Participation in Debates

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend puts it absolutely perfectly: this is all a question of balance and trying to ensure that Members can participate—particularly those with difficult circumstances, whom everybody wants to facilitate if possible—while also recognising that there is a Government agenda to be worked through and the job of holding the Government to account. My right hon. Friend—my hon. Friend; I dare not promote him quite so quickly—has managed to say in one sentence what I think I have been saying over the past hour and a half. Perhaps he should be Leader of the House.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

This may be deemed a covid-secure environment, but every day I am here I witness breaches of the “hands, face, space” criteria set out by Her Majesty’s Government, so someone who is clinically vulnerable is at risk and therefore this is not secure. Secondly, may I say that it is completely reprehensible that the Leader of the House discussed the clinical diagnosis of a Member of this House from the Dispatch Box and that calling on Members to declare that they are clinically extremely vulnerable is also reprehensible? I have two suggestions for him. The first, on equality, is that he ask the Equality and Human Rights Commission to carry out an investigation into the discrimination that is occurring as a result of his practices. Secondly, I ask for a short independent commission to see what is possible with regard to making the whole of Parliament virtual for those who require it.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am concerned to hear the hon. Lady say that this is not a covid-secure workplace. If we look around, we see the precautions that have been taken: the advice given to people to wear masks, which most people are doing as they walk about the Palace of Westminster; the gaps that have been placed; the covid-security of this Chamber; the lack of spaces within this Chamber, which is problematic for many Members, who regret the fact that they are not able to attend debates and that we have only about 50 people in the Chamber, rather than the 400 or whatever the precise number is that we can normally contain; the changes that have been made to the Tea Room, which are not enormously popular with all Members, to ensure that it, too, is a covid-secure workspace; and the encouragement of people, which has been continual since the beginning of this pandemic, to wash their hands. I must confess that I would be very surprised if right hon. and hon. Members are not washing their hands regularly, and no doubt she will encourage them when she sees them failing to do so. I am surprised by what she says and think that the work done by the House of Commons authorities to ensure that this is a covid-secure workplace has been most impressive. As regards the equalities issue, we are doing exactly what she would want to see done in ensuring that those people who have illnesses are able to participate in our proceedings.