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' wort

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

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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 o

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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 sit

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 wi

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 wh

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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 b

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I assume we are talking about in camera meetings of committees because our plenary chamber, obviously, does not meet in camera. It's a really live issue. The strong advice from our parliamentary information authority, who are the people who look after our information security,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a very good question. In Westminister, we have a government with a majority of 80, having had quite a long period of minority government. This has meant, obviously, that at the end of the day if the government wanted certain changes to procedure, it could get them. The g

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will do my best, because obviously I work for the House of Commons rather than the House of Lords, so I don't have all the details. Maybe through the clerk I can send something in writing afterwards.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My understanding is that this was a problem that arose from a particular feature on Microsoft Teams, which actually, ironically, was a security feature. If you're running an ordinary conference with Microsoft Teams, you can have a feature that announces who is doing the meeting.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We don't need to pass legislation to do that, because it would be a matter of our own Standing Orders. We already have passed a temporary order that allows remote participation in proceedings under arrangements to be made by the Speaker. That's already in place. The House will

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We chose the hybrid model because the Speaker of the House didn't want to be in the position where members were actually forbidden from coming to Westminster. There's a very ancient right that MPs have—and which some of them claim—to come to a sitting of the House wherever it is,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I've not yet done a really detailed analysis of who's physical and who's virtual. Ministers so far have tended to appear in person, partly because the Speaker has said it's easier to manage the chamber, from his point of view, if the ministers are there. We've had a mixture of