UK Parliament / Open data

Virtual Participation in Debate

It is lovely to see everybody bobbing up and down—we do not get to see that nowadays—and there is no call list. Goodness me, Madam Deputy Speaker, what days we hark back to! How much we want to get back to those halcyon days.

I am afraid that I was not able to hear what my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House said, because I was unfortunately caught unawares and did not know that the debate was about to start. I am grateful to him for the debate. He knows that last week, I called strongly for a debate on this matter, but it is a shame that it was done in such an unexpected and surprising way. I was on a call with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and it felt discourteous to say to her, “I’m terribly sorry, but I need to rush to the Chamber because apparently I am about to take part in a debate.” I set that call up several weeks ago and I was therefore disappointed to have to say that I could not complete our discussions on important matters relating to human trafficking and slavery. I should say that I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery.

I am also Chair of the Procedure Committee, which has issued six reports in this Session, four of which are on procedures under coronavirus. I thank all Committee members. A few have left us in the last few months, but we have a very active Committee and many of its members are in the Chamber, demonstrating that Procedure Committee members really do care about procedure.

We have worked incredibly hard to assist the House in considering what are appropriate proceedings and how we should change them to reflect the situation under coronavirus. I want to be clear up front: any recommendations by the Procedure Committee have been made on the basis of how we make the best of the situation. Nobody wants to be in this position. I keep using the word sub-optimal—my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has quoted me on it. The position is undoubtedly sub-optimal.

Other members of the Committee will recall that in our first meeting, we said that we would have to consider proceedings under coronavirus because things might change quickly. We first convened on 2 March. By 6 March, we had the Clerk of the House and the House authorities in to give us private evidence and a private briefing. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was incredibly courteous in allowing time for me, as Chair of the Committee, to meet him privately to hear what the Government’s thinking was.

I remember that first briefing when Members heard, for example, “We will have to stay 2 metres apart.” It was the first time I had heard the term “social distancing”. None of us could comprehend the thought that the Chamber would have crosses on the Green Benches where we could not sit and that whole Benches would be out of bounds. None of us had any idea how that would function.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
684 cc780-1 
Session
2019-21
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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