Virtual Participation in Debate

Debate between John Spellar and Valerie Vaz

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

I am extremely disturbed, because I had no notice, as shadow Leader of the House, that the Government were going to pull any business. There was nothing from the Leader of the House, I am afraid, to say that the business was going to be pulled, and I find that a huge discourtesy, because he is a very courteous person and we do get on in terms of getting the business done, although we may differ completely on the politics side of it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that there were important matters to be debated and for hon. Members to know. I had a speech prepared so that hon. Members would know exactly who had been agreed to go through on the independent complaints and grievance procedure, and my hon. Friend says that he was informed that that debate would happen, so this is a huge discourtesy to the House. Will the Leader of the House please say why the business was pulled in such a way?

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

This is also a discourtesy because some Members of the House had considerable objections to the make-up of that particular body. They wanted to ask questions, for example, as to how much these people were going to be paid, along with their civil service salary. We also wanted to ask questions about the social composition of the grouping, but we have been deprived of that opportunity peremptorily—

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[John Spellar]

Does my right hon. Friend, like me, wonder a little at the paradox that we have here today? The Leader of the House has often waxed lyrical about the need for Members of Parliament to be here to debate, yet he pulled a fast one to pull two of the debates that we wanted to have.

[Valerie Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I still do not have an answer to that. I hope that I will get an answer, partly because the normal courtesies of the House were not applied and I was not even informed—I was waiting to come in to speak and the motions were just not moved. That is not the right way to do business.

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[Valerie Vaz]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that is a bit concerning. At one point I thought that the Conservative Members were all at No. 11 being primed by the Chancellor on tomorrow’s statement. I thought that everyone was at a party, with drinks, canapés and things like that.

Let me just go back to the point about the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands, the Procedure Committee and its work—I was going to come on to that, but I will do so now. I have here two reports, its first report of Session 2019-21, “Procedure under coronavirus restrictions: proposals for remote participation” and its sixth report, “Procedure under coronavirus restrictions: virtual participation in debate”. The Procedure Committee has been extraordinary in the work it has done. It has done that work quickly, and I, too, pay tribute to Martyn Atkins, the Clerk. I was lucky to be on the Health Committee when he was a Clerk there. We were lucky to have him on that Committee. He was very assiduous, as were all the Clerks there. I have read all the reports, including the latest one. We did not have enough time to debate it on Thursday—we all just got a question each—but it is so important. I do not know whether right hon. and hon. Members have read it in its entirely. I could read it out, but it makes very important recommendations, one of which is:

“We do not consider that there is a justifiable case for eligibility for virtual participation in debate to be determined by reference to clinical vulnerability. Nor do we consider it appropriate to determine eligibility on a basis different from that for virtual participation in scrutiny proceedings. We therefore recommend that the criteria for eligibility for virtual participation in all House proceedings be made uniform at the earliest opportunity.”

This is the earliest opportunity.

[John Spellar]

Is it not utterly disrespectful for the Leader of the House and the Cabinet to disregard the House’s Committees, whose members are elected by both parties and whose Chairs are elected by the whole House? Is that not utterly contemptuous of the House and its Members?

[Valerie Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is right. It is concerning that Chairs of Select Committees, who are elected by the whole House, cannot participate. This is a cross-party report—a report that Members can amend but have not amended—which says that everybody should be treated equally in virtual participation. It is possible; we did it right at the beginning.

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[Valerie Vaz]

I agree. We did have the good and we did have the perfect, and for some reason we cannot have that any more—although we might because the amendment may get passed. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), who is not in his place at the minute, said that it is the Opposition, but it is not—this is cross-party. If he looks at the amendment, it is signed by the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and the Procedure Committee has agreed—all sides, all parties.

[John Spellar]

Is my right hon. Friend as surprised as I am that, given the huge success of our excellent technical operators, a Government Minister has not used the expression “world beating”? In this case it is justified, but it is often a slightly overblown expression; it is normally used by the Secretary of State for Health and the Prime Minister.

[Valerie Vaz]

It is world beating, but we do not use the term in the same way as they use it, because all their world-beating test and trace and everything else do not appear to be world beating.

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[Valerie Vaz]

Yes, with the greatest of respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood. He will know that unless a Member certifies that they are clinically vulnerable, they will not be able to take part in a debate under virtual proceedings. That is where the difficulty lies, because there will be two different sets of hon. Members: those who will have to certify and those who cannot certify. For example, take the hon. Gentleman’s colleague, the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, who has co-signed the amendment. It is not he who is clinically vulnerable; it is possibly another person who is, and he wants to protect them. Therefore, he cannot take part in the debate, and he should be able to. Why can he not take part in the debate without having to expose whichever person it is, who he would expose to the disease if he came here physically? That is the point, and that is why I say that this is a cross-party matter. It has nothing to do with politics or with anyone here. The only politics is that the Government seem hellbent on ensuring that people cannot take part in debates.

[John Spellar]

Has not my right hon. Friend exposed another flaw in this, which is the argument made by some Conservative Members that, “Well, you’ll have to go and get a sick note”? But if people have to do that, they hand the note in to their employer; it is not put on the front page of the local paper and out on social media, exposing to the rest of the world their—or in this case, even their family members’—condition. Whatever happened to medical privacy in all this?