Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier that he intends to extend the proxy voting scheme to those who are shielded and unable to attend the Chamber to vote in person? However, I must say that I have some concerns about the way the announcement has taken place and how it will be implemented. May I therefore ask you whether you can obtain this information from Mr Speaker? First, what advance notice did he have of the Prime Minister’s intention to make this announcement today? Can he confirm that the current pilot scheme for proxy voting—let us be clear that the proxy voting scheme we are currently using for maternity and paternity leave is a pilot—will expire in July 2020, that it has a number of structural issues that the Committee I chair is examining, and that it is not suitable to be extended to several dozen Members on the present basis?
Would you ask Mr Speaker whether he will agree to convene a meeting between the Leader of the House, me and the Clerk of the House so that we can discuss these matters urgently? Can Mr Speaker give the House an assurance that he will not allow any scheme to be implemented that obliges Members, from any part of this House, to disclose personal information about their health? Would you also ask Mr Speaker whether he would confirm that the Government have not, to date, provided any response to the three detailed reports on these issues produced by my Committee, one of which was to satisfy the impossibly tight timescale demanded by the Government for the introduction of remote voting, which they then ended up using for a mere eight days?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the right hon. Lady for her point of order; there were a lot of questions in there and I will do my best to respond. Obviously, I cannot answer on what discussions the Speaker has or has not had with members of the Government. I should also say that the Chair is not responsible for Government responses to the reports produced by her Committee, although, obviously, I hope that those responses will be forthcoming—I am sure those on the Treasury Bench will have heard that. I can confirm that the current scheme for proxy voting expires in July 2020 and that, as I am sure she will appreciate, the whole House will be interested in hearing the Procedure Committee’s expert views on the scheme. I know that her Committee has made a great many contributions to the debate so far, which have been extremely helpful. I am sure she knows that the Speaker has taken a very close interest in ensuring that voting in this House is carried out effectively, but that key to his response has been that it has due regard to the safety of hon. Members and of staff—I can assure her that he will continue to do this. As for a meeting between herself, the Leader of the House and the Speaker, I am sure the Speaker will respond positively to the requests she makes, as I know he has fairly regular meetings with her in any case.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is sort of tangential but allied to the former point of order. You will know that yesterday the Leader of the House committed to the Chair of the Procedure Committee that he would be introducing a motion today to deal with allowing some Members to participate in questions, statements and urgent questions remotely. That was tabled late last night, since which time amendments have been tabled. As I understand it, Mr Speaker is minded to select three of those amendments—four are being tabled but three have been selected. That means, in practice, that if we were to suggest that we were going to push those to a vote, this would be opposed business and so if we reached 7 pm—you will tell me if I have got this wrong, Madam Deputy Speaker—without having started the debate, it could not then be taken as it is opposed business.
I also note, further to what the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) just said, that since the Prime Minister has now made a further commitment today, it might be more sensible if we were to have a new motion tomorrow that covered all these matters in the round. We could then debate it properly, rather than having it shoved through at the end of the day by surreptitious means without the Government allowing any time for debate.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He has painted a scene of something that might happen at the end of the day, which I obviously cannot predict at this point because we do not know whether the business will run until 7 pm. However, not for the first time, he is correct—in saying that the motion cannot proceed after 7 pm if it is objected to. In the current circumstances, an amendment standing on the Order Paper that has been provisionally selected and not withdrawn, and is likely to be contested, would constitute an objection, and he is right that it cannot be taken after 7 pm.
Chris Bryant
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will have another go, very briefly—just to say that I will be contesting this at 7 o’clock, in case there was any doubt.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that point. I thought that that might be the case, but it is best to have it on the record.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Leader of the House announced yesterday that witnesses to tomorrow’s Domestic Abuse Bill Committee would be able to present evidence remotely if they so wished. He said that he wanted to allay concerns that some people had assumed that this would not be possible.
Nazir Afzal is the national adviser for Wales’s violence against women strategy, and is highly respected as an expert in measures proposed by the Bill. He was invited, at my request, to the Bill Committee, but had to decline as he had been told previously that giving evidence remotely was not possible. Following some discussion yesterday, Mr Afzal was under the impression that he would be able to contribute, so he contacted House staff again, after the announcement made by the Leader of the House that led him to believe that he would be able to commit such evidence. He was told again, however, that it was not possible to give evidence remotely. I must emphasise that this reflects in no way on the staff of the House, who are doing excellent work in challenging circumstances.
I seek advice from you, Madam Deputy Speaker. If it proves impossible for Mr Afzal to give evidence directly to the Bill Committee tomorrow, what should the Leader of the House do to correct the record?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order, and she raises an extremely important matter. I understand that the House authorities have urgently been putting measures in place to enable as much virtual witness participation in Committees as possible while at the same time enabling Members to participate in person, and that work is ongoing. I understand that the programming sub-committee for the Bill agreed a witness programme yesterday that includes a representative of Welsh Women’s Aid. It is, of course, regrettable that, on that agreed programme, Mr Afzal will not be able to give oral evidence tomorrow. However, I have no doubt that the Committee would be interested to receive his views in writing. If there are any further points that the right hon. Lady wishes to raise, I am sure that she will find the Committee staff extremely helpful.
In order to allow the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next—even though some have already arrived—I will suspend the House for five minutes.