thank you for joining us this afternoon for our parliament for early career researchers online training session my name's naomi i am part of the knowledge exchange unit at the uk parliament the point of our the knowledge exchange unit is to support and to strengthen the exchange of information and expertise between parliament and the research community and we do this in lots of different ways so we run training for researchers and those working in research we have online resources about how to work with parliament as a researcher we promote opportunities for researchers to work with parliament we run some academic fellowships and really importantly we are a point of contact for anyone from the research community who would like to know more about working with parliament as a researcher so let's get going let me take you through what we are planning to cover with you today i'm going to give you a bit of information about what is the uk parliament the difference between parliament and government and we'll touch on is information about the devolved administrations as well then i'm going to take you through who uses research at the uk parliament so we'll talk about select committees about libraries post the parliamentary office of science and technology appg's or all party parliamentary groups and individual mps and peers as well and we're going to end by showing you where you can get resources and support and i'm going to make sure we give you some tips about how to prioritize and target your time this is obviously a session for early career researchers we're really aware of the demands on your time and and that you might be juggling starting your career doing lots of teaching trying to get published et cetera so we really want to give you some really focused tips on how to align yourself and position yourself to make the most of opportunities with the least amount of demand on your time so let's get started what is parliament so parliament has three parts it is the house of commons this is where our mps sit the house of lords down the other end of the building which is where members of the house of lords or peers sit many members of the house of lords are appointed and uh the monarch as well as an official part of parliament so the queen's role is mainly ceremonial signs off every piece of legislation that goes through parliament she opens parliament each year as well uh we are going to leave the queen very respectfully aside for uh the rest of the session today because if we're thinking about how you get your research into parliament she's not going to be your first port of call so what does parliament do represents the people so it is where our mps go to uh represent the constituencies for which they've been elected checks and challenges the work of government so scrutiny processes and quite a bit of what i tell you about this afternoon will be about those scrutiny processes makes and changes laws so legislation we're not going to talk very much about legislation this afternoon it's very complex process it is possible to feed research into that process but it can be very difficult if you have questions about working with legislation or a particular piece of legislation please feel free to email us and we can take it through you then debating the most important issues of the day so mps and members of the house of lords can bring issues for debate to parliament and get a response from the government on those issues and finally checks and approves government spending so government needs to get tax and budget proposals through parliament before they can be enacted so it's a good moment now to pause and look at what is government this is a very carefully worded sentence the party or the parties who can command the confidence of the house of commons forms the government so it's about that word confidence the government needs to be able to show that they have the confidence of a majority of our elected representatives so a majority of our mps and that confidence of the house of commons in the government is what gives the government the right to be in power so that is that is the theory of it the government can usually demonstrate this confidence by winning votes in the house of commons doesn't always play out in exactly that way but the theory of it is that's what gives the government its power so what the government does is they run government departments of course uh the home office department of education depart for work and pensions etc and public services of course like the nhs they propose new laws to parliament so most new laws come from the government and they are accountable back to parliament so this is just another way to think about this split the fact that parliament and government are not the same thing so parliament is in westminster we usually hear it referred to as westminster it is all mps all members of the house of lords and the queen the government is in whitehall so uh just down the road and it is some mps some members of the house of lords who've been uh chosen by the prime minister to be ministers and to run government departments to propose new laws and they are accountable back to parliament so you might think that i'm overreacting this point about the difference between parliament and government but it's incredibly useful for you as researchers to understand and clarify that difference you could very easily be working with both institutions one at a time or either but you might just wear a different hat depending on which side of this slide you're working on so if you are for example working on the development of a particular policy or how a policy might be implemented perhaps you're responding to a consultation from a government department perhaps you are sitting on a working group for a government department looking at the development of policy that is all working with government if you are looking at challenging something the government is doing um looking at how is a policy actually being implemented and is it working if you are perhaps looking at a piece of legislation as it goes on its journey towards becoming a law that is all working with parliament so i hope you can see that you could work with either institution but you might wear a slightly different hats depending on which just before we stop and answer questions i'll tell you a little bit about the devolved context which of course we have in the uk in northern ireland we have the northern lined executive and the northern ireland assembly and sitting in that assembly are mlas or members of the legislative assembly in scotland we have the scottish government and the scottish parliament with msps sitting there and in wales we have the welsh government and zenith country or the welsh parliament with assembly members there so if you live or work in one of those devolved areas you have an extra layer of representation and decision making in that area between the uk parliament and any more local government so since 1999 certain powers have been devolved to those uh devolved administrations and they tend to be things that can be regulated on on a more local level so education health justice agriculture language and then some powers are reserved to the uk parliament and they tend to be things that affect the country as a whole for example defense or foreign policy so i hope that's given you a little bit of an introduction to parliament and government and the devolve context in the uk i'm just going to go over to sarah now to see if we've got any questions that can we can answer great thanks very much naomi yeah so um first question was asking for a bit more information on the devolved legislators and what the relationship was between working with them compared to working with um with working with westminster so the structures the the staffing structures are a bit different so whilst all of the four legislators have uh committees which you'll hear more about shortly and library services and and have plenaries and have um debates in the chamber and do very similar things in terms of how you might want to engage the structures are slightly different so whilst our committees are supported by committee secretariats so specialists and clerks who support those committees in the devolved legislatures the all of the support is given to committees and to members through research and information services whereas we have research we have the library who provides research and information services so actually in a way that makes it easier for you to engage with the devolved legislators because the people who are engaging with research sits purely in the in the research services and are not attached to committees three research and information services of the three devolved legislatures so scotland wales and northern ireland so would definitely encourage you to have a look at their websites to find out more about their ways of working which are similar to our ways of working and there will be uh ways for you to get in contact with them too they also all have twitter accounts so you can follow them there so we've got another question here which is whether we're going to cover the relationship between government and the civil service so um we won't cover that in any detail today because as naomi said we're focusing on parliament today and parliament and government are those very separate institutions um working together but very separately but it might be helpful just to articulate that government as naomi said is uh is those elected members so they are political appointments but the civil service so when you hear the word civil service and all those people working in the civil service they are not political appointments so they are our non-partisan staff who are employed to support the government to to enact its work but they are non-political in the same way that parliamentary staff are non-political so i think it's quite helpful to have that uh divide so there's another good question which is is there a similar training session like this but dealing with government so um we don't know of something exactly the same but would certainly encourage you to uh have a look online for the open innovation team so they are not our counterparts they don't do exactly the same team but they are a team within government who who have lots of demand-led work from within government where they're where they have a need for academic research and so they're reaching out to engage with academics to bring research in to support the working government so if you google open innovation team and get in touch with them they will be able to provide you with with lots of information on working with the executive side so working with government and not parliament sarah thanks so much and we're going to stop again in a bit to answer some more questions but before we do that what i want to take you through is who uses research in the uk parliament and give you some tips as we go on how you might like to think about your own research feeding in to these places so first of all we've got uh house of commons and house of lords select committees there are also some joint select committees which are having members of both houses on them parts of the legislative process use research particularly public bill committees in the house of commons the house of commons and house of lords both have libraries that use research as well and we have post the parliamentary office of science and technology so as you'll see some of these uh boxes are in green which means they are house of commons services some are in red which means house of lords services and the purple ones are bicameral which means they work for both houses so this box um is what we could call the more formal processes or teams at parliament that use research and then this box appearing at the bottom now is what we could call the more political side of who uses research at parliament so we have individual mps and their researchers confusingly called researchers this is mp's staff who are employed by the mps to help them with their parliamentary duties individual peers and their researchers again their staff who are supporting them and all party parliamentary groups which i will tell you a little bit more about later as well so what i'm going to do is take you on a whistle stop tour through these parts of parliament i'll give you a little bit of information about how they work and and how you as a researcher might want to feed in your research so we'll start with select committees uh the point of select committees is to conduct inquiries into various aspects of the government's work and they will be collecting a lot of evidence on particular subjects and producing reports which make recommendations to government about how the government can change or improve what it's doing in a particular area in the house of commons we have departmental select committees so there is a select committee for every government department an education select committee a health and social care select committee a foreign affairs select committee etcetera and then there are also some more cross-cutting ones in the house of commons such as the environmental audit committee that looks at the environments the government's environmental impact across departments and house of lords committees are all quite cross-cutting as well so for example in the house of lords there is a science and technology committee um an economic affairs committee etc so the way these committees work i mentioned that they invite evidence on particular subjects i'll just pause on the word evidence here because it doesn't mean what uh you as a researcher might take evidence to mean it doesn't mean what we might uh call evidence in a court of law evidence to a select committee is anything submitted to an inquiry that it's running so it could be a report from a particular charity or organization working in that area it could be a paper written by one or more researchers researching into a topic it could be an email from an individual about their lived experience of that particular issue it could be a submission from a lobbying company or group about a particular topic all of those are counted as evidence and they help the committee to build up a picture of what's happening and to draw some conclusions and make those recommendations committees have staff employed by parliament who run the committee and support the committee to run inquiries but they also employ subject specialists as specialist advisers for that committee and these are usually academics or expert practitioners sometimes they are employed on a temporary basis just to help the committee run a particular inquiry sometimes they're more permanent members of staff but the point of them is to help the committee identify the issues that need to be uh investigated plug them into the right networks of people to talk to make sure they're asking the right questions make sure they're looking at the evidence in the right way etc so i'll just give you a few tips then about how you can get involved with select committees so most committees are on twitter if you're on twitter you can follow select committees um or you can sign up for email alerts for committees that might be of relevance to you if you spot any inquiries that you think you have something to contribute to you can submit written evidence so a lot of evidence is written but sometimes witnesses are called in for oral evidence sessions those are the ones you might have seen them on tv there's a horseshoe table with the members of the committee sitting around it and a straight table at the front with some terrified looking people at it those are the witnesses asking questions um that the mps or lords are putting to them oral evidence isn't better than written evidence there's no hierarchy written evidence can be exceptionally useful to the committee so don't feel that it's a kind of uh aimed to get invited to give oral evidence written evidence is brilliant too if you see any opportunities to be a specialist advisor then feel free to apply for them and you could also offer to host a visit for a select committee or give them a private online briefing if you've got some experts that you feel could answer or could speak to a particular inquiry that committee is running let's move on to some other bits of parliament that use research then so the commons and lords libraries these are physical libraries where books can be borrowed by mps and lords but their main function is to be an impartial information and briefing service for mps members of the house of lords and and staff working for them and across both houses so they produce a really wide range of briefing material if you have a look at the websites for the commons and lords libraries you'll get a sense of the kind of things they are publishing a lot of it is in response to questions from mps but they are also looking at business that is currently happening in the house and there whichever house and producing briefings on that material so if there is a piece of legislation going through the house of commons library will produce a briefing on that piece of legislation if there is a debate coming up this week the commons and all lords libraries um will publish a briefing pack to be used in that debate and that those packs can be used by members of any political party because they are uh politically impartial um and i mentioned members can ask questions as well so an mp could get in touch with the commons library and ask anything from what is the unemployment in my constituency uh i'm going into a debate on fracking can i have the latest research evidence on this i'm looking at some regulations on animal cruelty what are the current regulations on that topic and i've made them up but any kind of questions like this can be put to the commons or lords library by the members in the commons library there are subject specialists who work on producing briefings for their particular policy area and in the house of lords um the staff working there are a bit more generalist if you would like to introduce yourself to the commons and lords libraries to just flag your research and let them know that it's there and who you are you can contact this email address it's papers at parliament dot uk uh no more than about 250 words just a very quick this is who i am this is my research very happy to talk to you further if you would like some more about my findings now i just want to move on and talk to you a little bit about post the parliamentary office of science and technology so this is probably the closest bridge between research and policy that we have at parliament a real core aim of post is to try and make sure that the best available research evidence is feeding into the work of parliament and they do that in a number of different ways so one of the main things that post does is work on post notes so these are big horizon scanning four page briefings they take about three months to produce they're based on a literature review lots of interviews with stakeholders and they're peer-reviewed before publication as well and these are really looking at the next big topics that are going to be coming across the parliamentary agenda in the next year or so so they also provide advice for committees and libraries and react to what's happening so post has produced a huge amount of research briefing material around covid19 for example um but they are whereas the commons and auds libraries are reacting to what's happening this week right now in parliament post is taking a bit more of a look ahead post also run events which bring together mps and lords and experts on particular topics it's where we're based so there's lots of knowledge exchange going on between the research community and parliament through post and there are also academic fellowships available at post so in terms of getting involved through working with post here are some tips for you i'd really recommend that you sign up to the post mailing list um or follow them on twitter if you're on twitter because then you'll get any opportunities to work with them post always publishes the next briefing topics it's going to be working on with the names of the author as well so you if you see any that you feel you could contribute to you can just get in touch with the author and say i've got something that could feed into this particular briefing you can also propose a topic for a post note so if you think that there is an issue that we really need one of these big four page briefings on for mps and lords to use you can suggest that you can attend an event so there's a series of online webinars coming up from post around migration for example those are the ones that are running at the moment and if you are a phd student do go and take a look at posts phd fellowship opportunities so these are funded by various research councils and charities it's a chance to come and do a three-month fellowship at post as a phd student do you remember that slide with the box of formal processes at the top and then the floating box of more political processes at the bottom of it about who uses research in parliament we're on to the bottom box now i just wanted to tell you a little bit about all party parliamentary groups or appgs so what these are appgs they are informal groups of mps and members of the house of lords there's one for nearly every country in the world there are many different subject groups from asthma to veterans they are all different because they are run by mps and lords so they are quite informal um if you think about it in a university context an analogy could be that they're a bit like student societies some of them are very active they meet regularly they hold events they produce reports some of them meet occasionally for a bit of a briefing session so they are all different the point of all party parliamentary groups is for mps and lords to develop their knowledge about a particular topic to meet other mps and lords who are interested in that to show they're interested in it and to do some kind of campaigning work in a way awareness raising work about a particular topic there are a couple of ways that i think you as researchers can use appgs have a look at the full list of appgs take a look at them see if there are any which are relevant to your research area get in touch with them to ask is there anything that i can contribute can i brief you are you having any events online that i can come along to for example they will all have contact details on their web page the other way you can use appgs is to take a look at the members of a particular group and that will give you a sense of which mps and lords are interested in that particular topic which might be of relevance to your research so if you do get in touch with an individual mp or a member of the house of lords what could they do with you i'll just give you a few little ideas of what mps and lords can do parliamentary questions are a big tool in the kits of mps and lords they can put a question to the government either a written one or an oral question in the chamber and get a response from the government they can ask for a debate so they can raise a particular issue and get a response a kind of long conversation response from a government minister about that issue obviously mps and lords are going to be very heavily involved in legislative work as well so looking at pieces of legislation many mps and lords will be a member of a select committee as well so you might want to take a look at what select committee membership a particular member has before you contact them and the last thing an mp could potentially do is raise an edm or an early day motion this is a statement that mps put out to show their opinion on something and other mps can put their names against that statement so it's a bit of a campaigning tool for mps uh to show their opinion on something so that gives you a little flavor of of the array of things that mps and lords are working on or the tools they have on their at their disposal when they are working at parliament i think we have got a few minutes for some questions hi thanks naomi yeah so many great questions just a few i just wanted us to think about together and talk through the first one's a really good question it's a classic question it is if post is the bridge between research and policy but it's the parliamentary office of science and technologies they're only interested in science and technology and stem research no absolutely not at all uh post is 31 years old now and when post was created 30 years ago it was a technology assessment office so yes it was focusing on principally on science and technology and and doing technology assessment the post has evolved over the years in 2013 the social science section came in uh colleagues work increasingly across disciplinary boundaries and now posters very much of the uh of the working methods that we engage with all sorts of research across the disciplines including the arts and humanities we work really closely with the ahrc so absolutely posters there using and advocating research across the disciplines so that was the first thing i just wanted to clarify the next thing was another great question which was whether the libraries have access to academic journals generally no so if something is behind a paywall it's it's pretty likely that the the libraries can't access uh those those academic articles that we do have some subscriptions the libraries do have some subscriptions but but not kind of systematically to academic uh journals post because of uh the close contact that post has with academic community uh post advisors are affiliated to universities so they do have access to journal articles but i think another really important point to add on to that is even if they did have access to article journal articles in the library that's still really not the right kind of format of information for library colleagues to be engaging in so you know you're writing your journal articles for peers our colleagues in in the libraries our colleagues in post are not specialists to the same degree that you are so really the ideal is not is not to access or receive information at that level of granularity but to get information um in a much more succinct uh um much more layman much more generalist uh format in a way that non-specialists can can understand your research so definitely have a think about that when you're thinking about how you want to communicate your research to parliament think probably a journal article is not the right kind of thing need to be thinking about how to to communicate in the right way so we had another question come in a really important question about uh ref research excellence framework we know um that's something that's on your mind a lot we know it's really really important to you and whether whether were aware of that we absolutely are we've been working with research england for a couple of years now um to really help them understand what parliamentary impact looks like so that so that their understanding really comes from us from parliament the research users so we've been working with them to raise their awareness and understanding we wrote a briefing on research impacting legislatures along with colleagues in the devolved legislatures and that briefing has fed into guidance for ref 2021 so now if you look at the ref guidance you will see a long list of what what they understand and what we understand to be parliamentary impacts and you will also see a list of of how you can evidence that and naomi i think it's time to throw back over to you sarah thank you so much some fantastic answers again right we've got a few minutes left then so i wanted to leave you then with our advice for you as an early career research and some first steps that that we recommend you could usefully take and the first thing i want to say to you is to trust your own expertise i realize as an early career researcher it might be a bit daunting to call yourself an expert or to claim that you know about a particular topic but trust me you will know more than the people at parliament working in that area and they really do want to hear from you and they really would like any expertise or insights that you can give them the second thing to take a little bit of time to do before you embark on any of this is to think about why do you want to do this why do you want to engage with parliament what would you actually like to achieve is it that you have a particular campaigning drive and you want to get a policy changed is it that you would like to see your research being used by parliamentarians in debates is it that you would like to make some contacts with mps and lords or do you maybe just want to have a relationship with some committee staff so they know who you are so what do you want to achieve before you start doing this and you've started it already by looking at the list of select committees but consider which areas of policy you think your knowledge or your research could potentially relate to um because then you'll be able to target your approaches much more um much more succinctly and then the final thing that i want to encourage you to do is position yourself to spot opportunities to be involved you haven't got time to sit and trawl through the parliament website and look for opportunities so just position yourself and make sure that you can see them when they come up so i suggest you do that by following relevant select committees looking out for any inquiries that are relevant to you and submitting written evidence at that point so it might be that you follow some committees on twitter or you sign up for email alerts from a couple of select committees and then onto your twitter feed into your inbox it lands every time there's a new inquiry and you can quickly delete it or respond to it depending on if it's relevant i also suggest that you sign up to the post mailing list look out for any of these post notes so briefings for mps and lords look out for any of them that are being written that are of relevance to you or you think you can contribute to and if there are if one comes up that's when you get in touch and talk to the author about whether you could contribute and the final thing i suggest is to have a look at the all party parliamentary groups if you spot one or two that are of relevance to you just pop them an email say is there a way i can contribute what activities are you running can i come along to anything so if you kind of follow these steps i think you'll have a really clear idea of the direction you're going in with working with parliament and you'll be positioning yourself in a good space to spot opportunities as they come up we've thrown so much information at you in 45 minutes thank you for bearing with us but if you want to have a look at our online resources and some how-to guides now here's the web address to go to parliament.uk research hyphen impact if you are on twitter please make sure you're following us we are at uk pal underscore research and you have got a dedicated knowledge exchange unit here it's sarah who you've met answering your questions it's me who you've met this afternoon and our other colleague laura and we are the faces on the other end of this email address keu knowledge exchange unit keu at parliament.uk please feel free to get in touch with us we are here to advise and support you to make connections at parliament and get your research being used as part of parliament i hope that's been a useful session for you i'm really grateful to you for joining us we'd like to say a big thank you to you for coming along and i hope you found it useful
2021-02-12