Study title

This dataset maps the parliamentary activity of House of Commons MPs from x small parties during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic (March 2020 - March 2021). To enable comparisons it also includes the year prior to the pandemic (March 2019 - March 2020). The parties included here are: Alliance, DUP, Green, Liberal Democrat, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, SNP. It firstly includes a mapping document showing which contributions were made virtually and which were made in person on the floor of the House of Commons. Similar information is shown here also for Scottish Labour and Conservative Party MPs. Secondly, it includes all contributions made by these small party MPs across the March 2019 - March 2021 period. This includes: party, name of MP, date of contribution, contribution period (relating to different rules for parliamentary business during the pandemic), type of contribution (virtual/physical) and venue (Commons chamber, Westminster Hall).We tend to think of British Politics as being dominated by two political parties (the Labour Party and the Conservative Party). This is reflected in the style of parliamentary politics at Westminster, in which an elected government is opposed by the 'Official Opposition'. Debate tends to move between the two. Observers of the weekly Prime Minister's Question Time will see a prime demonstration of this, when the leader of the Official Opposition is granted the privilege of speaking from the dispatch box (something which is denied to the leaders of all other parties), and has the opportunity to ask up to six questions to the Prime Minister. The leader of the second opposition party receives two questions. Smaller opposition parties receive no such guarantee of a question. This two party dominance is therefore reinforced by parliamentary procedures, which grant greater speaking time as well as committee memberships to the largest opposition party. But small parties have played pivotal roles throughout nineteenth and twentieth...