House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Newby Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, 15 months ago, we could not have imagined that your Lordships’ House would be discussing the extent to which it retained—not introduced —a range of ways of working that, at the time, would have seemed impossible, both politically and technically. So I, like other noble Lords who have spoken, begin by expressing my thanks to the staff who have worked so hard to implement the very widespread changes that we are debating today. I also acknowledge that many Members of your Lordships’ House now have a proficiency in new technologies that, 15 months ago, they would have thought impossible.

I had Covid in March and I therefore decided that, as soon as the House started meeting again, I was at less risk than my colleagues and that I would come. I have attended virtually every day since the House resumed, probably more than any other Member of your Lordships’ House. I have therefore seen at first hand, from in here, what it has been like as we have changed our procedures. As members of various committees know, I have chafed at the restrictions—many of which I have thought to be petty and overdone—with which we have had to put up over the last year.

As the country returns to normal, we now face the challenge that many other organisations are facing: how far should we simply revert to the ways we have done things in the past, and how far should we make permanent the changes that have been introduced, in an emergency, during a crisis? In making the decision, we have to begin by acknowledging the particular characteristics of Parliament, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, have set out so eloquently. It is a place for debate, for weighing the strength of argument, for exerting influence over colleagues, and, particularly in your Lordships’ House, for working together across parties on a daily basis. The conventional wisdom, which I support, is that this is best done face to face. It is undoubtedly the case that it is impossible to adequately hold Ministers to account through the sanitised environment of Zoom.

Against this, hybrid working allows those who cannot be present physically, because of either health conditions, work commitments elsewhere or problematic travel arrangements, to participate in our deliberations where otherwise they would not have been able to do so. This obviously allows a greater number of participants and a broader range of views. In a parliament, that is a good thing. The easiest option would simply be to turn the clock back and do everything as we did it before. That obviously has the benefit of simplicity, but it implies that the way we did things before cannot be improved upon, or at least cannot be improved upon by any of the innovations of the last year. Surely nobody can really believe that.

As we have more fundamental reform of your Lordships’ House, there is a disparity of view on the desirability of retaining virtually every aspect of the changes we have already made. In order to get a sense of balance among those views, we circulated a questionnaire among Members of the Liberal Democrat group to see what people thought. I thought it might be helpful if, instead of simply expressing my own view, I set out the headline views of my group.

First, while there is unanimity on virtually nothing, there is strong majority support for the following: that participation in the amending stages of Bills be restricted to those who can attend in person; that electronic voting should be retained in some form; that committees should be able to operate in a hybrid manner; and that each committee should decide for itself what degree of hybridity it thinks is most appropriate.

There was also support, by smaller majorities, for retaining a degree of hybridity for Oral Questions, Statements, Second Reading debates, SI debates, and party and general debates, as well as for retaining our earlier starting times from Tuesday to Thursday but reverting to 2.30 pm on Monday to allow those travelling long distances to arrive for the start of business. There was also a recognition that because some people would not be able to easily attend the House in person for some time after 21 June, mainly for health reasons, there should be a transition to whatever final arrangements were made to a point in the autumn, when, all being well, all significant Covid-related barriers to attendance would have lifted.

The only two glosses I put on those general findings, from my personal perspective, are these. First, while I do believe electronic voting should be retained, I accept that very many believe it should be restricted to those on the precincts. There is a good argument for retaining the current system, albeit without voting continuing to qualify for an allowance. But if, as I suspect, this is not a majority view, I hope that at the very least we allow electronic voting on the premises. Spending many hours a year shuffling at glacial speed through the Lobbies should surely be a thing of the past.

I also believe there is a strong case for allowing those who have a disability that makes attending the House difficult to retain the option to participate virtually on a permanent basis. The truth is that the House will not be able to benefit fully from the wisdom and experience of all its Members unless such an approach is adopted, and we will all be poorer as a result. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, says this is not an acceptable way forward, not least because people who participate virtually would not do so on the same basis, so there would not be parity. I do not know how many disabled Members of your Lordships’ House he has spoken to, but I can tell him that, from those I have spoken to, that would be a very small price to pay to have a continued ability to participate in the work of the House.

There are many more detailed aspects of the way we do things—for example, whether we retain speakers’ lists for Questions, or whether we repeat ministerial Statements made in the Commons on the same day here—on which I know Members of your Lordships’ House have strong and differing views. We should proceed with the maximum degree of consensus. This argues for not necessarily deciding on all the changes by 21 June—assuming that the next phase of easing happens on 21 June.

My principal plea, as we return to normality, is not to discard anything that we have done for the first time in the past 15 months simply for the sake of returning to normal. No other organisation is doing that. The noble Earl says that everybody is going back to the office, but, in my experience, virtually no organisation that has a large number of staff is going back on the same terms. People are working part-time and different methods of operation are being undertaken. This is happening everywhere else. It would be bizarre if your Lordships’ House was the one place that did not look to see where it could improve its efficiency and effectiveness by continuing changes it is already undertaking. Surely we want a new normality to embed those changes that have helped your Lordships’ House to undertake its core functions of scrutinising legislation, holding Ministers to account and leading a public debate. The Government want the country to build back better. We should aim to do the same.