Business of the House

Felicity Buchan Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very fair point. I think all of us as constituency MPs have businesses that we would like to provide more help to and that find they cannot apply for the scheme they want. The Treasury has made enormous strides to help people. There are Treasury questions on 18 May, when this matter can be raised. The schemes are enormous and widespread, but there are some who fall through the cracks.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I would like to thank the Speaker, my right hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for all their work on electronic voting. Have we test-proofed the systems to ensure they are robust against cyber-interference?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The issue of cyber-security is indeed important. I can assure my hon. Friend that Mr Speaker has taken a personal and strong interest in this matter. The Procedure Committee has done a full assessment of the proceedings and confirmed that they are ready to deploy. We have taken proper advice from Government sources on cyber-security to ensure that the system is as robust as possible, but there is the final safeguard that Members’ names are published. They are therefore able to check that their vote has been properly recorded, in the highly unlikely event of any cyber-attack.