Proxy Voting and Presence of Babies in the Chamber and Westminster Hall

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The evidence from the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire was some of the most powerful we heard in favour of extending proxy voting to those with long-term medical conditions. The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) is right to say that, through no fault of her own, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire is not able to attend as much as she would like and she feels disenfranchised as a result. Her example and evidence was some of the most persuasive we heard. I am not suggesting that a baby is necessarily going to be disruptive; rather, this would be an unpleasant place for a baby to be in at times, and it would certainly be noisy and uncomfortable for a small child. It is worth making the point that children are welcome in this place. I recall that when I was first elected and had young children they came to watch me in debates and joined me for their tea, with beans on toast from the Tea Room being one of their favourite foods I could provide in the Family Room. I never, at any point, felt that my children were not welcome in the environment and in the Palace, but in this place of work I would not have wanted to have had my child with me at that time. There was a real fear that people would feel obliged to do this, and in those precious few weeks of having a new child and a new person in one’s life Members wanted to be able to spend time with that new person, adjusting to being a new parent. They did not want to feel under any obligation to come here with a child because that was becoming the norm. As I say, there are plenty of opportunities for children to be in this place, and in my experience they are very much welcomed by all the staff in this building.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and the Committee on a balanced report. I was required not to be in this place for three months because of long-term sickness and I would have welcomed the opportunity to exercise my view via a proxy. Will she give us a flavour of what she would want to see in terms of not only medical evidence, but a possible renewal of medical evidence for someone to continue proxy voting?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. As a long-serving member of the predecessor Procedure Committee, I know he will have looked at these issues when it considered the issue of proxy voting for parental leave. The evidence we heard was clear that where someone is away for a short time, be it because of injury or illness, a constituency requirement, a Select Committee visit or any of the other reasons why we are not always in this place, that would not affect our constituents in terms of being enfranchised by our exercising our vote, but this changes once the time gets to somewhere around three months. We have not set a time limit, although I note that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is considering giving additional staffing support for people who are on long-term sickness for three months or more, and that seems to me to be about the right amount of time for medical evidence to be provided to the Speaker. We are not setting out what that medical evidence should be. It will be for a private conversation between the Member and the Speaker to demonstrate that they are not able to attend this place as fully as they would like because of their medical condition, and for the Speaker to exercise discretion.