House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I have listened to most of this debate, all bar a few speakers, and what has struck me is that most of us think that personal interaction is very important. Most of us are concentrating on what we are saying, but it is what is listened to that is important.

Ministers give out a great deal of information without saying anything. How many times has a noble Lord here realised that they have made a good point as the Minister shrinks slightly into the Front Bench and those around them start to look slightly embarrassed? That is when you know you have a point. There are minor victories, such as the Minister sprinting to the Box for information and then coming back. That always helps if you are sitting down keeping score during a long Committee stage. We must keep this interaction—the sudden realisation that there is a point that matters, and which has some weight behind it.

How we get to that is fairly irrelevant. Do we have Question Time with a list or do we jump up and down? It depends on who you are and what your experience has been. I have been here a long time. I do not know how many supplementary questions I have asked—it may well be in the thousands. But it was the last thing I learned and got comfortable doing. It is not an easy skill. Is it a skill we need? On occasion, I have even provoked a reaction from the Minister, especially if I have been wise enough to gather information to back up my question. Everything is about getting that reaction.

Can the new technology help us? The answer is yes, if we use it correctly and we adapt it. We are taking our first steps in using this virtual world. It has already been reasonably successful for committees, particularly for getting witnesses in. Occasionally we can get too many witnesses in and we do not have enough time to examine them correctly or, more importantly, have the committee discuss what it has heard. We will have to develop how we work with this.

Also, as my noble friend Lady Barker said, we have not made the technology work for us in the way we want to use it. Is that possible? Of course it is. I remind the House of some of my interests in assistive technology: voice-to-text and text-to-voice technology, used in different formats for various disability groups, such as the blind, dyslexics and even the deaf. Most of the technology is fairly similar at heart, whether you turn it round to interpret a written or a verbal input. You can change it around and get better stuff out of it, but we have to learn to use it better. I hope that the House will make sure we take it on and integrate it into what we are doing. If it gets good enough to make a Minister cringe then maybe we can use it, but not until then—not until you can get the idea that you are carrying people with you and making those against you occasionally say, “Yes, there is a real point here”, because that is what we are about. We are trying to make sure that we interact.

Everybody else has said something about voting, so I might as well. The Chief Whip will know that I have an occasionally unsuccessful relationship with technology when I have left my phone on silent and put it down, or something. I apologise, but not with any great sincerity. It is convenient, but we have had more votes that we normally would because we have missed out on what I have just talked about: Ministers are not picking up the vibe and do not know what is going on. We do not have a chance to make a serious change. I am absolutely convinced that we are leading to slightly more formalised conflict because we have a more formalised process that does not have the brakes and the ability to interact outside of it.

There is also the social interaction around voting: the conversations that have already been referred to matter. If anybody tells you that they do not, they probably have not been in a situation where they can use them. Everybody else does. Also, something can happen if you actually speak to somebody who knows something about an issue beforehand. We have to try to get the best out of the new technology and be brave enough to work it in with the old idea that we are actually talking to people and changing their minds. It is difficult to change your mind and to listen to what is said to you. Saying yes or no and pressing a button is easy. Until we learn to make that technology serve us well, we will be wasting opportunities.