James Heappey
Main Page: James Heappey (Conservative - Wells)Department Debates - View all James Heappey's debates with the Leader of the House
(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady is wrong on two counts. I said that the pairing system had worked well overall. As I have made clear, there have been more than 2,000 pairs in this Parliament and several have been broken because of errors. The vast majority were broken by Opposition Members, although I do not want to be at all partisan over this. It is a complex administrative system and errors have occurred. She makes a good point about the importance of bringing in new processes, but the Procedure Committee did not set out a prescription; it raised a number of issues that the House would need to decide on, such as, for example, what business should be proxy votable—all business, just Government business, business Monday to Thursday, closure motions of the House, private Members’ Bills on Fridays? These are the questions that the Procedure Committee rightly raised and the reasons why the House needs to debate this further.
James Heappey (Wells) (Con)
I echo the enthusiasm expressed by colleagues across the House for a look at our voting processes and how we might make them more family-friendly. In the meantime, does my right hon. Friend agree that the pairing system can be transparent? Those who are paired can say that they are paired and with whom they are paired, as, indeed, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) did yesterday on social media.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is right. Let me reiterate the undertaking by the Government Whips Office to provide even greater process, so that individuals who are paired will be specifically told the duration of the pair and with whom they are paired. I think that that will also reduce the number of errors. I can only say again that what has happened is extremely regrettable, and that the Whips are very apologetic about the error.