Procedure and Privileges

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD) [V]]

I welcome some of the relatively modest procedural changes being proposed today, such as retaining lists for Oral Questions and changing our working hours to make them more family-friendly, argued very cogently by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

However, my main purpose today is, first, to register my deep disappointment that a real opportunity has been missed to overhaul and modernise our working practices, many of which were designed for a very different age, despite the many voices calling for change in our debate on 20 May, which seem to have been ignored. Secondly, while strongly welcoming the proposed new arrangements for those with long-term disabilities—I found the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, particularly poignant—I draw specific attention to the plight of those Members with long-term health conditions, the clinically extremely vulnerable, those with shorter-term disabilities and those with caring responsibilities, for whom no provision is being made after remote participation finishes.

My starting point in our debate in May was that the ability to participate remotely, while developed to deal with the pandemic, should continue in certain forms to give everyone in your Lordships’ House an equal chance to participate. I was not alone in voicing those sentiments.

We are taking decisions today on the future working practices of the House at the same time as the Government have decided—recklessly, in my view—to scrap all measures introduced to keep us safe in the face of rapidly rising infection rates driven by a far more transmissible variant. This has real consequences for those for whom leaving home to take public transport and entering public buildings, such as Parliament, will become impossible if they cannot guarantee that others will be wearing face coverings after that ceases to be a legal requirement. That includes Members of this House who are clinically extremely vulnerable, as well as those living with family members who fall into this category.

Parliament, as we all know, with its many small and narrow corridors, its very crowded areas around the Chamber and its really tightly packed Division Lobbies, is an extremely difficult building to make Covid-secure. So I ask the Leader of the House whether, in September, we will be following the Chief Medical Officer’s advice to continue to wear masks in crowded indoor spaces, of which this Chamber is clearly one? What assurances can she give me that concerns about overcrowding will be taken into account when new proposals to vote in person using pass readers are put to the House in the autumn?

For me, this is personal. Having had two knee operations in the last nine months, my mobility has been severely impaired, making me effectively housebound for much of the period. Using the Tube has been pretty much impossible for me. Participating remotely, which I have done continuously during this period, has been my only real means of participating and contributing. In brief, I have had a short-term disability. So yesterday I sought some advice from employment law experts on how the requirements of the Equality Act 2010 to provide reasonable adjustments applies to people who may not have a long-term disability, as defined in the Act, but nevertheless have an impairment which impacts on their ability to perform day-to-day activities. I was advised that any good employer would be expected to make reasonable adjustments in these circumstances. I was also advised that, if someone had caring responsibilities that required them, for example, to be present at a prescribed time to supervise medication, it would be considered discrimination by association not to make reasonable adjustments to allow them to do so, if the means existed—which they clearly do; the system for remote participation is up and running.

So will the Leader say what legal advice has been sought on how removing the ability to participate remotely for those relatively few noble Lords with real and genuine needs to do so complies with the Equality Act? Will she also explain why there was no consultation about the new arrangements for people like myself with shorter-term disabilities—those with post-operative restrictions, the clinically vulnerable, and so on—and why the definition of “disability” has been drawn so tightly?

Finally, I make a heartfelt plea that the House of Lords Commission, which will be overseeing the process for deciding who will be eligible for continued remote participation, will look again at the issues I have raised, in the hope that good sense and common decency will prevail.