Business of the House

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful for my right hon. Friend’s question; she herself was such a distinguished Leader of the House. The issue is the technical problems one rather than the proxy one. The proxy vote would not necessarily have helped because it would have brought people to the House, we would have had Divisions, and that would not necessarily have solved the problem that we were trying to address. But there are measures in place for technical problems. A Member who is having difficulty voting on the Members’ hub will be able to text or email the relevant House office leaving a telephone number. House staff will immediately call the Member back on that number and, once they have performed the necessary checks and are satisfied that it is indeed the Member, arrange for the Member’s vote to be recorded.

More broadly, the changes that have been made to allow for the creation of a hybrid Parliament are strictly temporary and will last for only as long as a completely physical Parliament is impossible. Within that time, Mr Speaker, if you think that a Division is not working properly, you have the ability to stop the Division for it to be re-held at a later stage. In addition, people will always be able to check their vote because it is a public rather than a private vote.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Fifty per cent. of bed and breakfasts do not pay business rates, the events industry often does not pay business rates either because it uses outside spaces, and language schools are excluded from the Government’s support for tourism. I have tried to raise this issue with Ministers directly in writing, but the Government have not reissued the document, “Government ministers and responsibilities”, which lists the private and direct contacts for Ministers, since 11 October 2019, and we are ending up getting generic responses from civil servants. Will the Leader of the House make sure that that document is reissued to us, either publicly or privately, so that we can directly contact Ministers and their private offices rather than just the Department?