Business of the House (Virtual Proceedings and Topical Questions for Written Answer) — House of Lords, 2020-04-21
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move the first Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper When the House last met, my noble friend the Leader of the House set out a number of changes to the way our business would be organised. She also said that work would be done over Easter to look at how our practices and procedures could be adapted to allow noble Lords to take part in our business while not attending the House While we have been away, a huge amount of work has been undertaken to enable some of our proceedings to take place virtually from today onwards. I pay tribute to the House administration, the parliamentary IT professionals and the usual channels, who have been working very hard to achieve a lot in a short space of time. In particular, I mention the leaders and my private secretary, Victoria Warren, who has also done an enormous amount to make this possible. Members of the House owe a huge debt of gratitude for the work that all these people have undertaken to allow us to do our work Connecting some 780 Members who have varying degrees of technical ability, who are distributed around the country and who cannot be visited to be given help, with little time for testing and using off-the-shelf technology, is not a trivial problem. At the end of last week, the Procedure Committee met virtually and agreed to the package of measures before the House today. If this Motion is agreed to, from today Oral Questions, Statements, UQ repeats, PNQs, Thursday debates and topical QSDs will all take place virtually. Noble Lords will not be able to participate in them from the Chamber Your Lordships will be used to signing up in advance to speak in debates and QSDs but will now need to do so for Questions, Statements, UQs and PNQs as well. The same system that we have used for many years to sign up to speak in debates will now be used for all these types of business, although the deadlines for signing up will be a bit earlier. The Procedure Committee has published guidance to help noble Lords navigate the system that we will use. All noble Lords signed up to take part in a Virtual Proceeding will be sent instructions on how to join that proceeding. I ask all noble Lords taking part in one of the early Virtual Proceedings to familiarise themselves with the guidance that has been produced and to ask for assistance if they need it. Noble Lords not taking part will also be sent a link so that they can watch what is going on We will also need to continue taking some legislative business in the Chamber. That is because our new Virtual Proceedings will not be empowered to take decisions on behalf of the House as a whole, and at the moment that is quite right. When this House considers legislation, it is considering proposed changes to the law. We have to be sure that the House’s decision-making ability is not restricted or impaired by the use of remote working, but it is of course something that we can keep under review. In the meantime, I will endeavour to keep Chamber sittings to a minimum Finally, the Procedure Committee has agreed to the introduction of a new category of Written Question to allow Members of this House to get faster Answers from Ministers on topical matters. When they ask Questions in this new category, noble Lords will get their Answers in half the normal time I know that the system that has been devised will not entirely satisfy each and every noble Lord. It will not exactly mirror our normal proceedings, but in my view it provides a credible way for the House to continue holding the Government to account. Its operation will be kept under review and will be revised if necessary. I urge noble Lords to be patient if glitches occur. The staff of the House will do everything they can to help us adapt and we should probably thank them in advance for their forbearance.