House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I could not help but be very moved by that speech, as I think we probably all were.

I am a member of the House’s Covid-19 Committee, and on 21 April we published our first report, Beyond Digital: Planning for a Hybrid World. It shows that the pandemic massively accelerated a trend towards simultaneous actual and virtual, physical and online, living. The future of our society will be hybrid for working, shopping, learning, caring, receiving health advice, and social and family interaction—almost every part of our lives. We as a House have prefigured this new future over the past year with our own hybrid proceedings. We have been able to participate, to speak, to amend, to scrutinise, to revise, and to vote remarkably successfully, our staff performing amazingly.

According to figures from the Library, the average number of Members voting per Division, which had been pretty constant over the three preceding parliamentary Sessions 2015–16 to 2017–19 at 360, rose to 496 after the introduction of remote voting—a leap of nearly 40%. Surely it is healthy to have greater democratic involvement in amending and improving legislation, which, after all, along with scrutiny is our main function as a Chamber.

I desperately hope that we can return to what people call “normal” as much as anybody else does. The chemistry of debate, the palpable groans and “Hear, hears” greeting speeches bad or good, intervening, especially to hold Ministers to account, the informal face-to-face part of politics—all these are vital ingredients of a lively parliamentary democracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, so eloquently explained. Our legislative Chambers are nothing like as potent in the rather antiseptic culture of remote participation.

I will give an example. When I moved a manuscript amendment prior to the Dissolution of the House in 2019 to force the Government to complete the remaining stages of the Historical Institutional Abuse (Northern Ireland) Bill, the Government Whips resisted, initially with the help of our Whips. But the feeling of the packed House was absolutely unanimous. That amendment was carried without Division and the legislation completed its course. That would not have happened in a virtual or a hybrid House.

But is that at all possible in the foreseeable future, with new Covid variants and the pandemic spreading in other parts of the world such as India and directly impacting on us in Britain? Is it not the case that there will be no return to what we once knew as “normal”? The future is likely to be one of more or less effectively managing the Covid pandemic and whatever other pandemics or mutations follow it, because scientists warn that there will be more and different ones. In retrospect, maybe HIV/AIDS, SARS and Ebola were all dress rehearsals for a new and immensely more difficult future interaction with nature. If that is the case, then surely the future of parliamentary democracies, and therefore this House, will be hybrid—not necessarily everything we do all the time, but certainly part of what we do some of the time, and conceivably bits of what we do all of the time?

The first thing we need to do is to maintain and upgrade the technological, skills and physical infrastructure of the hybrid House. It would be unwise to dismantle it when the future is so uncertain, especially since many staff, who are generally younger, have not yet been vaccinated and may come a far second with booster jabs in future. Surely staff safety is imperative.

Secondly, we should maintain remote voting on our smartphones. Especially given the age profile of Members, is it really prudent to squeeze into poorly ventilated voting Lobbies? The noble Earl, Lord Howe, seemed to think that it was an offence that we were voting more often; I think that it is a sign of democracy.

Thirdly, we should enable the option of remote speaking for those who find it easier or safer, not least to avoid cramming into London underground trains or buses, but perhaps with new limits, particularly on Member numbers speaking to amendments, where debates have been far too long and Members have spoken to multiple amendments—sometimes consecutively—far too often. Debates have lasted long into the night, which they never would have done with the same frequency in the physical past.

Fourthly, we should keep the current 10-Member lists for Questions, which are an improvement on bobbing up and down, which favours muscular, loud males.

Fifthly, we should encourage committees to meet virtually, as has occurred very successfully when taking online evidence from all over the country and even the world.

The future is hybrid, and the question is how best to adapt our procedures to that, while retaining the essence of the physical parliamentary cut and thrust important to all democracies.