Posts Tagged ‘House of Commons’

The Government will offer free personal care in their own homes for those with the “highest needs”. This could benefit up to 350,000 people.

Legislation will be brought in to halve the current deficit and increase financial regulation

Commitment to ensure 0.7% of GDP for International Development

The Government will seek to abolish child poverty by 2020.

There will be a bill to continue the reform of the House of Lords

Other issues include:

Measures to deal with anti-Social behaviour

A Bill to enhance digital communications

A Bill to enshrine education guarantees

An Energy Bill to support carbon capture and storage

High Speed Rail Bill

Flood protection measures

Devolving more power to Wales

Legislation to ban cluster munitions

No real surprises contained in the Speech. More details will be provided on the content of the speech and on the Speech debate in the House of Commons later this afternoon.

The Tweetminster webpage, where Conservative MPs are outnumbered by their Labour counterparts

As a newcomer to Twitter, I can’t help wondering why there are only 66 MPs signed up to a social media site that they could use daily to stay in touch with their constituents?

More importantly I find it bizarre that of the 66 MPs on Twitter there are more than 4 times as many Labour MPs (over 40) as Conservatives (9) on Twitter.

Why is this?

The Conservative Party website is full of videos, YouTube links, blogs and audio messages and there are a couple of extremely successful Conservative blogs like Order Order and Conservative Home (although not directly connected to the central Conservative Party). David Cameron has packed his Shadow Cabinet with media savvy figures like Jeremy Hunt - founder of Hotcourses - and spent the last 4 years spearheading Webcameron and the Conservative Wall - innovative uses of interactive media.

So why are they so behind on Twitter?

I am going to put forward a series of hypotheses that could explain this mismatch:

• 1. Proportion - I thought at first that because there are more Labour MPs in Parliament it could seem like more are tweeting when the proportions are the same. But there are 349 Labour MPs compared with 192 Conservative MPs, yet there are only 9 Conservative tweeters and over 40 Labour tweeters. In terms of proportion this means only 5% of Conservative MPs tweet whereas 11% of Labour MPs do - a clear Labour margin.
• 2. Age - The Conservative Party has often had a reputation as a party of older more traditional members, which could be seen as a reason for the Conservative Party not embracing Twitter. But as of the 2005 election Labour MPs were on average three years older than the average Conservative MP at 52 and 49 respectively. So age alone cannot be a factor.
• 3. Occupation -Background could be a more important factor than age as the Conservative Party has a far higher proportion of MPs from traditional professions such as the law, business and finance as compared with the Labour Party’s greater number of teachers, lecturers and political organisers. This may reflect a greater background of engagement in modern media amongst the Labour Party as compared with the legal and financial careers of Conservative MPs.
• 4. Constituency Impact - But for me, the most redolent reason for why Conservative MPs can blog but not tweet is that whilst they are slowly seeing how blogs can help them to stay in touch with their constituents, they cannot understand Twitter’s benefits. In rural Conservative seats in Cumbria, Sussex and Hampshire there is most likely less frequency of creative and media jobs and less engagement with social media than the urban constituencies like Manchester, London and Birmingham where Labour MPs dominate. The greater number of students, teenagers and 20s-30s working in careers that use social media in Labour constituencies makes Twitter more relevant and usable in campaigning as Boris Johnson has showed as Mayor of London -a constituency with a modern and creative media hub.

These are my main thoughts on this twitter conundrum; but to get to the bottom of this question I am going to conduct a survey of MPs and people involved in political communications who may have a better idea of why there are less Conservatives than Labour MPs on Twitter.  With this in mind I will blog again in a fortnight and outline my findings on the big question:

Where are all the Conservative (MP) Tweeters?

 Like the Conservative Party Leadership contests of 2001 and 2005; the contest for Speaker this week (Monday 22^nd of June) suddenly gave the media, and to a certain extent the public, a hook for their interest - for an intense period.

John Bercow won through amidst a group of the old, Richard Shepherd and Sir Patrick Cormack, the experienced, Sir Michael Lord and Sir Alan Haselhurst and the high-profile Ann Widdecombe and Margaret Beckett. Apart from Parmjit Dhanda, Mr Bercow was the only character who could convincingly propound reformist principles without being attributed to the old traditions of the past.

In this way his victory does mark a break - Bercow is young(ish), energetic and full of life - a welcome change from Speaker Martin. He undoubtedly has support from the Left, in fact his campaign manager was Labour MP for Reading West, Martin Salter. Also he has never been someone to toe the line. In the 1980s he was thought to be too right-wing for the Conservative party and then in the 2000s he switched to a new left-wing style (prompted by marriage to his left-wing wife) breaking rank to vote with his new found social conscience on issues such as gay rights.

So it is difficult to say there is any particular group he must appease - he is a lone figure, independent, as the Speaker must be.

But can he actually do anything?

Betty Boothroyd, in my personal opinion a great Speaker, was interviewed mid-way through the contest by the BBC and whilst explaining how important the job was and the sort of character it needed she was asked what tenable powers the Speaker had to change the House of Commons:

Of course the Speaker has authority, but not power (she said) just the power to persuade, it was not the Speaker’s job to interfere - he must speak on behalf of the House and abide by its decisions.

So when it comes down to the facts of this contest we find an empty husk. The election of Speaker Bercow sends a message to the public that the House of Commons is willing to appoint someone with reformist intentions, but it does nothing more. He has no remit except to make suggestions to party leaders and the Prime Minister; it is still the House of Commons, who finally decide.

All those who have been treating Speaker Bercow’s election as the rise of a new independent leader of the House, on a par with party leaders, have been deceived by an over eager press excited with a good contest.

Speaker Bercow can by all means encourage, nudge, assuage and egg on his colleagues towards reform - but he can do nothing more. He is just a Speaker of the House of Commons encharged with carrying out the business of the House, but not making the business or affecting its outcome. On the outside this seems like a big break - but in reality MPs must change the House of Commons themselves not just the Speaker.

The House of Commons will elect a new Speaker on Monday 22^nd June.

There are, at the last count 10 candidates who have all attracted enough nominations to be able to stand. It is always with looking at the procedure for a rare event like the election of the Speaker to help us to understand how this will work.

Nominations

Monday 9.30 - 1.30am - written nominations must be submitted to the to the House of Commons Table Office.

Candidates for Speaker must submit the signatures of between 12 and 15 MP who support their nomination and a signed declaration stating that they are willing to stand for election.

11.00am - the final list will be published on the Parliament website.

Any MP is entitled to stand and at present, there are 10 candidates thought likely to be nominated, including Margaret Beckett, John Bercow, Sir George Young and Ann Widdecombe.

Election

Monday 2.30pm - the House of Commons will meet to elect the Speaker - the Father of the House (the longest serving MP), Alan Williams, will preside over the election.

Each candidate will give a speech to the House; the order will be decided by ballot.

If there is only one nomination, that candidate will automatically be proposed to the House as the Speaker. Once all the candidates have spoken, MPs will vote for their preferred candidate.

Voting

The vote will be by secret ballot and will take place in the Division lobbies and each MP will be given a ballot paper to fill in and they will have 30 minutes to vote.

Results and further ballots

If any candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, they will be proposed to the House as Speaker. If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, MPs will be asked to vote again.

This time the following will be eliminated:

• any candidate with less than 5 per cent of the votes
• the candidate who came last
• any candidate who withdraws within ten minutes of the result

Successive ballots will be held until only one candidate remains or a candidate obtains more than 50 per cent of the votes. The remaining candidate will then be proposed to the House as Speaker.

If the motion for the Speaker is contested, there will be a vote. If the motion is agreed to, the successful MP will be dragged to the chair. The Speaker elect will then need to be approved by the Crown.

With each vote possibly taking up to two hours, MPs could be in for a long night.