The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
Good morning, my Lords. Welcome to what is the last virtual Oral Question Time. I take the opportunity to thank everyone for making these procedures possible over the past weeks. Next week we plan to introduce the new hybrid House, and guidance for Members will be issued very shortly. That will be followed by remote voting, which is designed to beat the queues.
Virtual Proceedings of the House of Lords will now begin for the last time. I remind Members that these proceedings are subject to parliamentary privilege and that what we say is available to the public both in Hansard and to those listening and watching. Members’ microphones will initially be set to mute, and the broadcasting team will unmute their microphones shortly before we reach their place in the speakers’ list. Members may now need to accept an on-screen prompt to unmute their microphone. When Members have finished speaking, their microphone will again be set to mute. I ask colleagues to keep their contributions as brief as possible, and then we will be able to get as many people on the list into Question Time as we possibly can.