Proxy Voting

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I want to begin by thanking the Procedure Committee for producing its report. It occurred to me, as I was listening to the debate, that this is like all big changes, although I think we are making this out to be a bigger change than it is. Before we had the smoking ban in public places, people saw all sorts of unintended consequences, but once we did it, we thought, “Why did it take us so long?”

It is absolutely right that every workplace—this place included—should recognise that having a child is a life-changing event for new mothers and new fathers, and should try to be as family-friendly as possible. I share the concern of the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) that we are not being ambitious enough. We should not be timid.

If we agree with the principle of proxy voting, which I think everybody here does, we should extend it to people in other challenging circumstances, such as Members who are suffering from illness, Members who have a spouse or close family member who is living with an illness, or Members who are dealing with the death of a child or partner. People have talked about the special bond between parents and their new baby and said that that is why this category should be different, but while it is very important for parents to spend time with their new baby, it is also important for Members of this House to be able to spend time with a loved one who is dying. If we accept the principle of proxy voting, we should be more generous in our application of it. When proxy voting is brought in, it will be in the form of a pilot, and I would like that pilot to be more inclusive.

The hon. Member for Harrow East said that some MPs may not wish their constituents to know if they are very ill. It would be odd for an MP to be less visible in their constituency, so their constituents might well be aware of the fact that they are not around as much and might therefore deduce that they are ill anyway. I do not think that that is as big a deal as it might seem at first glance.

Everybody agrees that all workplaces should do all that they can to recognise and accommodate the demands of being a new parent, particularly a nursing mother. In this place, however, my concern is that, by limiting proxy voting to just nursing mothers, we must make sure that we do not forget fathers and make sure that they are given the same consideration as new mothers. I would like us to consider all circumstances that create challenges for Members turning up to vote. If we are going to do this, we should show a bit more ambition.

Many people have talked about how being an MP is not like any other job—the role is unique. Before and since becoming an MP, I have heard people say that MPs should set the standard that we would expect society to adopt, and that we should live up to those standards. Some Members may well have been here—I do not know, but the Mother of the House might have been—when the right to paid maternity leave was finally won for women. We know that paternity leave for fathers is still very much in its infancy, and many men do not feel able to take up the opportunity of paternity leave from their workplaces.

My word of caution in all this is that, as much as I support proxy voting, I do not want the House to do anything that might unwittingly set a precedent, even symbolically, for some unscrupulous employers in any way to interfere with or erode paid maternity leave. Women on maternity leave—that time is very important—should be on maternity leave, and they should not feel under pressure to vote, write emails to their boss or meet whatever the particular demands of their workplace are. We need to be careful not to send a signal to employers that women on maternity leave and men on paternity leave can still do some tasks, such as write the odd email.

I am talking not about MPs, but about the signal we may send to bosses. I know that fathers often, depending on the size of the company and the nature of the place in which they work, feel uncomfortable about taking paternity leave, and there is not as much acceptance of it and understanding as we would like. I just ask the House to be careful that if we bring in proxy voting—I think that we should—we in no way send a signal to any employer or workplace that maternity or paternity leave is not sacrosanct. It is sacrosanct, and it must be. It was too hard fought for to be compromised in any way.

Our job is to protect workers in the workplace. We know that pregnancy discrimination is still a big issue, and that is a stark reminder of how fragile the rights of new mothers can very often be. Let us not do anything to compromise or erode such rights. Research recently commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that some 54,000 working mothers per year are forced out of work in pregnancy through discriminatory practices. Let us tackle that, and let us protect nursing mothers and new fathers. Regardless of what we do in the House, when maternity leave is taken out there, it must still remain sacrosanct. It needs to be protected absolutely, not compromised, eroded or undermined in any way whatsoever.