Business of the House

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Baroness Uddin

Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the first Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to express my thanks to the staff and to the Government and Opposition Whips for their remarkable patience and advice throughout this challenging period. I salute all those in the incredible digital support team for their guidance in helping us to steer through the new adventures of Zoom and Teams.

There has been a Parliament-wide acknowledgement of the impact of Covid on people’s emotional, physical, psychological and financial well-being. Some noble Lords have lost loved ones, while a number have found the new ways of working to be frustrating and challenging in equal measure, as I have—I put my hand up to that—as has been described so eloquently in this Chamber by the noble Lords, Lord Shinkwin and Lord McConnell.

Our work is underpinned by our giving service to our country and promoting people’s well-being to the best of our abilities. I believe fervently that each of us has done just that by contributing to the work of Parliament based on our knowledge, experience and expertise. My question is simple: where do Members go should they need advice, guidance and counsel? I assume that the House provides comprehensive access to advice and counselling services for staff, should they require them, so will the noble Lord ask the noble Baroness the Leader of the House whether she will consider working across all political parties to facilitate, even on a temporary basis, a form of one-stop hub for Members as the House is opened up again for increased physical participation?

Business of the House (Virtual Proceedings and Topical Questions for Written Answer)

Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Baroness Uddin

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my thanks not just to the leadership of the House and the usual channels but to all the staff and everyone who has made it possible for us to commence some of our work. I add one small question to the Minister. Some comments have been made in the press and elsewhere, in social media, about access for people with disabilities—such as the hard of hearing—who are not necessarily able to access the important public information during this crisis. What are the Government doing to ensure that we tackle that issue as soon as possible?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their support, especially their support—unanimous, I think—for the House authorities, the Parliamentary Digital Service and others, who have worked very hard. I am grateful to the Front Benches for their support on this. There were some very reasonable questions, and I will do my best to answer them.

I said at some stage that this will not be an exact mirror of what we have in our normal proceedings, and it may well be that as we progress we will try to emulate nearer our normal proceedings, but there will be some key differences. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, we will have to start slowly and move on, but the key thing that we have tried to do and have done unanimously with the other party leaders and the Convenor of the Cross Benches is to focus, to begin with, on holding the Government to account. That is what we have tried to do today.

I take seriously what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about not broadcasting. I agree with him that it would have been nice if we had been able to. He asked a specific question about Hansard. Hansard will report Virtual Proceedings in the normal way, so there will be a written record. As for broadcasting in the House of Commons and not here, it is true that it is using Zoom, a different system. The focus has been on using for our purposes something that is available now and secure. The Parliamentary Digital Service has only a limited amount of resource and is—I think it is fair to say— concentrating on the House of Commons, which is able to broadcast. In the absence of as many resources as we want, it is reasonable that we should focus on the elected House.

As far as the noble Lord’s question about broadcasting is concerned, we hope we will be able to do that soon. We would like to broadcast and if that requires Zoom, we will move to Zoom if that is the technological solution. But we will move to Zoom only when it is secure, when we know it works and when we have the resources available to implement it correctly, which I hope will be reasonably soon.