Tom Brake
Main Page: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)Department Debates - View all Tom Brake's debates with the Leader of the House
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Miller
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that those are factors to consider. In fact, one reason why I was not going to talk about start and finish times was that it is a specific discussion. If he will allow me to take issue slightly with what he said, I feel that certainty is far more important. We can all cope with a lot of things in life as long as we know what is going on. All too often, the chaos that I mentioned feels very real, not just to us and staff in our parliamentary offices, but to members of staff here. I have been asked a number of times in the Tea Room, “Ms Miller, do you know when the vote might come?”. People want to be able to plan their days. The way in which this place is organised, and particularly the use of urgent questions, is a real problem for us, but I will come on to that in more detail in a moment.
Mrs Miller
Of course I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that Madam Deputy Speaker will not take a dim view of my allowing interventions.
Tom Brake
Does the right hon. Lady agree that another factor that must be taken into account is whether the Government of the day have a majority? She was elected in 2005, and I suspect that between 2005 and 2015, there was a degree of stability in people’s ability to plan work, because successive Governments had a majority. When that is not the case, things become much more unpredictable.
Mrs Miller
I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is not the point that I am making. He is right that there is an unpredictability when we have to deal with enormous issues such as Brexit. I suppose that I am talking about the things that we can control that we are not controlling, and that, I think, is part of a modern workplace. I will come on to that in a bit more detail.
We all agree that being a Member of this place is an immense honour, but that does not mean that we have to keep it in a time warp. Sometimes we feel the great pressure of the history of this place. We may not want to challenge what has gone before for fear of being seen to be disrespectful of it. We must acknowledge that that is a pressure on each of us as Members, perhaps in different ways.
Modernisation would help us to attract new and different people to being Members of Parliament. Yes, perhaps it would attract more women, more disabled people or people with younger children, but it would be people who want a less chaotic and more certain place in which to work—a place to which they feel they can contribute.
There is a much more fundamental issue here for all of us, regardless of our gender, sexuality or ethnicity. If we thought about this place in a more focused way, it would help us to retain Members of Parliament. This place is at its best when we have Members who have been here for many years as well as Members who are brand new, because that gives a perspective on procedure, debate and the history of this place. We need to work far harder at retaining MPs. Women in particular move away from this place far too soon. It would also help us to support better our staff in our parliamentary offices, and those parliamentary staff who support us so freely and so well. We have a responsibility to act to make sure that this is a modern workplace.
Another more fundamental issue that I will place on the table for others to comment on is trust in Parliament. We can take this debate today at a very superficial level—as being about women with children, childcare and nurseries—but it is also about how much trust people have in a workplace that looks more akin to the 18th century than the 21st.
The Brexit process has challenged people’s trust not just in parliamentarians, but in the nature of Parliament. We need to keep that in mind as we move forward and think very carefully about the challenge that the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge has put on the table today. We cannot continually kick into the long grass the need to modernise this place and to get to grips with some of the issues set out by her, me, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake).
Some of the groundwork has been done with “The Good Parliament” guide, and I think that all of us would want to put on record our sincere thanks to Professor Sarah Childs for what she has done. Some of those changes, as the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge said, have come into play. The nursery is very important, not just for us, but for our staff. My staff use that nursery, and I can keep great staff, which I might not otherwise have been able to do, because we have that nursery.
Proxy voting is long overdue, but being modern is not just about people who have small babies. My very small babies are now very large babies; in fact, the youngest is 17. It is actually even more difficult—you might have some sympathy with this, Madam Deputy Speaker—to look after a 12-year-old, if you have no childcare, when you are trying to go and vote or have been called in for a meeting during a recess. On more than one occasion, my children were parked with a policeman at the back of the Speaker’s Chair—thank goodness for those policemen providing that help and support—because nothing else was available. As we think of modernisation, we must think more roundly about the pressures on our lives at times other than those very important times when we have small children, and that we think about buildings and procedures hand in hand.
I hope that this debate will make us feel that we need a clear plan for moving forward. I pay tribute to Sarah Childs for her report. I pay tribute to the work that the Speaker has done, the work done by the Commons reference group on representation and inclusion, and all the other elements of work that has been going on, including, obviously, around the Cox report. Many, many different things are happening, but to me it all feels very fragmented. As somebody who is incredibly interested in this issue, I have found it very difficult to keep up with what is really going on. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington, who is on the Commission, will of course know far more than I do, and will be on top of it all, but it can be very difficult for many of us to know the long-term vision for this House as a modern workplace.
It feels very much as though—this is meant not as a criticism, but as an observation of fact—modernisation is being considered in quite a piecemeal way. We need to think about the risks that that poses to our being able to hold people to account for delivery of modernisation. We need to have clear managerial responsibility for modernisation. At the end of this debate, who will be responsible for making sure that the things we have talked about actually happen? I do not think it should be the Leader of the House, because he is also part of Government—it should be wider than that. We need to think about the procedures and the processes in play.
One immediate and very deep concern that I have is for the mental health of our parliamentary and constituency staff, and of Members of Parliament, because the chaotic approach and uncertainty that I mentioned are well-known triggers for mental health problems. If we do not act quite swiftly on this, we are at risk of being widely criticised for not acting. Constant uncertainty has an impact. We do not know when debates will start every day, because we do not know how many urgent questions there will be. We think, “Does that mean I will have to cancel or move meetings?” Of course, it is not just us who do that—it is also our parliamentary staff. Some Members who do not have parliamentary staff here have to do it themselves. It is a very inefficient use of time.
The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge highlighted inefficiencies around voting, but I would say that the issue is much more widespread than that. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington talked about Brexit. Yes, that has certainly brought a lot more unpredictability into the system, but we could take control of a great deal of that unpredictability and that chaotic feel.
I call on those who are able to influence these matters to hold an urgent review of the House timetable. I would be interested in the Leader of the House’s comments. He is relatively new to the post, but I am sure that he already has well-formed views on these things. Could we, for instance, put urgent questions before questions and debates? If these questions are so urgent, let us have them before we start the day. As the hon. Member for Huddersfield said, most Members of Parliament are here in London. The vast majority are not like me, commuting on the train. We could therefore perhaps have urgent questions at 8.30 am, before the day starts, so that they do not disrupt the flow of Members’ days—or perhaps from 9.30 am to 10.30 am, to help people with caring responsibilities. That would be a way forward. It seems straightforward to me; I am not sure why we do not do it.
When I joined this place, I had three children, the youngest of whom was three. I have a husband, and I care for two elderly parents who live with me. I am a living and breathing sandwich generation person, and I do not think we speak up enough for sandwich generation people. We often hear people with young children talk, but we do not hear those with caring responsibilities talk enough. I believe greatly that we should all do more to look after our elderly and ailing parents. As well as talking about nurseries, we need to talk about elder care issues, for not only ourselves but our members of staff.
We need a Parliament to be proud of, that attracts the best to stand for election and to be members of staff here, regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or caring responsibilities. Our building, procedures, culture and philosophy here are hugely important—they shape our Parliament, but what should also shape our Parliament is the people we represent. How does a young woman who comes here to visit me feel when I take her into Committee Room 14, which I love, and she sees no women on the wall, just a group of extremely old men? How does any person from a black and minority ethnic background feel about how representative this Parliament is of them when they see nobody of any minority ethnic background on the walls? I will probably now be corrected; there will be someone somewhere. How does a wheelchair user feel when they have to use the service lift to get around?
We need to take all those issues into account when we talk about restoration and renewal. How do people feel when their meetings with their MP are cancelled at a moment’s notice because three urgent questions are granted on the day, with little notice, causing the sort of chaos that we now see daily?
John Cryer
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think things have changed to a large extent. He mentioned my dad, who was an MP here in the 1970s, when there were all-night sittings. From 1974 to 1979, just on our side of the House, we lost 17 MPs in five years from heart attacks, strokes, haemorrhages and all the rest of it. Things have changed, but as I have said, they still have a long way to go.
John Cryer
That would be quite tricky to introduce—we could probably have a whole week of debates about such things, so I will not dwell on that.
Let me move on to accessibility. We all have disabled constituents—members of local associations, Liberal Democrat organisations, or constituency Labour parties—who come to see us, often in wheelchairs. They find it difficult to get in and out of the Palace of Westminster, despite the efforts of staff who work hard to make things as easy and accessible as possible for those with disabilities. A lot of community groups, particularly Afro-Caribbean community groups, tend to have an older age profile with members who often walk with difficulty or are in wheelchairs, and who find it difficult to get in and out of the supposed mother of Parliaments.
Some years ago I was not an MP but a trade union officer. I was the political officer for what was then the Transport and General Workers Union and is now Unite the union. It is the biggest union in the country, and has a large number of disabled members. I remember organising a lobby, and as usual with lobbies the meeting took place on the main Committee corridor. We were campaigning to keep the Remploy factories open, and the industrial officer who organised that lobby with me was Jennie Formby, now general secretary of the Labour party—I still work with her. There was only a small group of people in wheelchairs, but I vividly remember it taking an hour and a half to take those people from the Committee corridor to Carriage Gates where they could get in cabs. Even getting people picked up in cabs was tricky—it was not just about getting them from the corridor to Carriage Gates.
This is supposedly a people’s Parliament, but if a large section of the population cannot easily get in and out, can it really be that? We must change things. I am not sure exactly how we should change them in a building such as this, which, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke said, was built in a different era and for very different needs, but they must change. We must be able to get people who have serious or lesser disabilities in and out of Parliament, so that they can get to Central Lobby, Westminster Hall, the Committee corridor and the upper Committee corridor. If we cannot do that when work takes place over the next few years, we will struggle to call it a people’s Parliament.
Hannah Bardell
The right hon. Lady has read my mind, because I was coming to that. I am glad to see that among the threadbare business for next week there will be an update on that important piece of work. It is very important that we move that forward. I commend her on the important work that she and the Women and Equalities Committee, which she chairs, have done on this. She said that the Brexit process had challenged people’s trust in politics and in this place. I agree with that and would go further: it has exposed the crumbling relic of a democratic institution that this place is. We face the prospect of having a candidate for Prime Minister who wants to prorogue Parliament and have a no-deal Brexit, which will have a devastating impact. How will we get public trust if we cannot even have proper business and legislation in this place?
The right hon. Lady talked about the built environment and the paintings around this place. I have had the good fortune to sit on the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, and it has been a privilege to do so and particularly to see the work that has been done on the 209 Women project. I commend all those involved in that project, but during that period, I learned that 25 times more money had been spent over the past 20 years on buying pictures of men for this place than had been spent on buying pictures of women. Let us not forget that the photographs of the female parliamentarians who took part in the 209 Women project were taken by female photographers, who were not paid, which is a really important point. When we are trying to support women and their work, we must remember that they should be properly recognised. Without radical changes to this place to make it more inclusive, we will not properly reflect society.
We have made significant strides. We are the gayest Parliament in the world, or one of the gayest, and I am proud to be a woman who is gay in this place. When I stood for election and for selection, I stood against four men. I looked at the line-up and thought, “Why do I want to do this? Why do I want to go up against four men to go to a place that is very male dominated?” I did it because I wanted to be part of the change that I know many young women cannot see.
In Scotland, we have also made significant strides. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet. When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, she was one of only a handful of leaders in the world to do that. It is really important that we have politicians who are hard-working, relatable and can bring their personal experiences to this place. We saw that in the most recent election. There are Members across this House with a vast array of life experiences, but we have to make sure that we have that not just in Parliament and its elected representatives, but in our media. I often look up at the Press Gallery, at the press who are looking down at us, and I do not see many female faces or people of colour. It is really important that we have people reporting on our politics who are as diverse as possible.
We have had contributions from Members who have spoken about access to this place. If this building was being built from scratch today, there is absolutely no way in which it would meet health and safety standards. The hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge talked about the voting system. We have proxy voting, but electronic voting would save us a huge amount of time. On the last count that I did, which was in March, I calculated that we had spent 205 hours—five and a half working weeks—just voting. Given that Parliament sits for only 35 or 36 weeks a year, a huge amount of time is being wasted just on voting. Nobody is arguing that we should not be here debating and voting. That is extremely important, but, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, perhaps we could have an allotted time for urgent questions and have predictability in our business, particularly when we have people travelling from our constituencies, businesses and other organisations to come to see us in Parliament. Having to cancel meetings at the last minute and not being able to get back for children’s events and caring responsibilities is a ridiculous situation. There is no other such employment anywhere. We do our constituents an injustice, and in my view we cannot properly represent them and their issues when there is such a lack of predictability, progress and activity from a legislative perspective. Brexit has dominated so much of the legislative timetable that it has created and exposed the inadequacies of the system.
I understand that people like the banter and to have a wee chat in the voting Lobbies, but for goodness’ sake, we live in a modern world. We should be able to have those meetings and engage with one another. It just exposes the inaccessibility of the Government and the inability to get answers from them that people feel the need to use the time in the voting Lobbies just to corner other people, because they cannot get the proper responses, meetings and time that they feel they need.
Tom Brake
I want to use this opportunity to draw to the attention of the hon. Lady and other Members present to the fantastic opportunity that we have with the Northern Estate programme, as part of which we shall build a, I think badly named, temporary Chamber—a Chamber that could in fact be permanent. If we cannot get reform here—which is quite difficult to do, because there is a certain amount of inertia—we should make sure that for that temporary Chamber, which we will be sitting in from about 2025 onwards, those issues are at the very least tested, so that if they are successful, they can be reintroduced here when we come back to a new Palace of Westminster in 2031 or thereabouts.
Hannah Bardell
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that important point. However, if I am still here in 2031 and Scotland is not an independent country, I will eat my hat, quite literally. The thought that I would still be having to come to this place horrifies me.
We do not have a seat in the Chamber for every Member. So many times I have heard people argue, “We need to queue up and vote in the Lobbies because people need to be here for the debate,” yet we can only fit half the Members of this place into this Chamber to listen to a debate. For goodness’ sake—it is common sense. Let us have a Chamber that is big enough. I know of so few Parliaments—I have been in Parliaments all over the world, including Malawi at the beginning of last year—that do not have electronic voting. The European Parliament and the Council of Europe have it, as do the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is not difficult, so for goodness’ sake, let us just get on and do it.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), in a recent speech, made a point about half terms and summer breaks. She included reference to experiences in Scotland. In parts of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the recesses do not match up to the holidays. I have colleagues who sometimes have an overlap of less than 10 days, so they cannot even get a break with their families. I am in no doubt that we have a huge amount of privilege being in this place, and this is not about having a rant and a moan; it is about saying to our constituents, “Look, we could do a much better job for you, and a much better job by you, and more people—women—from across the social and the economic spectrum could be encouraged into this place if it had a proper, modern working ethic.”
I shall finish by reflecting on some of the experiences of my staff, many of whom have been with me since I was first elected. About the end of 2015, we started an all-party group on deaths abroad and consular services, because we had two constituents—women—who had been killed abroad in suspicious circumstances. Since then, we have taken evidence from about 60 families across the UK who have lost loved ones abroad. That has been a harrowing and deeply distressing experience for me and my staff—nothing like the experience that those families have had, but none the less the vicarious trauma that my staff and I have experienced has been significant.
We have worked with the parliamentary authorities to get the right emotional support, and it has become very clear to me that there is not appropriate emotional support for staff members. All our staff members do an incredible job, and they often have to deal with distressing and difficult constituency work. We must do much more, through the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the other authorities, to ensure that our staff get the proper support when they come to work for an MP, because we are all individual employers and we have a very important responsibility to our staff to ensure that they are properly protected. They will be able to serve our constituents properly only if they get the right support, and this place will be a modern Parliament that can properly reflect all parts of the UK and all people who live in it only if we can make it a modern and sensible working place.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
There are some heavyweight names attached to the motion: that of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), who opened the debate with an outstanding, wide-ranging speech. It was right to bring this matter to our attention and to keep it on the agenda.
Before my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) goes off to do his bit in childcare, I have to say that it is good to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge has dispatched him to do that. It would be interesting to hear from him on what it was like to be the child of an MP. It certainly did not put him off. He was also an older child of another MP—both his father and his mother were Members of Parliament. It is good to see him in his place, but we accept that he has other duties to go and do.
Many Members are probably not aware that the sitting time changes were thanks to Dame Joan Ruddock, who pulled together a group of cross-party Members. We consulted and voted on the various proposed times. It is pleasing that the Health Secretary, a hands-on-dad, was also involved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) was part of a group of new MPs, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge, who contributed to an important Fabian Society pamphlet about change. I wrote the introduction. I did not agree with all the suggestions in the pamphlet, but it was good to see that new Members were proposing changes.
A number of reports have been published. Many Members have referred to “The Good Parliament” by Professor Sarah Childs, which was commissioned by the Speaker and published as long ago as 2016. Its 43 recommendations address three parliamentary dimensions. Even before its publication, people were making trivial remarks such as “Oh, it is about everyone using the same toilet.” Professor Childs had to arrange many meetings to try to convince people that hers was a serious and hard-hitting report.
As I have said, the report identified three parliamentary dimensions. The first was “Equality and Participation”, which asked
“how a diverse group of MPs might be selected for, and elected to, Parliament”.
The second, “Parliamentary Infrastructure”,
“covers everything from the buildings and furniture of Parliament to the official rules and working practices”.
The third, “Commons Culture”, looked beyond the formal rules to examine the parliamentary culture and its effect on diversity.
Who selects parliamentary candidates is a matter for the parties. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who is not present at the moment, has put the responsibility for all-women shortlists squarely on Tony Blair. I would say to him that many members of the Labour party, women and men, fought long and hard to secure all-women shortlists. As a result, 49% of the parliamentary Labour party are women. That movement rose from the grassroots to the higher echelons of the party, and 1997, when so many women were elected to Parliament, was an important milestone.
Tom Brake
Does the hon. Lady agree that some fantastic organisations are working to improve diversity in the House, notably Operation Black Vote? I mention OBV by way of an apology to her and to the Leader of the House, because I have to attend an event that it is hosting here this afternoon. The event will finish by 5 pm, and if I do not leave I will miss the opportunity to support and, perhaps, mentor a person from OBV to ensure that people from ethnic minorities are better represented in the House.