By Louise Thompson
One of the key targets outlined in last month’s Digital Democracy Commission report was that the House of Commons should make sure that everyone can understand what it does. One of the examples it gave to demonstrate this was the rather arcane language still used during Parliament’s scrutiny of legislation. As someone who spends most of their time reading bill committee transcripts, I completely understand where they are coming from. How can we expect members of the public to know what MPs mean when they ask to ‘move’ or ‘speak to’ an amendment? Or what it actually means if a clause ‘stands part of a bill’ or an MP asks to ‘beg leave to withdraw the amendment’? And this is all before we get to starred amendments, manuscript amendments and clause stand part debates. Such language, the report says, is a ‘barrier to understanding’.