House of Lords: Governance

Baroness Harris of Richmond Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, suffice it to say that I am sure nobody wants me to go through the very great number of changes made to our governance since I first came into your Lordship’s House, in 1999. The Senior Deputy Speaker has spoken of some of the more recent ones, of course. However, a reading of the really excellent briefing from our Library will give everyone the details they may need.

As the only virtual participant this afternoon, I really want to speak about my own experience, now that I am a virtual player. This has changed my perception of how we run ourselves. During the time—quite recently, really—when we were mostly participating through PeerHub and just a few Members were able to sit in the House, I was busily working away up in North Yorkshire, where I am at the moment, learning about Zoom and Teams, and doing my job as a Whip. This was very much harder remotely than being in the Chamber, where one could nip in and out and nudge colleagues to remind them when they should come in—or better, relay to them the messages from our office on whatever piece of business we were dealing with.

Many people thought that we were having a very easy time of it, sitting on our sofas, making cups of tea, et cetera. But the truth was that, as a Whip, one had to be alert to what was happening on the screen, at all times. I say “screen”, when in fact I was working, as I am today, on at least two screens: my desktop computer and my laptop for business in the Chamber and Grand Committee, and my iPad for the emails that were constantly coming in. Then there was the chat function in Teams. This was the crucial piece of information-sharing between the chair, the clerks, the Whips, et cetera. I held it constantly, as I scrolled between my own colleagues, telling them of any changes to the business, keeping in touch with the app and constantly responding to messages. My husband took a photograph of me one day, juggling all this information, so that I would remember it when things got back to normal.

As it happens, it never will now for me. I have been admitted to the House assistance scheme, which allows those of us unable, because of disability, to participate as fully in House business as possible. The incredible Digital Service has made this possible, so I now go through the Parliamentary Broadcasting Unit when I want to participate. I put on record my huge thanks to it for the support and help it has given those few of us in this category. We simply could not have carried on without it.

In fact, we have all had to learn new skills since the beginning of the pandemic, and many people have worked extremely hard to ensure that we could all use these facilities when we needed to. So I ask the Senior Deputy Speaker: is all the infrastructure still in place in case we have to go back to some form of remote working? If not, how quickly might it be brought back into operation?

Another one of the many examples of how our work has changed is the programme instigated by our first Lord Speaker for Peers’ outreach, which asked Peers to go into schools to talk about our work with students. I was on the first working party that helped pull this together, and I have visited many schools in my region, thoroughly enjoying a Friday off to talk to the young people. The Lord Speaker’s office organised it all, and I very much looked forward to playing my part in educating them about what we do. That changed, and morphed into Learn with the Lords—an online communication with schools, which our excellent education unit runs. This has enabled many of us who participate in the programme to visit many more schools and, for me, a chance to go to parts of the country I would never have visited in the old days of the programme. In fact, on Monday, I am off to Exeter and, half an hour later, to Newcastle upon Tyne. This can be achieved only through the parliamentary communications unit, which I commend to your Lordships.

There are some glitches, of course, and after the debate we had the other day about how we should take things forward, I will watch with interest how Question Time in the House is dealt with; although it has to be better than it was the other week, when no less than three virtual speakers—I was one of them—came in one after the other, to the utter dismay of Members who were physically in the House and unable to ask their own questions before the time allowed was up. Now we are to wait until the eye of the Leader is caught and a signal sent from our Front Bench to indicate that one, or possibly two, of our virtual Members should be called. I am not at all sure how this can be achieved in a fair and equitable way, but time will tell, so I will not condemn it out of hand.

We virtuals have other rules to follow, which do not apply to those Members who are able to get into the Chamber, but I am pretty content to see how things develop. Once again, I am enormously glad that the House has accepted that disabled Peers can still participate in the work of the House. If we have learned anything from this wretched pandemic, it is that technology has enabled us to work in many different ways, which has, incidentally, saved the House quite a lot of money—certainly in my case—in travelling costs at least.