Proxy Voting

Huw Merriman Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

First, I would like to thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) to speak before me, because it is important that she gets back to her baby. There is an irony that we are discussing such matters today. I encouraged her, because I am a fan of such things, to bring her son into the Chamber. I did that in Glasgow City Council—I got away with it because everyone was too scared to tell me no. In yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions, Members were far, far worse behaved, and far, far noisier, than any baby I have ever seen, so I think that babies could get along in here fairly well on most occasions.

This debate calls for a discussion on proxy voting for Members with new babies, including in relation to adoption, and not just for women Members of Parliament. That is absolutely the right way to look at this. Opportunities to take care of, and to bond with, the child should be given to mothers, fathers and adopted parents equally. I would like to briefly focus particularly on women, who statistically will benefit from this procedural change the most.

If we want a society that tackles inequality, we need a reasonable cross-section of society to be making policy from the grassroots up. Women are sadly still under-represented in politics, and that can lead to policies that do not take women’s experiences into account. At the weekend, I spoke to Radiant and Brighter, a group in my constituency, at their “Bright Futures” talk. I said to the women in that room to look at Parliament, but not to think that they cannot be part of it. I said that they should look to be coming behind me and for my job, because their experiences are entirely different from mine. They deserve to be in here as much as anybody else—perhaps more so, given the contributions from some people—and they deserve a place in politics. Their voices deserve to be heard. At the moment, however, they are not being heard.

Women are not a problem to be retrofitted to this place or to the economy. When women’s voices are not heard, that leads to policies such as the two-child limit on tax credits which means that women have to prove to the Department for Work and Pensions that a third child was conceived as a result of rape. That applies to women who have no recourse to public funds getting their period on the bus when they cannot afford sanitary protection. It leads to situations such as split payments on universal credit being taken up by only 20 women in the whole of UK in June, because it is too dangerous for women to do so. Those policies have been made in the absence of women’s voices and the policies are poorer as a result. We therefore need to get more women in here and we need to look at the structures we have in place to achieve that.

I want to encourage every girl to stand up and make her voice heard, whether in her school, in her community, in council chambers across the land, in the Scottish Parliament, in Assemblies or in this place. Women do not put themselves forward for election to the same extent as men. We can pretend that this is a matter of preference, and that women are not as interested in politics as men, but we know that that is just not true. The reality is that this situation is a constructed one. It is a consequence, at least in part, of some of the policies in this House.

Mary Beard, in her book “Women & Power”, writes:

“You cannot easily fit women into a structure that is coded as male, you have to change the structure.”

The structure in this House is inadequate for women and for families. I am sure that nobody would want their daughter to work in an environment where they were subject to online abuse, judged by newspapers on their appearance or behaviour, and not entitled to maternity leave. The hon. Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for East Dunbartonshire spoke passionately about the abuse they received because people were judging them on a structure that was coded as male and had no place for them.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that it is precisely because we do not have proxy voting that we give the perception that this place does not work for women? I think back to the time when I stood in North East Derbyshire, when Natascha Engel was the MP. I was confronted by a lady who said that Natascha Engel was not doing her job properly because she had three children. In fact, people can do their job properly while having three children. I hasten to add that I threw that constituent’s vote away because I found her views so appalling. Surely this is about perception. We can and we must do more, otherwise we will never show that this place is right for all.

[Alison Thewliss]

I absolutely agree. When I was a standing as a candidate, somebody said to me, “I hear you have two children. How are you going to manage this?” I asked him whether he had put that question to the incumbent in the seat, because he also had two children, which put him in his place slightly, but he felt that that was a legitimate question for me. I am pretty sure that nobody would have asked the male incumbent in the seat that question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree that that helps with planning. There have been so many occasions recently when we have had to change our plans at late notice because of votes, business or other things. Getting a wee bit more certainty into the parliamentary diary would be to the advantage of us all, and it would help with our work-life balance and associated stresses.

[Huw Merriman]

The hon. Lady is being generous with her time. This view may not be shared by many other Conservative Members, or indeed Members from other parties, but I completely agree with her when it comes to taking two hours to complete eight votes. In my days in business, we would all have been fired if we had executed eight trades in two hours. Does she agree that if we were to introduce electronic voting, it would make sense also to require Members to spend time in the Chamber during the debate before voting? It is slightly nonsensical that at the moment people can vote at 9 o’clock on a Monday night, having spent no time in the Chamber whatsoever. With electronic voting and that tag-on, we could end up seeing more Members in this Chamber, which is what the public want, I believe.

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, up to a point. I think it is a myth that an MP must at all times be in the Chamber before they vote; we know that that is not true. How many people are here today? If the motion were put to a vote at the end of the debate, a lot of people who voted would not have been here. Sometimes we are in Committees, servicing Westminster Hall or doing other things in this building that mean that we legitimately cannot be in the Chamber for an entire debate before we vote. We need to be realistic about the fact that there are many things going on outwith the Chamber at various points during the day, but it is important to know what we are voting for and to take responsibility for it.