Proxy Voting

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Doorkeepers and the Whips are doing an excellent job to encourage proper social distancing, but we are a society that believes in individual responsibility. Members of Parliament really must lead by example and show they can be responsible. I confess I find that most Members keep a safe six-and-a-half-foot distance from me, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I am worried about whether that is because of the coronavirus or for other reasons that perhaps I will not go into.

None the less, I am extremely grateful for the continuing work of all those on the estate who contribute to making our proceedings possible in the present difficult and imperfect circumstances. Meeting the challenge posed by the pandemic has certainly provided lessons for all of us in appreciating afresh the value of actually being here together. The effectiveness of our scrutiny and the efficiency of our law making was sadly diminished during the period of the hybrid proceedings. Since then, the rigour of the measures applied across the estate and the ingenuity of the procedural approaches pioneered particularly by Mr Speaker have enabled so much that was once thought impossible: the welcome return of Backbench Business Committee debates, sitting Fridays, and soon, from a motion coming immediately after this one, Westminster Hall debates. All those things help us to represent our constituents better.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

May I thank my right hon. Friend for his endeavours as Leader of the House to ensure the voice of this House can be heard during this crisis, but reiterate that not a single constituent is saying that we are suffering from an excess of legislative scrutiny, given some of the measures that are being brought forward at this time?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I doubt that in the whole history of Parliament any constituent has ever complained about an excess of legislative scrutiny. I think a surfeit of lampreys is more dangerous than an excess of legislative scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I, too, will attempt to keep my remarks short.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for accepting most of the recommendations in my Committee’s report. We do support the motion on the Order Paper. Although the amendment was not selected, my right hon. Friend will have noted that it did not try to change the motion; it would merely have added to it something on other forms of voting.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), because his incarnation of the Committee was the first to look at a version of proxy voting for parental leave. Had it not been for the work done by his Committee at that time, we would not be where we are now. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who was the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee at the time and part of the team that pushed so hard to make sure that proxy voting for parental leave could be brought in. I reassure my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that there was unanimous support for the recommendations on parental leave in our report, and we are grateful that the Government have taken most of those recommendations forward.

The Committee members do differ when it comes to proxy voting for coronavirus. I am afraid that the majority view—I will be clear that it was a majority view; not everybody on the Committee feels the same—was that the proxy system for coronavirus is substandard. The majority view was that it is a very unwieldy system and is possibly open to abuse—that point was made by some Committee members; indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) would have found friends in our debate on that—but it was also felt that it is simply unreliable and not robust. We know that the queuing is not properly socially distanced. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is right to say that that is a matter of individual responsibility, but it simply is not possible: we see perhaps 500 Members queuing up and, inevitably, there end up being logjams, delays and points at which people are too close to each other. People are worried and scared—not just for their own health but for the health of the staff of the House of Commons. If we do not have our staff here, we cannot operate.

The majority view of the Committee was that we had a robust system of voting. The remote voting system that we used on our phones worked. It works consistently in the other place, which has been using it, and it is quick and simple. I do not accept that Members would not attend this place; Members want to be here. We want to take part in Committees and we want to take part in proceedings. We want to be here and be part of it. Some simply cannot, but we can see that it is not possible for all of us to be here. We are limited to 50 in this Chamber, and many Members feel that they are putting their health at risk to take part in a Division. They may really want to be part of that, but they have not been able to take part in the debate because there simply is not space for them.

[Andrew Griffith]

As a member of the Committee, I would like to pay tribute to the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend. It is true, nevertheless, that we as a Committee were unable to reach consensus. We had a strong consensus—consensus I was proud to be part of—on the issue of parental leave, but we were not as a Committee able to reach consensus on the appropriate means of voting. I would just urge my colleagues on the Committee and the Leader of the House to ensure, as we continue to address this issue, that the full House has a chance to express its view. It is so profound that it is really not something I suspect we are likely to be able to reach full consensus on in the Committee.

[Karen Bradley]

I absolutely agree. The point of my amendment was to give the House an opportunity to have its say. I personally believe there is a majority now for a return to voting by phone, not because people do not want to participate, but because it is robust and sensible. It gave more time for people to be able to do their job as an MP, and it meant that we were the safest and most efficient Parliament. I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that we were held up across the world as a Parliament leading on how to manage the pandemic and keep Parliament going, and it looked like a very retrograde step to move away from that.