Proxy Voting — House of Commons, 2018-09-13
Topic: Civil Rights
Emma Elizabeth Reynolds (Labour, Centre-left): I could not agree more. As I said, although I was on informal maternity leave, in every week of that maternity leave I checked emails, I phoned the office and my staff texted me—although they were careful about not bothering me all the time. That comes with the nature of the job, and I am not complaining about it. However, I am saying that it would have been much easier for me if I had not had, on top of that, the stress of wondering whether I should be here, and the criticism that I have described; and if I had had the right to have my constituents represented during that period of leave. I will give my reasons for thinking the pairing system is inadequate in a more formal way shortly, but I wanted to share that experience with other Members During our debate about this issue on 1 February, I explained to the House what had happened a week after I had given birth. I held an election meeting with members of my local party, and I think that if the situation arose again, I would not do so. My husband, who watched me make my speech, said, "I cannot believe I let you do that." I think we underestimate the stress of giving birth. It is not just about forming a close bond with the baby, although that is obviously the priority. To have a healthy baby, one must be a healthy mum. Giving birth is physical, right? And it is hard. Whether a woman has a caesarean or a natural birth, it will take her some weeks to recover. The last thing that she will want to do is hop on a train, or to be driven to London, in order to vote. We must be able to find a way of dealing with this, even given all the complications and the questions raised by the Leader of the House. Let me now quickly give my reasons for thinking that the pairing system falls down. First, in the case of close votes it is either suspended or broken. We heard from the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire, who had given birth three weeks before the vote in which her pair was broken. As she rightly said, that cannot be seen as anything other than cheating. Once the trust is gone, it is difficult to rebuild it Secondly, new mums have been attacked for missing votes. I have gone through that. I want to place on record my thanks to TheyWorkForYou, which, since our debate on 1 February, has put a banner on my page on its website saying that I was absent between July and December last year, so that the numerology takes that into account. People had been able to look at the website and see that I had not been here for many votes, so I am grateful to TheyWorkForYou for making that change. Perhaps, though, it should not be up to another organisation to be transparent about what is happening in Parliament. Perhaps the parliamentary website should do the work of TheyWorkForYou. The representatives of TheyWorkForYou tell me that they rely on generous donations, and I think that they do a good job, but perhaps we should do it for them My third point is the most important, and I mentioned it earlier. Only proxy voting, not pairing, will allow Members who are new parents to represent their constituents and vote in Parliament by nominating a colleague—not a Whip!—to vote on their behalf while they are with their newborn. That, I think, will be particularly crucial in the autumn. I do not want my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who is due to give birth next week, to be worrying, in October or November, about whether she will have a say on the Brexit deal that the Prime Minister will bring back. I do not want her to have that worry. I want her to be able to forge a close bond with her baby and enjoy her maternity leave, albeit, perhaps, with some constituency responsibilities Fourthly—this has already been mentioned today—pairing is not well understood. If we say "pairing" to our constituents, even if we put it in context, they may think, "That’s a bit odd; what is it?" It is not transparent, and I understand that it does not extend to all Opposition parties Fifthly, the later stages of a pregnancy are quite tiring. I remember being here with a massive bump, bobbing up all the time. I think I managed to make some sort of arrangement with the Speaker that I would put my hand up. This is a demanding job. There are, of course, other demanding jobs, but travelling up and down the country is not easy My main message today is "Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good." I listened carefully to what was said by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who is no longer in the Chamber, and I asked him what the "unintended consequences" were to which he was referring. If the worst of them is that my proxy would not be here on a Friday to vote on a private Member’s Bill on my behalf, or would not be here to vote on my behalf in a Backbench business debate, then so be it: I can live with that. A proxy voting system, even with those minor imperfections, would be so much better than what we have now This Parliament has more women than any before it, we are still outnumbered by two to one, so we are still nowhere near being gender equal—we do not represent the country in terms of ethnicity either. We have made huge progress, but we still have a long way to go. These changes, which I hope we could make quickly, would send an important signal to new mums and dads—I hope that these proposals will be extended to fathers who take shared parental leave, because at the moment only 5% of dads take up that right in the workplace—and send the message to young men and women thinking about a career in this place but who also want to start a family that they can do both.