Procedure and Privileges

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lord, I hope not to detain your Lordships for very long. Largely, I support the proposals in the main Motion.

There is really only one point on which I want to speak, which arises under chapter 2 on page 8 of the report: the interim option of voting using PeerHub. In my view, this is clearly a sensible option to allow us to continue voting by PeerHub until the technology is in place to enable us to move, as is planned, to swipe cards. I also support the proposal that to vote by PeerHub the Member should have to be on the Parliamentary Estate, which I hope includes Millbank so that those such as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, can continue to vote. Among the benefits, I hope, of being on the estate is that it may reduce the number of occasions when Members get in a muddle and misunderstand precisely what they are voting for, and, as a result, vote the wrong way, contrary to what they intended. One knows of several cases, in recent times, where that has happened.

My central point, however, is that there is a real problem—and to my mind little or no advantage—in stipulating not only that the Member must be on the estate but that he or she must also be in “a place of work”. That expression is not defined. To my mind, it is incapable of being given a useful definition in this context. What is intended to be encompassed? What is intended to be excluded and why? Clearly, it has to include places such as the Library, Lobbies, the Royal Gallery and so forth, where Members actually often work at desks. Presumably it would, and should, include corridors and other common space where Members meet and discuss parliamentary business and so forth.

I have heard it suggested that the reason for including this requirement is to safeguard the House from possible reputational damage if a Member were to vote by PeerHub in restaurants or bars, but work may very well be done even there. I have written speeches in the Bishops’ Bar myself. In any event, the most that could be required would be that the Member briefly wanders into the corridor in order to press a button. Who would be advantaged by that? Because there is so little point in excluding places of refreshment—and if it were necessary it could be done explicitly—it is difficult to give any cogent definition of what constitutes a place of work.

I am on the Conduct Committee, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance. For some years before that, I had the honour of chairing the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct. It is against that background that I am troubled by the veiled threat underlying this additional requirement. In this context, we are reminded of our obligation to act always on our personal honour, but it seems wrong to threaten a breach of the code without a clear, positive idea of just where we are allowed to vote and where we are not. This provision does nothing to advance Members’ faith and confidence in the disciplinary process and the concept of personal honour. If anything, it risks bringing that out of favour.

We would never allow this degree of imprecision, this manifest uncertainty, if we were scrutinising legislation, so I suggest we should not do so here either. I invite the Senior Deputy Speaker, when he winds up, to say it that is only if a Member is in a place of refreshment on the estate—if it is thought necessary to exclude that —that they cannot properly confirm, when voting, that they are at a place of work on the estate.