Virtual Participation in Debate

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I have frequently asked from this Dispatch Box, during the urgent questions and debates that we have had on this issue from the start, why on earth we should have to do that. We are all equal; we are all hon. Members. We were all elected on 12 December, equally. Why should we have to produce something to say that we wish to take part in basic proceedings and our basic democratic rights?

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend referred to Members not being children, and my view is that it is wholly inappropriate for the Government to treat Members of the House as children by suddenly pulling business. Is that not even worse given that the Leader of the House personally volunteered to the Committee on Standards this morning that we would be debating these matters this evening?

[Valerie Vaz]

I am extremely disturbed, because I had no notice, as shadow Leader of the House, that the Government were going to pull any business. There was nothing from the Leader of the House, I am afraid, to say that the business was going to be pulled, and I find that a huge discourtesy, because he is a very courteous person and we do get on in terms of getting the business done, although we may differ completely on the politics side of it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that there were important matters to be debated and for hon. Members to know. I had a speech prepared so that hon. Members would know exactly who had been agreed to go through on the independent complaints and grievance procedure, and my hon. Friend says that he was informed that that debate would happen, so this is a huge discourtesy to the House. Will the Leader of the House please say why the business was pulled in such a way?

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I understand that the right hon. Lady is, as always, behaving honourably and that she is giving a background to the matter in hand, which she is addressing, but I am making it clear to the House that we are discussing the matter that is before us now, not the matters that might have been before us, had they been moved. There will be other opportunities to address those matters—

[Chris Bryant]

Will there?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. No hon. Member will interrupt when I am speaking. It is perfectly reasonable for the right hon. Lady to give background to the remarks she is making, but I know that she will now address the matter that is before us, not the matters that are not.

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it, however, in order for the Leader of the House to tell a Select Committee of this House in the morning that he has made sure that we will be able to debate two matters this evening, and then not even to provide a change of business motion before the House or even to have the courtesy to notify those who might be involved in later debates? Is that really the way this House now proceeds?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

That is not a matter for the Chair, because it is in order for the Leader of the House to arrange matters today as he thinks fit. If it were not in order, I could not have allowed the things to happen that have been occurring this afternoon. It is all in order. The hon. Gentleman’s opinion on that is another matter, and I am sure that he will have the opportunity to express his opinion if I have the opportunity to call him. While I am making this clear, I note that there is no speaking list for this debate, so I will call people who were here at the beginning of the debate. For people who have come in after five o’clock I have allowed some leeway, because the debate started without a great deal of notice, and I appreciate that the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) had to hurry to get to the Dispatch Box on time. So those who were here in the Chamber before five o’clock will have an opportunity to be called to speak if there is time. Those who have come in after five o’clock, I deem not to have been here at the beginning of the debate.

[Chris Bryant]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As I understand it, that means that you would not be calling me. I am the only person who is able to move the amendment—

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[Valerie Vaz]

I agree. We do not know where we can catch it. What we are doing is exposing families, friends, everyone—people that we work with here. We are in the middle of a pandemic and people are dying. I know people in my constituency—people who have been long-standing friends—who are now dead as a result of this virus. This is extremely serious. All we are asking is for right hon. and hon. Members to take part in debates. Why should they be excluded from the European legislation that is going to come through now? Why should they be excluded from that?

[Chris Bryant]

In answer to the point made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), I have heard the same argument from the Leader of the House as well: we should not be any different from the rest of the public. I wholly agree with that. However, I think they misunderstand Government rules. The Government rules, as laid out by the Prime Minister yesterday in Parliament, are very clear. He said yesterday that, even in tier 1, if someone can work from home, they should work from home. That is the rule. The other part of the rule is that businesses have to do everything to make it possible for people to work from home if they possibly can. Those are the rules for the rest of the country; they should be rules for us here too.

[Valerie Vaz]

That is absolutely right. The Prime Minister did say that—

“work from home wherever possible.”—[Official Report, 23 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 601.]

We can work from home, we have worked from home as Members of Parliament, and other Members of Parliament want to continue to work from home, and that is being denied. We are exposing hon. Members’ families, and the hon. Members, who are travelling backwards and forwards.

I take umbrage slightly with the Leader of the House. He thinks that if we are doing something remotely, we are not working. I have talked to many hon. Members. Zoom is horrible—whatever anyone says, it is awful. You have to concentrate, you have to stare—it is just absolutely terrible. What makes people really nervous about the whole thing is worrying about being late—suppose you have not logged in on time? Who is walking around in the background? Have you got the right background? It is terrible. Are you dressed properly? We would rather be here, of course we would, but we cannot be.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Yes, I am very happy to clarify that. As ever, the hon. Gentleman has made his point very well.

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Could you not confirm that, as the hon. Gentleman just said that there is the perfect and the good on offer, if he votes for the amendment he gets the perfect and he does not discard the good at all?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

That was not a point of order.

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[Chris Bryant]

I just want to make it absolutely clear that I would love the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) to be able to take part in debates fully. I have spoken to her several times this year and I know how painful she has found this. None of us is seeking to prevent that happening. All of us who have tabled the amendment and support the amendment simply want a few more people to be able to participate in exactly the same way as she is. If the Leader of the House would stand up now and say that he will accept the amendment, we could all go home and get on with more important business.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I urge my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to listen to what is being said and to what was said in the urgent question last week and in the statement that the Backbench Committee graciously gave to my Committee last Thursday. He could be the hero if he were to accept this amendment. It would show compassion and generosity, and it would show his courtesy, because he is one of the most courteous Members of this Parliament, who, in all his time here, has always ensured that Parliament is sovereign—in fact, he has campaigned very hard to make sure that Parliament is sovereign—and that Members of this House are heard, from all Benches.

I thank the many hon. and right hon. Members who responded to the call for evidence from the Procedure Committee on this important matter and expressed a majority view on the exclusion from debates, not just in this place but in Westminster Hall. Let us be clear: the Government motion does not extend to Westminster Hall. The reason for this furore—the reason that we are here—is that my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) was unable to take part in the debate in Westminster Hall on the disease that she is suffering from. Unless the Government are willing to look at extending the virtual proceedings to Westminster Hall, that will still be a problem. The Procedure Committee stands ready to work with the Government to find ways to allow more debates, perhaps more Adjournment debates in this Chamber, so that Members can take part—Members like my hon. Friend. Again, I urge my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House please to think about how this will look to those of our hon. and right hon. Friends who are not here for other reasons.

The hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) made a very important intervention when he said that there is a difference about the situation here. Nobody is asking to not be at work. We are all at work. The idea that Members of Parliament have not been working over the course of the past few months when they have not been able to be here, or we are not in the full Chamber, is ludicrous given the hours that are spent on Zoom calls and Teams meetings, and the many, many pieces of constituent correspondence that we are all dealing with. In those few weeks at the beginning of the lockdown when people had such confusion and there was no certainty, the Government did an enormous amount of good in terms of the financial support and the guidance that was issued, but right at the beginning, everything was unknown.This was, as everyone says, an unprecedented situation.

Members across the House were dealing with constituents who had the most difficult and heart-rending stories. We wanted to do our best for our constituents, and we were doing that from home because Parliament was in recess. We could not ask questions of Ministers in the way we normally would by being here in the Chamber. Again, I pay tribute to the Government for the amount of access that Ministers made available to Members, to allow us to ask questions on behalf of our constituents. We are all working incredibly hard, whether we are working here, working in our offices in the precincts of the Palace or working at home. Nobody is asking not to work; it is merely that Members who cannot be here for reasons other than being clinically extremely vulnerable, including self-isolating because they have been told to by the Government, should be able to take part in all our proceedings.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment (a) in line 5:

Leave out from “Members” to “to” in line 8 and insert “with a public health reason relating to the pandemic”.

Welcome to the Chair, Mr Speaker. It is good to see you in your rightful place. I suspect that I am not going to please everyone, because I have just had an email from a Philip Toler, who says: “Why do you constantly stand up in Parliament?” [Interruption.] Oh, hang on, I seem to have united the House with that. He goes on: “Why do you not express your appreciation of the hard-working Prime Minister and all his Ministers? They are only trying their best. The Government was voted in by 95% of the population and you should therefore show some respect.” [Interruption.] Sometimes the vote in the Rhondda is a bit like that, but I do not think it is quite the same. That sounds a bit like a Trump version of how elections are run.

It is a terrible shame that this has become such a scratchy debate. There is no need for that, in all honesty, because there is a very simple issue at hand: the Government think one thing and quite a lot of Members of the House think a different thing, and we should be able to resolve that without all shouting and screaming at one another. I regret the way that we have ended up with the debate today, because many of us have repeatedly said to the Government, to the Whips and to the Leader of the House that the simplest way of having a proper debate on this is for the Government to timetable a chunk of time for a debate with a vote at the end of it, so that the House can decide. Unfortunately, that is not what the Government decided to do. They decided to table the motion on nod or nothing, without consulting with the Opposition Whips beforehand. Nod or nothing is there for consensual motions. The whole point of nod or nothing is that if the whole of the House does not agree then it does not go through. It is not nodded through, so we get nothing. I must say that when the Leader of the House made his response to the urgent question more than a week ago now, I had the impression that the motion he was going to table was one that the whole of the House would have been able to live with. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. What happened was that we had the nod or nothing games on Wednesday night and then again on Thursday. We have had a version of them again today.

Today has been the oddest of the lot, because the Government Whips put a whole load of speakers into lots of debates earlier on in the day. The Leader of the House, as I said earlier, told my Select Committee, the Committee on Standards, this morning that he had allocated time for two very important debates we would have tonight on bullying in the House of Commons. He said that we were going to have those debates and then he did not move the motions for them. I think it is a shame that we are debating this motion, rather than dealing with bullying in the Palace of Westminster. It has taken far too long to try to solve some of those issues. Members were asking earlier, “What will voters think watching this debate?” They will think, “Why haven’t you sorted out the bullying issues in Parliament?” They will not be worrying so much about this debate.

It is a shame we have got to where we are now. I say again that the easiest thing in the world for the Government to do is table a motion on the Order Paper in the normal way and to allow a chunk of time for it to be debated, so that all hon. Members can be notified that the motion is be happening at such-and-such a time and they can take their own view.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It appears to me that the House is now in a wholly unsatisfactory position. We stand to have a Division soon in relation to House business, which, by convention, is not normally whipped, and many Members who are not here will have given their proxies to their own party Whips. It is difficult to see how any view expressed by the House at 7 o’clock will be genuinely representative of the views of all the House.

[Chris Bryant]

I will come on to that point later, but there is a prior point which is really important. It is vital to the way we do our business as a Parliament that we have some business which is not subject to the Whip. Obviously, there are conscience clauses. One could argue that every single vote we ever cast in Parliament is a conscience clause, but there are specific matters that have historically been treated in the House as conscience clauses, such as abortion, gay marriage and so on. Traditionally, there has been a very strong view that when it comes to how the House does its own business and orders things, it is not a matter for the Whips.

Now, some of my best friends are Whips. Some of my very best friends are Whips. [Interruption.] Yes, all right, some of my next-door neighbours are Whips. They play an absolutely vital role in enabling the business of the House to proceed. They are therefore, in the main, for the greater convenience of the House. However, there is some business that we should just decide, because in our own conscience, out of our own thinking, that is what we have decided. I think that this matter, in the middle of a pandemic, really should be a matter where our own personal decision is the only thing that counts. It seems odd to me that we have ended up in a situation where a Government Whip can have more than 240 proxy votes—the Opposition Whip, too—yet lots and lots of people cannot take part in the debate. If anything, it should be the other way around.

I want to come specifically to the Government motion and why I have a problem with it, as it is worded. First of all, it says we must be

“certified by a medical practitioner”.

Frankly, I think medical practitioners have better things to do at the moment than to be signing people off as “clinically extremely vulnerable”. Secondly, the idea that we should have to present some kind of certificate—I do not know in what form—presumably to you, Mr Speaker, to prove that somebody has been certified as clinical extremely vulnerable by a medical practitioner, puts you in an invidious position, because you have then to decide. Effectively, you become the doctor of the House, deciding whether people are or are not clinically extremely vulnerable. I do not have any problem with all those people who are clinically extremely vulnerable taking part in debates. I think they should have been allowed to do so for some time already. I am not upset about saying that I have had several letters from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care telling me that I should be shielding—I am not sure whether this is his way of trying to prevent me from taking part in debates. He is not directly addressing this to me—as far as he knows, it has gone out to 300,000 people, or whatever —but the truth is that my doctor says that I am not clinically extremely vulnerable and there is no need for me to shield, not least because I completed my treatment for my cancer back in February. I just think that this is an inappropriate way of us dealing with Members.

The second point is that there are many people who have responsibilities for other people in their households for all sorts of different reasons, as many and as various as the stars in the sky, no doubt. I simply think that it is invidious, therefore, to draw the line in one particular place. I say to the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)—he knows I have enormous respect for him—that, on this occasion, I just think that it would be perfectly simple for him to vote for the amendment and then we would be able to get both the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) and the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) able to participate in debates.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to the hon. Member, who I also have a lot of respect for. I say to him gently again that if he withdrew his amendment tonight and let the motion go through as the Government have tabled it, at least the most clinically extremely vulnerable would be able to participate—they have not been able to participate since March—and then we could have his battle with the Government on another day. We have had two hours to debate this subject; it will fall at 7 o’clock.

[Chris Bryant]

I sympathise with the argument. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham has expressed that argument to me. The problem is that the only people who have responsibility for the way we do our business this evening are the Government. The only people who can grant us time to have a row on another day and allow other people are the Government. So far, what we have seen over the last two weeks is that they are passionately, adamantinely opposed to allowing a further extension of people, so the only moment at which we can possibly insist is this moment.

I have heard the argument, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”—I have heard it so many times in my life and sometimes I have even made it myself. I made it myself, oddly, on the issue of gay marriage, because I said to Members in my party, “Let’s just go with having civil partnerships, because maybe the country won’t wear gay marriage.” Lots of people, quite rightly, metaphorically slapped me in the face and said, “You’re an idiot. You simply don’t know where history is going.” So I say to hon. Members tonight: the perfect is within your grasp. Vote for the amendment and the whole motion will go through as amended, and we will be happy. The Government could say now, having heard so many Conservative colleagues and others in the House say that they would like to take part in debates, that they are going to accept the amendment.

[Fleur Anderson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

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[Chris Bryant]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I just want to deal with the specific issue of the Government’s argument.

Some Members rightly say, “MPs shouldn’t treat themselves any differently from the rest of the country.” I 100%, wholeheartedly agree. All too often, we adopt an exceptionalist position for Parliament, which I think our voters and our constituents do not understand or accept, but I think that on this particular issue, the Government have simply got it wrong and do not understand their own rules.

The Leader of the House said last week that the rule in the country was, if you can, go to work. That is not the Government’s advice. It was not last week and it is not this week. As the Prime Minister categorically said yesterday, the Government’s rule says specifically:

“To help contain the virus, everyone who can work effectively from home should do so.”

Everyone who can do so should do so. The Prime Minister reiterated yesterday that when the present lockdown in England is completed, even in tier 1, the rule will be work from home if you can. In addition, the Government rules specify—this is in relation to employers, so this is the responsibility of the whole House:

 “COVID-19 is a public health emergency. Everyone needs to assess and manage the risks of COVID-19, and in particular businesses should consider the risks to their workers and visitors. As an employer, you also have a legal responsibility to protect workers and others from risk to their health and safety. This means you need to think about the risks they face and do everything reasonably practicable to minimise them”.

The House can do something “reasonably practicable”, and that is to allow a significant number of Members to take part in debates remotely, because they are clinically extremely vulnerable. An additional number, which I believe to be a smaller one, could take part remotely for a public health reason in their own family or community.

I will make another point to the Government. I have felt a sense of deep frustration all year. I sometimes worry that the Government think that they are a Government of England, not a Government of the United Kingdom. I will lose some people in the Opposition now, but I am a passionate Unionist. I want the Union to hold together. As a Welsh MP, it has constantly been difficult this year to explain differences between sets of arrangements in Wales, Scotland, England and all the rest of it. Broadcasters have been particularly bad at explaining them, but the truth is that on this specific issue of whether people should work from home, the rules vary at different points in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[Patrick Grady]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way—as long as the hon. Gentleman promises that he will be a Unionist.

[Patrick Grady]

The point is exactly as the hon. Gentleman makes it, because the Government continue to put a rocket up the case for independence by refusing to accommodate the requirements of all Members of Parliament for Scotland. We are specifically exempt from legislation that now prevents people from Scotland from travelling to England. We have to be happy to be specifically exempt from that because the Leader of the House is intransigent.

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[Chris Bryant]

Obviously I do not go quite as far as that, but when we had the firebreak in Wales—the Labour Government in Wales have dealt with all of this much better, delivering a clearer message all the time, but that is by the by—some of my constituents said to me strongly that they did not want me to come to Parliament, because they thought it would be inappropriate for me to do so as they were not allowed to travel. I make no judgment—some MPs felt they had to come, some felt that they did not, and all the rest of it—but the truth of the matter is that there are different rules in different parts of the country, and there will be different rules in different parts of England in the forthcoming weeks. It would seem to make far more sense, on an equality basis, to allow everyone to participate on an equal basis.

The Leader of the House denies this—I am sorry to be so obsessed with the Leader of the House, but I was looking forward to a long speech and we have barely had a word from him today, which is a terrible disappointment to us all—but on occasion he has intimated that we cannot really do our job as an MP unless we are here. My experience is that, of all my 19 years as a Member, this has been the toughest year as an MP in terms of the understandable demand from constituents. Most arrives by email, not from people physically coming through the door—several Members have mentioned that they have not held surgeries in person, but have been doing them online. On social media, Facebook in particular, I have been dealing with many thousands of cases every week. Some questions are not right—such as, “Is Lidl open?”, or, “How much are nappies in Sainsbury’s?”, neither of which I knew the answer to, but in a way, it has been a good thing for Parliament that many MPs have had engagement with their constituents that they never had in the previous year.

It is tough, because there is no point going on holiday this year as an MP, because frankly, at all hours of the day, we have been dealing endlessly with requests from constituents. A lot of the job we can do perfectly well from our living room, back study, outhouse or stable, depending on how grand or ungrand the house is.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

An example of that was this weekend. The annual NATO Parliamentary Assembly took place, involving individual parliamentarians from NATO countries, including the United States and all across Europe. It was all done virtually, and I was even chairing meetings on Saturday afternoon.

[Chris Bryant]

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and all sorts of organisations have been doing this perfectly well, fully engaging all their members and enabling them to take part. Members might say that it is more difficult for people to travel, but sometimes some Members in the House forget that the travel is as risky as the business of actually physically being in Parliament. Mr Speaker, you and all the staff in the building have done a phenomenal job in making this place as covid-secure as possible.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you advise the House that, if this debate goes up to 7 o’clock, the motion will fall? Would it therefore not be prudent of the House to cease this debate now so that at least we can have a vote and thus protect those Members who are extremely clinically vulnerable?

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[Mr Speaker]

I think everybody in here knows exactly what the outcome is of what is going on. I do not think that we need to reiterate the obvious.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for your guidance, Mr Speaker, but let me make the point clear. I am moving the amendment in the names of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay and myself.

It is worth bearing in mind what Members are not able to take part in. I have heard very moving and important speeches by Conservative Members, saying that this year has seen a phenomenal suspension of liberty in this country—extraordinary. The Coronavirus Act 2020 has taken power away from individuals to live their lives as they want more than any other piece of legislation in our history. We subscribed to that because we believed that it was necessary. The Government insisted that they should require only a single vote every six months on a 90-minute debate, but the Members whom we are talking about are not able to take part in those 90-minute debates—to be honest, not many other people are able to take part in those 90-minute debates either.

If we look at the secondary legislation, we will see that, during this year, there have been 297 coronavirus statutory instruments, using powers in 106 Acts of Parliament. Why should none of the Members whom we are talking about be able to take part in any of that secondary legislation when it is depriving people of their liberty? More importantly, it is not about the Member; it is about the community that they represent—their constituency. Why should they be barred, for instance, from expressing a view about the 10 o’clock curfew in pubs, or whether their constituency should be in tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3? They are not able to take part in ten-minute rule Bills. They are not able to make points of order, which must be a terribly depressing thing for all of them—how can you live without making points of order? Ironically enough, they are able to table amendments, but they are not able then to speak to them. That is the irony of where we are at tonight. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay can table an amendment, but he is not able to take part in this debate because of the way that things have been structured.

I say to all hon. Members, first of all, I do not buy this argument about the perfect being the enemy of the good. Earlier today, I understand that the Government Whips tried to strong-arm the Opposition, saying, “Well, you’ll never get what you want. We’ll pull the motion.” But the Leader of the House said that he would enable the House to resolve this. The proper way to resolve this is to have a proper motion on the Order Paper when all Members know that the debate is coming and we can consider the thing properly.

Secondly, I believe that all MPs are equal—the good, the bad, the ugly. All of them are equal. It is a really important principle.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Name the ugly.

[Chris Bryant]

Especially the ugly, yes.

[Mr Jones]

No, name the ugly.

[Chris Bryant]

Oh. Anyway, the point is that it is such a historic principle that every MP is treated equally that it is a terrible shame that we have abandoned it this year just because there is a pandemic. I do not believe that House business should ever be whipped. I think it is wholly inappropriate to do that, and I think that there has been a tendency in the past year for the Whips to interfere. Sorry, I have just seen my Chief Whip—everything that he has done has been absolutely perfect. On a serious note, I just think that more of our business should be done without the Whips’ engagement, because sometimes that would mean that it was less cantankerous.

I especially object to the idea that large numbers of proxies should be used in a vote, unless the person who is delivering those proxies has asked each and every individual Member—every single one—how they intended to vote. Let me just say to Members who would even consider the idea of voting against the amendment, which I guess is the argument that many of them are advancing—