MPs are to be given iPads in an experiment that could lead to new technology being allowed to play a much greater role in House of Commons proceedings. The 16 members of the Commons administration committee will start using the tablet computers in private meetings and in their public evidence-gathering sessions. Later this year it will be decided whether all MPs could benefit from being allowed to use iPads when deliberating in committee.

This could ultimately lead to MPs routinely using them in the Commons chamber, although there are concerns that if they become over-reliant on technology when they were sitting on the green benches, the cut and thrust of debate could suffer.

In the House of Lords a committee recently said peers should be allowed to use laptops or iPads in the chamber for a one-year trial period, although it also said that peers should only be allowed to use the devices to read relevant documents and not to use Google to discover new material that could give them an advantage in debate.

In some parliaments, where MPs sit at desks equipped with a computer, the idea of having access to an iPad during a debate or a committee hearing would be unremarkable. But in the Commons the use of technology during proceedings has been frowned upon and, although MPs are allowed to consult their phones and BlackBerrys, they are not supposed to use them to get assistance during a debate.

Sir Alan Haselhurst, the former Commons deputy speaker, who chairs the administration committee, said his committee was conducting an experiment to see whether members found it useful having an iPad during hearings.

There was a trial during the last parliament, he said, which involved one committee room being fitted with WiFi so that MPs who were there could use laptops during committee hearings. "But that experience taught us nothing because members did not bother taking advantage of it," he said.

Now the administration committee is taking another look at the issue, partly because "it is thought that the iPad would be a less obtrusive item for committee work than a laptop", Haselhurst said. Having iPads during committee hearings will allow members to read the relevant documents on screen during meetings, potentially cutting paperwork and saving money.

Haselhurst said his committee would make a recommendation later this year. Although his members are only looking at whether iPads would be useful for committee work, he acknowledged giving iPads to MPs for all committee hearings could influence what happened in debates in the main chamber.

"The first question anyone would ask would be what happens when you have a committee of the whole house," he said, referring to the committee debates that take place in the main chamber because all MPs are entitled to take part. "That would transform the atmosphere of the place. Because we do like to promote the idea of interactive debate in the chamber."

Peers are also concerned that the routine use of computers in the chamber could affect the way debates are conducted. Although the Lords administration and works committee recently said in a report that iPads and other devices should be allowed in the chamber during a one-year trial, it also said that internet access could be "abused" and that peers participating in debates should now be allowed "to use electronic devices to search the web speculatively in the hope of finding information for use in debate which is not generally available to other participants".

MPs are currently issued with laptops by the Commons authorities.

Some iPads have already appeared in the chambers of the Commons and the Lords. On at least one occasion recently, a peer delivered a speech in the Lords reading from an iPad instead of from a paper text.

But no British parliamentarian has yet suffered the fate of the Italian MP who was photographed recently looking at an escort agency website on his iPad when he was sitting in the chamber during debate. He later said that his fingers "slipped" and that he found the page by accident.