Business of the House (Virtual Proceedings and Topical Questions for Written Answer)

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

That, until further Order–

1. The following proceedings of the House may take place as Virtual Proceedings: Oral Questions, Private Notice Questions, Ministerial Statements, debates (but not decisions) on Statutory Instruments, Questions for Short Debate and motions for debate;

2. The procedure in Virtual Proceedings shall follow, so far as practical, procedure in the House save that–

(a) no member may participate unless admitted to the Virtual Proceedings;

(b) the order of speaking in Virtual Proceedings shall be facilitated by the Chair;

(c) the time allotted for Oral Questions shall be extended to 40 minutes to allow up to 10 minutes for each Oral Question;

(d) the time allotted to business in Virtual Proceedings may be varied by unanimous agreement of members taking part in the Virtual Proceedings; and

(e) Virtual Proceedings may be adjourned between items or classes of business at the discretion of the Chair;

3. A Virtual Proceeding may take place irrespective of whether the House is sitting that day;

4. A member may table one Topical Question for Written Answer in each week during which the House sits, and it is expected that it will be answered within five working days;

5. The provisions of this Order shall be applied in accordance with guidance issued under the authority of the Procedure Committee from time to time, which may vary the provisions of the Companion to the Standing Orders insofar as they apply to Virtual Proceedings.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the first Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.

When the House last met, my noble friend the Leader of the House set out a number of changes to the way our business would be organised. She also said that work would be done over Easter to look at how our practices and procedures could be adapted to allow noble Lords to take part in our business while not attending the House.

While we have been away, a huge amount of work has been undertaken to enable some of our proceedings to take place virtually from today onwards. I pay tribute to the House administration, the parliamentary IT professionals and the usual channels, who have been working very hard to achieve a lot in a short space of time. In particular, I mention the leaders and my private secretary, Victoria Warren, who has also done an enormous amount to make this possible. Members of the House owe a huge debt of gratitude for the work that all these people have undertaken to allow us to do our work.

Connecting some 780 Members who have varying degrees of technical ability, who are distributed around the country and who cannot be visited to be given help, with little time for testing and using off-the-shelf technology, is not a trivial problem. At the end of last week, the Procedure Committee met virtually and agreed to the package of measures before the House today. If this Motion is agreed to, from today Oral Questions, Statements, UQ repeats, PNQs, Thursday debates and topical QSDs will all take place virtually. Noble Lords will not be able to participate in them from the Chamber.

Your Lordships will be used to signing up in advance to speak in debates and QSDs but will now need to do so for Questions, Statements, UQs and PNQs as well. The same system that we have used for many years to sign up to speak in debates will now be used for all these types of business, although the deadlines for signing up will be a bit earlier. The Procedure Committee has published guidance to help noble Lords navigate the system that we will use. All noble Lords signed up to take part in a Virtual Proceeding will be sent instructions on how to join that proceeding. I ask all noble Lords taking part in one of the early Virtual Proceedings to familiarise themselves with the guidance that has been produced and to ask for assistance if they need it. Noble Lords not taking part will also be sent a link so that they can watch what is going on.

We will also need to continue taking some legislative business in the Chamber. That is because our new Virtual Proceedings will not be empowered to take decisions on behalf of the House as a whole, and at the moment that is quite right. When this House considers legislation, it is considering proposed changes to the law. We have to be sure that the House’s decision-making ability is not restricted or impaired by the use of remote working, but it is of course something that we can keep under review. In the meantime, I will endeavour to keep Chamber sittings to a minimum.

Finally, the Procedure Committee has agreed to the introduction of a new category of Written Question to allow Members of this House to get faster Answers from Ministers on topical matters. When they ask Questions in this new category, noble Lords will get their Answers in half the normal time.

I know that the system that has been devised will not entirely satisfy each and every noble Lord. It will not exactly mirror our normal proceedings, but in my view it provides a credible way for the House to continue holding the Government to account. Its operation will be kept under review and will be revised if necessary. I urge noble Lords to be patient if glitches occur. The staff of the House will do everything they can to help us adapt and we should probably thank them in advance for their forbearance.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I add my thanks not just to the leadership of the House and the usual channels but to all the staff and everyone who has made it possible for us to commence some of our work. I add one small question to the Minister. Some comments have been made in the press and elsewhere, in social media, about access for people with disabilities—such as the hard of hearing—who are not necessarily able to access the important public information during this crisis. What are the Government doing to ensure that we tackle that issue as soon as possible?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their support, especially their support—unanimous, I think—for the House authorities, the Parliamentary Digital Service and others, who have worked very hard. I am grateful to the Front Benches for their support on this. There were some very reasonable questions, and I will do my best to answer them.

I said at some stage that this will not be an exact mirror of what we have in our normal proceedings, and it may well be that as we progress we will try to emulate nearer our normal proceedings, but there will be some key differences. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, we will have to start slowly and move on, but the key thing that we have tried to do and have done unanimously with the other party leaders and the Convenor of the Cross Benches is to focus, to begin with, on holding the Government to account. That is what we have tried to do today.

I take seriously what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about not broadcasting. I agree with him that it would have been nice if we had been able to. He asked a specific question about Hansard. Hansard will report Virtual Proceedings in the normal way, so there will be a written record. As for broadcasting in the House of Commons and not here, it is true that it is using Zoom, a different system. The focus has been on using for our purposes something that is available now and secure. The Parliamentary Digital Service has only a limited amount of resource and is—I think it is fair to say— concentrating on the House of Commons, which is able to broadcast. In the absence of as many resources as we want, it is reasonable that we should focus on the elected House.

As far as the noble Lord’s question about broadcasting is concerned, we hope we will be able to do that soon. We would like to broadcast and if that requires Zoom, we will move to Zoom if that is the technological solution. But we will move to Zoom only when it is secure, when we know it works and when we have the resources available to implement it correctly, which I hope will be reasonably soon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the House will be very encouraged by the Minister’s response. He has said that it would be “nice” to have the proceedings of the House broadcast, but I think that most people would consider it to be imperative that those proceedings are broadcast. Can he give a commitment that they will not be kept secret for longer than the next two weeks?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I can give a commitment that they will not be kept secret at all because they will be reported in Hansard. However, I agree that this is more than “nice”; it is important and indeed imperative, if you like. We are doing our best to make sure that, when we have a suitable system, the proceedings will be broadcast simultaneously with the Virtual Proceedings, although I think that there will be a 10-second gap. In the meantime, I beg to move.

Motion agreed.