Proceedings During the Pandemic (No. 4)

Before I call the Leader of the House to move the motion, Members will be aware that the debate on Second Reading of the Bill could have continued until 7 pm and that the next motion on proceedings during the pandemic has been tabled as a motion that is not debatable after 7 pm—a procedure sometimes referred to as “nod or nothing”. As such, a motion can be debated only if the previous business finishes before its full allotted time. A call list has not been prepared, but given that we now have time before 7 pm and I see present some Members who wish to speak, I shall call several colleagues to make brief contributions on the motion.

That the Orders of 2 June (Proceedings during the pandemic (No. 2)) and of 4 June (Virtual participation in proceedings during the pandemic) shall have effect until 3 November 2020.— (Mr Rees-Mogg.)

I thank the Leader of the House for tabling the motion and the Procedure Committee for its work on this issue. It is the right thing to do in the circumstances, given the difficulties that we still face with the pandemic, so Her Majesty’s Opposition support the motion.

In my role as Chair of the Procedure Committee, I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has tabled this motion. There is no doubt that this Parliament is sub-optimal—we have used that term time and again about the way Parliament operates—but in the circumstances we are in and with the Government guidance as it is, this is the best that we make of the situation at this time. I urge right hon. and hon. Friends around the Chamber to agree the motion so that we can continue to make sure that Members who are unable to be here at this time can continue to participate. I urge the Government to look carefully at the guidance for workplaces to see whether it can be changed in ways that will enable us to change the way we hold proceedings in this place.

The SNP also fully supports the continuation of the provisions for virtual participation. I welcome the proposal that the provisions will run at least until 3 November, which gives us time to plan and prepare properly, allows the Government to progress with their business, and allows Members to participate as safely as they can. Even if some shielding restrictions have been reduced, parts of the country continue to go into local lockdown— we are experiencing some restrictions in my Glasgow constituency—and the more that Members are able to participate virtually, for whatever reason, the less pressure there is on the ancillary services here in the Chamber. The reality is that only 50 people can be in the Chamber at any one time, so enabling Members to continue to contribute to the scrutiny processes through the virtual system is welcome. Attempts to derail the Government’s progress and upset the cross-party consensus on maintaining that would be disappointing, so the Government can be assured of the SNP’s support for the motion.

I am going to disappoint the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) by breaking the consensus. It is a paradox that one of the great champions of Back-Bench rights, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), has been forced, now that he is Leader of the House, to introduce measures that massively undercut Back-Bench rights.

I have been in the House for 33 years; to call this arrangement sub-optimal is to use a very delicate phrase. This is the weakest House of Commons that I have ever seen. It does not do its job. The House of Commons, at its best, is far greater than the sum of its parts. It is an organic entity that reflects our constituents’ interests and pushes the Government to do better, govern better and make the right decisions first time, not after several preliminary attempts. It has been bled dry—I am being as delicate as I can about what others would call U-turns—and it gives Ministers a pathetically easy time. That is actually not a benefit to Ministers. Having to stand at the Dispatch Box to defend their case, and think through before they arrive all the weaknesses that might be in it, is a way for our Government to improve their case. Those who have been special advisers or Ministers in the past know exactly how the process works. It is one of the things that makes our Government, our Parliament and our democracy better than almost any other in the world.

That is particularly true given that, in late March, under the coronavirus emergency legislation, we gave Ministers huge powers, which were exercised almost straightaway to go into lockdown, and almost straightaway ran into problems because the Government had not had to face this House over several hours to talk about what would happen if somebody’s constituent has a disabled child or a mother they could not look after, or about all the other small, detailed things that make legislation work properly, keep it effective, and keep the confidence of the public.

That is the whole point: if we get into a second wave in the winter, and there are more local lockdowns and more people who are ill or have to stay at home and shield, that is all the more for reason for people to be able to participate virtually.

I will come back to participating virtually. I do not disagree that people should be able to participate virtually, but we have the worst of all worlds. At the moment, we have a Chamber that does not work. I have watched my colleagues in this Chamber make incredibly powerful speeches that would have moved the whole House under normal circumstances, and yet they have exactly the same effect as an Adjournment debate speech. That is what is missing; that is the problem. We are in the middle of some of the biggest problems this country has faced in peacetime, and we have a House of Commons that is not functioning. Parliament is not working.

I want the Government to look at ways of making it possible to use the Chamber better. There are small things we can do, like using the Galleries, but I think we should be testing every MP every day so that we can be sure that we can operate properly. People say, “But what about our constituents?” Well, that is what they want; I have had any number of communications in the past couple of weeks saying, “Why aren’t you going back to work? Where are you?” It is very important to do that. We do not have to do away with electronic voting, proxy voting and protecting the vulnerable—by the way, I count as a vulnerable Member in these circumstances—but we can make the House work.

My plea to the Leader of the House is this: by all means carry on for the next month, but before we get to November, when we have to make the decisions about covid—not after covid either has or has not blown up—about the next stage of the economy and about Brexit, we must ensure that we do it with a full and properly functioning House.

We are in exceptionally difficult times—we often say that, but it is the truth. We have to look at the issues and where we are. I understand the issues that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) referred to, because they have been on my mind, and particularly those relating to Brexit, primarily because businesses in my constituency are asking me where we will be. They are three or four businesses in the agrifood sector that probably employ 2,500 people. It is very important that they have some idea of where they will be.

But I understand why we need to extend these measures to 3 November. I have to be honest: I support that, because I understand the reasons for it. It is not ideal. There will be burning issues relating to the economy, and those will become greater as furloughing decreases and pressure comes upon businesses, as the way they respond will have an impact on the high streets and our constituents.

Brexit is a burning issue for me, as a Brexiteer. I need to be able to go back to businesses in my constituency and tell them where we are going in relation to it. I am fearful that as we get closer to 3 November, all of a sudden—I said this earlier today to some colleagues—it will be the new year, and then this becomes a real problem, because at the end of this year we will be making many big decisions that will impact greatly on our people.

There is also the issue of covid-19. I am hoping—I say this with lots of prayer—that we will not have a second wave of covid-19. The fact is that we do not know, but we now know better how to respond to it, so there will be that ability, with the Government responding to clusters, but we need the support of our constituents to make that happen.

I make a wee plea to the Leader of the House, and it is one I have made before. One of the things that many of us in this House—indeed, probably all of us—enjoy is being able to take debates on specific subjects to Westminster Hall. I asked Mr Speaker about this. The Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), is not here, but I spoke to him before recess. He made me aware, as he has made others aware, of the many outstanding debates that MPs want to bring forward on behalf of their constituents in Westminster Hall, where they have that opportunity. Is it not possible for us to have the opportunity to be involved in Westminster Hall debates between now and 3 November? There is a way of doing that. It is an opportunity that every one of us here enjoys.

I am disappointed that, having come back thinking that we might move on and be able to accommodate more Members within this Chamber, we seem to be where we were in the summer. We are here to lead. We are expecting schools to go back, universities to go back and people to go back to work. With 650 MPs and only 50 allowed in the Chamber, that inevitably restricts the ability of Members to represent their constituents. We live in a difficult time. We also live in a time when Government legislation undermines the civil liberties of many people. We have certain areas of our country in local lockdown, yet those Members of Parliament are restricted in their ability to come to this Chamber because of how we are operating at this moment.

I am disappointed that the motion, had it come at 7 pm, would have been without debate and for an extension until November. We already see the number of cases reducing and the number of deaths and hospital admissions falling, and yet we will continue with the existing arrangement for several more weeks.

I apologise for contributing from the Opposition Benches, but there is no room anywhere else. Does my hon. Friend believe that the measures we are taking are proportionate, given that in the last two weeks of July five times more people died of seasonal flu, outside the season, than of covid-19? When we had Hong Kong flu, it carried off 80,000 people. Did we behave in this ridiculous way?

It is interesting that my right hon. Friend is over there, given the ten-minute rule Bill we had today. The key point is that we should be making progress. If the Government wish to continue, as they do, with the current arrangements, they should not go to November. The arrangements should come back to the House on a more regular basis to be debated and tested, because they affect the civil liberties of our constituents. If the House is willing to go along with them, fine, but just to shut debate down until the beginning of November is wrong. I hope that the Leader of the House, who has been a strong defender of the rights of Back Benchers in this House, comes back and tests the opinion of the House more regularly. I have to say that Back Benchers are restless; they do not have the say that they should have.