House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Roberts of Llandudno Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD) [V]]

I have listened with great interest to many of the speeches and nobody has mentioned how it has affected the attendance of Peers. Have the pandemic and the virtual or hybrid proceedings reduced the presence of Peers? I went through some of the records. In 2016 there were 484 Peers on most days, in 2019 there were 458, and all could claim the full allowance. Then we come to the hybrid House—this is not the physical presence, but the voting presence—where we have on average 474 Peers voting. The figure is always in the upper 400s and sometimes, rarely, it goes into the 500s. However, we always have about 300 Peers who do not engage in any way in the activities of the House. Can we have the official figures for this, please? That would be interesting in case I have misled or been misled.

The other point I want to raise is on voting. Mr Rees-Mogg, leading the Commons, wants to return to traditional voting arrangements and, yes, that is okay—some want us to follow. But people are forgetting that the older you get, the less able and mobile you are. In the Commons they are on average about 30 years younger than us in the House of Lords. In the Lords, 306 Peers are in the 70-79 age range and 122 Peers are over 80, so we can see that it is much more likely that Members of the Lords will have greater difficulty attending in person than Members of the Commons. These things demand a great deal of thought and I am delighted to give some figures to bear out some of the recommendations.