Thousands of questions are asked in Parliament. There are times, however, to ask questions of Parliament. The pressing challenge facing, not only the UK Parliament, but all legislatures in the 21st century is how we reconcile traditional concepts and institutions of representative democracy with the technological revolution witnessed over the past decade or two, which has created both a demand for and an opportunity to establish a digital democracy.
While academic research has been conducted in to this and there have been individual initiatives and publications, there has not been one single overarching strategy for how we might move from where we are now, to what a parliament in a digital democracy may look like. Nor is there one role model whom we can all take inspiration from, although Estonia, where a quarter of the votes cast at its last national election in 2011 were delivered online is well worth investigation.
I am convinced that we need to create such a map and a compass and to invite outside expertise in to assist Parliament in this endeavour. This is why I will be announcing the creation of a unique year-long exercise, the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. Its core membership will include Parliamentarians, industry experts and academics, to be assembled in the next few weeks, supplemented by a circle of specialist witnesses and reinforced, I hope, by up to 60 million members of the public. This exercise will start in early 2014 and report in early 2015, a special year for Parliament as it will be our 750th anniversary along with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the document that set the scene for the 1265 Parliament.
We should want our globally-admired Parliament to be ahead of the curve in this territory and, I firmly believe, we should aspire that our 750th birthday party in 2015 is not an occasion for slapping our own back about the past but pointing ourselves firmly toward the future; an opportunity for inspiration not introspection.
For representative democracy to thrive it has to evolve and there has to be a step change improvement in its responsiveness to the electorate and the country at large. The Speaker’s Commission will consider, report and make recommendations on how parliamentary democracy in the United Kingdom can embrace the opportunities afforded by the digital world to become more effective in representing all the people of modern Britain. We also need to ask searching questions about the digital divide, the haves and have-nots of the internet and the smart-phone, not least because of the accumulating evidence that the Berlin Wall which undoubtedly exists in this terrain is no longer about age but relates to affluence and the lack of it. A digital democracy should not reinvent the divide in franchise of the 19th century in a new high technology form. It has to be universally inclusive and not a Geeks nirvana.
If we get this right, then the Speaker’s Commission would provide a blueprint for action covering, how to make the most of e-petitions, public reading for Bills, the use of online media by MPs, the engagement of citizens in parliamentary activity and much more that we have yet to contemplate or to discover.
The Commission is a completely new idea. It will not be bound by parliamentary rules or protected by privilege. It will draw upon existing parliamentary and external resources, including my own time as Speaker. The information and ideas upon which it will feed will be provided freely (in both senses of that term) by anyone who wishes to participate. Any additional costs for research and other expenditures will be met within existing budgets. It will be open. It will involve public hearings and the mass solicitation of evidence. I want it to be seen outside of Zone One of the London Underground network. It will crave for international examples, such as Estonia. It will involve asking the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Microsoft to let us in to their thinking about how technology might develop. It will call upon the brilliant entrepreneurs in Tech City and a host of fantastic Tech clusters throughout Britain and ask them to apply their minds to how technology can enhance democracy. Like the digital world itself it will be unpredictable, potentially anarchic. I have chosen this structure because it duplicates the spirit of the digital world. What we want to be is fast, flexible and fluid. Above all the Commission on Digital Democracy needs to deliver results. I recognise this is ambitious but I am a passionate advocate of the need for our democracy to evolve in step with advancing technology.
The survival of our political institutions and traditions in this country is remarkable. However, I recognise that the world is radically changing, that the demands on and of parliamentary democracy will be different in the future than the past and that, while it is impossible to anticipate every single technological development, I believe we can devise some new structures and methods of doing our business that will allow Parliament the agility and flexibility to adapt and flourish over the next 750 years.
What the Commission on Digital Democracy will consider is nothing less than a Parliament version 2.0.