Month: October 2019

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News

October 2019 newsletter

Image courtesy of Colin via Wikimedia Commons

In this month’s newsletter, we have the following announcements/information:

  1. Ideas for 2020 wanted
  2. New Project: The Scottish Parliament – A Graphic History
  3. Celebrating 40 years of departmental select committees
  4. New data resource – ParlRulesData
  5. Event: Do parliamentary e-petitions matter to MPs?
  6. Call for new PSA Chair
  7. Recently on our blog

If you have any notices / messages you would like us to circulate to the group, please let us know.

Best wishes,
Marc (@marcgeddes), Louise (@LouiseVThompson) Alex (@A_Meakin) and Seán (@S_Haughey)

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Categories
Blog

Combating discrimination and human rights violations through Post-Legislative Scrutiny

Franklin De Vrieze of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy discusses the use of post-legislative scrutiny to combat human rights violations.

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Blog

When select committees speak, do newspapers listen?

It is frequently claimed that the House of Commons’ select committees have grown in prominence since key reforms were implemented in 2010. In a blog originally posted by Democratic Audit Brian J. Gaines, Mark Goodwin, Stephen Holden Bates and Gisela Sin test this claim specifically in relation to press coverage. They find a pattern of increased newspaper attention after the reforms, but caution that these results show no consistent sustained increase, and also vary considerably depending on committee.

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Blog

How to make the select committee system more effective and influential

Dr Sarah Wollaston, Chair of the Liaison Committee, discusses its new report into how the system of select committees can operate more effectively, both in terms of their place within the House of Commons and their external impact, in a blog originally posted on The Constitution Unit. New ways of working and more powers are suggested, such as taking a ‘digital first’ approach to reports and formalising formalising further the arrangements for the Prime Minister to appear before the Liaison Committee.

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Blog

Getting data is hard to do: Clean data on House of Commons Members

Data on Members of Parliament is notoriously non-standardised and difficult to sift through. That’s why Dr. Larissa Peixoto Gomes is sharing her database on the House of Commons.

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