House Business during the Pandemic

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Carmichael]

It was my decision to make an application, but it was Mr Speaker’s decision to grant the application. If the hon. Gentleman is seeking to question Mr Speaker’s judgment, he should perhaps make that clear. And the very best of luck to him. I see that he is not standing to correct the record in that regard.

The other point that the Leader of the House made last week was that, somehow or other, Members should be prepared to set an example. In this, there might be a bit more consistency than in other arguments. Let us remember that the ending of virtual proceedings ran contrary to the Government’s own advice that if someone could do their job from home, they should do so. Of course, the Government have form when it comes to disregarding that particular piece of advice.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

In response to the point that was just made by the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) about the vote that we had a week ago, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that all those people who were having to shield were unable to vote in that Division? It was one of the biggest Conservative rebellions since Brexit, but lots of people were unable to vote. If those people had been able to vote, we might well have had a different result, so does he agree that it would be sensible for us to have another vote with everyone who has been elected to this House able to take part?

[Mr Carmichael]

Having committed ourselves to virtual or hybrid proceedings, it would have been sensible to make the decision to end them by a virtual process. However, that was not done, and we have to just accept that that was the way the vote went. If the hon. Gentleman has regard to the excellent letter from the Constitution Unit at UCL, he will find that it makes exactly that point.

One of the things that pains me more than anything else is the way in which the Government have chosen to do this without consulting the other parties in the House and without seeking to build the necessary consensus. So let us be quite clear that, in the event that this all goes horribly wrong, as it may well, only one person and one party in this place will be responsible for that.

I do not want to take too much time, but before I sit down I have to reflect on the fact that the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) was quite harsh in her judgment of the Leader of the House last week. She said that he had been the worst one ever. As I say, I think that that was harsh. Personally, I always reserve judgment until someone has left office as to where they stand in the panoply of greats. However, I think it is worth while comparing how the Leader of the House currently does the job with the way in which it has been done by many of his predecessors.

I was first elected to this place in 2001, and the Leader of the House then was Robin Cook, a man who had been demoted, as many said, from being Foreign Secretary. He never saw the transfer to being Leader of the House as any sort of demotion, however. He gave a weekly masterclass at the Dispatch Box in what it was to be a parliamentarian, and I am pretty sure that he would have had no truck either with the physical return at this time or, indeed, with the manner in which it has been executed.

In her assessment last week, the hon. Member for Wallasey prayed in aid the Prorogation of Parliament as well as the ending of the hybrid proceedings. She might have added to that the treatment of the Liaison Committee. The reason that Robin Cook—or, if you prefer, Sir George Young or William Hague, who have also given distinguished service to the House as Leader of the House—would never have had any truck with this sort of thing is that they understood that the office of Leader of the House had two functions. Yes, the Leader of the House is a Minister who is accountable to Parliament, but also, uniquely, they have a role as Parliament’s representative within Government. Robin Cook, William Hague, George Young and others all understood the importance of that role, and they were never afraid to carry it out. They understood the importance of the principle of equality of all Members and the people that they represent in this place, and they understood that it was their duty in Government, at the Cabinet table, to protect it. That remains the duty of the Leader of the House at the moment. It pains me beyond measure that he is so determined not to do his duty, and my plea to him today is a simple one: he should change his mind and do his duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a great deal going on in the world and, thanks to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, we are debating ourselves—a subject that is of course of great interest to us.

[Mr Perkins]

The right hon. Gentleman’s concern was that virtual debates were preventing the Government from getting on with their business, but the way in which debates took place was just one aspect; another was whether we needed to be here to vote. Even if we had wanted to get rid of virtual contributions to debates, surely we could still have had electronic voting, which would have been much quicker than queuing 45 minutes for a Division, as we did last week.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is an assiduous attender of Parliament and very thoughtful in his contributions. Where I disagree with him is in my understanding of what a Parliament is. Parliament is a coming together from across the nation to one place; therefore, we cannot carry out our role as parliamentarians properly and fully when we are absent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a point with which I have a great deal of sympathy. I would remind hon. and right hon. Members that the formal advice from the Government is that those who are living with people who are shielding do not themselves need to shield, but I understand why many people who are living with people who have to shield want to shield as well for the safety of the member of their family. As I said to the hon. Member for Rhondda, I am listening very carefully to that point.

[Mr Perkins]

Like Conservative Members, I do not think that Parliament is at its greatest when we spend our time debating our own affairs, but if they feel so strongly that a debate about what happens here is a waste of time, could they not help this debate to finish quicker by not constantly interrupting the Leader of the House to tell him that we should not be discussing the damn thing?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman has now made two interventions, so I wonder why he is suddenly so concerned about other people’s interventions. I can see that we should perhaps have a Standing Order to say that he may intervene but no other hon. or right hon. Members may do so.

--- 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.