Virtual Participation in Debate

Harriet Harman Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the report issued by the Procedure Committee last night about virtual participation in the debates of this House for those who cannot participate physically. It is the sixth report of the Committee in this Session, and the fourth we have produced on House procedure under coronavirus restrictions.

I must start by thanking the Chair and members of the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time in the Chamber for this statement, and the sponsors and contributors to this afternoon’s debate for their understanding. My final thank you is to the very many right hon. and hon. Members from all parties who have given evidence both publicly and privately to my Committee on this matter. It is that evidence that has informed the Committee and on which our recommendations are based. Those recommendations go much further than the Government’s position on this matter.

I am a great fan of my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House. He is a most courteous parliamentarian and, as a Back Bencher, was one of the greatest champions of the independence of Parliament from the Executive. But his failure to schedule any debate on this subject and his refusal to listen to the views of the House, expressed so fervently on Monday in response to the urgent question secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), when tabling the motion to extend virtual participation in debates is indefensible.

The Procedure Committee was unanimous in its view that virtual participation in debates should be extended to all Members who cannot, for whatever reason, participate in person due to the pandemic. There should not be different tests for those who can participate virtually in debates, those who can enjoy virtual participation in our scrutiny proceedings and those who decide to use a proxy vote. It should not take the image of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) being denied the right to participate in a debate on the very disease that is keeping her from Parliament to make the Government move. The Leader of the House was right to say that nobody could fail to be moved by that image. It is my view that he should have seen the possibility of that image, demonstrating the complete contradiction in his position on this matter, and never have let it happen. The public will be baffled by a situation in which the Prime Minister can answer Prime Minister’s questions virtually yesterday and make a statement to the House virtually today but cannot take part in a debate until he has finished self-isolating. This is an utterly farcical situation.

I am sure that the Leader of the House, being a traditionalist, does not want to change our procedures too much because of a fear that those changes will become permanent. I have enormous sympathy with that view, but we must acknowledge that things are not as they were. This hybrid House is, to coin a phrase, sub-optimal. We must try to make this House work as best we can for the situation we find ourselves in now and ensure that all Members can do their job today. That requires us to look at the issue strategically, with easy-to-understand and clear rules about participation that reflect today’s reality, as set out in the four reports published by my Committee on this matter.

I must tell the House how much the Committee appreciates the work being done on the House’s behalf by all those across the House service and our digital and audiovisual services to support the work we come here to do. Our corridors are eerily quiet at the moment, for reasons we all appreciate, but I know that the staff involved will have been working non-stop to get the broadcasting systems ready for virtual participation in debate as soon as there was a prospect of the Government allowing it to happen.

Under Mr Speaker’s leadership, we have a House service that is well placed to take a strategic view of our circumstances. If there had been a little more strategic thinking in certain other quarters about how best to equip the House to meet the challenges of the pandemic once it was clear that the restrictions were to be extended well into the new year, perhaps the necessary political signals enabling work on virtual participation to commence could have been sent rather earlier than last weekend. Not for the first time, the Government have looked for tactical fixes rather than strategic solutions that would increase the House’s capacity for resilience now and in the future.

The House must be allowed to have its say on how best we represent our constituents in this place. We are all accountable to our constituents, and they will challenge us if they do not believe that we are representing them properly. Around one quarter of Members are using the ability to participate virtually in scrutiny proceedings. With pandemic restrictions likely to be in place until the spring at least, I ask the Government to stop using short-term tactics that require constant U-turns, and instead let that quarter of MPs take part in debates.

Nobody—not even my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House—has a monopoly on being right. It is possible that the majority of the House agrees with him, not my Committee, but the only way to find that out is to schedule a debate on the matter and allow a free vote, as I think he would have demanded if our roles were reversed. As a Back-Bench Member of this House, there are two ways that I can represent my constituents: by speaking in this Chamber on their behalf and by casting my vote. We are in danger of removing both those rights from far too many Members. I commend my Committee’s report and this statement to the House.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab) [V]]

May I thank the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) for her statement and say that I agreed with absolutely every single word of it? I commend her and her Committee for this report, which is based on the principle that, despite this awful pandemic, all Members should be able to participate in our debates, whether in person or remotely, and I strongly support that principle. I agree with her that it is the role of the Leader of the House to support MPs to do their job and to speak in debates and that it is not for him to set up exclusions.

Is the right hon. Lady aware that the number of MPs who are exercising proxy votes and therefore excluded from debates is 62%? That means that 62% of us are not able to speak in our debates; that cannot be right. Is she also aware that the figure for Scottish Members of Parliament is 78%? Imagine having a situation during this pandemic where 78% of Scottish MPs are excluded from debates. We want and need to hear from them and from our colleagues in Wales and from the regions outside Westminster as well. We do not want a situation where half of the Chairs of Select Committees are not able to speak in debates, even those debates that are on the subject on which they have done inquiries and reports.

We might be essential workers, but we can work remotely. I strongly back the amendment of the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) to the motion of the Leader of the House. I urge the right hon. Lady to back that amendment—I am sure that she will—and to urge all other Members to do the same, so that we can override the Leader of the House and ensure that all Members are able to speak in debates on equal terms at this crucial time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I gave the right hon. and learned Lady some leeway, as Members may have noticed, but please can people just ask questions now?