit the
House and they have got access to a computer, then they can go to the Parliament website,
there's a lot of information there.
They can find out how to do it if they want to do a tour,
they want to come and watch debate, if they want to go into a committee meeting.
Parliament is very welcoming and likes having people so
we do hope people will use that facility and can come and watch their Parliament.
The chamber,
is also a place of real theatre
and I think the public enjoy that.
[Prime Minister, David Cameron addresses Minister]
The adrenaline ought to be flowing because it is exciting and you're conscious that it's
being reported very widely
and viewed fairly extensively across the country and indeed
beyond the UK.
This is a working museum, this is a fantatic
building to work in.
It's the envy of the world,
home of democracy.
But it all comes back down to one place in reality;
that is the Chamber,
that is where decisions are made.