Procedure and Privileges — House of Lords, 2021-07-13
Topic: Government Operations
Sarah Virginia Brinton (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, for the last year your Lordships’ House has moved forward in its processes and has even joined the 21st century by using Zoom, Teams and electronic voting, in the Chamber and remotely. The decision to move to hybrid working was necessary and it is important to say a big "thank you" to all those who have made it possible. So I echo the thanks of the previous speakers, but I want to mention the commission, the clerks, all the Whips’ offices and the myriad invisible staff who have come to our aid to make it work. I especially thank the broadcasting teams, who onboard us with patience and courtesy, and help problem-solve when things do not quite work. Above all, I thank everybody who has made this work across the House We have to learn the lessons of what worked well for us and what we can change to improve our future ways of working, and this report proposes some of those. I think that retaining the extended time for Questions, and, indeed, speakers’ lists, are sensible. For those such as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who want us to return to bobbing, I say that there are some who always find it difficult to get in over noisy colleagues, and for those of us who cannot stand there is immense frustration that we are invisible to the rest of your Lordships at Question Time and too often spoken over. The proposals of the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Balfe, do not quite address the problem that we wheelchair users face On voting, keeping the principle of electronic voting is good, but forcing Members on to the main Parliamentary Estate to use it seems somewhat short-sighted. As a disabled Peer, I know that the most suitable offices for wheelchairs are in Millbank, but it is not possible to reliably get out of the building, across the road and into Parliament in time to vote. The reality is that people just do not see wheelchairs. They do not give way in lifts; cars do not give way on crossings; and at bottlenecks coming into Parliament, wheelchairs always seem to be pushed to the back. That means we have to stay in the main building, often in offices unsuitable for wheelchair users. Having these stands to tap in would be very helpful. My main focus today is to thank the commission, its sub-committee and especially the Lord Speaker for listening to the disabled Members of your Lordships’ House. To say we were distressed by some of the comments from the Benches opposite during the previous debate in May is an understatement. We felt devalued and excluded by other noble Lords, to be told that if we could not physically come in, we did not deserve our place in your Lordships’ House. Some Members opposite even suggested that we should retire because we were "frail and elderly". We are not; we are disabled, and, under the law of this land, all organisations are required to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people to help them overcome the barriers they face. These proposals are a start and, I believe, a trailblazer for disabled parliamentarians in Westminster. I hope that the commission will keep the practical working of these proposals under review. As an opposition Front-Bencher, I am not quite sure how some of these proposals will work in the heat of debate on a Bill, but I believe that the House authorities are prepared to help Members like me give it a go I would like to restate something I said in the previous debate: I am desperate to return to the Chamber, and I will as soon as it is safe for me to do so. But, as I mentioned in that debate, there are some other Members of your Lordships’ House who are excluded from these proposals but who cannot come to Parliament for the foreseeable future. I refer to the clinically extremely vulnerable, who were told yesterday by the Government in revised formal guidance that, from next Monday, because all other restrictions will be lifted and because of the large surge in Covid cases, they must keep themselves safe and not meet people inside, not come into contact with unvaccinated people, and ensure that they keep socially distant from others, whether inside or outside. I believe that this makes it impossible for them to resume their seats in the physical Chamber. Some of these clinically extremely vulnerable people are disabled, but not long-term. Others may not define themselves as disabled, and they are not the "frail elderly" referred to by noble Lords opposite in our previous debate. But, under these arrangements, they are to be excluded from your Lordships’ House, despite Ministers and these people’s hospital consultants saying that they should not come to London and to Parliament because it is not safe for them. I do hope that the commission will reconsider this small group of people Finally, can the Leader of the House say what will happen if further restrictions need to be imposed in the future? Can hybrid facilities be reinstated if necessary? I hope, with every single other Member of this House, that it will absolutely not be necessary—but, as Israel and the Netherlands have recently discovered, the virus and its variants may have further shocks for us all.