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Spread the word! The House of Campaigns could only come into existence if enough existing Parliamentarians support the idea. They will be more likely to support the idea if it …
The House of Campaigns would be open to the following:
Such organisations and individuals could use a simple online application form to apply to speak in the House. If a large number of applications were received, the House of Campaigns Committee (see below) would allocate the available spaces and establish a speaking order.
The House of Campaigns Committee could actively invite some campaigners to speak in the House.
The House of Campaigns could meet on a monthly basis. Initially it could meet in a Committee Room in the Palace of Westminster but later it might meet in different venues across the United Kingdom.
Each sitting day would take place on a Friday and would consist of six half-hour sessions.
Campaigners who were using the House would become Parliamentarians for the day and would have a half-hour session allocated to them. They could use their session as they wished (within reason).
Importantly, having half an hour would allow them to develop their case in some detail. Many would wish to make eye-catching presentations which might attract public attention to their cause.
Each session would have to conclude with a Request for Action. The Request for Action would ask a specific Government department to take some specific action (bringing forward legislation etc).
At the end of the relevant session, the Request for Action would be placed onto the Parliamentary intranet so that MPs and Peers could indicate their support for, or opposition to, the proposal. MPs and Peers would also have the ability to post comments on the Proposal. It would be important not to lose momentum so Parliamentarians would probably only have two weeks within which to add their comments. The campaign group that had drafted the Campaign for Action would not be obliged to make any changes in light of any support/opposition/comment but would have the ability to do so.
Once the Parliamentary comment stage had been completed and once the Request for Action had been finalized, the House of Campaigns would send the Request for Action to the relevant Minister.
While the Minister would not be required to comply with the Request for Action, they would be obliged to provide a detailed response explaining either the action that it did propose to take or why they did not propose to take any action. The Minister might also be obliged to meet with the given campaign group. In any case, the Minister’s response should be either live or in a video format. They may feel that they have to refuse the Request for Action – but they would need to put their face to that refusal.
The House of Campaigns Committee would supervise the Government’s compliance with its obligations to the House.
The impact of ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office shows how crucial it is for a campaign to win public support. The subpostmasters had already made great, indeed, remarkable progress in getting the Government to take note of the wrongs done to them. This progress, however, was dwarfed by the action taken once public support had been mobilised. It would be foolish to hope that every meeting of the House of Campaigns could have as great an effect as Mr Bates vs the Post Office, but the House would at least give campaigns an opportunity to appeal to the public directly – and to do so on their own terms.
Those speaking in the House could make their case in as attention-grabbing a style as they could manage. It should be possible for the House’s proceedings to be televised and, given that the other Houses of Parliament seldom sit on Fridays, the House of Campaigns should have a monopoly on parliamentary reporting. The fact that there would only be six sessions each month would also help to ensure a degree of novelty value.
Not all campaigns would win public support but more should have the opportunity to try. Following Mr Bates vs the Post Office we now know that such an opportunity is available in the office of ITV’s Head of Entertainment Commissioning; it should also be available in the Palace of Westminster.
The House of Campaigns Committee would be made up of volunteer members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. It would be important to ensure that the Committee’s membership had members from a range of parties and from the Crossbenches in the House of Lords. There would also be a number of lay members (perhaps drawn from organisations such as the Royal Society of Arts and the Institute for Government).
One of the House of Campaigns Committee’s most important responsibilities would be to ensure diversity of opinion in the arguments expressed. There are various ways in which this might be achieved. One option would be to involve all political parties which reasonably hope to contest more than, say, fifty parliamentary seats. Each such party could play a role in allocating a certain number of sessions to applicant campaigns. This should go some way to ensuring the representation of a range of outlooks. While quotas can sometimes be counter-productive, the House may wish to set informal expectations in terms of the diversity of speakers and of campaigns with regard to, inter alia, ethnicity, socio-economic background, age and gender. Consideration would also need to be given to balance across the regions and nations of the United Kingdom.
With this in mind, the House would probably need to have an active outreach programme. While large and well-resourced campaigns would obviously be encouraged to use the House, it would be important to ensure that smaller campaigns were not squeezed out. The House may wish to work with local councils, community leaders and others to promote the House and to encourage campaigns and speakers to take part.
The House of Campaigns would need a small secretariat to process applications etc.
The House need not be expensive.
