Time to modernise Parliament

What a farce. Parliament opened to normal voting procedures this week without a single nod to 21st Century technology. The Government, despite a rebellion of some 30 Tories, used its majority to scrap the UK’s virtual parliament, forcing MPs to only vote in person, socially distanced of course.

This could lead to queues of up to a kilometre for every vote, each one taking up to an hour. Johnson’s excuse for this in PMQs yesterday (another strong performance by the Opposition Leader, Starmer, by the way which is apparently infuriating Johnson) was that MPs should make the same sacrifices as the public during this pandemic but this is a lot of nonsense. Many MPs are vulnerable just like the public and should not be expected to put themselves at risk by voting in person, any more than vulnerable members of the public should be expected to give up their shielding to continue to work.

Then, to top it all, the Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, after PMQs, displayed what seemed to be Covid symptoms whilst making a statement in Parliament. If positive, how many MPs will now have to go into self-isolation, possibly bringing part of the parliamentary process to a halt anyway? The Johnson Government seems increasingly to be either unlucky or stupid, probably a bit of both, but more on that another time.

The innocent explanation for the Government’s stance in now forcing MPs to vote in person during the pandemic is stubbornness and a desire to reassure the public of a return to normal. A darker note is that it reduces the accountability of Government when it is most needed as MPs stay away or votes become increasingly chaotic.

Parliament is already a joke in the minds of many voters. Few understand its arcane procedures. The braying of MPs at a fully attended PMQs is embarrassing and, more than most things, has contributed to the low esteem in which politicians are held. It is time for it to be reformed. Less confrontation, electronic voting and simplifying parliamentary procedures are long overdue to re-establish confidence in voters’ minds. Holding on to increasingly meaningless traditions is, well, traditional and old-fashioned.

And there is an opportunity. The Houses of Parliament are falling down and require extensive building works, possibly with politicians having to vacate the premises. The House of Lords is mooted to be moving to York. In addition to reforming the Lords, how about building on changes made when Parliament was ‘virtual’, starting with the continuing use of electronic voting, considering eradicating procedures that make no sense to the public in a modern world and thinking of redesigns where possible (rightly, impossible to argue for a new parliamentary building in the current climate) so that the ‘English Parliament’ reflects the more discursive ‘horse shoe’ style of the Scottish and Welsh debating chambers. Certainly, the recent polite exchanges between leading politicians as they make greater efforts to search for consensus in the face of this pandemic has been a refreshing change.

Just a thought. It would be a small, but positive legacy as we start to emerge from this crisis.