Yes, of course. The normal way we vote is we have two rooms on either side of the chamber that you can't see, but they are behind the chamber. One is behind where the Prime Minister and the government MPs sit, and the other is behind where the opposition MPs sit. They are called the division lobbies. The aye lobby is on the government side. The no lobby is on the opposition side.
When a division is called, members of Parliament have eight minutes to get into one of those two rooms. The bell rings. It's like an old-fashioned school bell. Members then have eight minutes to get into either the aye lobby or the no lobby. You can imagine, with the size of Parliament, the size of our building, that can be quite time pressuring for people, but on the whole, members are very good at being able to get into the right division lobby at the right time.
Then what we do is congregate within that lobby. We go to three desks at the end of the lobby by our surnames. There's one A to F, I think it is, and G to L or whatever, and you have your name crossed off by the clerk. There's a clerk at each desk who then records that you voted, but the vote is the voice when we shout aye or no. The actual count happens as you leave the lobby.
The problem with our system is that the doors of the division lobby are reduced in size so only one person can get out at any one time. I would be delighted to give you a demonstration if you could ever get to the United Kingdom when we're allowed to do this. Then there are two people who stand on either side of the door, the tellers, and they count you.
Quite clearly the problem you have is that with only one person coming through at one time and two people standing right next to them, you cannot maintain social distancing between the tellers who do the counting, between members and the clerks who are crossing the names off and between the members themselves, because you get a bottleneck as people try to get through these lobbies. Bear in mind that for a division, you would probably have over 300 members in one lobby and around 250 to 260 in the other lobby. That would be the normal sorts of figures.
You can imagine that in eight minutes you congregate with everybody in a room that is the length of the chamber, but not as wide, and you are squashed in there. It's quite unpleasant in the summer, but it's a very good opportunity to see your colleagues. It is your chance to meet ministers. It is your chance to doorstep those people you need to speak to about matters, so it's very valued by colleagues. Members do not want to give up voting in the division lobby because of the access it gives them to colleagues. Clearly, in this pandemic with this situation, that kind of voting is simply not possible.
We looked at having staggered voting times, where perhaps we would have 10 minutes for each set of surnames to go through each lobby. We looked at other ways to do it, but it simply wasn't possible, and the public health advice was that this was congregating, and getting through this tiny gap to come out was the bit that causes a problem, so we then had to look at other ways to do it.
Of course, the original proposals made were that we would have remote electronic voting, which Matt and his team developed so fantastically. If you have seen the report my committee made on April 8, we said we didn't believe it was possible to have any form of remote electronic voting in place within four weeks. Not only did we have it but we were carrying out live divisions.
We still, of course, have a problem because we have now given up on the remote voting, and we are now having to vote in person. You will probably see the queues that have caused some of the problems with that.