Procedure and House Affairs committee  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.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Chair, to you and to all the members of the committee for this invitation to give evidence to your committee on a subject that is occupying all of my time at the moment. I see that I have been asked to speak for up to 10 minutes. I don't think I have 10 minutes' worth of material, you'll be very glad to know, given that you have a lot of witnesses to get through.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That greatly suits me, as I don't have a prepared presentation, apart from what I've written in the last 15 minutes during the sound checks. It might be helpful if I explain what I'm doing in this context and then talk the committee through, very briefly, what we've done in the last four weeks, which has probably been the biggest set of changes to how the House of Commons works in the last 700 years.