More than 30 million people have signed at least one petition addressed to the UK Parliament, representing over a third of the country’s population. This figure illustrates the potential of electronic petition platforms to expand citizen participation in the parliamentary agenda.
This point was highlighted by Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Professor at the University of Leeds and Chair of the International Parliament Engagement Network, during the webinar “Right to petition: international experiences to revitalise citizen power in digital democracy”, organised by Political WatchSpain on 3 February. The event brought together specialists, institutional representatives, and international experts to discuss how the right to petition can be strengthened in the context of digital democracy.
During her intervention, Leston-Bandeira presented the UK Parliament’s e-petitions system, developed to link citizen petitions to parliamentary activity. As she explained, these tools have significantly broadened opportunities for citizen participation, although they also pose challenges in managing large volumes of petitions and ensuring that diverse groups of citizens engage in the participatory process.
The discussion took place alongside the presentation of a report by Miguel Ángel Gonzalo, Director of Documentation at the Congreso de los Diputados (Spain) and Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. According to Gonzalo, the main challenge is to connect citizen petitions with parliamentary decision-making, as otherwise “the right to petition becomes merely decorative”.
The data presented highlight the limitations of the current system in Spain. During the current legislature, the Congress of Deputies has received 386 citizen petitions, of which 380 were referred to other institutions without generating direct parliamentary consequences. In the Senate, 53% of petitions are archived outright. Moreover, the Congress Petitions Committee meets very infrequently—around one and a half hours per legislature—far less than other parliamentary committees.
Website of the Petitions Committee of the Spanish Congress
The event also featured other international experts, including Maarja-Leena Saar, responsible for Estonia’s petition portal Rahvaalgatus.ee, who emphasised the importance of institutional independence in petition platforms to build public trust. Likewise, Alberto Alemanno, founder of The Good Lobby, warned of the persistence of an institutional culture that often resists translating citizen petitions into concrete action.
Among the main conclusions of the discussion was the need to modernise the Spanish petitions system through accessible digital tools, clear mechanisms of accountability and procedures that connect citizen demands with the parliamentary agenda. As participants noted, the success of petitions lies not solely in solving specific problems but also in their ability to bring neglected issues onto the public agenda and open spaces for democratic deliberation.
The IPEN Executive Team is pleased to announce that long-time Deputy Chair Dr Sarah Moulds has been elected as IPEN’s Vice Chair.
In line with IPEN’s governance statement, Sarah will take over as Chair in September 2026. We would like to express our heartfelt congratulations to Sarah and look forward to continue working with her in this new role.
We also would like to express our deep gratitude for all that IPEN’s outgoing Chair and co-founder Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira has done for the network. It is hard to overestimate the role Cristina has played in making IPEN into the force it is today.
We will mark the transition of chairs with a special event in September, expect more on this in the coming months.
Sarah Moulds said:
“I’m delighted to have been elected Vice Chair of the International Parliament Engagement Network (IPEN). I look forward to taking on this role and taking over as Chair later in the year.
A few words about my work on parliamentary public engagement
For those of you who do not know me, I am an Associate Professor in Law at Adelaide University and co‑founder of the Rights Resource Network South Australia. I have been teaching and researching in the area of public parliament engagement for many years. My work is driven by a simple idea: parliaments work best when they are genuinely connected to the communities they serve.
My training has always been grounded in how rules, institutions, and human experience intersect—particularly where public engagement shapes (and is shaped by) the legislative and law reform process. In my research, teaching, and policy work, I focus on building practical pathways for participation that inform drafting, committee scrutiny, human rights compatibility assessment, and post‑legislative review. This includes working alongside practitioners and community partners to design engagement that genuinely improves the quality and impact of lawmaking.
In 2022, I was honoured to receive a Churchill Fellowship exploring ways to empower young people to engage effectively with Australian parliaments. The resulting report, Connected Parliaments, continues to inform my contributions to IPEN and my broader program of research on democratic renewal and inclusive participation.
My involvement with IPEN
My involvement with IPEN goes back to its beginnings in 2020 and has been one of the most energising parts of my professional life. I’ve learned so much by broadening IPEN’s reach in the Australasian and Pacific regions, including through the Australia–New Zealand–Pacific Islands Community of Practice and in my role as Editor of the Australasian Parliamentary Review, and it has been a privilege to support colleagues to share practice, co‑create resources, and collaborate across jurisdictions.
A key strand of my professional practice is capacity‑building for parliamentary professionals. I have coordinated and delivered the Parliamentary Law, Practice and Procedure course for colleagues across Australia and New Zealand, helping to translate comparative doctrine and institutional history into practical tools for scrutiny, engagement, and reform. These experiences keep me closely connected to the realities of legislative work and the opportunities to embed meaningful public engagement at every stage of the lawmaking cycle.
Looking ahead
I’m grateful for the leadership, generosity, and mentorship of the IPEN Executive, and in particular, Professor Cristina Leston‑Bandeira. Her example—combining scholarly rigour with inclusivity, curiosity, and collaboration—has shaped IPEN’s culture and my own approach to network leadership.
As Vice Chair of IPEN, I’m excited about the opportunities ahead. I’m committed to supporting IPEN’s members, nurturing new partnerships, and helping the network continue to flourish as a global leader in public engagement. Most of all, I’m looking forward to working collaboratively with colleagues around the world to champion approaches to engagement that are innovative, inclusive, and grounded in real‑world democratic experience.”
The future of IPEN is in good hands
As she steps into the role of Deputy Chair from September onwards, current Chair and co-founder of IPEN, Cristina Leston-Bandeira spoke of her delight of Sarah Moulds’ election as Vice-Chair:
“The International Parliament Engagement Network (IPEN) has been a labour of love to many of us. As I step back from academic roles and the IPEN Chair position, I am delighted with the election of Sarah Moulds as our incoming Chair.
I know that IPEN will be in very good hands with Sarah at its helm. Sarah brings with her not only unique expertise in parliamentary public engagement but also a deep understanding of parliamentary practice – two key ingredients at the core of IPEN.
We are very lucky to have her as our future Chair and I look forward to working with Sarah in this transition to a new stage of IPEN.”
Over the past year, the UK Parliament has celebrated the 10 year anniversary of its e-petitions platform. As part of this, its Education and Engagement Outreach team developed a bespoke programme on e-petitions for its annual UK Parliament Week programme to better establish connections between communities and petitions.
UK Parliament Week 2025 with the Outreach Team
The UK Parliament runs an annual outreach programme every November, which lasts about a week. Known as the UK Parliament Week, it consists of a series of events and activities across the UK that connects people with Parliament and democracy.
For UK Parliament Week 2025, the Education and Engagement Outreach team delivered a bespoke programme exploring the Power of Petitions. The theme marked the 10‑year anniversary of e‑petitions, the digital tool that enables the public to raise issues with Parliament.
In response, the team focused on educating classrooms and communities about how petitions work and how they can break down barriers to participation.
Bespoke activities
For school and college assemblies, the team developed interactive quizzes exploring e‑petitions, their rules, and the role of signatories, using real‑life examples from the past decade and linking directly to the e‑petitions website.
They also created a card sort game inspired by historic petitions from the Parliamentary Archives, highlighting the long‑standing relationship between public voices and social change.
Using historical petitions to connect with petitions – Copyright UK Parliament
The final part of the programme featured a creative activity for workshops, SEND groups, and community organisations, through which participants illustrated their own petition ideas on an outline of their hand (see feature image). This encouraged creative self‑expression and reinforced the historic link between signatures and democratic participation.
Reaching audiences nationwide
In one week, the team reached 11,248 young people through 81 interactive school and college sessions. Beyond education settings, they engaged 239 community participants, working with organisations including The King’s Trust, Mencap, and the Third Age Trust to make petitioning Parliament accessible to all.
“It was great using the new Petitions resources during November as they brought a different focus to my sessions and really showed the groups I worked with how they could directly engage with Parliament in a meaningful way. Many of the groups signed petitions during the workshop and one even started to set their own up.” – Rachael Dodgson, Outreach Officer for the North West
Communicating about petitions through interactive quizzes – Copyright UK Parliament
Linking to research
These educational outreach activities align with Professor Leston‑Bandeira’s recommendations on reducing barriers to parliamentary engagement by “disseminating the value of petitioning to all citizens.” They also support deeper collaboration with classrooms and community networks nationwide, contributing to the development of a “citizen‑focused parliamentary petitions system” that helps communities to understand and engage with Parliament (Leston‑Bandeira, 2024).
Learn more
To learn more about where they went, what they delivered, and life as a UK Parliament Outreach Officer, explore the team’s visual story: Outreach’s Parliament Week 2025
Feature image: Using creative approaches to connect communities to petitions – Copyright UK Parliament
This seminar explored how three very different parliaments – Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, the Parliament of Ghana and the Scottish Parliament – structure the delivery of public engagement services. The idea for this seminar came directly from one of our new IPEN members, who is setting up a new public engagement department in their parliament and wanted to hear about how other parliaments have done this.
Public engagement is understood in many different ways across parliaments, with some putting more emphasis on education, others on participation and others still on communications; or a combination of these. This results in very different types of services supporting public engagement activity. This can matter in the way public engagement relates to other activities, such as parliamentary business.
Public engagement services also vary very considerably in size across parliaments. Some parliaments may have one small team that needs to attend to every public engagement needs, perhaps keeping everything well integrated and connected – to the detriment of capacity to undertake a high number of activities. Other parliaments have separate services that address different aspects of public engagement, being able to provide a high number (and often more complex) set of activities – but perhaps resulting more in a culture of silos, where each service does their own thing.
Chaired by Cristina Leston-Bandeira (Professor of Politics at the University of leeds and Chair of IPEN), the seminar followed an in conversation format through which we heard from Enock Adomah (Administrator for the Department of Public Engagement, Parliament of Ghana), Sally Coyne (Head of Public Engagement Services Office, Scottish Parliament) and Rodolfo Vaz (Coordinator of Digital Solutions for Citizens, Chamber of Deputies, Brazil).
Rodolfo, Enock and Sally started by outlining how their parliament structures public engagement services.
In the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, this is divided by two main directorates: the Directorate of Communications and the Center for Education, Training and Development. The former includes as diverse services as the children’s parliament website and the interactive debates with committees; in the main digital activities. The latter focuses on more in-depth, in person and longer-term education activities.
Organogram of services supporting public engagement in Brazil Chamber of Deputies
The Parliament of Ghana divides its services through an internally oriented service and an externally oriented one. The internally oriented educational service focuses on services taking place within Parliament, such as educational visits, tours and resources. The externally oriented delivers a wide range of outreach services.
Organogram of services supporting public engagement in the Parliament of Ghana
The Scottish Parliament has again a very different structure to deliver its public engagement services. The Directorate of People, Communications and Engagement brings together teams delivering very different types of services such as visits to parliament to committee engagement. The directorate is supported by other departments such as Events and exhibitions and Business information Technology.
Organogram of services supporting public engagement in the Scottish Parliament
After outlining the services, the speakers discussed key issues such as decision-making power within these services, the link between strategy, structures and activity, and what works particularly well within these structures and what could be better.
The seminar was attended by 34 participants from as far as British Columbia in Canada, all the way to Ireland, Portugal and Ghana. IPEN members can listen to a recording of the seminar through this link. IPEN members can also access organograms of all three parliaments through the seminar’s thread in MS Teams.
Image credits:
1. Parliament House (State House) – Parliament of Ghana. Photo by Wgsohne. CC BY-SA.
2. Palácio do Congresso Nacional, Brasília, Brazil. Photo by Cristina Leston-Bandeira.
3. Exterior view of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Photo courtesy of the Scottish Parliament.
In this article, IPEN member Rhayna Mann (Citizen Engagement Senior Manager at Senedd Cymru, Wales) shares insights into how the Senedd’s Citizen Engagement Team closes the loop in their work with seldom-heard groups.
Introduction
At the Senedd (Welsh Parliament), the Citizen Engagement Team often works with people who don’t usually see parliament as “for them”. One thing becomes clear very quickly: a single conversation isn’t enough.
Lack of trust and accessibility barriers, both real and perceived, can make it hard for people even to step into the process. Previous experiences may have left them wary; information is often not presented in ways they can use or feel comfortable with. And when we invite people to share personal, sometimes painful experiences with an institution that also makes the rules, the power imbalance is unmistakable.
All of this means we have to work reflexively and with care, adapting at every step so that people feel informed, respected and able to stay in the loop. For us, “seldom-heard groups” means people who are rarely reached or represented in formal political processes, even when those decisions affect their daily lives.
For the Senedd’s Citizen Engagement Team, a test of good engagement is how we close the feedback loop – how we show people what happened to their words and how their evidence shaped scrutiny and decision-making. But that final moment of feedback only works if every contact point before it has been handled with care and reflection.
We’ve learned to think of our work as a series of significant contact points with participants. At each one, we learn something about what they need and adapt what we do next. That reflexive way of working shapes the whole loop, all the way through to the final feedback. We don’t always get this right the first time, but treating each contact point as a chance to adapt has changed how we work.
Here are six key contact points that, taken together, help us close the loop with seldom-heard groups in a way that feels honest, accessible and – we hope – even enjoyable.
The Wallich Shadow Board, after participating in a focus group for the post-legislative inquiry into the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Copyright Senedd
1. First contact: where trust and the feedback loop begin
The loop doesn’t start with an activity, such as an online form or a committee meeting; it starts with whom we speak to first.
Before we approach participants, we spend time with the people they already trust, such as charities, support workers, organisations and community leaders. We ask two simple but important questions: “Is our engagement approach appropriate?” and “What is the right way to communicate with this group?” That includes understanding social norms, etiquette, preferred terminology and the ways people naturally share information.
For the British Sign Language (BSL) (Wales) Bill, for example, deaf gatekeepers helped us understand the landscape long before we reached out to participants. They told us about previous experiences of being consulted and then ignored, about access barriers, and about what “good engagement” looked like. They also taught us crucial language and cultural points, such as referring to BSL signers, not “users”, and using a capital ‘D’ for the Deaf community.
What we learn at this point shapes everything that follows: how people want to be approached, what they are wary of, and how they might want to be kept informed later. The feedback loop really begins here, with reflexive listening and the willingness to adapt our first step.
Staff and visitors to the Senedd during events, 2023. Photographer: Ben Evans Huw Evans Picture Agency. Copyright Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament.
2. Designing communications: making the loop accessible from day one
The next contact point is what people receive from us before engagement: the invitation, the participant guide and the consent information. If those materials don’t work for people, the loop breaks before it even gets going. So, we design communication around participants from day one, and we keep revisiting it as we learn more.
Some participants told us they disliked Easy Read with pictures. The images felt childish and made assumptions about their abilities. They wanted clear, simple text, but without pictures. We changed it: same content, same structure, just without images. A tiny edit with a huge impact on how people felt listened to.
With the advisory group on mental health inequalities, many participants were neurodivergent. Together, we co-created clear communication guidelines based on what they told us they needed: Word documents rather than PDFs, blue backgrounds instead of white, and materials that worked well with read-aloud tools. These choices came directly from participants’ own expertise about their needs.
The ethical test for us isn’t “does this fit our institutional template?” but “does this reflect what participants have told us they need to understand, engage and make informed choices?” We can’t rely on parliamentary speak, dense documents or standard formats and expect people to feel included. Communication design is an early step in the feedback loop, and it only succeeds when the materials reflect participants’ preferences rather than institutional habits.
Staff and visitors to the Senedd during events, 2023. Photographer: Ben Evans Huw Evans Picture Agency. Copyright Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament.
3. In the room: agreeing how people want to stay informed
During the engagement session, we’re there to listen. But we’ve also learned it’s a good time to ask: “What do you want from us after today?”.
In our work with BSL signers, participants told us they didn’t trust email links. They asked for BSL feedback videos embedded directly in the email. We changed our practice, and that became the norm for that project.
For the inquiry into children and young people on the margins, we interviewed young people who had been criminally exploited. At the end of each interview, we asked how they would like to be kept updated. They told us they wanted any follow-up to go through their support workers, rather than directly to them. So when the findings were ready, we checked in with each support worker, talked them through the report and agreed on the best way to pass it on. Some young people received a hard copy; others preferred a verbal summary.
This approach respected their safety and circumstances, and just as importantly, it respected their own expressed preferences about how they wished to stay connected to the process. At this stage of the loop, reflexivity means letting participants shape the rhythm and route of future contact, not just the content of the initial conversation.
Inside the Senedd. Photo by Cristina Leston-Bandeira.
4. Sharing findings: strengthening connection and ownership
Sending a copy of the engagement findings to participants is one of the most significant contact points in the feedback loop. For many seldom-heard groups, this is exactly where communication has often stopped in the past. Our job is to make sure the loop doesn’t break here.
It’s also the moment where participants can begin to see their experiences grouped, interpreted and reflected in ways that feel true to them. When this works, people don’t just see a report about them; they recognise evidence that exists because of them. That sense of ownership is powerful.
The BSL (Wales) Bill findings page is one example. We worked with deaf participants to co-create the page. They weren’t just contributors; they were co-designers of the feedback. This took more time than we had planned and continued into the engagement phase, with regular email contact and time spent building relationships with the right gatekeepers and Deaf community experts. We could not always do everything people asked for, but involving them meant we could be honest about our limitations and make decisions together.
At this stage, participants need to see themselves in the evidence, feel ownership of it and, crucially, want to stay on the journey through the next stage and into the final feedback moment.
Senedd Chamber. Photo by Cristina Leston-Bandeira.
5. Showing impact: when people see what they changed
As the inquiry or Bill progresses, we show the ways participants’ contributions shape scrutiny and recommendations. Impact can be visible in many ways, such as their concerns forming lines of questioning for witnesses or Ministers or their issues reflected in recommendations to the Welsh Government.
For many seldom-heard groups, this is a completely new experience. Instead of feeling that their story disappeared, they can point to something concrete, a paragraph, a recommendation, a question in committee, and say: “That’s us.”
Pride in that impact is a powerful antidote to distrust. It turns feedback from a dry update into a meaningful moment and reinforces why a flexible, adaptive approach throughout the process matters: it makes this visible impact possible and credible.
Staff and visitors to the Senedd during events, 2023. Copyright Senedd Commission.
6. Closing well: bringing everything we’ve learned together
The final feedback moment is where every previous contact point comes into play: the trust we’ve built, the communication preferences we’ve learned, the ownership people feel over the evidence, and the care we’ve taken to keep them informed along the way. This is where the loop closes, and it matters that we close it well.
This isn’t just a goodbye; it’s a deliberate moment of recognition where we use everything we have learned about the group to design a final feedback that feels meaningful to them.
With the advisory group on mental health inequalities, we had been meeting for a year. They had shaped the inquiry from the outset and saw the engagement findings as their evidence. Before the Plenary debate, they came to the Senedd to meet committee members and hear how their experiences would be represented in the Chamber. A photograph from that day, showing one participant and a Member of the Senedd, is a reminder of whose voices were being carried into formal politics.
After the debate, we organised a lunch in the Senedd to celebrate their work. Many people in the group still faced significant challenges in their daily lives; taking time to acknowledge what they had achieved together really mattered. It was probably the most enjoyable “closing the loop” we’ve ever done.
Ending well can be emotionally difficult, especially when we know that parliamentary scrutiny cannot fix every issue people are living with. But a clear, thoughtful final contact point brings the loop to a respectful close: people know what happened, what it led to, and why we are now stepping back. It also leaves the door open, if they choose, to engage with the Senedd again in the future.
Staff and visitors to the Senedd during events, 2023. Photographer: Ben Evans Huw Evans Picture Agency. Copyright Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament.
Conclusion: Feedback as a reflexive journey, not a single message
For us, closing the feedback loop with seldom-heard groups is not a single email or a final report; it’s the cumulative effect of all these contact points. At each one, we learn something about what people need from us, in language, format, timing, tone or support, and we adjust as the engagement progresses.
When this works well, at the end of an engagement, people can see their impact, recognise their own words in the published reports and feel that Members have truly represented them. For us, this has meant treating feedback as a journey rather than a moment. You may recognise similar patterns in your own work, especially when engagement needs to adapt in real time.
However, this does not always work smoothly. Sometimes a committee reaches a different view to participants, even after strong and thoughtful engagement. In longer inquiries, people can lose momentum or disengage while waiting for outcomes, and there can be misunderstandings about what a committee can realistically change or influence. At times, participants may also feel their contribution has disappeared into the process, particularly when decisions are shaped by wider evidence, political context or competing priorities.
Wherever we work, the core question is similar: if someone from a seldom-heard group gives us their time and their story, how do we ensure they can see and feel what changed because of it?
Members of the Wallich Shadow Board, after participating in a focus group for the post-legislative inquiry into the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Copyright Senedd Commission.
Access to the House of Commons and its Procedures follows a significant inquiry into access to the House of Commons and makes a series of recommendations calling for improvements to the institution’s physical environment, procedures, practices and communications.
A cross-party committee of MPs was set up in 2025 to consider reforms to House of Commons procedures, standards and working practices. The committee gathered views from the wider parliamentary community and external stakeholders.
IPEN submission
IPEN members were invited to contribute views to shape IPEN’s submission of written evidence to the Committee, through a call in our November 2024 newsletter.
IPEN’s evidence provided in 2025 focused on public engagement and drew on our members’ extensive knowledge and experience of what makes public engagement work.
Section 3 (‘Communicating what the House of Commons does’) refers to the House of Commons Administration’s strategy for 2023–27 “which includes a priority to engage and inform the public, including disengaged audiences, and to explain how to participate in the work of the UK Parliament in an accessible way”.
The report cites how IPEN sets out the value of public engagement:
“Better public engagement can help to build people’s trust in their representatives, and can contribute to better scrutiny. This can in turn improve legislative standards and avoid costly unintended consequences that can flow from enacting legislation that has not been carefully considered from a range of different perspectives.”
IPEN’s Chair, Cristina Leston Bandeira, is cited as arguing that “Parliament communicates well within the Westminster bubble, it needs to better communicate beyond this bubble”. The report continues:
“She suggests that the House of Commons should focus on making the public feel like the work it does is important and relates to their own lives, and that it should increase efforts to engage with groups who are less likely to proactively get involved.”
The Committee report concludes with a number of recommendations, including around communication and parliamentary engagement, and recognises ‘the potential of engaging with groups which are less well represented in Parliamentary engagement’.
In 2026, IPEN is changing. The network has been growing and maturing, and this year will see some big changes.
Communications and events
We are sadly saying goodbye to one of our core team, Fiona Blair, as funding for the Communications and Events Coordinator role has come to an end. You will have seen Fiona sending our newsletters, organizing our seminars and developing our communications. She has helped IPEN grow from a small volunteer-led group of committed engagement enthusiasts into a burgeoning professional network that is widely recognized for its expertise.
Fiona will continue to be a member in IPEN, whilst moving into a Project Manager role for an arts-based research project that works with marginalised communities. Thank you to Fiona for all your hard work, and we wish you all the best in your next endeavours.
Without Fiona, IPEN will be moving back to being volunteer-led. This means fewer events and communications, but more opportunities for you to get involved. Activities will be delivered more directly by the IPEN Executive Team, partners (including the Westminster Foundation for Democracy) and IPEN members.
We need your ideas on anything IPEN, including topics to cover in seminars, speakers to hear from, funding opportunities and innovative practices to cover in our newsletter. And we’d love it if you could help deliver IPEN activities. Get in touch by email at [email protected] or via MS Teams.
IPEN Chair
This isn’t the only change we are expecting this year. After more than five extremely productive years, our brilliant Chair – Professor Cristina Leston-Bandeira – is preparing to stand down later in the year.
Under Cristina’s leadership, IPEN grew from an idea to an established reality. Her expertise, warmth, commitment and deep understanding of both research and practice have enlightened and inspired the IPEN community. We aim to honour her legacy with an event later in the year, where we will also celebrate the new Chair taking over. Cristina will remain in IPEN after this date in the role of Deputy Chair.
The IPEN Executive Team is in the process of electing a Vice Chair, who will be in place for 6 to 12 months, to learn the ropes before taking over as Chair later this year. We will let you know the outcome as soon as we can. Details about the election process as well as IPEN’s governance arrangements will be shared in MS Teams soon. If you are interested in joining the Executive Team, or would like to find out more about its work, do get in touch.
This year, IPEN and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy will draw on our shared expertise to enhance collaboration, knowledge exchange, and good practice on public engagement with parliaments around the world.
Working in more than 50 countries and territories globally, Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) is the UK public body dedicated to strengthening democracy around the world.
By combining WFD’s experience in democracy support with IPEN’s international network of parliamentary practitioners, we will co-develop a series of seminars and work together on future editions of the IPEN newsletter.
These initiatives will provide practical tools and foster global dialogue to help parliaments engage more effectively with all the people they serve and represent. Stronger public engagement leads to better representation, improved law-making and increased public trust – key ingredients in resilient and successful democracies.
In this new series, we’re looking back over the past five years at some of the great things that have come about as a result of the network. First up is our Public Engagement Toolkit.
60 participants attended an interactive session to explore principles and challenges of public engagement, with a view of establishing a toolkit on public engagement. The toolkit was co-designed at the session using visual thinking methods to draw out key themes.
Hosted in the ‘resources’ section of the IPEN website, this collaborative toolkit includes a set of principles to guide effective public engagement practice by parliaments.
The Public Engagement Toolkit is structured around three key questions:
A book chapter by IPEN members Cristina Leston-Bandeira (Chair of IPEN and University of Leeds), Emma McIntosh (UK House of Commons Service) and Ben Pearson (UK House of Commons Service) is featured in the second edition of Exploring Parliament (Oxford University Press).
Public engagement has become a key role for parliaments, as expectations for openness, accessibility and participation between elections have increased and the value of the public’s participation in parliamentary inquiries has been recognised.
This chapter explores how the UK Parliament performs this role. It shows how it has developed from generic education and public information services in the 1970s into a far more complex and targeted operation today.
The authors begin by outlining how this role has developed, identifying key milestones such as the creation of the e-petitions system. The authors then analyse parliament’s provision of information and education activities. They highlight the work of the Education Centre and the Outreach Team, followed by consultation and participation activities, which reviews select committee and chamber engagement, together with e-petitions.
The chapter concludes with an evaluation of the impact of public engagement and point to key challenges for the future, including reaching out beyond the so-called ‘usual suspects’. A case study demonstrates how public engagement with parliament can shape policy change, in this case in the area of menopause policy.
‘Parliament and Public Engagement’ by Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Emma McIntosh and Ben Pearson was published in the second edition of Exploring Parliament on 19 March 2025.
A copy of this chapter can be accessed by IPEN members in our MS Teams space.
Exploring Parliament (Second Edition) is a textbook providing an engaging and accessible introduction to the UK Parliament, Edited by IPEN members Cristina Leston-Bandeira, Alexandra Meakin and Louise Thompson. The book is available via the Oxford University Press website.
