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

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the Chair of our Committee. She knows that I am a long-serving, or perhaps long-suffering, member of the Procedure Committee. I welcome the recommendations on ill health proxies, as they show progress from where we were with the baby and adoption proxies a number of years ago. On decoupling from the estate, and being able to attend the Chamber and then leave, does she agree that this is simply about having a keeping in touch day and allowing this House to follow modern working practices for mothers and indeed fathers; they may wish to access this for slightly longer if they are sharing their maternity and paternity leave? This simply brings the House towards some modern practice.

Finally, on babies in the Chamber, as the father of a 17-month-old, I wholeheartedly back the Committee’s report. I would not want to bring my son into the Chamber, although he has benefited from being in for a Division. This is not just about new mothers in this place; there are also lots of new fathers who care deeply about what happens to their children, and we should have a voice in this process as well.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my friend, the Vice-Chair of the Committee, for his comments. He is right: we did want to decouple the requirement not to be in the Chamber from the proxy vote. We heard significant evidence about keep-in-touch days for new parents.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who said that when she was recovering following her breast cancer diagnosis, she was able to avail herself of the proxy vote because we still had pandemic proxies, but that she was also able to come into this place and make contributions. For her, that was good for getting her back into working practices and good for her recovery, but it would have been very detrimental to her recovery had she had to stay to vote later in the day.

We reflected that in the report. We wanted to make sure that there was a decoupling of the requirement not to attend the Chamber from the proxy vote, because it would give Members the opportunity to do that kind of keep-in-touch day.