Parliament as a Workplace

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) on this excellent debate. It is sad that it is not more broadly attended because it is an important topic. As a Member of Parliament who has to spend anywhere between 10 and 15 hours a week travelling to and from my constituency, I was grateful to hear of the great experiences that others have who travel shorter distances.

Members have made important contributions. The late and much-missed Jo Cox said that we in Westminster

“are behind the curve compared with working practice in much of industry, and the charitable and public sectors, and that is a problem… if we act differently and change the culture and working practices here, we can change how others operate. We should do that, because we are here to change and improve the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 46WH.]

I could not agree more. If we are to make laws and policies that are forward thinking and progressive, we must get our own house in order.

When I came to this place, I could not help thinking it was a cross between Downton Abbey and Hogwarts. I know people have great affection for the Houses of Parliament, but there is no doubt it is stuck in the past. It is steeped in great history, but it is not forward looking enough. It has a rich history of failing to be a workplace that is anywhere near as functional or inclusive as it should be. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) spoke of his shock and surprise when he arrived here to see how many pubs there were. I shared that experience.

Of the many places I have ever worked—the corporate industry, the energy sector, other MPs’ offices, foreign Governments—the only place I have seen something similar is the media. I started at Good Morning Television the year after the last pub in the building had been closed, and it was closed for a very good reason. People often visit us here in our workplace—for example, we bring constituents into this place—and it is still a mystery to me that there are so many pubs and places to buy alcohol and that alcohol is served during the day at receptions.

None the less, progress has been made. When we introduced proxy voting, I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. It has been interesting to hear from male colleagues whose partners have recently had babies or are about to have them and who have missed out on proxy voting but who will now benefit from it. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has just introduced a proposal for extended parental leave for those who have premature babies. That is a sensible proposal that I hope the Minister will consider.

Dame Laura Cox’s report last October concluded that a

“culture of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence”

was enabling abuses of power and the mistreatment of colleagues to go unchecked. It should not have taken one of our colleagues having to come here in a wheelchair on the day she was due to give birth to force proxy voting through. She was incredibly brave in what she did—she stood by her principles—and it is because of her that we have finally taken that step forward.

We have heard many stories about an endemic culture that normalises bullying and harassment, which continue to permeate our politics. That is the sad reality of decades and centuries of ancient tradition in this place. We have plans to refurbish this place. It is predicted to cost between £4 billion and £6 billion of taxpayers’ money just to bring this place and the other place up to standard. The Scottish Parliament, which will shortly celebrate its 20th anniversary, cost a little under half a billion pounds. We could build between eight and 10 Scottish Parliaments for the cost of the refurbishment. Some argue that this place would be better turned into a museum and that we could build a new Parliament in another part of the UK.

[Mrs Miller]

I did not want to stop the hon. Lady’s flow, but she referred earlier to the Cox report and the grievance procedures. I hope that she will have noted that we have secured a short debate on the Floor of the House next Tuesday to press for progress in those areas. I hope that she will be able to support that debate.

[Hannah Bardell]

The right hon. Lady has read my mind, because I was coming to that. I am glad to see that among the threadbare business for next week there will be an update on that important piece of work. It is very important that we move that forward. I commend her on the important work that she and the Women and Equalities Committee, which she chairs, have done on this. She said that the Brexit process had challenged people’s trust in politics and in this place. I agree with that and would go further: it has exposed the crumbling relic of a democratic institution that this place is. We face the prospect of having a candidate for Prime Minister who wants to prorogue Parliament and have a no-deal Brexit, which will have a devastating impact. How will we get public trust if we cannot even have proper business and legislation in this place?

The right hon. Lady talked about the built environment and the paintings around this place. I have had the good fortune to sit on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, and it has been a privilege to do so and particularly to see the work that has been done on the 209 Women project. I commend all those involved in that project, but during that period, I learned that 25 times more money had been spent over the past 20 years on buying pictures of men for this place than had been spent on buying pictures of women. Let us not forget that the photographs of the female parliamentarians who took part in the 209 Women project were taken by female photographers, who were not paid, which is a really important point. When we are trying to support women and their work, we must remember that they should be properly recognised. Without radical changes to this place to make it more inclusive, we will not properly reflect society.

We have made significant strides. We are the gayest Parliament in the world, or one of the gayest, and I am proud to be a woman who is gay in this place. When I stood for election and for selection, I stood against four men. I looked at the line-up and thought, “Why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go up against four men to go to a place that is very male dominated?” I did it because I wanted to be part of the change that I know many young women cannot see.

In Scotland, we have also made significant strides. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet. When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, she was one of only a handful of leaders in the world to do that. It is really important that we have politicians who are hard-working, relatable and can bring their personal experiences to this place. We saw that in the most recent election. There are Members across this House with a vast array of life experiences, but we have to make sure that we have that not just in Parliament and its elected representatives, but in our media. I often look up at the Press Gallery, at the press who are looking down at us, and I do not see many female faces or people of colour. It is really important that we have people reporting on our politics who are as diverse as possible.

We have had contributions from Members who have spoken about access to this place. If this building was being built from scratch today, there is absolutely no way in which it would meet health and safety standards. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the voting system. We have proxy voting, but electronic voting would save us a huge amount of time. On the last count that I did, which was in March, I calculated that we had spent 205 hours—five and a half working weeks—just voting. Given that Parliament sits for only 35 or 36 weeks a year, a huge amount of time is being wasted just on voting. Nobody is arguing that we should not be here debating and voting. That is extremely important, but, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, perhaps we could have an allotted time for urgent questions and have predictability in our business, particularly when we have people travelling from our constituencies, businesses and other organisations to come to see us in Parliament. Having to cancel meetings at the last minute and not being able to get back for children’s events and caring responsibilities is a ridiculous situation. There is no other such employment anywhere. We do our constituents an injustice, and in my view we cannot properly represent them and their issues when there is such a lack of predictability, progress and activity from a legislative perspective. Brexit has dominated so much of the legislative timetable that it has created and exposed the inadequacies of the system.

I understand that people like the banter and to have a wee chat in the voting Lobbies, but for goodness’ sake, we live in a modern world. We should be able to have those meetings and engage with one another. It just exposes the inaccessibility of the Government and the inability to get answers from them that people feel the need to use the time in the voting Lobbies just to corner other people, because they cannot get the proper responses, meetings and time that they feel they need.

[Tom Brake]

I want to use this opportunity to draw to the attention of the hon. Lady and other Members present to the fantastic opportunity that we have with the Northern Estate programme, as part of which we shall build a, I think badly named, temporary Chamber—a Chamber that could in fact be permanent. If we cannot get reform here—which is quite difficult to do, because there is a certain amount of inertia—we should make sure that for that temporary Chamber, which we will be sitting in from about 2025 onwards, those issues are at the very least tested, so that if they are successful, they can be reintroduced here when we come back to a new Palace of Westminster in 2031 or thereabouts.

[Hannah Bardell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that important point. However, if I am still here in 2031 and Scotland is not an independent country, I will eat my hat, quite literally. The thought that I would still be having to come to this place horrifies me.

We do not have a seat in the Chamber for every Member. So many times I have heard people argue, “We need to queue up and vote in the Lobbies because people need to be here for the debate,” yet we can only fit half the Members of this place into this Chamber to listen to a debate. For goodness’ sake—it is common sense. Let us have a Chamber that is big enough. I know of so few Parliaments—I have been in Parliaments all over the world, including Malawi at the beginning of last year—that do not have electronic voting. The European Parliament and the Council of Europe have it, as do the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is not difficult, so for goodness’ sake, let us just get on and do it.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), in a recent speech, made a point about half terms and summer breaks. She included reference to experiences in Scotland. In parts of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the recesses do not match up to the holidays. I have colleagues who sometimes have an overlap of less than 10 days, so they cannot even get a break with their families. I am in no doubt that we have a huge amount of privilege being in this place, and this is not about having a rant and a moan; it is about saying to our constituents, “Look, we could do a much better job for you, and a much better job by you, and more people—women—from across the social and the economic spectrum could be encouraged into this place if it had a proper, modern working ethic.”

I shall finish by reflecting on some of the experiences of my staff, many of whom have been with me since I was first elected. About the end of 2015, we started an all-party group on deaths abroad and consular services, because we had two constituents—women—who had been killed abroad in suspicious circumstances. Since then, we have taken evidence from about 60 families across the UK who have lost loved ones abroad. That has been a harrowing and deeply distressing experience for me and my staff—nothing like the experience that those families have had, but none the less the vicarious trauma that my staff and I have experienced has been significant.

We have worked with the parliamentary authorities to get the right emotional support, and it has become very clear to me that there is not appropriate emotional support for staff members. All our staff members do an incredible job, and they often have to deal with distressing and difficult constituency work. We must do much more, through the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the other authorities, to ensure that our staff get the proper support when they come to work for an MP, because we are all individual employers and we have a very important responsibility to our staff to ensure that they are properly protected. They will be able to serve our constituents properly only if they get the right support, and this place will be a modern Parliament that can properly reflect all parts of the UK and all people who live in it only if we can make it a modern and sensible working place.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mel Stride)]

I thank all those who have contributed to a valuable and wide-ranging debate, and especially the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) for sharing with us her many ideas, which were clearly built on her experience, in another life before Parliament, of workplace and maternity rights. I also recognise that the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who is no longer in his place for the very good reasons he gave, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) put their names to the motion. In mentioning my right hon. Friend, perhaps I may take this opportunity to thank her for the work that she does as the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, and say that I particularly look forward to the prospect of working closely with her in the weeks and months ahead.

As I said, we have had a wide-ranging debate. That is part of the nature of the solutions we all look to when we seek to have a Parliament that is fit for the 21st century and to ensure that the heritage, the wisdom of the ages and the things that make this Parliament work extremely well—there are many; we tend not to focus on them and to take them for granted—are preserved while we move forward positively. That came out in the debate.

As I listened to the various contributions, I noted the wide variety of areas on which hon. Members rightly alighted. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge mentioned the onsite nursery, electronic voting, the recess dates, school holidays and parliamentary Prayers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke mentioned commuting to Parliament, retention of MPs and staff, proxy voting, mental health, the parliamentary timetable—especially UQs—disability access, restoration and renewal, women in Parliament and ethnic minority portraits.

The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead mentioned accessibility and disabled access and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentioned job sharing in an intervention. The hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) referred to shared parental leave, and I was gratified to learn that his eldest daughter shares the name Ophelia with one of my daughters: it is a lovely name. I will certainly take away from this debate the wonderful image of several Labour Members and the shadow Chancellor failing to fill in a passport form at the Passport Office: I am sure there were very good reasons for that happening on that occasion.

This is an important debate. If our Parliament is not properly accessible, does not project an image that gains the trust and respect of the public or is not truly representative of the country at large, it is a pretty poor state of affairs. I accept that more can be done at every turn. On the point about representation, “The Good Parliament” report has been mentioned. It is an excellent piece of work. It gives the figures: at present, just 32% of Members of Parliament are female, and the figure for the House of Lords is just 27%. On just that one metric, that is clearly not right, and much of the debate has understandably been framed in the context of how we address that particular issue, along with several others.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, who did some excellent work in several areas that have been raised this afternoon, not least of which is proxy voting. We should not forget that the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) was the first to exercise a proxy vote on 29 January. I also thank the Procedure Committee for the valuable work that it did in that respect. My predecessor also drove through work on restoration and renewal, which will bring with it many opportunities to address some of the accessibility and, perhaps, technology issues that have been raised.

One of the aspects that did not feature in everybody’s contribution, but is very important and was raised by the shadow Leader of the House, is the independent complaints and grievance scheme, on which much additional work now needs to be done. I look forward to working closely with her on that. My predecessor did a great deal to move that element forward.

As we fall over ourselves to say that things are not right or are archaic, and all the rest of it, we should not overlook the progress that has been made or, indeed, assume that we are stuck in a previous century, because many good things are occurring. There have been changes to the sitting hours, which many Members mentioned. Most recently—this was during my time here—we made a number of helpful changes in 2012. We now have childcare facilities for those aged three months and above, up to five years, the family room off the Lower Waiting Hall, the baby-changing facilities and various other things that are advances in their own right.

A huge amount remains to be done, of course, which I would categorise in at least four areas. The first is a change in the culture of the House of Commons and the Palace of Westminster, particularly through the independent complaints and grievance scheme, which has a role in ensuring that we have a system that has zero tolerance for harassment and bullying in any form. I join the shadow Leader of the House in thanking Julie Harding, the independent director of cultural transformation, for her work, particularly in that regard.

The Alison Stanley report, the six-month review of the scheme, has been mentioned. The scheme has now been going for about a year, and the report has made some interesting recommendations. I look forward to working with the shadow Leader of the House on reviewing those recommendations, particularly on the efficiency of the system, training requirements and resourcing.

There are outstanding matters across the three strands of the Cox report, most notably on the second and third strands. As the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) may have mentioned, we have a debate on the report next Tuesday and I urge all those present to join us. I will have another outing and we will be able to discuss these matters in even more detail—something to look forward to.

The second area is about supporting parents, and many Members specifically mentioned the piloting of proxy voting. We need to see where we go with that. Clearly we could take other avenues. We could broaden the scope of proxy voting to different situations, and I look forward to looking at that closely.

A number of Members commented on the working hours of the House, which the Procedure Committee has previously looked at in detail. There was a survey on these matters in 2017. The problem, as with so many of these issues, is finding consensus. It is for the House to make these changes, and it is for the House to come together and form consensus on any proposal that may be made.

Several points have made about the organisation of business, and I will briefly touch on one or two of those points. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke raised an interesting idea about the timing of urgent questions, although it contains the nub of the problem with many such ideas. Although it may have some beneficial effects in one respect, it has more negative effects in another. It is about balancing the two. Specifically, if we had urgent questions very early in the parliamentary day, we would still need all the processes that happen in the background leading up to Mr Speaker’s decision on whether to grant an urgent question. That would be shifted several hours earlier and would therefore cause problems earlier in the day, although it would perhaps solve some of the problems for others later in the day. We need to debate and consider such things closely, and I would be happy to sit down with my right hon. Friend to have a closer look at her suggestions, if she would like to do that.

The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the possibility of deferring Divisions late at night, which is an interesting suggestion, and at least one hon. Member talked about the Whips and the valuable role they play in pairing, slipping and so on. They are often the unsung heroes of the parliamentary processes. I say that as a former Whip and therefore somebody who fully grasps, should I say—to be generous—the impact that they can have upon one’s future.

Accessibility is very important. We have a real opportunity with the restoration and renewal project to get some of these things right, and I am very excited about that. The matter was raised by the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead, who made some strong points. As the shadow Leader of the House pointed out, it is not just about lifts, ramps and those kinds of things. Often, it is about the acoustics, lighting, security and technology—all these things that make buildings more accessible.

My final point is about technology in this place. There are great opportunities to use technology better here. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge pointed out that we could speed up voting by holding multiple votes at the same time on iPads, provided the votes were not contingent on each other. We have real opportunities to look at using technology to do things differently, although we have to be careful in considering change in those areas.

To respond to the hon. Member for Livingston, I am not particularly drawn to the idea of electronic voting. There are clearly some benefits, but I am very drawn to the idea of Members getting together at a moment in time when conversations with Ministers and others can occur. That is important, and the second point to underscore is that spending the time to get here and do that means that we have to think more about what we are voting for than we would by, alternatively, clicking something or touching a screen.

To be slightly self-indulgent, I would like to float my own idea, which I first floated in 2011. It went absolutely nowhere, because it was obviously far too frightening and radical, but maybe we have moved on. The idea was to have a list of those about to speak up on the annunciator, so that if we knew that the Leader of the House was going to speak in two or three speakers’ time, we could scamper to the Chamber to listen to his pearls of wisdom.

There could be an even greater benefit—I know that I am straying into dangerous, radical territory, Madam Speaker, but let me finish my point at least—because if that information were known several speakers in advance, it could be communicated to the wider world through technology. I could be sitting on a bus and an app could suddenly ping to tell me that the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) would be on her feet in 10 minutes. I would obviously not dismiss that fact for a second, but would press “Yes, please, I’m absolutely gagging to hear from the hon. Lady”, whereupon she would appear on my screen. I could listen to her or perhaps to my local MP on that bus trip and become more engaged with Parliament and my Member of Parliament. Part of the problem is that we do not know when Members will be called to speak, so that might be one idea.

[Hannah Bardell]

I have to say that I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman on that point. I am a member of the Council of Europe, and that is exactly how it operates. We know the order of speakers well in advance and exactly how much time we will get to speak—there is none of this increasing or reducing the time limit; it is much more organised. So he will have my support if he brings forward that proposal.

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Lady very much, although I am not sure that I have the support of the Chair—I am desperately trying to hold everybody together, which I might just about be able to manage. If the hon. Lady would like to discuss that further with me, I will be happy to do so, although of course I raise these points fully aware that they are far more complicated than the manner in which I have presented them might suggest.

Perhaps I should conclude and leave a minute or two for the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge to respond to the debate, if she would like to. Again, I thank everybody for their contributions. I have listened extremely carefully to everything that everybody has said and my door is always open. The mission to reform Parliament is deep and complicated, and it often faces considerable resistance from all sorts of different directions, but the House has my commitment that I am happy to work with Members from all parties to see how we can improve matters.