House Business during the Pandemic

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I reiterate the point that a debate is about interventions. It is how we test the argument of the Government.

Members of Parliament are no different from others who are unable to perform their jobs fully from home and are now returning to their workplaces. I understand that many Members will feel concerned about their particular circumstances, but they can be reassured by the significant changes made to make the parliamentary estate covid-19-secure. It is clear to anyone in Westminster that, while we have emerged from the initial stage of lockdown, we are by no means back to normal. That is why I made it clear before the Whitsun recess that I would work with the House authorities to explore ways in which those unable to come here can continue to contribute.

I have every sympathy with Members who feel that the constraints of the pandemic prevent them from being able to attend in Westminster. The work of scrutiny is so important that it is right that we have brought forward a motion to allow those affected to have their say during scrutiny proceedings, but I remain conscious of how important it is that Members who participate in the decision-making process of the House ought and need to do so in person. As we saw last week, the decision on whether to vote Aye or No is a public one, for which individual Members can often find themselves held to account. It is a decision that should only ever be taken after the kind of serious consideration and engagement which is only possible when all those concerned are in Westminster. By the time Members are asked to vote, Ministers want to have had the chance to talk through fully any specific concerns of individuals or groups. That remains my strong view.

I am grateful to the Procedure Committee for its willingness to support the Government’s desire to extend proxy voting. Last week, the House unanimously agreed to make this available to Members who are unable to attend at Westminster because they are at high risk from coronavirus because they are either clinically extremely vulnerable or clinically vulnerable. In making judgments of this kind, I have sought to balance the competing priorities of this place in a way that looks at Parliament as a whole. As I have maintained throughout, the Government are listening to Members across the House. I am—I hope this will please the hon. Member for Rhondda and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland—giving thought to bringing forward a motion that extends proxy voting beyond what has already been agreed by the House, to include Members who are more widely affected by the pandemic.

Parliament must send a clear message to the country: we are getting on with our work as best we can during a period of great challenge, just like everyone else. That is the spirit in which I encourage all Members to view our proceedings during the pandemic. We recognise that there are difficulties, but we are showing leadership to the nation in persisting in our purpose. We are doing our duty in leading the way. Our constituents will not entertain the notion that we should ask parents to send their children back to school while we choose to remain at home.

Fortunately, that is not our approach. Rather than suffering the depredations of the muted hybrid Parliament, we are once again talking to each other in ways that were impossible when we were scattered to the four winds. Rather than wading through the treacle of the hybrid proceedings, which even the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said were far from perfect, we are once again fleet of foot and dancing a legislative quickstep.

I have enjoyed the formalised interventions in this speech just as much as I enjoy the informal interventions of Members putting their socially distanced heads around my door. Rather like the school swot secretly delighted by extra homework, I must confess that my appetite for the opportunity of today’s debate is very great, even though some may think—and some of my hon. Friends have indicated that they do think—that talking about ourselves under the current circumstances is a little self-indulgent. For there is more to our democracy than general elections. Between polling days, it is in Parliament where the interplay between Ministers and MPs comes alive. I am delighted that that interplay, as we see today, is being restored, allowing our Parliament to scrutinise legislation properly and to get on with its core business of delivering for the British people.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call Valerie Vaz, may I say that there are a lot of people who wish to participate in this debate? I ask people to perhaps temper interventions and take some of the heat out of the debate.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for applying for the Standing Order No. 24 debate, and I thank the Speaker for granting it. It is important, because we are trying to persuade the Leader of the House that he is wrong. We need to restore a way for all right hon. and hon. Members to participate as equals, instead of having a two-tier or two-class membership of this Parliament.

I want to address some of the arguments, myths and legends that the Leader of the House has perpetuated. Myth No. 1—he said that we have more effective scrutiny by being here. We are in the middle of a pandemic, and we can have only 50 Members in the Chamber. We had effective scrutiny, where every Member could take part in the same way: by applying for and being called to ask questions, and by being called to speak in a debate.

Myth No. 2—the Leader of the House said that we were returning safely. There were 400 in the Division queue, queueing for hours. That is not the same as queueing for food. Actually, it has never taken me 45 minutes to queue for food, but it has taken us longer than that to vote.

Myth No. 3—the House does not work effectively on behalf of our constituents. I say it again, and I am glad to see that the Leader of the House has conceded this: we do, and we are. Whether it concerns constituents stranded abroad, furloughing or businesses, we have been working here, and we have debated and voted like we always do.

Myth No. 4—line-by-line scrutiny of Bills. We are in the middle of a pandemic, and we have only just set up this system. Our House staff have done a fantastic job to get us into the position of being able to take part in debates and vote remotely. By the way, all Select Committees have been able to participate in Zoom rooms. We could still have Bill Committees doing that.

Myth No. 5—we arranged only business that would be non-contentious. Yes, we all agreed, because we were in the middle of a pandemic. It was agreed by all parties to allow the system to get up and running and so that the staff who worked overtime on the new system would be able to get it into place.

Myth No. 6—time limits on scrutiny. There have always been time limits on scrutiny. If the Leader of the House really wants scrutiny, why have the weekend press conferences been cancelled? What steps is he taking to ensure that all written questions are replied to in an appropriate way? That is a tool for scrutinising the Government.

Myth No. 7—no one is banned. Yes, we are. If someone physically cannot get here or wants to protect people, whoever it may be—even strangers on a train—they cannot vote. The Leader of the House said that the measures were temporary. Yes, they are temporary measures while this pandemic is in progress. I am not sure whether he has read the accounts that were published in the newspapers at the weekend of members of the public who are still trying to recover from the disease, but he should do so. We know that the R number has increased in the north-west. The Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) and I have worked together and signed motions to enable business to take place, until the Leader of the house dictatorially decided to end it.

Myth No. 8—it might take a bit longer. Previously we voted in 15 minutes, so that was an understatement—it took 45 minutes, or nearly an hour. Will the right hon. Gentleman update the House, perhaps by placing a letter in the Library, on how long the votes took from the start to the announcement of the results. I would like to know that, because the way we voted on Tuesday was not in the interests of Parliament or our constituents.

Myth No. 9—getting it done. The Leader of the House referred to 216 hours of parliamentary legislation. This is not normal—we are not in normal times. It is not normal for people to be working from home and educating their children. We were only back for three days during the height of the pandemic. It is changing now. It is not normal for there to be excess deaths in care homes, and that has not even been addressed.

Myth No. 10—on the system clogging up so that we cannot pass Bills. I do not know where the Leader of the House was, but we voted on the Agriculture Bill and the Trade Bill, and those went through.

Myth No. 11—we need to vote in person. We were all voting individually, on our phones. I was able to sit here while other hon. Members were able to vote somewhere else, but everyone took part equally.

Myth No. 12—we have complied with social distancing. We did not. Anybody who saw the way we stood in that queue on Tuesday knew that we did not, and the Leader of the House did not do that himself either. I know because I was watching from the top of the steps in Westminster Hall.

Myth No. 13—there is no accountability unless we are here in person. The Leader of the House then said that the Liaison Committee, which was done in a virtual proceeding, was successful. Every time the Chair of a Select Committee tried to question the Prime Minister and he did not want to answer, they were interrupted and told, “Move on, move on.” That is not accountability.

Myth No. 14—let me take on the Leader of the House’s point about interventions. Those are not a right; it is just a parliamentary tradition. It is up to the Member to allow interventions. Obviously, he was trying to prove his point, so many Government Members tried to intervene, but parliamentary tradition changes, as he knows—just as we do not wear top hats when we make points of order, and just as women are now allowed on the Floor of the Chamber, when previously, we were up there.

Myth No. 15—the Leader of the House said, “Let’s listen to what comes forth from the Procedure Committee”, yet he completely ignores the fact that the Procedure Committee are now undertaking a consultation on proxy voting. That is exactly why we have these Committees of the House—so that we do not make all these new rules and procedures on the hoof. We listen to people and we make sure that it works, just as we have done on its previous, very timely reports, which have informed debates in the House.

Myth No. 16—we have a duty to the country and voters to fulfil both our collective constitutional function and our individual roles. Why is he denying other right hon. and hon. Members their right to vote without a sick note? I am sure that the Leader of the House will have seen the letter that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to in The Times—I am sure the Leader of the House reads The Times; his father used to edit it—from the University College London Constitution Unit. It also said that Members are being denied their constitutional right. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) said in a tweet—this was very timely—she has been disenfranchised from voting for her own disenfranchisement.

The Leader of the House has created a two-class membership of Members. He has driven away the right of everyone to take part. He has exposed the personal circumstances of right hon. and hon. Members. We have a duty to stop the deaths. We have a duty to keep people safe. Going back to the hybrid system, with remote voting, is the right thing to do for hon. Members and our constituents.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The Chairman of Ways and Means announced a five-minute limit on contributions from Back Benchers, but if Members can take less than that, please do, just to allow other colleagues to get in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is a member of the Committee, for his kind words and his point about the temporary nature of the arrangements. It is incredibly important that decisions that we take on our procedure during this pandemic are temporary, because, when we return to some form of normality, this House will have to decide how we proceed with our processes, procedures and rules and regulations.

My final thing that went well is Select Committees, which have been referred to already. Select Committees have met and scrutiny is carrying on. They have operated very successfully, and continue to operate, in a virtual world.

What could we have done better? Well, we could have been better at dealing with some of the uncertainty. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and I have already disagreed on this matter during an earlier debate in the Procedure Committee when he was kind enough to give evidence. The Government should have extended the motion that allowed for virtual participation until after the Whitsun recess, so that the House could have met without a recall of Parliament and made a decision about how we wanted to proceed without disenfranchising any Members.

We should have tested the voting system that we implemented last week. I urge my right hon. Friend to make sure that, whatever comes next for voting, we have a chance to test it, because this House needs to be happy and comfortable with it. The point was made about the Division Lobbies. I want to get back in those Division Lobbies as quickly as we can. They are a very valuable asset, but we have to make sure that they are safe. I urge my right hon. Friend to use deferred Divisions more. It is incredibly useful if we can vote, socially distanced, on deferred Divisions. On Public Bill Committees, there was nothing to stop them meeting before the Whitsun recess, and I urge him to ensure that they meet, and meet for longer—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I call Patrick Grady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I have some sympathy with the comments of a couple of Conservative Members about the fact that at a moment of such importance in the nation we are once again here discussing our own affairs and our own matters. None of us enters this place in order to spend many hours having these kinds of debates, and I do not intend to spend the whole of my five minutes talking about it, but it is an important matter: we all know what these changes are about. The Government were very concerned that the Prime Minister was being exposed every Wednesday because he had not got those public schoolboys barracking behind him when he was being asked questions, and so the order went out, “We need people back in the Chamber so that this scrutiny—this forensic approach that the Leader of the Opposition is bringing forward—can be barracked at and shouted down; we must change the way that Parliament sits.” That is a tremendous shame.

I have some sympathy with the argument that we need to be here in order to do our job. Frankly, I would probably be coming here for these debates myself anyway, although I recognise that there are colleagues who are excluded. However, there is a question about the message that we are sending. The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) said that we need to set an example to people out there. At the same time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) pointed out, the Government’s own advice is, “You should work from home if you can”, and we had clearly found a way in which parliamentarians were able to make representations from home. We should have encouraged Members to come back and speak from the Chamber where possible, but allowed those Members who were excluded to continue making their contributions from home.

We should also have kept virtual voting, which is much simpler than the charade that we saw last week. I was very sad that people who had put in a tremendous amount of work to implement that system were unfairly criticised, because if we are going to have physical voting and we are going to have social distancing, then what we went through last week was probably about the best way that we were going to be able to achieve that. I do not blame those people for putting in place that great long queue that we had, but it was a ludicrous spectacle when we were walking up and down the steps of St Stephen’s Hall like marathon runners, going up one road and running back down the other, with people pushing in in front of each other because they thought they saw a chance to jump the queue. It really did not show this place in a good light. We could achieve the Leader the House’s desire to see Parliament represented and to have interventions that are only possible in this kind of Chamber while retaining online voting, so that we will not have to go through the sort of performance that we saw last week. I will leave it there.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Chris Bryant, who must finish by 7.49 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

I am very grateful to all hon. and right hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. In responding, I essentially want to make one point.

This is not just about Members of Parliament. If I have learned nothing else over the years, I have learned that the market for Members of Parliament complaining about how difficult their life is, is an exceptionally niche one populated mostly by Members of Parliament and occasionally their mothers. It is not about that. It is about the very simple straightforward principle: the principle of the equality of participation and access to all who are elected to this House.

The question I sought to put to the Leader of the House was this: why is he insisting that we should abandon that principle, as important as it is, and do it so blithely? I made that point in my speech and others made it in theirs. I put it directly to him in an intervention on his speech. It will not be lost on anyone reading our proceedings now or in the future, that the Leader of the House had no answer to that simple straightforward fundamental question. This is an error of judgment of potentially catastrophic magnitude. It is a judgment, ultimately, for which the Leader of the House may have to be responsible. I hope there will be no doubt about that should this all go wrong.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Conduct of House business during the pandemic.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am suspending the House for five minutes. Please maintain social distancing as you leave the Chamber.

Sitting suspended.