Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 9th, 2020

[Karen Bradley]

First of all, you would need the government to actually put the motion forward on the Order Paper, and the government does not support electronic remote voting for normal times.

I think it would be fair to say that, at the moment, there is not a majority in the House of Commons who would want to move to remote or electronic voting for long-term voting. It was willing to accept it for the very short term of the pandemic but has wanted to get out of it quite quickly. We did have a vote on that matter last week and there was a majority for moving back to fully physical voting.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Bradley.

I have a final question. You mentioned earlier about the current situation of Parliament lapsing on July 7. One of the challenges we have as a committee is here we are on June 9, Parliament is not scheduled to resume until September 21, yet four months ahead of Parliament resuming we are to preclude perhaps what's happening with the pandemic.

What will be the basis of the decision to perhaps expand under the current format of the British House of Commons as opposed to returning to a normal Parliament?

[Karen Bradley]

We're very much driven and governed by the government's advice to the general public. One of the things that has been key to what we've done is that we follow the advice that is given to everybody. We all have to follow the Public Health England advice or the public health advice that's given in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We all have to comply with that, and that includes in Parliament.

If changes are made to the recommendations and guidelines that the government has, we expect the next potential changes, the large-scale changes, around July 4. That's why July 7 has been picked as a date that will be after we've had the next large-scale changes that are expected to the advice from the public health authorities.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

In other words, government is making the decision to open up, from the economy to public gatherings, and so on, and that would be the basis by which the decision would be made. It's a very similar situation to what is going on here in Canada as provincial authorities start opening up our economy and public gatherings, correct?

[Karen Bradley]

Absolutely. The reason we came back physically last week is very much in line with the fact that schools are reopening, that we have more businesses reopening, and it was important that Parliament was seen to have a change in the way it operated.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Next up is Dr. Duncan.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses. We appreciate your time and your thoughtful answers.

Mr. Stutely, could you take us exactly through the voting procedure? What do the MPs receive on their device? Take us exactly through what they would experience, please.

[Matt Stutely]

Basically, what happens is that members will receive a text message when the division begins. The division is kicked off, they receive a text message and they get an email as well. They can choose to receive that email in a second mailbox. They get one sent to their parliamentary account and they can choose to send an email to another account. As I'm sure is the same with all of you, members can get huge amounts of constituency and parliamentary business and things going into their main mailbox, and they might miss something. So members can choose to send it to a personal or a staff mailbox, just so that they know a division is happening.

Once that is received, it tells them to log on to the system to cast their vote. If I could share my screen with you, I could show you what that looks like. It's very straightforward. In the MemberHub system, a big banner appears along the top of the screen that tells a member that a division is in progress and they have x minutes to vote. A little countdown tells them how long they have.

When you as a member press the button to cast your vote, basically a pop-up appears: “This is division 1 on such-and-such bill, amendment 2.” Then you cast your vote. There are two big boxes. One says aye and one says no. You click aye: “You're going to vote aye. Press next.” You press next: “You're about to vote aye. Once you have cast your vote for aye, you cannot change it. Are you sure?”

If you hadn't meant to vote aye, you can press “back” and change your vote to no: “You are going to vote no. Are you sure?” Then it takes you to the final page: “You're going to vote no.” Once you say that's correct, you are told, “Right. We've received your vote. Thank you very much.”

At that point, to reassure the member and to reinforce the fact that the House has received their vote, we send the member a text and an email: “We are in receipt of your aye vote. It was received at 2:18 p.m. Thank you very much.” That kind of finishes it.

With virtual proceedings, not all members are watching it live at the time it's happening, so when the division is finished and the Speaker has read out the result in the House, every member who voted will receive a text: “The vote for this division was ayes 201, noes 100. The ayes have it.”

So they also get the results, and are fully engaged in the process all the way through.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Stutely.

Could you, and then Ms. Bradley, please, tell me the response from the MPs about this system?

[Matt Stutely]

Sorry; when you say “response”, what do you mean?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Did they feel it was user friendly? Did they feel it was secure? Did you have any notes from MPs?

[Matt Stutely]

I would say that almost without exception, the members we spoke to, or the members we received feedback from, regardless of their political view, as Ms. Bradley said, around whether they believe remote voting is the right or wrong thing, were hugely appreciative of the work and felt it was easy for them to use.

We know that we had 610 members vote out of a maximum possible.... I'm going to get this one wrong, but I think about 637 is the maximum feasibly possible to vote, and that just doesn't happen. We had 610 in one of the votes that took place.

I'll let Ms. Bradley take over at this point.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you so much.

Ms. Bradley.

[Karen Bradley]

I would concur with what Matt said. Even the most doubtful of my colleagues, the most opposed to remote voting, the most traditionalist of all, could not complain. The system that was introduced was quick, efficient and secure. It worked. Whilst there was a lot of noise before it was introduced, and worry about what the implications might be for the future, once it was in people seemed to find it very easy to use—not so easy to whip, I think it would be safe to say, but very easy to use.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Burton, I know that you'll be doing this in the House of Lords, and you have people who are over 70. How comfortable will they be with remote voting, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Please be very quick.

[Simon Burton]

The answer is that the response has been very positive. We sent a survey out to members when we first announced the remote voting. We very quickly got back 700 responses. We haven't analyzed the details of what they said, but they're all engaging positively with it.

I have just one tiny thing to add. The wording of the question that goes out on the vote will be very important. If you say “amendment 12”, you may need to be a bit clearer so that members can see easily on the system what the amendment is about. We need to think that through.

Certainly, though, the response has been very positive from the members of the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Burton.

Next up we have Madam Normandin, please, for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

As members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, we were tasked with studying the possibility of a virtual Parliament, and our report was about holding virtual meetings of Parliament. Right now, what we're looking at more specifically is virtual voting, so a remote or hybrid system.

Ms. Bradley, I was reading some of the comments you made during a BBC interview in which you were talking about how important it is for people who can't be physically present in the House to be able to participate in debates and vote. This is a matter of parliamentary privilege and ensuring MPs can represent their constituents.

If we were to conclude that we need to create a hybrid Parliament, would it make sense to develop a hybrid voting system? Do the two go hand in hand? Are they inextricably linked?

My question is for Mr. Burton too.

[Simon Burton]

In the House of Lords, the agreement is that it should be a purely virtual vote. Members will be casting their votes on their smart phones, their tablets and their iPads, even if they're in the chamber, for the same reasons as Ms. Bradley said: the division lobbies in the Lords are not suitable for voting under current Public Health England guidance, so they will be shut. The members will be able to vote anywhere, including in the chamber, but they will have to use the system. There will be very few exceptions for people with accessibility issues who just cannot use the system. Two or three people, maybe, will have to have special arrangements made, but everybody will vote using the app, wherever they are.

[Karen Bradley]

The same thing happened in the House of Commons when we did have remote voting. Nobody voted in person. Everybody voted using the online system and that, as I say, was very quick and efficient and did seem to work.

When we came back to fully physical voting, the original proposal had been that the whips would manage those who couldn't be there by what's called pairing: so as long as you have one from each party who is absent, you can keep your majority figures the same. The problem with that in this particular pandemic is that it would disenfranchise so many of our members. So many great parliamentarians would be totally disenfranchised. The government did then concede that we needed to continue some virtual participation. It's not as it was when we had the hybrid Parliament, but we are able to participate virtually. They've now conceded that there needs to be a vote for those people, but they're doing it through the proxy physical system rather than the remote system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you.

Ms. Blaney.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

One of the questions I have is about the reality that we're hearing from many health professionals across the planet, which is that a second wave could happen and it's predicted that it might be happening during the fall.

I'm just wondering—and I'll ask you first, Ms. Bradley—with the methods you've used for virtual voting, whether there is any sort of agreement between the parties about when you would be able to pull those out again in practice if you are in the situation of a second wave.

[Karen Bradley]

I'm not aware of there being agreement between the usual channels. I think that would have to be a conversation at that time as to whether there was a need to return to a remote voting system rather than using the physical system with the increased numbers of proxies that we're going to have from this week onwards.