Proxy Voting

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I thank the Leader of the House for moving the motion and for accepting the recommendations of the Procedure Committee, of which I am pleased to be a member.

The idea of extending proxy voting further was not entirely without controversy. Some people were very concerned about it—understandably, given that we are meant to be a Parliament where people gather and exchange views, and our voting system is designed to ensure that Members vote in person rather than via a proxy. Our task was to consider whether we should allow a proxy vote for Members who were suffering from a long-term illness or a serious injury; it was not to take into account those who had a short-term illness or were travelling on parliamentary business, or who felt that this was an adaptation they needed in the long term for career reasons.

I think it fair to say that the trial was a success, but I also think there was evidence that some people were securing proxies in circumstances that were not envisaged in the creation of a scheme for those with serious long-term illnesses. We had always intended this to be a temporary measure allowing those who could not attend Parliament because they were too ill to have their voices heard at least in the voting Lobbies. The expectation was that at some point, they would come back and vote in the normal way. Personally, I would be sympathetic to allowing a proxy vote as a long-term adaptation for someone who was not fit to be here for the whole day, which I think is reasonable, but that is not what the Committee was tasked to do, and it would have to be the subject of further work if the House so wished.

There are some tweaks in the report. The requirement to produce a letter from any medical professional has been changed to a requirement to produce a letter from a consultant, to emphasise our expectation that a proxy vote would be used in the event of a serious illness probably involving hospital care. There is now the expectation of a seven-month time limit, intended to be in line with the arrangements for statutory sick pay, so we are not trying to make arrangements for Members that are different from those in the real world. This is meant to be a temporary situation from which Members will eventually emerge. The insertion of the reference to an occupational health review was an attempt to help Mr Speaker, with his discretion, to work out whether an application was actually related to a serious long-term illness.

If Members want the scheme to be a success and to be a permanent feature, I urge them not to apply for it on the grounds of a short-term illness or to extend maternity leave. They should not be speaking regularly in the Chamber and voting by proxy unless there is a very exceptional circumstance. They should not be at drinks dos on the parliamentary estate and voting by proxy. That is not what the scheme is intended for. It is intended for Members who are too ill to be here.

We considered whether there could be a very prescriptive scheme, with a list of conditions that were serious enough to be covered, but we worked out pretty quickly that we would probably be coming back here every few weeks to add a new condition that we had missed, which would leave Mr Speaker far too fettered in his discretion. We also accepted the persuasive evidence we heard that a Member in the final stages of recovery from an illness might be able to come back to work part time but might not be able to be here for a long night of voting into the early hours, and that there was clearly merit in the Speaker’s having discretion to enable the Member to speak in the Chamber without having to be here for hours when they were not fit to be.

The shadow Leader of the House talked about the principle of a proxy vote being available only to those who are generally not on the parliamentary estate, but, as she noted, we did not include that as an absolute rule. If there is an emergency in a Member’s constituency, the Member may want to break their leave and speak about it, but generally Members will be absent and will not be here for the whole day, or the whole week, or the whole month. That is the balance we were trying to strike. We were trying to find a way to enable Mr Speaker to use his discretion to ensure that the scheme was not being abused, and to ensure that, generally, Members who are fit to be here should be voting in person, while those who are not fit to be here can vote by proxy. That is what we were trying to achieve, and I urge Members who make applications to stick to the spirit of it. I suspect we will have another review by the end of the Parliament so that we can see whether proxy voting should become a permanent fixture after the next election. I certainly hope that when we get the next review, we will see that the people who are using proxy voting have been sticking to the spirit and the intention of it, and that that will enable it to become a permanent feature.