Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mrs Haynes, and today I'm going to teach you some Citizenship.

So I'm just going to bring back up that title page so we can have a look at that together.

So I'm going to be doing a series of lessons that look at the nature of the British Constitution, and today is the first of those lessons, and the key question for that is there on that slide.

It says, "Is the physical set up of the House of Commons fit for purpose?" Okay, so it might be a good idea if you just want to pause for a moment and make a note of that question for today's lesson.

Okay.

Right, let's move on.

So my lesson today has been broken up into four different parts.

Number one, the physical layout of the chamber called the House of Commons.

Number two, the comparison between the House of Commons and other chambers such as the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.

Number three, a discussion about whether the chamber is too confrontational and small.

Number four, a consideration of the future of this layout of the House of Commons.

Okay, so that's just giving you an idea of how we will progress through the lesson.

So we're going to start with the physical layout of the chamber called the House of Commons.

Now, I'm just going to say at this point, we are going to draw a diagram quite soon, so if you don't already have a ruler and a pencil with you, it might be a good idea just to pause the video for a moment to make sure that you can get those two pieces of equipment and also a piece of paper that is probably no smaller than A4 ideally, to be able to draw the diagram.

So that's the kind of size of a large exercise book or sort of printer paper size, okay, so that would be good.

If you don't have that, you'll just have to draw the diagram a bit smaller, okay? All right.

Right, so let's carry on then.

So we're going to watch a clip that shows us sort of who goes where and what happens where in the House of Commons, so I'd like you to pay very close attention to this.

Welcome to the House of Commons chamber, the place where our elected representatives or members of parliament come to discuss bills or issues that concern themselves or their constituents and to question the government.

Now, this is the 20th century part of the building after it was rebuilt following the destruction of the original chamber in the second World War.

When the chamber was rebuilt, Commonwealth countries contributed to the cost of the materials to rebuild the place.

For example, the doors into the chamber are from India and Pakistan, the table of the house from Canada, the bar of the house from Jamaica, and the speaker's chair from Australia.

Now the speaker sits right behind me in the middle of the room, and their job is to keep order during debate and to call MPs to speak.

To his or her right hand side on those benches, that is where Her Majesty's Government sits and behind them the MPs belonging to the government party.

To the speaker's left hand side, that is where the official opposition sits, and beyond them is where the other opposition parties sit just underneath the gangway.

Further along is a single chair which is used by the sergeant at arms, the parliamentary official who is responsible for the security in the House of Commons.

The despatch boxes on the table are where the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition stand or whichever minister or shadow minister are speaking at the time.

At the end of the table, at top and the bottom, are the holders for the Mace.

Now the Mace is a symbol of royal authority, without which the House of Commons cannot sit and debate.

The Mace is bought in and out of the house by the sergeant at arms in a procession at the beginning and the end of each day.

Now, if you'd like to come and see the proceedings here in the House of Commons, the public gallery is just above us and anyone can turn up and ask to be admitted.

However, depending on what's being debated in the chamber on that particular day, you might have to wait a while.

If you're a UK citizen, you can apply for a ticket through your local MP.

To find out what legislation and other topics are due to be discussed, then you can go to the parliament website at www.

parliament.

uk.

Now right at the back, above the speaker's chair is the press gallery, where accredited journalists and reporters from parliament's official report sit.

Now the official report is called Hansard after the 18th century printer who produced the House of Commons journal, and it's a record of what was said inside this chamber.

The report is produced daily and bound into volumes.

It can also be read and searched for on the parliament website only a few hours after proceedings have taken place.

Now people say that this chamber is a lot smaller in real life than it looks on TV.

Well, that's because when it was rebuilt after 1945, it was deliberately kept to be the same size so to preserve that air of intimacy.

In fact, there's room here for about 430 of the 650 members of parliament.

Which means on particularly busy parliamentary days, it gets very crowded in here, and the atmosphere is electric.

The other films in this series will show you the debating chambers used by the Lords and Commons, parts of the old palace, as well as introducing you to the work that parliament does.

We hope you enjoy your tour.

Right, so this is the bit I was talking to you about earlier about doing the diagram.

So I'm going to ask you to do several things here, you're going to make a copy of the diagram you're going to see on the next slide, and then you're also going to add on to it, the 20 numbers that I've put across the diagram.

And then finally, before you rejoin me if you think you know what some of those numbers actually sort of correspond to, if you know what should go there, then you could kind of add on the little label yourself, okay? So if you think ah, hang on a minute, I know what number three is, then you could just write on the actual person or thing that that was, okay? So, see how you get on with that, I'm going to bring the diagram up now so you can have the diagram up now so you can have a look.

Here it is.

So that's our title, "Layout of the Chamber," make sure you include that and underline it, it's always really important, isn't it, to have our diagrams titled? And then that's the diagram of the House of Commons, I'd like you to draw, okay? I know it looks a bit daunting, but I'm sure you can do a sort of similar job to that.

Okay, so take your time, and add on any of those that you think you know, and join me again once you're done.

So, pause the lesson now.

Right, so you've come back to me.

So maybe you've had a go at labelling what some of those numbers are, shall we have a look? Let's move on then.

So I'm going to take care of one, two, three numbers at a time as I go through this.

Right, we're going to do one, two, and three.

Number one is the press, and number two is the Hansard, both of which were mentioned on that video.

And I should say it was quite difficult when I was drawing this to demonstrate that number one and two are above.

They're sort of galleries above the House of Commons, so that's sort of why I kind of drew them at the top there of the image.

Number three, however, is on the floor of the House of Commons and I bet you got that one, didn't you? Number three is the speaker's chair, speaker.

Well done, you guys, if you got one.

Okay.

So I'm going to move on now, but if at any point, you just want to kind of pause me on the slide to make sure that you've got the correct labels on then just do that.

Okay.

All right.

Four, five and six.

So four, Prime Minister.

I bet you've got that one as well, didn't you? Well done.

And then five, there's two number fives look, and they are the despatch boxes, careful with the spelling of that, and this is where the Prime Minister or other cabinet members would stand up and speak, sort of a large box, and apparently, they are the kind of boxes that used to be carried by members of parliament into the chamber with kind of documents and stuff in, fortunately nobody has to carry those massive boxes around now, but that's what they were in the past, okay? And then number six there.

If you think about it, they're not really chairs are they, they're more of a bench in the House of Commons, a long, a long seat.

So you've got these people here that are described as the front benches, and they are the Prime Minister's cabinet.

So you've got people like you know, the Minister for Education, those kinds of people, who've got sort of titles like that, and they're all sitting along the front there next to the Prime Minister.

Okay, pause again if you need to, I'm going to move on.

Okay, so we've got seven, eight and nine.

Seven, the Mace.

Now the Mace wasn't shown on that little clip, was it? Because the House of Commons wasn't in progress, the members of parliament were not all there, were they? So it wasn't actually demonstrated on the table there, so I just thought I'd include a picture here for you.

It's about one and a half metres long, it's quite heavy, silver gilt, and it shows a kind of royal authority that's been given to the House of Commons there.

Number eight, the Leader of the Official Opposition is there, opposite the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.

And then along beside them, you've got the Shadow Cabinet.

So whereas you've got the Minister for Education in the government, you've got the Shadow Minister for Education sitting on the opposite side on the front bench.

And they would just be keeping an eye on the actual Minister for Education and seeing sort of scrutinising their work and sort of, you know, suggesting perhaps how they might do things differently, okay, so that's who's there.

Now, I haven't labelled it on this diagram, and I'm not sure that it's, you know, of huge significance to us all, but I wanted to also show that there are some other places for other people who are kind of nominated in the House of Commons.

So number 10 here, just below.

So it goes down the side, doesn't it, with nine and eight and number 10.

Number 10 is where the leader of the next largest political party in the House of Commons would sit, so the one kind of, you know, sort of slightly smaller than the Official Opposition, that's where they would be sitting.

Okay.

All right.

We'll move on.

So here we've got 11, 12 and 13.

11, so these are the members of parliament who are part of the party that is in government at the moment, so the party that's in charge.

And because these are not on the front they're not front benches, like the cabinet, the Shadow Cabinet, they are back benches, it makes sense, doesn't it, that they're at the back, okay? And then you've got that on the other side as well, you've got the MPs of the opposition back benches, okay for 12.

And 13, those are three clerks.

There's quite a few different civil servants that you might see around there, sometimes there's a few sat to the right of the speaker there at number three, but you always get some clerks sit there doing administrative roles within the house.

Okay, 14, 15 and 16.

14's sergeant at arms, now this can sometimes, can cause a little bit of confusion, because they are described as being in charge of order for the House of Commons.

And what they mean is that they're in charge of security for the House of Commons.

And the confusion I think comes sometimes because the speaker will sometimes call out order, which means they want the House of Commons to settle down and be quiet and listen to the person who's talking, okay? But it's the sergeant at arms who has responsibility for keeping order, okay, the security, okay, in the, in the house.

Number 15, bar of the house sounds exciting, it's not a bar at all, it's actually just a white line on the floor, and it's a point at which if you are a guest at the House of Commons, you can't step over, okay? Now 16, when I drew this, I had the same difficulties I did with number one and two because 16 is above, it's on the public gallery, you're sort of looking across at the same level as the press and the Hansard writers, okay, so that's the public gallery, that's quite a large section, it's got a big glass screen in front of it so you can see and you can hear what the MPs are all doing, but you know, you couldn't throw a piece of paper over, there's a glass screen between, okay? Right, that page looks a bit messy, doesn't it? There's loads of lines all over that one, so the reason I've got those, all those four lines, is because they they're all demonstrating the same thing, but I'm going to do number 17 first because, as one might expect, it's a table so it's called Table of the House, okay? Nice and simple, right, so let's go back to 18.

So there's four lots of 18 there, because I was trying to show that those are the exits, the way out, of the House of Commons.

So people would get up from their benches and they'd head to one of those 18s to be able to leave the House of Commons.

So once you've left those, through those eight, number 18s, those exits, you will then be in the lobbies, which are effectively corridors, that's what number 20 is there, okay, I'm slightly out of order here, aren't I? But they're at the top there and they relate to 18.

So number 20 are the two corridors on each side, and if you imagine that you were sat in the speaker's chair, okay, they, the one to your right would be the aye division, which is like the yes division, and then the one to your left would be the no division, lobby, corridor, okay, no.

And I explain this yes/no thing a bit later on.

Number 19 there, red lines on the floor.

And if you wanted to go back and have a look at the video, you could, but on the video you can just about see those red lines on the floor of the House of Commons and it's just showing to the members of parliament, they may not step over that, they may not get up and close to the people on the opposite side, okay? They have to keep a sort of respectful distance.

It's about two metres across, and sometimes people say things like, "Oh, it's the length of, you know, a sword each." But no, there's no real evidence to that, but it's about a two metre space.

Alright, so that's it, that's all 20, okay? So if you do need to pause again, just to kind of make sure that you've got everything correctly onto your diagram, you're very welcome.

I'm going to move on.

We're going to have a look now at a comparison between the House of Commons and other debating chambers, and the Scottish Parliament known as Holyrood is going to feature.

So, while I'm going to play this clip for us, I'd like you to see if you can spot, if you can observe, at least three differences in the layout of Holyrood, which is a metonym for the Scottish Parliament, another name for, compared to the House of Commons, so you're looking for three things that are different between Holyrood and the Commons, okay? Welcome to the debating chamber.

The design is very specific.

It's called an ellipse and it was designed to promote conversation.

I'm standing in what we call the well of the chamber in front of the desk of the Presiding Officer.

The Presiding Officer is the one who chairs the debates.

On the wall behind this desk, there are six cameras that record the debates as they happen.

Down here in the glass box is the parliament's Mace.

This is the symbol of the parliament's authority over the devolved matters.

It's made of silver and gold, and embedded in the face are the words, "There shall be a Scottish Parliament," the opening line of the Scotland Act, 1998, that brought the Scottish Parliament into existence.

Along the wall here on the left are a series of small rooms for a variety of purposes.

Some are used to maintain the broadcast in the chamber, and others are used by interpreters.

All but one of the rooms has a glass window.

The room without glass is used by the writers of the official report, which is the written account of the debate in the chambers.

On the chamber floor, there is a seat for every member.

And here, front and centre, we usually find the First Minister, leader of the Scottish Government, surrounded by the cabinet secretaries and ministers.

Above is our public gallery with 225 seats so people can come and see debates as they happen.

For those who can't come here to see the debates though, we still record and broadcast it, and there are a further two cameras in the public gallery that face the desk of the presiding officer.

If you have a look over here in the window, you'll see a rather unusual shape.

And this same shape is repeated above the public gallery.

The lead architect, Enric Miralles, created this abstract shape as a representation of the people of Scotland.

Miralles never wanted the chamber to be empty, it was always to be a place for the people here.

And we've used that shape in our lights as well.

If you look up, you can see the shape repeated in each one of these sails 129 times, the same number as members in this parliament, and a reminder that the members are themselves people of Scotland.

Okay, let's see if you've got three differences, I think there's actually quite a lot more than three differences, but I'm just going to bring up the next slide of mine, which actually has three differences that I spotted.

So don't worry if you've got different ones, maybe just add mine as well.

Three differences in layout between the debating chamber at Holyrood and the House of Commons.

The shape of the chamber at Holyrood is an ellipse, not a rectangle, like the Commons, so that's that box over on the left and I drew there for you the shape of an ellipse in red.

Middle box, seats all face the presiding officer in the chamber at Holyrood, not facing each other on either side of the speaker, like in the Commons.

And the last box on the right, the public gallery stretches around the back of Holyrood, whereas in the Commons, it is just at one end.

So if you've got some different ones, that's great, perhaps just add some of mine.

Well done, let's move on.

So now we're going to have a look at some other different shapes that exist for different debating chambers around the world.

So first of all, I've got several images here of more a sort of a semi-circular shaped chamber.

And you can see that at the top there, I've got the US American House of Representatives, and then to the right of that with a little arrow I've got the same chamber, but with lots of people in it so you can see it kind of occupied.

And that's sort of semi-circular, isn't it? And then below that, on the right, we've got the US Senate, which is also the same sort of shape.

And then I thought I'd also show you the Welsh Assembly, which is pretty much a circle, a complete circle, isn't it down there? Smaller chamber than some of the others but still an interesting different shape to the House of Commons rectangle, okay.

So now we've got a different one again, we've got U-shaped chambers.

The top image is of the Australian House of Representatives, and the bottom one is the New Zealand one.

They offer a combination of the rows facing each other in the Commons and the more circular feel of Holyrood, okay? So, that's an interesting one too, just be thinking to yourself, "Oh, that's an interesting, I quite like that design." Okay, right.

So what I'm going to ask you to do now for me, is just pause the video in a moment and I want you to think about two pros and two cons, so two positives and two negatives, about the more circular design debating chambers, okay? You can be considering in your answer the elliptical, circular or the U-shaped layouts, so I'd like a couple of positives and a couple of negatives of that more circular style, okay, all right, good luck with that, so just pause the lesson now.

Okay, so these were some of my thoughts.

You may have something similar.

I found with this, I knew exactly what I wanted to say but it was quite hard to write it down.

And for my words, to kind of give my meaning, so if you had something similar, if you found something similar, then, you know, I think that's understandable really.

So let's have a look what I've got here.

So the pros, the positives of the more circular style, first bullet point.

The circular shape can be inclusive.

So it feels like it's including everybody together, and encourage collegiate discussion, that kind of feeling of, you know, we're around this table together, we're all in this together, let's kind of work together.

That, that feeling was where I was trying to explain, explain there.

Second bullet point.

All opinions may be seen as of equal importance, as key members are part of the circle with everybody else.

Last bullet point, all elected members face the chair of the debate rather than each other, so views could be considered more productively, less personally, perhaps.

Okay, now I was thinking about the cons, the sort of more negatives of this circular design.

First bullet point on the right.

There is little direct eye contact with those of opposing opinions, so it may not be clear that you're addressing their point, and we all know how important eye contact is when you're trying to engage someone don't we? Second bullet point, there is less opportunity to see the leaders of the opposing parties, tackling each other's sort of ideas in close contact with spontaneity, you know that, that great moment that you sometimes see in the House of Commons, if you've ever watched a debate live, where you've got the, the Prime Minister will stand up and say something at the despatch box and then sit down, and the Leader of the Opposition will stand up and say something, and it's exciting and this kind of like, it's interesting to see the two of them playing off against each other and, and contradicting each other, their views, I mean, it's, it's quite a special moment for us to, you know, to see that, to see our democracy in action there.

And then finally, on the right hand side there, there is less opportunity to see the reactions to your views in the chamber, in the circular ones, because they're quite often not tiered.

So, you know, we talked about that with our diagram, the, the benches in the House of Commons, they're not all flat on the same level on the floor, as we saw from the video, they're tiered.

Like in a kind of, a theatre, so that you can see over the tops.

If you stand to make a point, you can see the other people around you.

Okay, maybe you've got something similar to me, perhaps you've got some other different ones as well.

If you want to pause and add any of those to your ideas, then by all means, do.

You may not agree with those, you may have different viewpoints.

It's absolutely fine, Citizenship is great for that.

Right, so we're going to have a quick discussion about whether the Chamber is too confrontational and small.

Let's have a look at this, okay.

So, we need to go back and just consider some history here in order to have a full understanding of that question.

So I'm just going to read through this slide with you.

History.

"The Magna Carta, signed in 1215, forced King John to agree to setting up an advisory council of 25 men.

The House of Commons continued to evolve through the 13th and 14th century.

In the Palace of Westminster, the Commons first met in St.

Stephen's Chapel.

The church pews, or benches, where the choir sat were used by members, and these happened to be facing each other.

Before 1512, Westminster was a royal palace.

Henry the Eighth abandoned it after a huge fire in 1512, and it then became Parliament's home." Just on the right hand side there, I've got an image there of the Magna Carta and a painting of the king signing it.

It's an important document for our Citizenship course, and you'll find that it's also mentioned and explored in some more detail in Mr Henson's lesson where he's looking at protesting, okay? So I've just got some information there underneath that in green.

"The Magna Carta is a charter of rights, agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on the 15th of June 1215.

Rights included that everyone is subject to the law and the right to a fair trial," key points for our course.

And then I've got a picture of Henry the Eighth underneath.

Okay, so some interesting things there to consider.

Let's just look at the next one.

So this is history continued, I'm going to read it through again for you, so top left, black type.

"Despite its large membership of 650 MPs, the House of Commons seats only 427.

After it was destroyed by a German bomb during World War II, there was considerable discussion about enlarging the chamber and replacing its traditional rectangular structure with a semi-circular design.

Among those who argued against this proposal were Winston Churchill.

He said that if it were circular too many members might fill the centre, theorising, rather than focusing on making decisions.

He also prevented the chamber being enlarged, stating, "There should be on great occasions, a sense of crowd and urgency." He did not want the chamber to have an empty depressing feeling.

Instead, he preferred that it kept a feeling of intimacy." Okay, and you can see there's a picture there I've added to kind of demonstrate that point, you know, when everybody's in that House of Commons, when it's a, you know, key debate, it is, it's very full and it's, great atmosphere.

And, you know, I can kind of understand what Winston Churchill was trying to do there.

And then in the green writing there, I've just explained that Winston Churchill was Prime Minister in both the 1940s and again in 1950s.

Again, that's a picture of Winston Churchill, but you all knew what he looked like, didn't you? Okay.

So let's just move on.

So, I'd like you to think about this, then.

I want you to think whether you agree.

I'd like you to give your opinion on Winston Churchill's instructions for the rebuild of the House of Commons.

So write up to about, I don't know, no more than five sentences, I would think, to give your opinion on Churchill's objections to a more circular or larger House of Commons.

So you're just going to tell me whether you think he was right or whether you think he was wrong, and why.

Okay, so, if you can pause the lesson now, please.

Okay, so there's no right or wrong answer to that is there? It's just me asking you to kind of think about this for a moment or two.

And it's, it's a personal choice, isn't it, as to which kind of style you prefer, and I can certainly see the advantages of both there.

But it's just, you know, part of the skill in Citizenship is to be able to kind of put an argument across, so I'm sure that your sentences have kind of, well and truly nailed your argument to the wall there, and you've made it clear whether you agree or disagree, or perhaps you've gone with the fact that you agree in part and disagree with it, with something else, which is also absolutely fine.

Okay, well done for thinking about that.

So, let's have a consideration of the future of this layout.

Okay, so we've already heard that it's perhaps a bit small.

And we've also heard that perhaps there are too many members of parliament in that one room.

So let's have a look and think whether, whether that's, whether that's true or what we could do about that.

So here, we're going to take the question of whether we could actually have less MPS, which would reduce the concern about the fact that they can't all sit, okay? So we've got here a piece of writing by Professor Larcinese, I really hope I pronounced that correctly, sounds like a lovely name doesn't it? From the London School of Economics.

And he wrote in 2010, I'm just going to read this out.

"The House of Commons is roughly similar to the Italian lower chamber, and slightly larger than its Canadian and French correspondence.

The ratio of inhabitants to members, however, is not only substantially inferior to that of Germany, but also to that of countries that are much smaller than the UK in population terms, like Australia, the Netherlands and Spain.

This suggests that, at least in terms of these simple comparisons, the House of Commons is possibly oversized, although not dramatically, so compared to analogous bodies in other countries." Okay, that's quite wordy, isn't it? Yes, I agree.

So I've tried to kind of explain and sort of summarise what was being said there by the professor on the right hand side, so in the bold print on the right hand side, so it says: "This suggests that the number of MPs we have in the UK is quite similar to other countries around the world, and that if we were to reduce the number of MPs we had, it would reduce our representation." Our MPs at the moment, you'll know, represent a certain number of voters.

So if you had less MPs, members of parliament, that means that each one of them would have, have to represent more voters.

So, as a, you know, you'd have less of a percentage of that, of a share effectively, in your MP, okay? So therefore, you're sort of reducing your representation in the House of Commons, and that's not something probably that we would want.

Okay.

Right.

The other question was, you know, could we enlarge it? Could we make the building bigger, the chamber bigger? Right, so, I'll read you this piece of information here to make us think about that.

So we're going to read, I'm going to read the text on the, with the black type.

"The Palace of Westminster is falling apart faster than it can be repaired.

According to the National Audit Office, Parliament has spent more than £369 million on maintenance since 2016.

There is also an increasing backlog of repairs, estimated at over £1 billion.

A review of these renovations will take place in 2020 to ensure best value for money going forward." So, things to consider.

Should the chamber be made larger? Okay, maybe you've thought that Winston Churchill was wrong and you'd like to have that enlarged somehow, the chamber? Would that be more expensive? Well, probably yes.

Because it's expensive already to actually kind of keep up with what, what's already there and make sure that that's not crumbling.

So to enlarge it would be really quite expensive.

Would there actually be space in the current position of the Palace of Westminster to actually have a larger chamber there, you know, I mean it's right next to the river, isn't it? It's not as if you could just put an extension on the side, I mean the MPs would all get wet.

So you've got to think about, you know, could you actually extend that somehow? Because it's in quite a tightly, sort of, compact area there in London if you, if you've ever been.

So that would be quite tricky.

So if we were going to redesign it somehow, in possibly a different shape or in large shaped, then we may need to have a completely different building.

And then we have to consider do we want that, do we want our Houses of Parliament not being in the building that we have associated with being the home of parliament since the time of Henry the Eighth.

You know, is that something we want to do or do we value the, you know, the history behind the position of that building? Does it really matter? You know, fundamentally, isn't it just a group of MPs talking about modern day issues and then they could just be anywhere? You know, there's no right or wrong there is there, it just very much depends on your view.

And then, would we want our House of Commons perhaps somewhere else, if we are going to enlarge it, and perhaps have to move it away from the Palace of Westminster completely, then does it need to be in London anymore? Should it perhaps be more centrally based in our country? Birmingham, for instance.

Interesting to think about, okay, lots of things to consider there.

So that, that question is not at all straightforward, is it? I think probably we are concluding that the future of the House of Commons layout is really not very clear, it's not yet decided, because that review is going to look at, you know, how much they can fund, what they can do.

There's certainly no plans at the moment to have a big expensive overhaul where they change everything in the house, in the House of Commons because our money is required, you know, the country's money is required on different things at the moment, okay? So, hopefully, that's really made you think about this.

Right, let's just have a little bit of a recap of what we've established today.

We have learned the layout, number one, we have compared it to some other types of chambers, we have discussed whether we think it's, or thought about, whether it's too confrontational and small, and then we just tried to think briefly about how we feel about the future of the House of Commons and, and what perhaps, could be changed or should be changed going forward, okay? So we've covered a great deal today.

So well done you for sticking with this and really thinking about it.

Now you're unlikely to necessarily get an exam question that wants you to be able to tell, you know, exactly where does the sergeant at arms sit in the House of Commons, but just having that understanding about how that all works is really relevant and I mentioned that I was going to talk more about those corridors, those lobby corridors, and I haven't done that in today's lesson but that's coming up in our next lesson, so do, I hope, watch our next lesson that's coming up and before you completely finish today, have a go and have a look and see if you can do the exit quiz.

It's been lovely to be with you today, enjoy the rest of your day.

Bye for now.