Proxy Voting

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I certainly love looking at my hon. Friend’s Facebook photos of little Clifford. It is great to feel that we get to see him a bit even though he is not often in the Chamber. Yes, I completely agree with her. What proxy voting will do for this place is to enable parents to have that precious bonding time with their new babies.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) for securing what has turned out to be a fruitful urgent question. I very much welcome the Leader of the House’s commitment to ensure that we have the motion on Monday. It has been a long time coming, but I think we are going to get there at last. This episode has been profoundly embarrassing for the Government; I do not know whether the Leader of the House shares that embarrassment. I do not know whether it was the Whips Office trying to block this, but I will take the Government at their word. I welcome you saying, Mr Speaker, that if the motion is passed, proxy voting will be available the day after to Members of the House of Commons. Perhaps the Leader of the House can ensure that that is the case.

What happened to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) shocked the country. Our constituents could not believe that in the place where we design the legislation that deals with safety at work, we were prepared to put one of our colleagues at such risk. Our 19th-century method of voting has totally and utterly failed. The discredited “nod and wink” pairing system is in tatters and lies in disrepute. It has relied on trust, and clearly that trust has been thoroughly and fundamentally broken by what happened to the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire.

The Scottish National party never believed in that system or trusted it. I am glad that we have been totally vindicated for never participating in pairing. As the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, said, we have to do more to modernise this place. This is a good start, but it is only a start. We have to start to ensure that we look after people in this House who are ill, indisposed or cannot make it to this place of work. We have to start looking at the practice of putting people in cramped Division Lobbies, at risk to their own health. Many of us heard my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) talking about her claustrophobia in the packed Lobby last Tuesday. We have to get beyond that. We have to start making sure that this place looks like a modern, 21st-century Parliament.

This is good news, and I welcome it. I look forward to discussing this later with the Leader of the House, when we will hopefully get a clear indication about how this will be done. This is good work, but there is more to be done. Let us get a move on and make sure that this place is safe for the people who come to work here.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is taking this matter up with the Scottish Parliament, which also has informal pairing arrangements. I am interested to know what steps he is taking to ensure that it comes into the 21st century at the same rate as the Westminster Parliament.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the situation for the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). I can confirm that a pair is available for her, or, if she is on site during the day at any point before the vote, she will be nodded through, which means her vote will be recorded. That is the existing arrangement for those who cannot be here due to illness or other reasons. As I said last Thursday, I genuinely do not believe that any of her constituents would honestly require her to turn up here in a wheelchair when it was perfectly possible to receive the normal arrangements for people in this place with conditions. Members with long-term health issues were paired on that day.

I am genuinely delighted that we are making progress on this issue, but I urge all Members to recognise that we had 13 years of a Labour Government, with three female Leaders of the House, and we have had two Liberal Democrat Deputy Leaders of the House, and I do not believe that any of them brought in proxy voting. The Scottish Parliament has not brought in proxy voting.

Let us pause and have a moment of celebration. We are achieving something truly fantastic—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) shouts that this is not my idea. I am certainly not claiming credit for it. I am asking Members to celebrate the House’s achievement and what we can do when we get together and collaborate.