At the recent Commonwealth Parliamentary Association British Island & Mediterranean Region Conference held in Gibraltar, I was asked to speak on Digital Parliaments and the use of Artificial Intelligence. The workshop discussion was led by the Clerk to the Gibraltar Parliament, Mr Phillip Borge McCarthy, and had contributions from Mr Steve Aiken MLA of Northern Ireland, Gibraltarian Opposition Member the Hon Joelle Ladislaus MP and myself speaking in my capacity as an MLC, member of Tynwald.
This is a copy of my prepared contribution, there may have been some differences in delivery!
Moghrey Mie Oltanyn Onerole. Good morning Honourable Members. My name is Rob Mercer, and I’m a Member of the Legislative Council in Tynwald, the parliament of the Isle of Man. My background prior to becoming a parliamentarian was as a technologist, and that is part of the reason I put my name forward to speak on this topic. The main reason though is that I’m here primarily to listen and learn: I want to gain a greater understanding of how digital tools are being used across CPA parliaments, what’s working, and what challenges others are navigating. In return I can offer you an an account of where Tynwald is. Which tools we use, how we use them, and the questions we’re working through. I have had some great conversations here already on this subject.
I’ll cover four areas: digitalisation as support to parliamentary work, digital tools in legislative procedure and scrutiny, safeguards and institutional memory, and finally how the Isle of Man as a jurisdiction is approaching AI more broadly.
- Digitalisation as support to parliamentary work
Tynwald’s digital journey has been incremental. Electronic voting has been in use in Tynwald Court and the Branches since 2006, upgraded in 2011. Since 2016, sitting papers have been distributed electronically as standard, with paper retained on request. The Register of Business has been published online since 2021, and from early 2025 digital copies of Bills became the default for Members, again with paper available.
In 2024, live video streaming of Committee oral evidence sessions was introduced through the Tynwald YouTube channel, and the Listen page on the Tynwald website now provides real-time public updates during sittings. This replaced the previous use of X, previously known as Twitter, which we stopped using in 2025. Microsoft Teams is widely used across Tynwald and within the Clerk’s Office for communication, collaboration, and distribution of Committee papers, agendas and minutes. It also allows Members who cannot attend in person to join sittings or Committee hearings virtually. That was a change in our legislation and standing orders that originated during Covid.
What characterises all of this is that each tool sits alongside the parliamentary process, and it augments how Members and officers work, without changing what Tynwald decides or how decisions are constitutionally made. Making the register of business available in advance of debates and decisions, and making these more accessible and transparent is to my mind, an important democratic upgrade.
- Digital tools in legislative procedure and scrutiny
All Members have access to Microsoft 365 and CoPilot. The Cabinet Office’s 2025–26 Departmental Plan set out a supported and evaluated rollout of CoPilot. GTS, who are our in-house technology team, held CoPilot workshops for Members in May 2025 to demonstrate use and encourage adoption.
At the operational level within the Clerk’s Office, the Hansard team uses an AI-assisted transcription tool to help produce Hansard. It uses natural language processing and a custom dictionary aligned to Tynwald’s style guide. The output is downloaded as a Word file and cross checked and edited by the team before publication as the official record.
On the scrutiny side, I can speak to my own practice. Over the last year I have developed, along with the help of Claude AI, a set of structured risk-assessment and evidence-testing frameworks, based broadly on UK National Audit Office standards with some tweaks to suit our context, which the Environment and Infrastructure Committee I chair have adopted and shared with our other committee chairs.
I use document search tools like Agent Ransack for working through large volumes of material, and AI-assisted summarisation when reviewing reports and evidence packs. These aren’t official Tynwald tools. They are part of how I personally approach scrutiny work, and I mention them because I suspect individual Members across many parliaments are similarly building their own informal digital toolkits, often ahead of any institutional framework for doing so.
An important caveat: I have the subscription version of Claude and I have privacy settings enabled. Even with that in mind, I only use Claude for documents that are already in the public domain. I was an early adopter of ChatGPT, and my early experiences with that have made me well aware of the limitations and the ability of AI tools to completely make things up , hallucinations, although things are improving in this regard. The phrase I have in mind always when using these tools is: “trust but verify”.
- Safeguards, institutional memory, and procedural integrity
Running alongside all of this is the institutional infrastructure that underpins the record and accountability of proceedings.
Hansard, the Official Report, is an essentially verbatim record of everything said in every sitting of Tynwald Court and the Branches. Draft Hansards are published the same week as a sitting, and the database is searchable back to October 1887. Whatever tools assist in its production, the published record is human-checked and human-authorised.
The Listen Live service streams audio of sittings in real time, with audio uploaded to the website as soon as possible afterwards and a live blog updated throughout. As of May 2026, main chamber sittings are not video-broadcast, though Committee oral evidence hearings are streamed on YouTube.
On long-term preservation: under the Public Records Act 1999, the Public Records Office has statutory responsibility for the national archive. In 2023 the PRO published its strategy for long-term digital preservation, with the goal of keeping records of historic or cultural significance accessible and usable over time.
Speaking personally, I believe that institutional memory really could extend to what members of parliaments can pass on to those who follow them. The evidence and scrutiny frameworks I mentioned I hope will outlast my term and be useful to future scrutiny committee members — and perhaps also in the wider CPA family.
- The broader AI landscape — government and economy
Beyond parliament itself, the Isle of Man as a jurisdiction has been moving deliberately on AI. Digital Isle of Man launched the Activate AI programme in August 2024. This is an initiative focused on helping businesses, government and residents understand and use AI to improve productivity and drive economic growth, with an explicit target of increasing the Island’s GDP by 10% by 2030 through AI-driven solutions. Over 2,300 individuals have been through the courses so far, and the consultancy service has supported 28 businesses. Whilst for us these are a good start, these are figures we would really like to improve on.
The Department for Enterprise followed this with the launch of the National AI Office in January 2026, with a focus that includes developing a National AI Strategy and using AI to improve efficiency within public services.
This is the context within which Tynwald operates and which Tynwald scrutinises. Digitalisation isn’t parliamentary infrastructure, but it has begun to inform and help shape the policy and scrutiny environments. As others have already said, as AI becomes more embedded in public services and the wider economy, the scrutiny challenge for parliament grows with it.
So that’s Tynwald’s picture as I understand it: parliament’s own digital tools, the safeguards around the record, and a jurisdiction actively investing in AI at the national level. I’m very much looking forward to hearing how others are navigating similar questions, and what the experience has been across the CPA.
Gura mie eu. Thank you.