Business of the House

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

This has been checked, and between four and 10 additional people will be required to come on to the estate on a daily basis with the reopening of a hybrid Westminster Hall. That is the point. That may not be a very large number, but the advice from the Government is currently that people should not be coming in if they do not have to do so. The right hon. Lady asked for Westminster Hall to be closed and it was, because of people coming on to the estate, and she really cannot have it both ways. I am certainly in favour of scrutiny; I think it is good for the Government. If representations are made that this increase in numbers is proportionate, I am more than willing to bring forward the relevant motions, but it needs to be clear that people have accepted that.

The right hon. Lady mentions the payment of £500 to people through Test and Trace. It is obviously important that benefits are paid properly and efficiently to people who are entitled to them. The Department for Work and Pensions has done particularly well in ensuring that the welfare system has held up during this very difficult time, with a very large increase in the number of people requiring universal credit and requiring general support—it has been an achievement. Indeed, one of the reasons this has been so little talked about is because of how well the system has worked, but if there are any specific problems that the right hon. Lady is aware of and she raises them with me, I will take them up with Ministers.

On that subject, I note that the right hon. Lady has written to me about a response from an official rather than a Minister. Ministers should respond to Members of Parliament, as long as Members of Parliament themselves write; there is a slight tendency, which I do not think applies to the right hon. Lady, of Members getting their assistants to write to Ministers. Such correspondence is not entitled to a ministerial letter and it is not in the normal courtesy to ask assistants to write to Ministers. But the right hon. Lady is entitled to a ministerial response and I will try to ensure that she gets one as soon as is practicable.

As regards my hon. Friend the Minister for Equalities, it is hard to think of a more forthright or sensible Minister of the Crown at the moment. She does an absolutely fantastic job and I am sure she will report to the House. She has a balanced, sensible and wise view, and is deserving of full support.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con) [V]]

Tribute needs to be paid to you, Mr Speaker, the House Service and the Leader of the House for making sure that Parliament has continued to function throughout the pandemic. The discussion that has just happened about Westminster Hall is critical to Back-Bench Members of Parliament. The Grand Committee Room is simply not fit for purpose at this time—there is insufficient airflow, too many staff would be required to be on the palace estate and it is not equipped for hybrid proceedings. None the less, there are rooms in the palace that are ready to do that. Will my right hon. Friend to reflect on that and bring forward a motion that will allow for Westminster Hall-type debates to take place in the Boothroyd Room, in Committee Room 10, or possibly even in unused time in the Chamber?

Sittings in Westminster Hall (Suspension) (No. 2)

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con) [V]]

I address you from a very misty Staffordshire Moorlands today, Mr Speaker. May I thank the Leader of the House for the opportunity to have this debate, and for his tone? He struck exactly the right note in showing his reluctance to introduce these measures, as well as his willingness to consider other options. Many members of the Procedure Committee will welcome that tone, and the commitment that he has given to addressing this issue and getting Westminster Hall debates, and similar debates, back as soon as possible.

These debates are important. They are important to our constituents. The most watched parts of Parliament after Prime Minister’s questions are the debates on petitions on a Monday evening, and I am sure that over the past few weeks, many Members have been implored by their constituents to attend those debates in Westminster Hall. Space has simply not allowed us all to be there, but it shows how important those debates are. The Chair of the Petitions Committee will be speaking later in this debate, as will the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, who is keen to ensure that there is time for the debates that that Committee has lined up, and that Members desperately want to discuss.

The Procedure Committee wants to consider the situation carefully. None of us wanted to be in this situation or for this to happen, and we would have preferred to have continued with the debates. Over the next few weeks we are keen to support the Leader of the House, as well as you, Mr Speaker, and the House Commission, in finding ways to make this work. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and I welcome what you said, Mr Speaker, about using alternative facilities. There are rooms that could be used, perhaps with some imaginative thinking about the use of the Chamber, or using Chamber time to accommodate more Back-Bench debates, petitions debates, and other debates that are important to us as Members of Parliament.

A point raised earlier was about taking evidence in Bill Committees. Because Bill Committees are sitting physically, its members have to turn up in person to meet. The evidence sessions are virtual, however, although members of the Committee are expected to turn up physically to listen to them. Could the Leader of the House, and others, look at whether an exception could be made to avoid members of Bill Committees having to travel to Westminster for an extra two days—or possibly more—in order to take evidence, all of which will be given virtually?

On private Members’ Bills, I listened to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said. Many representations have also been made to me by Members who have private Members’ Bills that are about to go to the other place and just need that final nod through; the Government have given the money resolution and they are all ready to go, but they are now just waiting. They are good Bills that we know the Government want to see go through, so I wonder again whether the Leader of the House could consider finding a way to get them to the other place as soon as possible.

I am now going to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) because I told him earlier that I was going to support his amendments. However, having listened to all that the Leader of the House has said, I take his assurance at face value; he has given me his word. On that basis, I am happy not to support the amendments and to support the Government in this case. We have found ourselves in a dreadful situation and none of us wants to be here, but let us all do our bit to be role models, to lead our constituents and to show them the right way to behave in this situation.

Virtual Participation in Debate

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

My hon. Friend is right. We have a very difficult job to do anyway. As I said to the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) and her Committee, some people like to say what they had for breakfast on Instagram, but some people do not want to do that. Some people do not want to say anything about their lives. We are forced to do it sometimes. We are forced to tweet and do various other things that do not come naturally to many of us—I can’t do it, actually. But he is absolutely right that this is a privacy issue. Hon. Members have to decide what they say in the public sphere.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that when our right hon. and hon. Friends were pregnant and having wonderful babies—something so natural—they were trolled. They were trolled for doing what they needed to be doing, which was to be at home with their children when they had just given birth. I remember being in the House during the debates in which they had to explain that they were not the laziest MP in the world but were actually looking after their new-born. That was the most terrible thing and it was clarified only as a result of the debates in this House, which is why this is such an important venue.

This is the most important venue: people look to the Chamber to hear about what is going on. Unfortunately, sometimes we talk rubbish, and I am the biggest person to do that—[Hon. Members: “No!”] It is pantomime season! Sometimes we do, but the Official Reporters have to write down every word, and we sound wonderful when we read it back—when we dare to.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) will not mind my mentioning him, because we have been in communication today about this debate potentially taking place. His greatest regret is that he cannot be part of this debate. He secured an urgent question that enabled him to take part in our scrutiny proceedings and raise his point, but he cannot be here to take part in this debate because he has made the health of his family and his wife—he has been very public about that—his priority. We all know that he is working his socks off at home. Does the right hon. Lady agree that he is a great constituency MP and is working incredibly hard for his constituents?

[Valerie Vaz]

I absolutely agree with the Chair of the Procedure Committee. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay had the courtesy to email me before the start of this debate. He told me about the difficulty; I shall not repeat it, but it is safe to say that he is not able to be here today.

That great intervention from the Chair of the Procedure Committee gives me an opportunity to raise the incredible work done by her and members of her Committee, who are scattered all around the House—[Interruption.] She is pointing to them and I am trying to find them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Valerie Vaz]

It was slightly alarming—

[Karen Bradley]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise, but could you confirm that if a closure motion were moved, proxy votes would not count towards it?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

There are various stages of a closure motion: the granting of the closure motion, the taking of the closure motion and the substantive question that may or may not then be put. Proxy votes do not count for the calculation of the quorum necessary, which, as the right hon. Lady knows well, is 100.

--- Later in debate ---

[Valerie Vaz]

My hon. Friend is right, and that is why we have these debates. He is absolutely right—I am sure they will come to that in the end, but hopefully not. Let us return to the discriminatory nature of this motion.

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Lady is being incredibly generous with her time, and this is most certainly a full debate—I think we can all agree on that. Will she comment on remarks made by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care at the Health and Social Care Committee earlier today? I was not able to catch it, but I have seen reported that he said we have to stop this British attitude of soldiering on, and that we should not be coming into work with sniffles and coughs because we will pass them on to other people. Does she agree that that is contradictory to some of the other things we are hearing?

[Valerie Vaz]

That is extremely contradictory. As a result of the Prime Minister being exposed to sniffles and coughs, he shielded and was given the ability to do his work in a different way. That is all that right hon. and hon. Members are asking for.

Let me give two examples of people who are very vociferous and active, including in the Chamber. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) is an amazing Member of Parliament, but she is finding that she has not got a voice any more. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) constantly badgers the Leader of the House during business questions, but he is now not able to do that. The Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon)  loves coming into the Chamber—I have seen him—but he is not able to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

It is lovely to see everybody bobbing up and down—we do not get to see that nowadays—and there is no call list. Goodness me, Madam Deputy Speaker, what days we hark back to! How much we want to get back to those halcyon days.

I am afraid that I was not able to hear what my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House said, because I was unfortunately caught unawares and did not know that the debate was about to start. I am grateful to him for the debate. He knows that last week, I called strongly for a debate on this matter, but it is a shame that it was done in such an unexpected and surprising way. I was on a call with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and it felt discourteous to say to her, “I’m terribly sorry, but I need to rush to the Chamber because apparently I am about to take part in a debate.” I set that call up several weeks ago and I was therefore disappointed to have to say that I could not complete our discussions on important matters relating to human trafficking and slavery. I should say that I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery.

I am also Chair of the Procedure Committee, which has issued six reports in this Session, four of which are on procedures under coronavirus. I thank all Committee members. A few have left us in the last few months, but we have a very active Committee and many of its members are in the Chamber, demonstrating that Procedure Committee members really do care about procedure.

We have worked incredibly hard to assist the House in considering what are appropriate proceedings and how we should change them to reflect the situation under coronavirus. I want to be clear up front: any recommendations by the Procedure Committee have been made on the basis of how we make the best of the situation. Nobody wants to be in this position. I keep using the word sub-optimal—my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has quoted me on it. The position is undoubtedly sub-optimal.

Other members of the Committee will recall that in our first meeting, we said that we would have to consider proceedings under coronavirus because things might change quickly. We first convened on 2 March. By 6 March, we had the Clerk of the House and the House authorities in to give us private evidence and a private briefing. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was incredibly courteous in allowing time for me, as Chair of the Committee, to meet him privately to hear what the Government’s thinking was.

I remember that first briefing when Members heard, for example, “We will have to stay 2 metres apart.” It was the first time I had heard the term “social distancing”. None of us could comprehend the thought that the Chamber would have crosses on the Green Benches where we could not sit and that whole Benches would be out of bounds. None of us had any idea how that would function.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Karen Bradley]

I give way to the august right hon. Gentleman and member of the Committee.

[Mr Jones]

Will the right hon. Lady join me in thanking the staff and the Clerks, who from those early days have done some tremendous work to make the system the best that we can? Without that work, we could not have achieved what we have done so far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was going to come on to say that, but he gives me the chance to say it now. The House authorities have worked so hard and have made this House the envy of the world. The number of requests that the Committee receives from similar committees around the world to understand the temporary changes that we have introduced is astonishing.

[Chris Elmore]

rose—

[Karen Bradley]

I give way to another august member of the Committee.

[Chris Elmore]

Will the right hon. Lady also acknowledge that during a public evidence session, we had academics come in to say that, of all the devolved institutions and Parliaments in the world, we were world leading? The Leader of the House, the traditionalist that he is, was sector beating in terms of the facilities that were offered to Members of this House. It is such a shame that he is not willing to show that forward thinking now in ensuring that all Members are treated equally.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I call him my hon. Friend, because he serves as the Committee’s vice-Chair and stands in for me when I am unable to participate, as I was not when I self-isolated, suffering, I believe, with covid. He is absolutely right. We had those comments from around the world. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House should take incredible credit for being world leading on this matter. He introduced revolutionary changes, changing our procedure in the most significant way for 700 years, I think it was.

[Owen Thompson]

rose—

[Karen Bradley]

I give way to another august member of the Committee.

[Owen Thompson]

I know that the right hon. Lady did a session with the Canadian Parliament, but when Committee members took part in a session with members of the Japanese Parliament, it was very frustrating that they were there asking us questions about how we were implementing this world-leading solution, only for us to have to tell them, “Yes, we were; unfortunately, the Government have now stopped that.”

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It was slightly embarrassing, I think, for members of the Committee to have to say that, after saying that we did develop, at pace, the most incredible changes to our procedures and to the capability and capacity of our digital services in order to enable us to continue working.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House often talks about the period of the hybrid Parliament between the Easter recess and the Whitsun recess as being somehow not effective. During that period, as I recall it, five or six Bills received their Second Reading—unopposed, in fact. When we did have votes, the Government won those votes handsomely. We were able to have debates on legislation, we were able to have general debates on the matter of covid; actually, this House did function.

My right hon. Friend often talks about Bill Committees. I hope that he will recall from our very first conversations about this matter that I shared his reservations about whether Bill Committees could meet in any other way than physical. However, as the hybrid Parliament included physical presence—I certainly participated physically during that period—I was always of the view that that could be managed and accommodated within the rules that we had. Of course, the difficulty with Bill Committees was finding rooms that were big enough to accommodate a Bill Committee socially distanced, and ensuring that those rooms were set out. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will have seen some of the revolutions in the other place, including Perspex screens being put into Committee Rooms so that more Members of the other place can get into Committees.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Karen Bradley]

I give way to another august member of the Committee, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), and then I will give way to SNP Members.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Speaking of Bill Committees, does the right hon. Lady recall that some of us took part in a trial running of a Bill Committee, including interventions and a full debate, which worked perfectly well? That might have been another way of ensuring that Government business was able to move forward.

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. We did not really test or try that hybridity in Bill Committees, which may well have been possible. Given what the House authorities have been able to achieve in other areas, I am sure that if anybody could have achieved it, the House authorities could.

[Alan Brown]

On Bill Committees, clearly it is a matter of the business managers working to find appropriate space in the House, but has not part of the solution been found by the Government themselves, considering that they now put so many statutory instruments through the main Chamber, including SIs that should never be coming to the Floor of the House? They are actually finding ways to free up space and make a hybrid solution work anyway.

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I would not want to speculate about what goes on between the usual channels—I suspect the usual channels were slightly surprised by some of the things that have taken place today—but I hope, as a former Whip myself, that the usual channels will continue to work, because this place works best when the usual channels are working.

[Chris Elmore]

rose—

[Karen Bradley]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Chris Elmore]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and will return the compliment, as she is an exemplary Chair of the Committee. May I place on record, as my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Hove (Peter Kyle) have said, the fact that during the Domestic Abuse Bill Committee they were willing to take part in physical proceedings? There is an idea that somehow the usual channels were not working and names were put forward, but this is on the record: they were willing to take part in those proceedings. The only concern, which is available, as the right hon. Lady is aware, was about witnesses, and there was an option for having a hybrid-facility fallback to protect victims of domestic abuse. It simply is not correct to say that Members were not willing to engage in Bill Committees, and I know that she agrees.

[Karen Bradley]

I absolutely agree with that point.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I have been in touch with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), who is in one of the extremely vulnerable categories. She is watching the debate remotely, getting more and more demoralised about it. She has asked me to plead with the House to pass the motion unamended, because she has not been able to take part in debates since March, and it is likely that she will be unable to take part in debates until next March, which is simply not fair. Let the most vulnerable people take part in debates, then fight the other battles another time.

[Karen Bradley]

I, too, want my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) and many other clinically extremely vulnerable colleagues to be able to take part in debates, but the amendment does not preclude their doing so. It allows them and others to take part in those debates. I want to see my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who secured an urgent question last week, taking part in debates as well. I want as many Members as possible to take part in debates. This has been going on for far too long. About a quarter of Members are currently availing themselves of the ability to participate virtually in scrutiny proceedings: questions, UQs and statements. Not all of them are clinically extremely vulnerable, but they need to be allowed to take part in debates. We will have been going for 12 months by the end of March, and not to have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay in a debate in that time I consider inappropriate and not fair on him. He is working incredibly hard, and he needs to be able to participate.

I should also like to raise the case of our hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who has been texting me during the debate and has asked me to mention him. If he were here he would be speaking, but he cannot be here. He would love to take part in this debate down the line. He would love to take part virtually, but he cannot do so—he is not allowed.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I thank the Chair of the Procedure Committee, on which I serve, for giving way. She has mentioned Members who cannot be here. May I put on record the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who is heavily pregnant and would like to know whether the relevant words, “or equivalent”, in the motion extend to ladies in the third stage of their pregnancy?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend, who has just joined the Procedure Committee. I was going to make exactly the same point, because my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) has texted me as well. In the third trimester of pregnancy, women are asked to shield, but they are not clinically extremely vulnerable. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is sympathetic to that, and is trying to do all that he can to assist, but if he accepts the amendment, we do not have to have a debate about whether someone in their third trimester is clinically extremely vulnerable—we will just feel able to let them take part.

The capacity of digital services is much improved. We have seen what has happened in the other place. I do not think that my right hon. Friend should worry about allowing our hon. and right hon. Friends to take part in debates down the line, because this is not going to stifle debate—it will enhance and add to it.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Karen Bradley]

I see that many Members wish to intervene. I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Paul Holmes) and then the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady).

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend not accept, to back the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), that if the motion fails tonight the people she is talking about and whom she wants to involve in the Chamber will not be involved, so it will be the worst of all worlds?

[Karen Bradley]

Once again, I say to my hon. Friend that the Government could accept the amendment. However, I do not see why the Government would have to accept an amendment on House business, as this is a matter for the House to decide. If the House wants Members who cannot be here for reasons other than that they are clinically extremely vulnerable to participate, why would we not let them? Of course I want to see the motion to go through, but I want to see the amended motion go through.

[Patrick Grady]

The point that the Chair of the Procedure Committee is making about the amendment and about this being a House matter is very important. It should be a free vote. I am carrying quite a significant number of proxy votes, but I have consulted in advance with the Members for whom I am acting as a proxy, and I know that they all support the amendment. Given how this debate happened so quickly, is she concerned about whether other Members who are carrying substantial numbers of proxy votes have had a chance to consult all those Members individually on their exercise of those in a free vote, because I am sure that the Government are not threatening their Members on a free vote.

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) is perhaps the first Deputy Chief Whip to have voted against his own Government and kept his job, so I know that he will put forward this vote in the right way, but my concern is whether hon. and right hon. Members are aware of this debate and know that the vote is coming. I just ask the Government to let our hon. and right hon. Friends be able to take part.

[Chris Bryant]

I just want to make it absolutely clear that I would love the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) to be able to take part in debates fully. I have spoken to her several times this year and I know how painful she has found this. None of us is seeking to prevent that happening. All of us who have tabled the amendment and support the amendment simply want a few more people to be able to participate in exactly the same way as she is. If the Leader of the House would stand up now and say that he will accept the amendment, we could all go home and get on with more important business.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I urge my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to listen to what is being said and to what was said in the urgent question last week and in the statement that the Backbench Committee graciously gave to my Committee last Thursday. He could be the hero if he were to accept this amendment. It would show compassion and generosity, and it would show his courtesy, because he is one of the most courteous Members of this Parliament, who, in all his time here, has always ensured that Parliament is sovereign—in fact, he has campaigned very hard to make sure that Parliament is sovereign—and that Members of this House are heard, from all Benches.

I thank the many hon. and right hon. Members who responded to the call for evidence from the Procedure Committee on this important matter and expressed a majority view on the exclusion from debates, not just in this place but in Westminster Hall. Let us be clear: the Government motion does not extend to Westminster Hall. The reason for this furore—the reason that we are here—is that my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) was unable to take part in the debate in Westminster Hall on the disease that she is suffering from. Unless the Government are willing to look at extending the virtual proceedings to Westminster Hall, that will still be a problem. The Procedure Committee stands ready to work with the Government to find ways to allow more debates, perhaps more Adjournment debates in this Chamber, so that Members can take part—Members like my hon. Friend. Again, I urge my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House please to think about how this will look to those of our hon. and right hon. Friends who are not here for other reasons.

The hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) made a very important intervention when he said that there is a difference about the situation here. Nobody is asking to not be at work. We are all at work. The idea that Members of Parliament have not been working over the course of the past few months when they have not been able to be here, or we are not in the full Chamber, is ludicrous given the hours that are spent on Zoom calls and Teams meetings, and the many, many pieces of constituent correspondence that we are all dealing with. In those few weeks at the beginning of the lockdown when people had such confusion and there was no certainty, the Government did an enormous amount of good in terms of the financial support and the guidance that was issued, but right at the beginning, everything was unknown.This was, as everyone says, an unprecedented situation.

Members across the House were dealing with constituents who had the most difficult and heart-rending stories. We wanted to do our best for our constituents, and we were doing that from home because Parliament was in recess. We could not ask questions of Ministers in the way we normally would by being here in the Chamber. Again, I pay tribute to the Government for the amount of access that Ministers made available to Members, to allow us to ask questions on behalf of our constituents. We are all working incredibly hard, whether we are working here, working in our offices in the precincts of the Palace or working at home. Nobody is asking not to work; it is merely that Members who cannot be here for reasons other than being clinically extremely vulnerable, including self-isolating because they have been told to by the Government, should be able to take part in all our proceedings.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As the right hon. Lady highlights, people are working very hard, and I pay tribute to members of the Public Accounts Committee, including the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan). Two of the Committee’s members are self-isolating, and even on a hard-working Committee such as the Public Accounts Committee, they are two of the hardest working Members. It is of great sadness to me that those Members are unable to contribute to debate and that this issue has been kicked around like a football when it could be so easily resolved. I urge the Leader of the House to allow this amendment and to spare the pain of Members who have been unable to represent their constituents by participating in debates. The issue could be dealt with tonight, and then those excellent Members could contribute fully in the House.

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Lady is right. Select Committees, of which we are both Chairs, have conducted their business virtually, with some physical proceedings to take evidence. She and I have both chaired meetings from Committee Rooms, but we have managed, as have all Select Committees, to take evidence, to work and to produce numerous reports on the basis of virtual participation, which includes all Members. Nobody has not been allowed to take part because their situation means that they cannot get a doctor’s note. Every single member of every Committee has been able to play a full part in the Committee. I do not understand why, on a matter of House business, the Government are determined to prevent that from happening.

Members spend years getting elected to this place. People give up their careers, and they lose their families in far too many cases. They do incredible work to get to this place. As an MP, I want to be in this place—I want to be here. There are Members who cannot be here at the moment, but they want to work. They want to have the chance to carry on their work and to be heard.

As I said, this is about the view of the House. I know that my hon. Friend the Deputy Chief Whip would never do this, but if proxy votes were used inappropriately —if a Member’s proxy vote ends up being cast in a Lobby that they would not want it to be cast in because they did not know this debate was coming, or if a Member is not here because they saw the business and were happy to believe that there would not be any votes—it would be a great shame. It will cause resentment, I suspect, if the motion goes through without a proper vote by all Members.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am going to try again. This is a really sensitive matter for those who are extremely vulnerable. Why do we not let this motion go through tonight—it will fall if it is not passed by 7 o’clock—at least to give those very few Members the chance to participate in our debates? We can have the argument another day about the wider remit, but let us get this motion through tonight. I will be supporting the Government.

[Karen Bradley]

I will be sitting down shortly. I wanted to ensure that I took interventions because I know that many Members who were not here for the start of the debate will not be able to catch the eye of the Deputy Speaker, or possibly even the Speaker, due to the rules that apply to this debate, which are different from those of other debates with call lists and so on. This was a surprise debate—none of us thought that it was happening —so I wanted to ensure that Members had the chance to speak. I say to my hon. Friend again that I really want to see the motion go through, but I want it to go through amended so that all our hon. and right hon. Friends can take part in the debates. I really do not see why there is a problem with ensuring that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham can take part in debates, and I have fought like he would not believe to ensure that she can do so, but I also want my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay to take part in debates, because I want to hear from them both on these matters.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I simply remind the House that this motion will fall at 7 o’clock. Let us at least have half a loaf if we cannot get the whole loaf, and enable those very vulnerable people to participate in our debates.

[Karen Bradley]

As I say, I will sit down shortly, because I want to make sure that the amendment can be moved and that we have time for the vote, but I urge my hon. Friend to consider voting for the amendment, because that will mean that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay will be able to vote and speak.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

There is a simple way to move this on: the Government could accept the amendment tonight. The fact that this debate has been curtailed into less than two hours is not the House’s fault or the Procedure Committee’s fault, because the Committee has asked for a full debate on this and it has been refused by the Leader of the House.

[Karen Bradley]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct. We asked for this debate during the urgent question last week, and we asked for it again on Thursday. This debate has been sprung on Members, and I feel strongly that we need to look at the House having its say. This is a House matter. The Government have kindly tabled the motion, but it is a matter for the House to decide.

I shall conclude, because I want to ensure that the hon. Member for Rhondda can move and speak to his amendment. I urge the Government to think about how this looks in the eyes of the public when their MP can take part in a question but not take part in a subsequent debate. Yes, they can vote by proxy—we can have a debate about whether the proxy voting system works and whether it is optimal—but all of this is suboptimal. None of this is as good as it should be. Why exclude Members who could take part in debates and make important contributions simply because of—well, I do not know. I do not know why the Government are refusing to accept this, but we must give the House a proper say, and the Procedure Committee will continue to pursue the issue.

Participation in Debates

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am afraid I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The default position should be that Members attend the House to carry out the business of the House. We are key workers, and we have a job to do. I am slightly surprised that the Scottish National party values democracy so lowly that it does not think that it is important to be here and to be actively involved in the democracy of our nation. I know that the SNP is not perhaps the greatest admirer of this Parliament that we could find, but they are still Members of it, and they are here to represent their constituents—or at least some are—and this is an important contribution to the national debate.

The reason for making exceptional provision is exactly that—it is exceptional. It is exactly what other workplaces are doing to help, aid and assist those who are not able to turn up for work because of the Government’s advice, which is that if someone is extremely clinically vulnerable, they should not go into work. That is being facilitated. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman; it is not a matter of choice for MPs. The default position is that Members should be here to do their job. That is their duty. There are some people in exceptional circumstances who need alternative arrangements to be made, and the House of Commons is quite correctly facilitating those and helping them to work from home, to ensure that they have a good connection and to participate. I hope we will agree to help them participate in a broader range of our activities.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I thank the many Members who contacted my Committee following our call for evidence, wanting to see exactly this change. I am sure that they were very pleased when they saw the news on Twitter last night. I repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said: this should be a matter for the House and needs a full debate. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that these changes will not impact on the work of Select Committees? It is very important that they are able to access digital services to carry out their important work.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise that point about Select Committees. There is a limit to the broadcasting resources within the House and what they can do. That is why it has not been possible to extend this to Westminster Hall. Select Committees can continue to meet virtually. I would be nervous to give absolute carte blanche, because if every Select Committee wanted to meet at exactly the same time on one particular day and the Chamber was also in action, that may stretch the resources. Assuming that Select Committees arrange their affairs in such a way that a reasonable number of them are sitting at any one time, I do not believe that these proposals will make it harder for Select Committees to meet.

My right hon. Friend is right to explain that there is a balance in terms of the resources there are to ensure the participation of Members in the various activities that take place. Sometimes it is thought that all that goes on in Parliament takes place in the Chamber, but of course that is not the case. Business was not getting through in May and June because of the inability for other aspects of business to take place that are not necessarily seen, particularly the work in Public Bill Committees and statutory instrument Committees.

Business of the House

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise those issues and bring them to the attention of the House. I remind him that Transport questions will be on 22 October, which will be an opportunity to raise those issues again. There are issues relating to HS2 that are within the House’s consideration in other ways, but he would certainly be entitled to ask for an Adjournment debate or a Backbench Business debate on that matter.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

The Kniveden Project offers tailored mental health services to people in the Staffordshire Moorlands, but the covid crisis has had a real impact on the services that it can provide, and I am sure that it is not alone. With World Mental Health Day this week, will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent debate on this very important matter?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Mental health is an issue taken seriously by all the parties in this House, and overall mental health funding has increased to £13.3 billion in 2019-20. It is at the heart of the NHS long-term plan to see the largest expansion of mental health services in a generation. There will be at least a further £2.3 billion by 2023-24 of additional taxpayers’ support to help 380,000 more adults and 345,000 children. There has been temporary support of £9.2 million to help mental health charities during this crisis. I absolutely understand what she is saying, and I will pass the message on to Health Ministers on her behalf.

Proxy Voting

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

By your leave, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will try to answer that question. Mr Speaker or the Chairman of Ways and Means will set out the proposals, but, yes, there will have to be limits and, yes, therefore call lists, except that many Westminster Hall debates do not have so many people involved that we would face getting up to the limit.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I wanted to put on the record that at the meeting of the Procedure Committee earlier we agreed to a short sharp inquiry into the use of call lists and time limits. We encourage all hon. and right hon. Members to contribute to that inquiry.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful for that and I know that Members will be glad that such an inquiry is taking place.

Ultimately, we have a system that is working and balances the need to ensure the safety of Members and staff, while providing a robust voting system to allow the delivery of the legislative programme and the key decisions affecting our constituents. I therefore commend the motions to the House.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I, too, will address both motions in my response. I thank the Leader of the House for tabling them, and a special thank you to the Chair of the Procedure Committee and its members. They have worked incredibly hard to get many reports out in double-quick time, so that we can continue with this.

The Committee’s report is the fourth of the Session and was published on 10 September, but the launch of the first inquiry seems a long time ago, after the House resolved on 1 February 2018:

“That this House believes that it would be to the benefit of the functioning of parliamentary democracy that honourable Members who have had a baby or adopted a child should for a period of time be entitled, but not required, to discharge their responsibilities to vote in this House by proxy.”

We have had a number of debates and, as I set out from the Dispatch Box on 18 July 2018, 13 September 2018 and 22 January 2019, Her Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour party, support the principle of proxy voting for parental absence. I am not sure when baby Sixtus was born and whether the Leader of the House indulged in proxy voting at the time.

The motion provides for the new Standing Order for voting by proxy for parental absence. It is not temporary or time-limited. It accepts the Procedure Committee’s recommendation that

“provision for proxy voting for parental absence be made in the standing orders of the House”.

The new Standing Order makes a number of amendments to the original proxy scheme, allowing proxy voting for the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, in addition to the others. It removes the provision for the exercise of a proxy vote for Members who have suffered a miscarriage, quite rightly replacing the wording with

“in circumstances where there have been complications relating to childbirth”,

which may include postnatal depression. It removes the restriction on proxy voting in a Division

“on any motion in the form specified in section 2(2) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011”—

if we want to vote for an early general election, we may do so by proxy. Those were all recommended by the Procedure Committee in its report.

In the proposed Standing Order, the certification process touched on by the Leader of the House becomes the responsibility of the Speaker alone. The Procedure Committee’s report found:

“The requirement to produce certificates of pregnancy or adoption to demonstrate eligibility for a proxy vote has proved onerous.”

The Committee suggested that such certificates were “unnecessary”, which I also suggested during the debates—people do not have to prove that they are pregnant or having a baby. It is up to the Speaker to decide whether to remove the certification process. I agree with that recommendation.

I was to provide evidence to the Procedure Committee in March, but the pandemic set in and I was unable to do so. It was arranged for 15 July, but I think the evidence was incorporated into the Committee’s other report, “Procedure under coronavirus restrictions”. As a result, the evidence was not included in this report, but I know that the written evidence is on the website. I hope it was taken into account. I have to pay tribute to the Clerk of the Committee, who has been assiduous. I have known him from other Committees, and my thanks go to him.

[Karen Bradley]

I wanted to say absolutely, categorically, that the right hon. Lady’s evidence was very informative and informed our report. She was right that the evidence is published under a different inquiry, but it very much helped to inform us in this inquiry.

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that.

Turning to proxy voting during the pandemic, the second motion amends the Standing Order on voting by proxy to allow proxy votes

“for medical or public health reasons relating to the pandemic”

until 3 November 2020.

The Procedure Committee report found that

“the system of remote voting used in May was a more effective means of handling divisions in the House under conditions where the division lobbies could not be used in the traditional way and where a large number of Members were unable to attend for public health reasons.”

Her Majesty’s Opposition put that in our written evidence for the Committee on 9 July 2020, when we said:

“The electronic remote voting system was a practical and necessary measure which allowed Parliament to continue in unprecedented circumstances during the pandemic. The decision to end electronic voting on 2 June 2020 was”—

I am afraid—

“undertaken without consultation or consideration of Members”,

or of their democratic accountability. It was replaced by the proxy voting system, which was clearly inferior to the safe and efficient remote voting system that did not fail once.

In its report, the Procedure Committee found that the current system of proxy voting for coronavirus absences

“is barely adequate, is potentially unreliable and imposes disproportionate administrative burdens on staff.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will be quick.

I thank very much my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), and the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), for what I think is a real improvement on proxy voting for parental leave. It is great to see that someone no longer has to prove, when their tummy is out there, that they are actually pregnant and it is not just a cushion. That is very valuable.

On the other hand, I have to say that I am a bit disappointed. As the right hon. Member for Walsall South said, we had many debates in this place, and there was a Procedure Committee review of parental leave a long time ago. That was always done on the expectation that if it worked, we would include it, but also potentially expand it. I see that the Committee’s latest report says, “We don’t want to expand it because if somebody is very ill or recently bereaved, for the purpose of transparency, that would have to be disclosed.” I am sorry; I just do not accept that.

I think that this is a missed opportunity. We have had some colleagues in this place who have been desperately ill. They are not allowed to vote by proxy. They are just going to have to turn up or be paired. What really sparked this change was the inadvertent breaking of a pair when a colleague was off on maternity leave. I do think it is a grave disappointment—

[Karen Bradley]

rose—

[Andrea Leadsom]

I give way to the Chair of the Procedure Committee.

[Karen Bradley]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for the work that she did to get us to this point. May I just assure her that the Procedure Committee is committed to looking at proxy voting once we are through the pandemic? What we wanted to do at this stage was to ensure that we had a report that allowed the Government to bring motions forward on parental leave and that dealt with proxy votes during the pandemic, but I give her my absolute commitment that we will look at this again and consider whether it is right to expand proxy voting beyond parental leave once we are back to—let us hope—business as normal at some point soon.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reassurance. Even so, were somebody to be very ill now with cancer or some other awful thing, they would, under the current circumstances, be very tempted to say, “This is related to the coronavirus pandemic.” My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said that people are swinging the lead. I do not think people are swinging the lead, but I do think that, since we have what is in effect a very lax system of self-assessment for any illness related to the coronavirus pandemic, for someone who was recently bereaved or, indeed, very ill with something that was nothing to do with the pandemic, that would be the way to remain enfranchised in this place. Surely, that cannot be right.

Very briefly, on proxy voting during the coronavirus pandemic, I am concerned that we are not really able to socially distance in a properly fit way. Instead of using our passes in the Lobbies, I would love to see us perhaps using them in Westminster Hall, where it would be much easier for people to remain apart from one another. We do have bottlenecks. It is very difficult for the doorkeepers to keep us all away from one another when there are bottlenecks as we are filing through the Lobby, even after using our passes, so I would like to see that change. However, I welcome all these changes, and I congratulate all those who have sought to improve the system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I, too, will attempt to keep my remarks short.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for accepting most of the recommendations in my Committee’s report. We do support the motion on the Order Paper. Although the amendment was not selected, my right hon. Friend will have noted that it did not try to change the motion; it would merely have added to it something on other forms of voting.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), because his incarnation of the Committee was the first to look at a version of proxy voting for parental leave. Had it not been for the work done by his Committee at that time, we would not be where we are now. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who was the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee at the time and part of the team that pushed so hard to make sure that proxy voting for parental leave could be brought in. I reassure my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that there was unanimous support for the recommendations on parental leave in our report, and we are grateful that the Government have taken most of those recommendations forward.

The Committee members do differ when it comes to proxy voting for coronavirus. I am afraid that the majority view—I will be clear that it was a majority view; not everybody on the Committee feels the same—was that the proxy system for coronavirus is substandard. The majority view was that it is a very unwieldy system and is possibly open to abuse—that point was made by some Committee members; indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) would have found friends in our debate on that—but it was also felt that it is simply unreliable and not robust. We know that the queuing is not properly socially distanced. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is right to say that that is a matter of individual responsibility, but it simply is not possible: we see perhaps 500 Members queuing up and, inevitably, there end up being logjams, delays and points at which people are too close to each other. People are worried and scared—not just for their own health but for the health of the staff of the House of Commons. If we do not have our staff here, we cannot operate.

The majority view of the Committee was that we had a robust system of voting. The remote voting system that we used on our phones worked. It works consistently in the other place, which has been using it, and it is quick and simple. I do not accept that Members would not attend this place; Members want to be here. We want to take part in Committees and we want to take part in proceedings. We want to be here and be part of it. Some simply cannot, but we can see that it is not possible for all of us to be here. We are limited to 50 in this Chamber, and many Members feel that they are putting their health at risk to take part in a Division. They may really want to be part of that, but they have not been able to take part in the debate because there simply is not space for them.

[Andrew Griffith]

As a member of the Committee, I would like to pay tribute to the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend. It is true, nevertheless, that we as a Committee were unable to reach consensus. We had a strong consensus—consensus I was proud to be part of—on the issue of parental leave, but we were not as a Committee able to reach consensus on the appropriate means of voting. I would just urge my colleagues on the Committee and the Leader of the House to ensure, as we continue to address this issue, that the full House has a chance to express its view. It is so profound that it is really not something I suspect we are likely to be able to reach full consensus on in the Committee.

[Karen Bradley]

I absolutely agree. The point of my amendment was to give the House an opportunity to have its say. I personally believe there is a majority now for a return to voting by phone, not because people do not want to participate, but because it is robust and sensible. It gave more time for people to be able to do their job as an MP, and it meant that we were the safest and most efficient Parliament. I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that we were held up across the world as a Parliament leading on how to manage the pandemic and keep Parliament going, and it looked like a very retrograde step to move away from that.

[Owen Thompson]

On that point, I can give as an example the fact that we had the Japanese Parliament talking to the Procedure Committee about the processes we had implemented. It was looking at what we had done, but during that process, we had to say, “We’re very sorry, but actually these leading processes that we implemented have since been turned off. They were great; however, we’re not using them anymore.” There are some Members who still cannot take part, but if we were to have such a vote it would be the first time all Members would actually be able to take part, because they were not able to do so last time.

[Karen Bradley]

Absolutely, and I would reflect that. I gave evidence to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee of the Canadian Parliament, and exactly the same points of view were put forward.

Another point about the system we have at the moment, with the large number of proxy votes, is that the power is held in the hands of the Whips. Hundreds of votes are held by the Whips. I know my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will say that a Member can give their proxy to anyone they wish, but that is not what has happened. Whether we like it or not, constitutionally, it is not perhaps the best look for this Parliament, and it is something that many right hon. and hon. Members are desperately uncomfortable about.

I want to be very clear that the moment we can go back to the Division Lobbies and use them in the traditional way, I will be the first person to request that we do so, but until we can do that—until we can vote safely in the Division Lobbies, in a way that is safe for our own health and that of the staff in this place—I ask my right hon. Friend to consider giving this House a chance to have another say on whether we want to return to remote voting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I will endeavour to be brief, and to pick up a number of points that other Members have made. First, I support the motions on the Order Paper, and I welcome them. Perhaps I can be of help to my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, on the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) made about coming back to the arrangements regarding other reasons not to be here. One of the things I can perhaps offer, as a former Chief Whip, is that these things are connected. For example, when someone is absent for parental reasons, the fact that they can now have a proxy vote actually makes it more challenging to enable other colleagues to be absent for other reasons, particularly ill health. That is because pairing involves colleagues from both sides of the House, and it was often those who were not here for maternity or paternity reasons who enabled other colleagues to be paired with them.

On the question of delay, I would counsel that if we are in this for the long haul, the Committee might wish to attend to that matter—maybe not to reach a conclusion but at least to look at it—earlier, and to see whether we need to address the point about people who are seriously ill earlier. Another point is that, culturally, pairing is not well understood outside the House. It means that when two people who are going to vote on opposite sides cannot be here, they effectively cancel each other out. Our voting is more visible now, however, because there are apps to enable people to see how we vote, so if we think that it is not really acceptable for someone who is very ill to just not vote, we need to put in place a mechanism whereby they can vote, so that people who are seriously ill are not required to turn up here in person. It may be that things have moved on and that, because we have made one set of changes, we need to make the other set of changes because they are more difficult to implement.

Let me pick up on the point that the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) made. It is not often that I defend members of the Scottish National party in the House, but I will defend those who are not here. In my experience, it is easier for many Scottish Members to get here by plane than it is for me to get here from the Forest of Dean—certainly in terms of the time that it takes. I do not believe that there is a significant number of Members in this House—I am afraid that I disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on this point—who do not want to be here. In my experience, Members of Parliament work really hard to get into this House, and they want to be here. I certainly love my constituency and I love being at home, but I would not trade it for being in this place.

None the less, we do have to recognise the issues facing many of our colleagues—either because of their own health or because of their shielding responsibilities, or, as the Leader of the House mentioned, the variety of reasons around childcare. A parent may be in their place here, but if their child is in a bubble and a child in that bubble has coronavirus, that bubble will get sent home and that parent may not have access, particularly at short notice, to childcare. Someone will have to stay at home to look after their children, so they may not be able to get here. That will mean not that they are not dedicated, but that they are having to balance their responsibilities as a Member of Parliament and a parent, as many of our constituents have had to do during the pandemic. We need to recognise that if we want a diverse range of Members of Parliament, of different ages, different backgrounds, different financial requirements, and people who are parents, we need to ensure that they can all participate in this House as Members of Parliament. I think that what the hon. Gentleman said was perfectly sensible.

On remote voting, the Leader of the House and I could probably have a competition over who was most keen on in-person voting—I am not sure which of us would win that competition. I always champion in-person voting when people suggest that we should move to modern electronic mechanisms. That is because, certainly for members of the major parties—the Labour and Conservative parties—it is a fantastic opportunity for Back Benchers to engage with Ministers. I say to every Back Bencher that if they ever want to keep Ministers accountable and accessible, never move permanently to remote voting because they will never see a Minister in this place again. For constituents who wonder what the benefit is for them, I say that in-person voting is so valuable because we can then raise their issues directly with Ministers quickly and efficiently. When Ministers do not have their civil servants present, they can sometimes see the point of something without someone persuading them that the issue is not worth solving.

The whole point about that is that we can access people. The problem at the moment with the way t we have to vote is that we cannot just go and grab a Minister. If Members are to be properly socially distanced, they have to be 2 apart, or perhaps a little less if they are wearing a face mask, but a complex, difficult conversation is impossible in those circumstances. I am afraid, therefore, that I do agree with what is in the report.

From my experience, because Members want to use that opportunity to talk to each other, they are torn between socially distancing and creeping closer together. I do agree with what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said: we need to set an example. Even if, individually, we try to set an example, it is not always possible when there are hundreds of colleagues getting very close. I am not saying that I am perfect at it, but sometimes I try to shoo people away because they are getting too close. It is difficult. As a fan of in-person voting, I think we need to think about setting a good example and looking at remote voting.

[Karen Bradley]

Not only is it not possible for a Member to find the Minister that they need to find in the queue in a socially distanced way, but they are not able to do so privately, because they are in a queue of hundreds of people from all different parties. With the best will in the world, even though I have great friends from all parts of the House, I may not want to discuss some issues in front of them.

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. All I ask the Leader of the House to think about is the fact that the big advantage of in-person voting—my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and I are in massive agreement on this point—is the access that Back Benchers get to Ministers. That is simply not deliverable in the present circumstances. Perhaps it is a little bit, but certainly not to the extent that it was. Regrettably, because I love in-person voting, I do think that during this period, which I fear will be lengthy, the Leader of the House should at least think about that and put in place some procedures that will mean that we can bring in remote voting if we need to. In particular, if we are forced to take more stringent measures—I hope we are not, but it is entirely possible that we are—we may need to look at it.

On remote voting, and then I will conclude to allow the Leader of the House to get in, the other point that struck me in the report was about areas of local lockdown. I agree with him that if someone is in an area of local lockdown, there are ancient privileges for Members of Parliament to be able to come here, but we also have to set an example. If someone is in an area where we are telling constituents that they must not go to work if they can work at home, although there may be reasons why Members of Parliament feel that they should be here, this would set a dreadful example and look very much like, “One rule for us and one rule for our constituents”. If a Member is in one of those local lockdown areas, as something like a fifth of the population are, we want them to do what they are encouraging their constituents to do, and in those circumstances, they cannot be here and participate. I think we need to think about how we deliver that, and those points are made powerfully in the report. Although I am a traditionalist on in-person voting, I urge the Leader of the House to look at it going forward.

Proceedings During the Pandemic (No. 4)

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

In my role as Chair of the Procedure Committee, I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has tabled this motion. There is no doubt that this Parliament is sub-optimal—we have used that term time and again about the way Parliament operates—but in the circumstances we are in and with the Government guidance as it is, this is the best that we make of the situation at this time. I urge right hon. and hon. Friends around the Chamber to agree the motion so that we can continue to make sure that Members who are unable to be here at this time can continue to participate. I urge the Government to look carefully at the guidance for workplaces to see whether it can be changed in ways that will enable us to change the way we hold proceedings in this place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Robert Syms]

It is interesting that my right hon. Friend is over there, given the ten-minute rule Bill we had today. The key point is that we should be making progress. If the Government wish to continue, as they do, with the current arrangements, they should not go to November. The arrangements should come back to the House on a more regular basis to be debated and tested, because they affect the civil liberties of our constituents. If the House is willing to go along with them, fine, but just to shut debate down until the beginning of November is wrong. I hope that the Leader of the House, who has been a strong defender of the rights of Back Benchers in this House, comes back and tests the opinion of the House more regularly. I have to say that Back Benchers are restless; they do not have the say that they should have.

[Karen Bradley]

I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says and I think it is very good that we are actually having a debate on this matter. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will know that I felt strongly that we needed a debate on this matter, but I hope that he can confirm that, if the Government guidance on social distancing and other matters changes before 3 November, he will give the House an opportunity to consider what changes we could make at that time to the way our sittings proceed, based on that revised Government guidance.

[Sir Robert Syms]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point, but I also make the point that this is the Parliament of the nation, and we should be deciding the guidance for what our citizens have to do, rather than it go through by edict or statutory instrument without proper debate. We need to be debating these issues and we are not doing so. At the moment, I do not think this House is in a position to call itself a proper Parliament. If we are to proceed in this way, the House ought to consider the motion on a more regular basis with a debate, and the Government should on those occasions put forward the reasons why we should stay as we are. As many Members have said, there are many big issues out there that we should consider, and I think that Parliament is going down a cul-de-sac by supporting this motion.

House Business during the Pandemic

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

If I may say, as Chair of the Procedure Committee, I always relish the opportunity to discuss procedure in this place. 

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate. It is very important that this House is able to scrutinise, to represent and to ensure that the legislation that the Government bring forward is fit for purpose and right for our constituents. I make no apology for our taking some time to ensure that we get that right.

The point was made earlier about the arrangements that this Parliament had before the Whitsun recess, and I am on the record as saying that those arrangements were sub-optimal. I turned up in person. I participated twice physically and tried to participate virtually, but was not able to do so due to the internet, so I can quite safely say that the virtual Parliament was very difficult for me. I personally prefer being here in person; I am a traditionalist in that respect. However, I also feel that it is incredibly important that those who cannot be here must be allowed to participate, to have their voices heard and to represent their constituents. They were elected in exactly the same way as those of us who can be here physically, and they need to be heard.

Although I am clear that the arrangements before Whitsun were sub-optimal, this situation is far from optimal. We do not have a full Chamber. Yes, we can make interventions, which does make for a much more interesting and fulfilling debate. I would be very much in favour of continuing those interventions for those of us who are in the Chamber, but not for those who are participating virtually because there is a problem with participating and making interventions virtually; Members need to be teed up, they need the tech to work and they need to get around very many problems. As Chair of the Procedure Committee, I fully support the end that we now have to the full parity of treatment between those who can participate physically and those who can participate virtually, but that does not mean that we should prevent virtual participation.

I did a little totting up of what I thought had gone well and what we could perhaps do better on, because it is important that Parliament reflects on these things. What went well? The fact that Parliament met was a great achievement. We should pay great tribute to all the people who gave up their Easter recess to work. We have said before that our staff and the staff of this House use the recess to not work quite as hard as they do when the House is sitting because we ask so much of them when the House is sitting. Well, they did not get that break over Easter and they certainly did not get that break over Whitsun. We should pay tribute to them for the fact that we were able to meet at all.

The fact that we did have physical participation during that period was also a great achievement. This was the most visible place for social distancing. The whole world can see social distancing in action. It can see it today; it can see us all sat here, spaced out and properly observing social distancing. That is something in which we should take great pride.

The tech actually worked very well for most people. Despite the fact that my Committee said on 8 April that we did not believe that it was possible to develop a system of remote voting, we were able to do it. We did have remote voting and it was quick, which meant that we could continue to spend all those hours and hours working on behalf of our constituents, and participating in the debates. We could listen to the debate and we could vote, and that was a real achievement.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House made the point about how hard we have all been working. This has been an unprecedented time. I have been a Member of Parliament for just over 10 years, and I have never seen the volume of casework in that 10-year period that we have all been seeing. It has been individual, complicated casework. I remember spending one Friday night on the phone to the Foreign Office trying to get my constituent back from China. I remember the times I spent lobbying on behalf of constituents to get furlough arrangements in place—and great credit to the Government for managing to do that.

[Andrew Griffith]

I pay tribute to the Chair of the Procedure Committee. I think that both sides of the House would recognise that she has gone above and beyond to ensure that this House can continue to function. I also thank her for her recognition that any of these arrangements—those made in the past and those that we are making in the present—must remain firmly temporary, for the duration of this pandemic. She has been very consistent on that, as has the Committee.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a member of the Committee, for his kind words and his point about the temporary nature of the arrangements. It is incredibly important that decisions that we take on our procedure during this pandemic are temporary, because, when we return to some form of normality, this House will have to decide how we proceed with our processes, procedures and rules and regulations.

My final thing that went well is Select Committees, which have been referred to already. Select Committees have met and scrutiny is carrying on. They have operated very successfully, and continue to operate, in a virtual world.

What could we have done better? Well, we could have been better at dealing with some of the uncertainty. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and I have already disagreed on this matter during an earlier debate in the Procedure Committee when he was kind enough to give evidence. The Government should have extended the motion that allowed for virtual participation until after the Whitsun recess, so that the House could have met without a recall of Parliament and made a decision about how we wanted to proceed without disenfranchising any Members.

We should have tested the voting system that we implemented last week. I urge my right hon. Friend to make sure that, whatever comes next for voting, we have a chance to test it, because this House needs to be happy and comfortable with it. The point was made about the Division Lobbies. I want to get back in those Division Lobbies as quickly as we can. They are a very valuable asset, but we have to make sure that they are safe. I urge my right hon. Friend to use deferred Divisions more. It is incredibly useful if we can vote, socially distanced, on deferred Divisions. On Public Bill Committees, there was nothing to stop them meeting before the Whitsun recess, and I urge him to ensure that they meet, and meet for longer—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I call Patrick Grady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman makes that point, which I believe is true, because it leads to my next point, which is about childcare.

In normal circumstances, Members of Parliament need to be careful when they complain about childcare. Compared with most of our constituents, we are very well paid; we are in the top 5% of income earners, so sometimes when I hear Members of Parliament complain about the difficulties of balancing working here with childcare—I accept that there are difficulties—I think that some of our constituents who have to manage working and childcare on considerably less generous salaries probably regard such complaints as self-indulgent. However, at the moment, it is difficult for people to get paid childcare, and many Members have children who are being educated at home, so it simply is not possible for them to get here and deal with those childcare responsibilities. Indeed, in his press conference on Wednesday 3 June, the Prime Minister, in answer to a public question from a lady called Toni, I think, accepted that lack of childcare was a perfectly valid reason for not being able to attend the workplace, and any good employer would recognise that in making decisions on whether an employee needed to report to work.

[Karen Bradley]

My right hon. Friend is correct, but there is another issue to do with childcare. As we are key workers, our children can go school, but there is a practical problem there: how do you get your children to and from school if you are in this place, doing your job as a parliamentarian, in the absence of the background childcare that you would normally have and the availability of grandparents and other relatives?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right and makes that point very well. What is unique to us is that, even if a Member can send their children to school as a key worker, the children may go to school in the constituency, so if they cannot access paid childcare or family, the Member cannot perform their duties here. As I said, the Prime Minister himself accepts that that is a perfectly valid reason for not being able to attend. Such Members need to be able to participate in this House virtually and to vote by proxy.

The last point I wanted to draw to the attention of the Leader of the House is about legislation—the coronavirus regulations, which are the greatest restriction on liberty that we have seen in this country outside wartime, and perhaps ever. I accept that the first set of regulations were made by the Secretary of State using emergency powers under public health legislation and were not voted on by this House before coming into force, but those regulations have now been amended three times, and I do not think the urgency provision can really be brought into force, although the Secretary of State says it can. We have the absurd situation now where there have been two sets of amendments and the regulations have been amended a third time before this House has even had the opportunity to vote on the second set of amendments.

The importance of that is illustrated by the events of the weekend. Under the third set of amendments, which have not yet been debated and voted on by this House, any gathering of more than six people is unlawful—it is against the law. So every single person who attended one of those demonstrations at the weekend was committing a criminal offence. The point about the debate in this House is important because I suspect many of those people were not aware that they were committing a criminal offence and this House has not had the opportunity to decide whether restrictions on protest are acceptable—

Proceedings during the Pandemic

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I should start by declaring an interest as the Member of Parliament for Alton Towers. I am delighted that the Leader of the House has both visited my constituency and seen the expertise with which queueing can be managed, as seen at Alton Towers—other theme parks are available.

[Chris Bryant]

On the way to Oblivion.

[Karen Bradley]

Oblivion and Nemesis.

I will address amendments (b) to (d), tabled in my name and those of several right hon. and hon. Members, including 15 other Select Committee Chairs. Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope you will allow me to address my remarks not just to the Chamber but to those Members who cannot be present because of the limitations on space, which you are quite properly enforcing, and who, because of the conditions caused by the pandemic, are having to follow proceedings from elsewhere.

Since the 16th century, this Chamber and its predecessors have been the absolute focus of the House’s life. Our procedures are founded on the principle that everything is done in the Chamber. That is a sound principle. Members rely on face-to-face communication. The word “parliament” comes from the French “parler”. The idea that the Chamber is now not available to many of us is a massive dislocation. Let me be clear: I do not want the measures that we are debating to be in place for a second longer than they have to be to keep our colleagues, our staff and the staff of the House as safe as possible from coronavirus. I look forward to the time when the guidance is relaxed and we can all of us meet here again.

I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that this is a very uncomfortable day for me. I do not like being badged as a rebel on House business. I am determined that we will get back to a fully physical Parliament as soon as possible. The Leader of the House will recall that I tabled an amendment to slow down the introduction of remote voting on 22 April, which the Government would not accept. I am very much in the traditionalist camp and am on the record as saying that the hybrid arrangements were sub-optimal, so let me be clear: the sooner we are back to normal, whatever that is, the better, for me, but the physical Parliament that we are in today is far from optimal itself. We can have no more than 50 Members in the Chamber and, in fact, 40 Members in the choir seats, as they are called; no bobbing; long queues to vote; very little spontaneity; and so many great parliamentarians absent.

Last night I had a conversation with my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), and he said that I could discuss that conversation in the Chamber. He is a great parliamentarian, a great campaigner and a great champion for his constituents. He wanted to be present today, but his doctor has advised him that he must not be, for his own health. The idea that we decide today to disenfranchise him completely seems to me to be absurd. I very much welcome what the Leader of the House said about tabling a motion to allow virtual participation, but I would like to see a copy of that motion before I make a final decision not to push to a vote amendments (b) and (c), which I tabled and which relate to virtual participation.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is it not a double injustice that the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) is not only to be disenfranchised by the vote that will be taken today but cannot even participate in his own disenfranchisement because of the nature of that?

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Gentleman makes exactly the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow made to me last night, and I know how frustrated he is by this situation.

Let me move on to Divisions, because we have had debates about hybrid proceedings and, as I say, I look forward to seeing the Government’s motion, hopefully before the end of this debate. I am an ex-Whip; I have every sympathy with the desire to get back to fully physical voting. That is the way that Whips manage the business and the party, and it is how we Back Benchers interact with our colleagues and with Ministers. But I say to the Leader of the House that we will perhaps shortly have the chance to test the proposals that we have put forward, and I look forward to seeing what Members feel about them.

I back up the comments about deferred Divisions made by the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who is no longer in his place. I support the Government’s bringing forward of changes to Standing Orders that will allow deferred Divisions on Second Reading and other debates, so that we will not have to have so many physical Divisions. I would welcome tests of other forms of voting, but when we introduced remote voting, we did so after we had tested it and tried it; nobody has tested and tried the current proposal for physical voting. Will the Leader of the House please consider accepting the amendment to allow remote voting to continue for a short period of time? We will all work together to find a form of physical voting that we can all be happy with.

[Ian Paisley]

My party is minded to support amendment (d), which the right hon. Lady has tabled on behalf of her Select Committee. We take exception to the fact that Northern Ireland Members face a double restriction: fortunately, as far as I know, none of them are shielding, but not being able to get here denies them the fundamental right that is at stake, which is for them to be able to get on the record in respect of the vital issues that affect their constituents and on which their constituents expect them to be on record. Resolving the voting issue would go a long way. Members can be denied the chance to speak but not to vote.

[Karen Bradley]

I understand exactly the points the hon. Gentleman makes. He will know that in the past I had personal experience of enjoying that journey very, very frequently.

The Procedure Committee has worked long and hard to find arrangements that we think are in the interests of the whole House. We received an unprecedented level of feedback on our work and I thank all colleagues who have taken an interest in it. As one of my hon. Friends observed to me, “Perhaps the Procedure Committee really is the most interesting Committee after all.”

There has been a certain amount of discussion about how the hybrid arrangements have delayed the Government’s legislative programme. Let me be clear. On 21 April the House brought in hybrid arrangements for the Chamber. There was no requirement for the Bill Committees to operate in hybrid form. A great deal of work was done to prepare for hybrid or virtual Bill Committees in case the Government wanted to use them, but there has been absolutely no bar, in the weeks since 21 April, on the Government arranging for wholly physical Bill Committees to meet in the rooms large enough to take them. They are: Committee Rooms 10 and 14, the Grand Committee Room and the Boothroyd Room. Members should take any suggestion to the contrary with a large pinch of salt.

Let me make one other thing absolutely clear. I was elected by the House to Chair a Committee to advise the House on its procedure and practice. I was also elected to this House as a Conservative on an ambitious manifesto to get Brexit done. I make a personal commitment to the Leader of the House that that is what I am determined to see we deliver. Nobody on the Conservative Benches is trying, in any way, to stop that happening.

The Procedure Committee is concerned that we make sure all Members of the House have their say. A very distinguished Conservative Lord Chancellor, when in Opposition, once described the constitutional arrangements in the UK as “elective dictatorship”. I hope the Leader of the House will listen and remember that what is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I speak as a traditionalist. I am a Whip. My right hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) and for Tynemouth (Sir Alan Campbell) have constructed my DNA in this institution. I am therefore very much a traditionalist. However, the system does not work. The Mogg conga, as it is now being deemed, through the House into Westminster Hall, is the result of the Government’s not tabling the relevant motion before the recess. It is the responsibility of the Leader of the House, no one else. According to some who have been briefing, even No. 10 did not realise what the Leader of the House was doing on the day before the recess. It would be helpful to know the right hon. Gentleman’s view on that because No. 10 does not seem to know what is going on.

The point is that this is about disenfranchisement. There are Members who have to shield but who are not vulnerable. Most Members I know who are shielding are far from vulnerable; they are honourable, hard-working, decent people, but like many people in this country, they are taking the advice of their clinicians. It is also a fact that some Members are the partners of key workers who no longer have childcare and who therefore have to be at home to look after their children. This is about the Leader of the House introducing a system that is no longer equal, and that is deeply unfair.

I want to use my remaining minute and a half to bust some of the myths mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley). I pay tribute to her as the Chair of the Select Committee, of which I am proudly the minority ranking member—I think that is how some people think of it—as the vice-Chair. [Interruption.] I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that that was just a joke. He never normally likes my jokes. I want to bust a myth for the Leader of the House: there has been no delay in bringing forward Bills for Public Bill Committees. There are four rooms in the House that could be used, and there is a maximum of four or five Bills currently being debated on the Floor of the House that will go through to Committee. It is the Government who have prevented the Bills from going into Committee, not the Opposition Whips Office.

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the vice-Chair for giving way; it is very generous of him. May I also make the point not only that Public Bill Committees have been able to meet since 21 April—nothing has stopped that—but that they could meet for more than their normal two days a week? They could meet on every sitting day for very long hours to ensure that business was delivered, and I am sure that Members would support that.

[Chris Elmore]

I quite agree with the right hon. Lady. One Committee that is going to the Programme Sub-Committee today will be meeting for three days a week with two sessions a day, and it has the option to do four days if it so wishes. That is at the request of the Government. The Government have delayed the start of this process, not the official Opposition or the smaller parties. It is for the Government to put forward a Bill Committee, and they have no one to blame but themselves. The rooms are available, and I would further add that testing was undertaken for hybrid Bill Committees. The Clerk of the House and Officers of the House were asked to undertake the testing of the hybrid version, and I understand that it worked perfectly well, including taking evidence from witnesses. I would never wish to suggest that a Member has misled the House, except maybe inadvertently, but it simply is not correct to say that anyone was blocking Public Bill Committees from sitting. It simply is not true. The Opposition were able to put forward Members to go on to the Committees, and the Government were able to do the same. Those debates could take place. As the Leader of the House knows, some Bills, such as the Finance Bill, do not need to have witness sessions. They just involve line-by-line scrutiny, so they could easily have been done. I ask the Leader of the House to clarify that matter when he comes back to respond. I support the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands—in fact, I have added my name to them—and I will proudly vote for them on the basis that this is about fairness and about true equality for all Members of this House, no matter what their reason for not being able to attend.

[Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). I entirely agree with the Government that remote scrutiny is inferior to Members of Parliament being here to do it directly. That is no criticism of those who have worked very hard to make a virtual Parliament work at all, but it is the reality of the ways in which Bills and Ministers are most effectively scrutinised. It is also to the Government’s credit that they are seeking to restore the most effective scrutiny of themselves. In relation to those of us who can do so, I understand their preference that we conduct our scrutiny from here, but this debate and the amendments to the Government’s motion are really about those colleagues who cannot be here, and specifically those who cannot be here because the Government have, for good and sensible reasons, told them that they should not be. For those colleagues, there is a strong case for preserving some means of virtual participation in our proceedings. I am grateful to have heard what the Leader of the House has already said about that, but I look forward to hearing more.

Surely the most fundamental part of our job is casting our votes. In that regard we should be most concerned with the most fundamental principles, and surely the most fundamental principle of all is that our votes in this place count equally, in our roles as representatives of our constituents. It cannot be right to exclude from decision making any Member against their will, unless it is done for reasons of principle or because it is unavoidable. Excluding those who would be here, were it not for the Government’s instruction, cannot be right on principle. This is not the House taking disciplinary action against those who have broken rules—quite the reverse—and neither it seems to me is it unavoidable. Imperfect though of course it is, we do have a system of remote voting that we have tested and used over the past few weeks. Of course, it should be used only for this period of restriction, but while that period continues it remains the only way that those excluded from this place can vote. I do not believe, I am afraid, that the Government’s solution is satisfactory. Pairing and slipping are exclusions from voting for which a Member has volunteered in most cases. The Members we are talking about today are not all volunteering to be excluded and to exclude their constituents from the process of legislative decision making. They are being excluded through no fault or wish of their own.

[Karen Bradley]

I apologise for intervening again, but my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) referred to me earlier as letting the genie out of the bottle. My point was that the public expect us to vote. The public expect us to be here. The public are looking at our voting record. We will be judged on our voting record. To say, “I took the decision at that point to allow myself to be paired” or that, “I was not able to do anything else other than be paired because of my medical condition,” will probably not be sufficient for many of our voters.

Conduct of Business After the Whitsun Recess

Karen Bradley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We will now try to reconnect Karen Bradley, Chair of the Procedure Committee.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con) [V]]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; I am audio only, I am afraid. I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. I firmly believe, as Chair of the Procedure Committee, that the House should be allowed to have its say on these changes. It is important that an opportunity is provided for the House to do that.

Will the Leader of the House reflect on the resolution that the House passed on 21 April, which stays in place while Public Health England advice remains, and which allows for both virtual participation and parity of treatment for all Members? Is the Leader of the House intending to amend or rescind that resolution, or does he believe that it no longer applies?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the invaluable work that she and her Committee have been doing, and for the suggestions that they have made about how we can make the hybrid work and how we can get back to a real Parliament. We see in her absence the difficulties with a hybrid Parliament. I am glad that the technology was able to reconnect her, in voice only, but being here in the flesh does have advantages.

The motion of the House stands, but to allow it to be effective it requires subsidiary motions that will lapse. Of course, the Government take motions of the House very seriously and wish to ensure that their details are reflected in the way the House operates, although sometimes these are matters more for Mr Speaker than for the Leader of the House.