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

Baroness Uddin Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as a non-affiliated Peer, I wholeheartedly support the arrangements, including the ability of all Members of the House to participate. They seem thought out, fair and reasonable, and should not be altered. On broadcasting, in the dim and distant past I once tendered for the contract for this place. With that knowledge base, I ask whether audio, as opposed to visual, has been considered. One of the great dangers that I am sure we will be able to discuss virtually over the next few weeks is overreliance on the screen, perhaps to the detriment of other senses. The era of radio is re-emerging and, in my view, audio would be preferable to visual—not at all times, which is perhaps a little too radical, but I would be very happy if that were the case in the short term.

[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.