The 4 of us (and not forgetting Mrs Mummery, of course) set off for the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, where we were greeted upon arrival with a ballot paper asking us, on a scale of 1 – 5, how good we thought Parliament was at holding the government to account, with 1 being that Parliament was very incompetent, or something along those lines. The result, from over 70 other students along with ourselves, was an overwhelming 2 out of 5 – not so good, then.
We were first tasked with answering whether Parliament should remain in Westminster, then received a lecture from Baroness Kennedy detailing the work that she does on select committees, particularly those surrounding Justice and the ECJ, outlining what the ECJ actually is and how it is different from the ECHR, and telling us of her work as a QC defending human rights, which was very informative and interesting.
We paused for a quick break and listened to the history of Oxford Parliament and how it sat during the Civil War, and how they'd decided that it was time to bring it back. We were then informed of the select committee hearing that was to be held after lunch, with rumours that Stella Creasy MP would be partaking.
The ballot from the morning was repeated to see if anyone had changed their minds drastically on how well Parliament holds the government to account, albeit the result was only a 3 out of 5 competency rating, up from 2 a few hours earlier.
After lunch, we listened to a select committee hearing, chaired by Nicola Blackwood MP, surrounding Ebola (and what could be done to better a response to it were an outbreak like the one seen in the past year to happen again) and internet data (about who stores our personal internet data) which was the best part of the day, hearing from Glasgow North West MP Carol Monaghan and Walsall South MP Valerie Vaz.
In all, we came away more informed and enthused about the role of Parliament and the work that they do, even if Ms Creasy had not been able to sit on this select committee hearing.
- Sean, Year 12