Proxy Voting — House of Commons, 2018-09-13
Topic: Government Operations
Valerie Carol Marian Vaz (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the Leader of the House for opening the debate. We had a Back-Bench debate on this subject on 1 February. This is the second debate, and I think, from what the Leader of the House has said, that there is going to be yet another, this time on a substantive motion Following the breakdown of the pairing system on 17 July, Mr Speaker, you said during the urgent question on proxy voting that "there is concern about a potentially endless debate", and that "people would not want…procrastination."—[Official Report, 18 July 2018; Vol. 645, c. 430.] I am not sure what the Leader of the House was actually saying—whether she is going to take further evidence or is going to ask the Procedure Committee to look at this issue again. I cannot see how, other than through this debate, she is going to be informed as to what the procedure will be. Is it going to a be a formal committee, or is it not? They are very fine, warm words, but what we want now is action, because I had understood that everyone had agreed on the principle. Labour’s business managers have tried to discuss this with the Government; they have offered to meet to resolve it. Babies will have been born and grown up, gone to school, left school and probably gone to university before the Government finally agree on proxy voting I, too, want to move the debate forward. It is important to do that, because I had understood that we had all agreed on the principle of proxy voting, yet this motion seems to be narrow in merely discussing proxy voting in general. I want to focus on the process of how we could take this issue forward. I thank the Procedure Committee—its Chair and other members are here—for its diligence in undertaking the inquiry to ensure that this issue does not go away. The Committee reported on 9 May. In the meantime, hon. Members such as my hon. Friends the Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) and the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) have all recently given birth. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) is about to give birth, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) is also pregnant. We want to act quickly The Leader of the House is right: hon. Members are not employees; we are here to represent our constituents, and our work in this place is undertaken in the Chamber, on Select Committees, on taskforces, in other Committees, and in our constituencies. This relates to the narrow principle of those giving birth who, for whatever reason, are unable to be physically present in the Chamber but are not incapacitated by illness or away on an official visit. We are not referring to a natural process as an incapacity, but one where the needs of a child are paramount, and the parent needs flexibility. Added to that, our hours are not normal working hours. Business managers were able to support women when they needed to be away, and were able to agree some concessions, but now, in a 21st-century Parliament, hon. Members consider that this should become a right.