Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2020

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

It's not bidirectional.

[Siwan Davies]

No, that's right.

For usual plenary committees we would have more than one translator and they would swap over, but because we've been trying to keep our plenary sessions limited to a three-hour slot, we have one translator performing the role. It's the same thing for committees. Therefore, I suppose we are mindful of the pressure on the staff not only in terms of ICT and broadcasting, but also in terms of translation. We have managed to hitherto accommodate that within our existing staffing, and our translation staff are working from home.

With regard to the technology, we seem to have made it work. We're using the Zoom platform, and the interpretation is the way you have it set up here. I think for us, when you only have it going in the one direction, it makes it easier.

We did find in initial testing that there were some issues with people not using headsets. There was some feedback from translation and the non-translated feed, but we resolved that. Thus far it has worked remarkably well. The only issues we've identified have tended to be user error and not something more generic to learning the new technology.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

It's good to know we're not the only ones going through challenges with that.

Mr. Ward, I want to pick up on something you mentioned about Zoom. You mentioned that you decided, along with some other European assemblies, not to proceed with Zoom. Could you elaborate? Is it because of technical capabilities or is it security concerns? What exactly was the concern? We've had a lot of comments about Zoom. What was your reasoning behind that?

[Bill Ward]

It was mainly around security concerns.

A number of video conference platforms offer pretty similar functionality, and at the time there was quite a lot of press going on around concerns about Zoom. Our cybersecurity experts said there was no particular increased risk for Zoom than any other platform—they all have similar vulnerabilities—but one of the things was about pre-empting concerns that members may have had about using this platform at a time when it was receiving quite a lot of adverse press.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you for the information.

Mr. Hamlyn, one thing I find interesting about the U.K. Parliament is the physical set-up of the House of Commons with its 650 MPs. The physical capabilities of the chamber allow only about 425 members to be in there. There are actually some restrictions physically in normal times for members to be in the chamber.

My understanding, from what you're doing now, is that there is a limit of only about 120 MPs on the virtual side. Is that a technical or a procedural challenge right now in terms of that on the virtual side?

[Matthew Hamlyn]

The 120 figure is our starting point for what we thought we could most easily manage over the course of a two- to two-and-a-half-hour session. To be honest, I wouldn't say it's an arbitrary figure, but we had to start from somewhere. In the average two or three hours of a House of Commons session, you wouldn't normally get to 120 members. You might do, but it's mainly a technical limitation. Likewise, the limitation of numbers of members physically in the chamber, which is around 50, is based on the physical distancing measures we've put in place with signage, blocking off some seating, and so on.

They're both driven, in effect, by logistics.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Just for context, how many days a week is the U.K. sitting physically in the chamber right now? Is it five days a week, a couple of days a week, or something else?

[Matthew Hamlyn]

The House of Commons is sitting three days a week, as is the House of Lords. For complicated reasons, we're sitting Monday to Wednesday and the House of Lords is sitting Tuesday to Thursday. We would normally sit four days a week, and occasionally five days a week. We're also sitting for shorter periods on those sitting days, at the moment.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Noted.

Since the physical distancing requirements have been put in place, have things been going okay from a safety perspective? Are you hearing a lot of grievances? Have the physical aspects with the social distancing changes been okay so far?

[Matthew Hamlyn]

Certainly in the chamber the attendance has been very low, even for the Prime Minister's questions. We've had very good co-operation from the party whips. People are behaving themselves. Lots of traditional behaviours, like coming to chat with the clerk at the table or to talk with the Speaker, people have realized they shouldn't do. Members had some quite bad publicity towards the end of this session, just before the Easter recess, when lots of photographs in the media showed members clustering around or huddling together. This clearly was not ideal, and that's now not happening.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you.

I have a last quick question on voting.

I follow some U.K. MPs on Twitter, and in looking at the testing that's going on, as you speak right now, are there any other options being considered besides electronic voting, such as pairing, proxy or weighted voting, or is electronic voting the only method you're looking at right now?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Please be quick.

[Matthew Hamlyn]

We already have proxy voting available for members on parental leave, so theoretically one could extend that to other members, such as members who are ill or for whatever reason. We already have pairing. That was an option, but it's not very transparent if you have 400 members who are apparently not voting at all because they're paired with each other. No one has suggested weighted voting to us. Remote voting is what we've been asked to try to make work.

I think our procedural people—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Next we have Mr. Turnbull, please, for six minutes.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, everybody, for being here.

It's a real pleasure to have the opportunity to listen to some of what has been learned in other jurisdictions, which I think to some degree parallel our Parliament here and how it functions. I've learned a lot already from what you've shared. I really appreciate your taking the time to share that learning with us.

Ms. Davies, I really appreciated your overview and the speed, I think, at which the Welsh legislature moved forward on making quite a few changes. I wonder if you could maybe briefly list what areas and aspects of Parliament have already been quickly adapted to a virtual format.

[Siwan Davies]

I suppose the main thing is that the plenary has continued to meet. I suppose we took it a different way around from many legislatures, where the business committee took a decision that it would continue the business of the plenary in preference to the committees. We allocated our resources towards virtual continuation of the business, where the first minister and ministers could be scrutinized and where we could continue to pass legislation.

The concern was that we didn't want to establish committees that didn't have the full functionality of the assembly itself. I suppose, because we're small, we were able to make it happen in a way that perhaps would be more of a challenge for larger legislatures.

We have retained the ability for all members to question the executive. That was the principal driver, as well as to just ensure that we could continue, where it was applicable, the legislative program of government. That was, of course, primarily COVID related. Also, it was to continue with the statutory requirements of the assembly, and to an extent, any time-critical business. We foresee in the coming period some matters that are not COVID related that we will need to get through. That was our priority, first, to ensure that could continue.

Second, committees, now, this week, have started. There was pressure placed on the business committee to reactivate, if you like, the committee business. Effectively, the pause we had would have reflected the Easter recess, in any case. We've tried to prioritize those committees that are scrutinizing the ministers responsible, primarily, for the COVID response and to enable stakeholders to come and assist the committees to undertake that scrutiny function.

In summary, what we kept going was the plenary and scrutiny in relation to COVID and legislative functions.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you for that overview. I really appreciated your opening statement that where there's political will, there's a way. It seems to be true in all cases.

I want to ask Mr. McGill a related question about the Scottish Parliament and the changes that have been implemented.

It's clear to me that you've been on a path, moving closer to being able to, in a sense, replicate or have formal proceedings again. You mentioned that there were changes to the Standing Orders. I wonder if you could go into a little more detail as to what specific changes were made or need to be made, whether agreement has been sought and how quickly that agreement was achieved by parties.

[David McGill]

To do the last part of your question first, we didn't experience a great deal of difficulty in persuading the political parties to agree with what we were planning to do. That wasn't an issue for us.

In relation to the Standing Orders change, we did anticipate there would be more changes that we would have to make. What we went through, for our Standing Orders, was a comprehensive review. We found there really were only about three or four different rules we would have to suspend or vary in order to allow Parliament to begin to meet virtually and to do things differently.

I think I mentioned the rule we had that parliamentary meetings must take place in the debating chamber, in our physical building in Edinburgh. We had to veto that rule to allow us to meet in a virtual space. As well, we don't have any rules about quorums, except for a very few minor legislative requirements, so there were no adjustments that had to be made there. In those regards, where there were requirements for quorums, the political parties were keen that we protected them. They didn't want to go below the numbers that were statutorily required for particular decision-making.

Probably the biggest issue we had was with the length of time that we would make these variations for, and that's only because we were working at high speed. We made these changes, and I think I can quote my saying that we put them through for the duration of the public response to the novel coronavirus COVID-19, but we very quickly realized that it wasn't going to be clear when that public response would come to an end. We went back again and we adjusted that in line with the emergency legislation and some of the sunset clauses that are in there. We have now restricted it to sometime during the summer, when we'll review again. We do give the Parliamentary Bureau and the Presiding Officer power to extend it rather than having to go back through the process of making the changes in Parliament again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you. That's all the time we have.

Next we have Ms. Normandin.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Hello, thank you very much.

My first question is for Mr. Hamlyn. I want to clarify something in case I misunderstood.

You referred to a hybrid Parliament. Does that mean it's exclusively virtual for a set amount of time and exclusively in-person for another amount of time, or are both happening at the same time?

[Matthew Hamlyn]

It's the latter. Both are happening at the same time, so for proceedings in the chamber, members can participate in the same proceeding either virtually or physically. Our select committees are meeting entirely virtually at the moment, but the chamber is mixed.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I'd appreciate it if you could tell me more about how the hybrid Parliament works, like how members are recognized and the technical details. I find this fascinating. It might even help uphold parliamentary privilege for all members.

[Matthew Hamlyn]

Logistically, it means we have to plan further ahead. Members who wish to take part in a debate or a question period need to let the Speaker's office know much further in advance so we can prepare a fixed speaking list that is published each day sharing all the members who will be called to speak in the order in which the Speaker has arranged for them to be called. We stick to that speaking list, except of course where a member is unattainable for a technical difficulty, where we may have to take them off the call and insert them in the list later on.

A debate in the chamber will switch between a member who's physically present in the chamber and a member who is virtual. It's that kind of mixture.

Privilege makes no difference at all, yet we are content that all these are parliamentary proceedings and any member taking part, whether speaking virtually or in the chamber, is covered to the same extent by parliamentary privilege.