Do MPs Venue Shop? Westminster Hall as a Strategic Policy Choice Venue

Research shows that policy actors strategically select different institutional venues to lobby on specific issues to influence policy‐making. But we lack understanding of how Parliament, a key representative and legislative body, may offer itself multiple venue shopping opportunities for internal actors. Our study explores venue shopping at the intra‐parliamentary level in the UK Parliament by MPs themselves, showing how they use Parliament's two debating chambers: the government‐controlled House of Commons chamber and a parallel backbench chamber, Westminster Hall. Drawing on analysis of 60 backbench debates and 17 elite interviews, we find that MPs do engage in intra‐parliamentary venue shopping, utilizing debates differently in each chamber. While the main chamber serves as an agenda‐setting venue, Westminster Hall is used as an accountability venue, creating a policy‐oriented dialogue with government and fostering clearer policy outcomes. Our study makes a key contribution showing that venue shopping can occur intra‐institutionally by internal policy actors. Related Articles Gash, Alison, and Michael H. Murakami. 2015. “Venue Effects: How State Policy Source Influences Policy Support.“ Politics & Policy 43, no. 5: 679–922. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12128 . Grossmann, Matt. 2014. “The Varied Effects of Policy Cues on Partisan Opinions.” Politics & Policy 42, no. 6: 881–904. http://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12102/abstract . Rugeley, Cynthia R., and John David Gerlach. 2012. “Understanding Environmental Public Opinion by Dimension: How Heuristic Processing Mitigates High Information Costs on Complex Issues.” Politics & Policy 40, no. 3: 444–470. http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2012.00352.x/abstract .