Learn about the history and traditions of the House of Commons Chamber, also the functions of its members

JOHN BERCOW: I love the Chamber of the House of Commons. I'm a Chamber devotee or a Chamber fanatic. I suppose really, I regard it as the cockpit of our democracy.

LINDSAY HOYLE: It is the heart of parliament and the heart of democracy for this country. And it's a great example to the world. That's why the Chamber is so important.

JACQY SHARPE: The Chamber is really the heart of our parliament. It's the one place where members all gather together to ask questions, to debate, to legislate.

LAWRENCE WARD: So this is the House of Commons Chamber. It's said that Churchill himself got involved in a discussion about how big the Chamber could be. And it was felt it would make it more intimate and a bit more argumentative if it was smaller, so that people are packed in for the big debates.

The government typically sits on this side, or to the right of the Speaker. The front bench is for government ministers. And on the left hand side are the opposition and the Shadow Minister sit on these benches here too.

MEMBER 1: Don't believe that millions of people are losing confidence in our legal system, I believe that they are concerned about the ability of the European--

WARD: So if a member wants to reserve a seat for the day, other than the front benches which are reserved for ministers or shadow ministers, members would have to write their name on a prayer card, put it in the prayer card holder, and that would reserve their seat for the day as long as they're here for prayers, which is always the first business of the day.

HOYLE: On Prime Minister's questions, it's amazing how many seats are reserved, how many people come in for press.

WARD: So synonymous with the sitting of the House is the mace that is always present whenever the House is sitting. And the mace is carried in by the Sergeant at Arms each time, and is placed either on the table or below the table if the House is in committee.

And maces belong to the royal household. The current mace was made for Charles II. And when the House dissolves at the end of its term, they actually go back to the royal household where they are stored safely.

This is called the government dispatch box. So any minister, including the Prime Minister, that is making a speech to the House or replying to questions from other members, would stand at this dispatch box. It can be incredibly intimidating, particularly when the House is very busy, as is the opposition box.

HOYLE: If you look back in history, we've had these great, great politicians that have been at that dispatch box banging away, making statements.

WARD: So this is the Speaker's chair where the Speaker sits. And he is here to keep order in the House, particularly during very loud and busy debates.

BERCOW: Order! Order! Perhaps we can now make some progress with short questions and short answers.

WARD: In front of the speaker's chair are the clerks who advise the speaker and members on procedural matters. And the Clerk of the House usually sits in this chair and the Clerk Assistant there.

When members are asked to decide on a particular issue that's coming through the House of Commons, the Speaker will call a division. The division lobbies run parallel to the chamber on either side. We have the ayes behind the government side and the noes behind the opposition side. So if you're a member of parliament and you want to vote for a particular amendment--

SPEAKER 1: Division, clear the lobby.

WARD: --you will go through the aye lobby. Or if you're against it you'll go through no.

And this is the Sergeant at Arms' chair. We are there to represent the authority with the Speaker. Up here we have the press gallery, which is where the media sit and [INAUDIBLE]. They're the official reporters and they record everything so there is a record of what is said and done in the House of Commons Chamber.

And in the other galleries around either side is where the public sit. Because a very important element to Parliamentary business, is it doesn't only sit, but it's sing to sit.

The other very special thing about the House of Commons Chamber is you get a sense of the power of it. You know, and how the decisions that are taken in this place affect everybody's lives. So the stakes are always high. It's always a big occasion.

BERCOW: Order, order.

NATASCHA ENGEL: In Westminster, we start with prayers where the Speaker processes through Parliament, arrives, the doors shut. And what's interesting is that that's the only time where it's all MPs. And then after prayers are over, the doors open, the journalists come in, the gallery fills up.

BRAKE: It will then be followed by question time. Ministers have to come to Parliament to account for their departmental activities.

BERCOW: It might be home office questions. It could be foreign office questions or education questions or defense questions. The interrogation of ministers is something that takes place every day, Monday to Thursday.

MEMBER 2: Come on right over and tell me how much will be saved by freezing police pay, and whether the benches opposite support those savings.

JUSTINE GREENING: MPs have to put in in advance what they want to ask for part of the session. But then there's a bit at the end called topical questions where people can ask anything they like. We're there to give some answers.

BERCOW: We then move on to statements or urgent questions.

TOM BRAKE: If something critical had happened, perhaps the Prime Minister needs to report back on a big international conference, then he will give a statement.

BERCOW: A member can ask permission from the Speaker urgently to question a minister on a matter that has arisen on which, for whatever reason, the minister hasn't offered to make a statement to Parliament.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Will the minister make a statement on the government's plans in respect of the reports on employment law.

BRAKE: Then we'll get into the main business of the day, which typically would be perhaps the second reading of a bill. So for the first time, parliament is looking at the scope of a particular bill.

HOYLE: Some days, you know, it will be an opposition day. So the opposition will actually choose what's being discussed in the chamber.

GREENING: There's accountability. The opposition can have their debates on their choice, and so can the backbenches too. So I think it works really well.

MEMBER 3: Friends, [INAUDIBLE] speaking. Can I express my thanks, first of all, to government members for [INAUDIBLE] South, mostly for co-sponsoring this very topical backbench debate.

BRAKE: Members of parliament can present petitions, and any member of parliament is entitled to do that. And then the last thing that happens in Parliament would be an adjournment debate.

NADHIM ZAHAWI: An adjournment debate is where parliamentarians want to raise particular issues. And it raises its profile, because the government then has to send a minister to respond to the backbencher on the adjournment debate. And therefore, that minister needs a speech and needs to research what they're saying and making sure that they are effectively up to date on whatever the issue happens to be.

BERCOW: My role as Speaker, as is true of my work in the Chamber more widely when chairing debates, is not to take sides, not to be on one side or the other. Not, in other words, to be a player, but to serve as the referee of the match.

HOYLE: Everybody wants to get the attention of the Speaker, whoever's in the chair, whether it's the Deputy or it's the Speaker himself. And people, to get noticed, stand up.

SHARPE: It's very much for the Chair to choose who to call. Members will stand up each time someone sits down.

BERCOW: And I'm looking around to see who's standing up. And I then have to decide who to call. How do I decide? Well, I go back and forth from one side to the other, so there's a mix between government and opposition.

I'm looking to call members of Parliament from different intakes, not just from people who came in 40 years ago, but from people who came in two years ago. I'm looking to get a geographical spread. And to some extent, I'm looking to call people expressing a range of different views.

SHARPE: The Speaker and the people in the Chair refer to as Mr. Speaker or Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr. Deputy Speaker, there's very little use of individual surnames. That's because only the Speaker will call a member by name. Other members will refer to people on their benches as my honorable friend or the honorable member for a constituency.

MEMBER 4: Does my right honorable friend suppose--

SHARPE: And for members opposite, normally it's the honorable lady or gentleman or again, by constituency.

SPEAKER 2: Division, clear the lobby.

BERCOW: Votes in parliament are often referred to as divisions. At the end of a debate, typically the Speaker will say, the question is as on the order paper, as many as are of that opinion say, "Aye." And people will yell, "Aye." On the contrary, "No." And very often members will yell, "No." And at that point, the Speaker in the chair says, "Division, clear the lobbies."

ENGEL: Voting is exciting. And first of all, we have the Division Bell ringing. And you have that all around the parliamentary estate. So wherever you are in parliament, you hear the Division Bell going.

And you have eight minutes to when the doors are shut. So the door keepers who keep the doors open, after the eight minutes have finished, shout, "Lock the doors." And then if you haven't made it, you've missed the vote.

ZAHAWI: We divide. And you're either in support of whatever the issue happens to be, so you go into the "aye" lobby, or you're against it, you go into the "no" lobby. And that's how we divide. And we physically divide, by the way. We walk through the division lobbies and have our names noted off a big list of paper with all the MPs.

At first when I came to Parliament, I thought, this is a cumbersome and clunky way of doing things. But actually now, after being here for two years, I find it an incredibly useful way for being able to get hold of a minister. Because if I have a particular issue that I would like to raise with that minister that my constituents are concerned about, as a backbencher, it's one of the useful less formal tools.

SHARPE: Parliament sits on a sessional basis. And in each session, there is a Queen's speech. And the Queen's speech sets out the government's main legislative program.

GREENING: The first thing that normally happens is there might have been a draft bill published that everybody can have a look at even before it comes into the Chamber to be debated.

SHARPE: Once they appear on the order paper, that Clerk will read out the title of the bill. It's the formal first reading of a bill. And that sort of starts the whole process off.

GREENING: The next thing that happens is a debate in parliament. And it's called a Second Reading debate. And what that really means is, in principle, what do we think this bill is all about?

SHARPE: Members from both sides will indicate what they like about it and what they don't like about it. At the end of that process, it will then go to a committee.

MEMBER 5: I'd like to say that I have much more positive view of law six.

GREENING: Basically, it's just like a project team of MPs from across all the different parties. They go away and they literally go through the bill line by line. So it's bit like editing a book.

Then it comes back to Parliament. And the chamber looks at this revised bill and then have that final debate. At that stage, the Commons has really had its say.

It goes over to the House of Lords. They do pretty much the same process. They then throw it back to the Commons. We debate that all over again. And then generally, we reach a conclusion about what it should end up looking like.

ZAHAWI: The way you introduce legislation as a backbencher is there's a presentation bill you can ask for. There is a 10 minute rule bill that you can again request, or enter the ballot.

ADAM AFRIYIE: Data sets are now beginning to provide jobs and the economic growth the country so desperately needs.

HOYLE: I always look at the Chamber and think, the Chamber is the great place of the House. This is to me, what belongs to the backbenchers.

BERCOW: The vast majority of members of parliament are not ministers. And the responsibility of members of parliament, apart from handling casework for their constituents, is to come to the Chamber and to probe, question, scrutinize, challenge.

MEMBER 6: However, will the minister confirm that the Health and Social Care Act creates more [INAUDIBLE] than the Public Bodies Act abolished?

SHARPE: One of the real main functions of parliament is to scrutinize government. Members will do that through questions, both written and oral. So it's not just the questions on the floor of the House.

GREENING: Often MPs have their own one to one meetings with the ministers if they've got a particular local interest. MPs are on select committees, and they hold inquiries. And then, of course, there's the Backbench Business Committee.

ENGEL: Since this parliament started, the government has given backbenchers 35 days of the parliamentary calendar to schedule for themselves the debates that they want to raise. So that's been a really exciting development. And that's kind of really changed the way that parliament is working.

HOYLE: Of course, they'll be emergency items that can be brought to House at times. You know, there could be an emergency statement. You know, big issues that really affect the country. You know, quite rightly, Parliament has got to reflect not something next week, but something that's immediate. And that's the power of the Chamber.

MEMBER 1: The government pursues the work that it is doing, not just to look at the possibility of a British Bill of Rights, but also so that in future we will be in a position to deport people who are dangerous to us.

BRAKE: The Chamber clearly is the focal point, and it's what people know best. But we also have a secondary chamber called Westminster Hall. That chamber is used for debates where, for instance again, an individual member of Parliament might be pushing a particular issue. So what it's provided is really a new forum in which members of Parliament can raise issues and critically get a minister to respond. Because that's the important thing.

ENGEL: The debates that happen in Westminster Hall have actually got exactly the same status, are equally reported as is any event in the Chamber. The difference is, you cannot have a vote in Westminster Hall. So as long as it's something where you just want to have a general debate about something, the Minister still comes into Westminster Hall and gives answers. You've still got the Shadow Minister as well asking questions and making speeches. It is exactly the same, reported in exactly the same way, and the only difference is that you can't have a vote.

MEMBER 7: Can I say at the outset that I also support the overall aims of the government in respect to this issues.

SHARPE: Members sit around a hemicycle rather than facing each other as they do in the Chamber. And it has the advantage that it's more intimate, I think, than the Chamber. The public sit on the same level. Which does, for some debates if you're talking about something that the people listening are very concerned about, makes them feel more connected to the people speaking.

MEMBER 8: This morning, if I may, I want to set out the practical problems and concerns with the government's proposals.

ZAHAWI: You see the Chamber packed for Prime Minister's question time, and of course, for the big statements, for the budget statement and so on, the Chamber is cramped. At other times, my constituents will say to me, well, where are you? Because the Chamber is either half empty or actually pretty empty. And actually, what MPs do outside the Chamber is really important.

SHARPE: Members of parliament have a very busy life, I think. Many are members of select committees, so they will be attending meetings probably at least once a week, usually. Quite a few will be on something called Public Bill Committees, which are the committees which go through legislation. Or they will be on committees looking at secondary legislation or European documents.

ZAHAWI: If we're not in committee, we will have lots of party groups that we may be members that we are subject matters that we are concerned about. But also, you're obviously back in your office working with your researchers. Because we field about 1,000 emails and letters a week from constituents.

ENGEL: The job is so varied. And one of the things about being an MP that is fantastic is that every single day you arrive and you absolutely have no idea what's going to happen that day. It's always completely different.

SHARPE: If anyone wants to make contact about what's happening in the Chamber, I think the first port of call would obviously be with their constituency member.

BRAKE: Constituents have a number of ways in which they can first of all contact their Member of Parliament, and then ask their Member of Parliament to take up an issue. As many Members of Parliament do, I hold regular surgeries in the constituency, in terms of by e-mail, by Twitter, by Facebook, in person, over the phone.

SHARPE: If it's an issue which a select committee is looking at, then they can write to the committees. They can petition, ask the member to lay a petition. E-petitions, there's no guarantee that a e-petition would get a debate, but it's certainly one of those things which the Backbench Business Committee would look at very seriously.

And of course, they can ask members if something is a problem which they've been unable to get resolved, they can ask them to raise that in the adjournment.

BERCOW: I think a lot of people are not conscious that they can come and watch the proceedings. In fact, they don't have to ask their Member of Parliament. People can turn up and queue and get into to watch the proceedings of the House.

SHARPE: If people wanted to visit the House and they've got access to a computer, then they can go to the Parliament website. There's a lot of information there. And they can find out how to do it, if they want to do a tour, if they want to come and watch a debate, if they want to go into a committee meeting. And Parliament is very welcoming and likes having people. So we do hope people will use that facility and come and watch their Parliament.

ZAHAWI: The Chamber is also a place of real theater. And I think the public enjoy that.

DAVID CAMERON: What I would say to the honorable gentleman is the Eurozone--

BERCOW: The adrenaline ought to be flowing because it's exciting, and you're conscious that it's being reported very widely and viewed fairly extensively across the country and indeed beyond the UK.

HOYLE: This is a working museum. This is a fantastic building to be in. It's the envy of the world, home of democracy. And it all comes back down to one place in reality. That is the Chamber. That's where decisions are made.