Getting hold of the Frank Field amendment

Here is the "Frank Field" rebel amendment, which calls for the scrapping of the 10p rate to be delayed (even though it's already been introduced). The Treasury says this is a wrecking amendment and asks for money that is not there. Undoubtedly support for it is changing hour by hour.

But on a slightly different point, why is it so fiddly to get hold of the text of the amendment and the signatures? I had to pick up this piece of paper from the Frank Field's office, which I've scanned in. After some searching, I later found it was available online, though it is deeply complicated to track down what you want.

Tom Steinberg, of the TheyWorkForYou / My Society websites, is running a commendable campaign to get Parliament to release the text of amendments online in a format which can be easily reproduced by his group of websites and others. This would allow for amendments to be searched by author, and people interested in particular subjects will be informed automatically by e-mail when changes are proposed. This will undoubtedly aid transparency and help demystify Parliament, which everyone has agreed is A Good Thing.

Steinberg estimates it will cost £10,000 for the software to make this happen. Doesn't sound like a lot to me.

I asked someone senior in Parliament what they thought of the proposals. The reply wasn't overly encouraging:

A project is underway which has already significantly improved the parliamentary website. Improving access to information on Bills is an important part of this. The pages on Bills have progressively been enhanced and the changes made have been welcomed by users of the site. Our priorities are guided by tests carried out with users and we are continually reviewing the list of future improvements we can take forward. More improvements to the information on Bills are currently being scoped and planned. The My Society proposal was not one of the ones we decided to pursue when it was sent to us.

So they think they've done enough. Oh dear. On days like today it seems absurd that important information is so hard to obtain.

Comments

[Marcus Cotswell]

It really isn't terribly difficult to track down this sort of thing and you can in any case sign up for an e-mail alert which tells you when new amendments have been tabled to Bills and links you through to the relevant page.

There is in effect a page for each Bill which lets you keep track not just of amendments but also new versions of Bills (when they have been amended in Committee) and proceedings in both Houses.

This is not to say that the Parliament website is perfect. Very far from it - the search functionality in particular is atrocious.

But credit where credit is due - it is actually very simple to keep track of the passage of legislation.