Arrangement of Business

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to make a brief Statement about what happened yesterday.

As noble Lords will have seen, yesterday we experienced serious technical difficulties with the remote voting system during our consideration of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill. The result of that difficulty was that three Divisions, on Amendments 3, 11 and 14, had to be deferred. I can confirm that we intend these Divisions to take place on Monday in what would normally be the gap in business between Oral Questions and any Private Notice Question and the beginning of debate on further groups of amendments to the Bill at the normal time of around 2.30 pm. I am grateful to all noble Lords for their forbearance.

Following the issues with the remote voting system, tests of the system will be required to ensure that it works as expected. We would welcome the participation of Members in any such tests, the timing of which will be advertised to noble Lords as soon as possible.

As far as I am aware, we are not anticipating Divisions today but, were one to be called, it, too, would have to be deferred to another day until the tests had taken place.

Finally, I place on record my thanks to the usual channels and the clerks for their constructive and flexible approach, which allowed scrutiny of the Bill to continue, despite not having Divisions yesterday.