Parliaments and the Pandemic (PDF)
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Parliaments and the Pandemic Study of Parliament Group January 2021 Preface The Study of Parliament Group (SPG) was formed in 1964. It arose following the publication of Bernard Crick’s seminal book, 'The Reform of Parliament'. A senior clerk in the House of Commons, Michael Ryle, impressed by the work, but feeling that the author may have benefited from more informed knowledge of the actual operation of parliament, contacted Crick. Both felt that meetings between academics and clerks may be of mutual benefit and, with Sir Edward Fellowes, former Clerk of the House of Commons, they sent a memorandum to various parliamentary officers and academics with an interest in parliament. A meeting was organised in October 1964 at which it was agreed to form a body to promote understanding of the way parliament worked and how it may be more effective. The Study of Parliament Group was born. Since its formation, the Group has held conferences and seminars, formed various working groups and been responsible for publishing books and articles. Submissions have also been made to various parliamentary committees, not least those concerned with procedure and reform. The membership has expanded over the years, encompassing clerks from other legislatures in the United Kingdom as well as some with a scholarly interest in parliament without themselves being academics. To encourage frank exchanges of views, MPs and journalists are excluded from membership, though they are regular speakers at Group events. Publications have included substantial volumes such as 'The House of Commons in the Twentieth Century' (1979), 'The New Select Committees' (revised edn. 1989) and, to mark the Group’s fortieth anniversary, 'The Future of Parliament' (2005). The works produced by the Group have been collective enterprises, drawing on members especially qualified to write on the subject. This collection is very much in that mould. It draws on the knowledge and experience of academics and those who serve or have served in different capacities in parliamentary service and who are well placed to analyse and comment on the effect that the COVID-19 crisis has had on the nation’s legislatures and how they have adapted to a situation they have never faced before. Study of Parliament Group, January 2021 ii Content Preface ii Lord Norton Foreword 2 Paul Evans, Christine Salmon Percival, Paul Silk and Hannah White 01 How the House of Commons has adapted to the pandemic 5 David Natzler 02 How the House of Lords has adapted to the pandemic 11 David Beamish 03 The impact in the Commons chamber 17 Colin Lee, Clemmie Brown and Matthew Hamlyn 04 Legislative proceedings 27 Liam Laurence Smyth and Andrew Makower 05 Abracadabra law-making and accountability to parliament for 41 coronavirus regulations Tom Hickman 06 The impact on select committee witness diversity and 57 accessibility in the House of Commons Margaret McKinnon and Holly Dustin 07 House of Lords investigative and scrutiny committees’ response 63 Philippa Tudor 08 An alternative to oral evidence hearings 71 James Hockaday 09 The interpersonal dynamics and drama of virtual committees 78 Lucinda Maer 10 The impact on behaviour in the House of Lords 85 Lord Norton 11 Representation and the constituency 91 Ben Lake MP 12 Parliament during the pandemic – a staffer’s perspective 95 Emma Salisbury 13 The impact on the media 100 Mark D’Arcy 14 Parliament’s public engagement role 106 Cristina Leston-Bandeira and Alex Prior 15 The response from IPSA 113 Marcial Boo 16 Participation in the House of Lords 120 Thomas Brown and Edward Scott 17 Parliamentary design and spaces in a post-pandemic world? 127 Alexandra Meakin 18 The construction of the ‘Good Parliamentarian’ within 134 the House of Commons Harriet Deane and Chloe Challender 19 The Crown dependencies 146 Mark Egan, Jonathan King and Simon Ross 20 A citizen’s account of Stormont’s response 155 Jenny McCullough 21 The Scottish parliament’s response 162 Stephen Imrie, Jim Johnston, Katy Orr and Hugh Williams 22 The Senedd’s response 171 Siwan Davies 23 Overview of international practice 180 Sue Griffiths and Emily Death 24 How the New Zealand parliament responded 187 David Wilson 25 Emergency powers in parliament: a short history 195 Paul Seaward Afterword 201 Paul Evans, Paul Silk and Hannah White Foreword Wuhan novel coronavirus was first mentioned in the Westminster parliament in a private notice question from the medically-qualified chair of the Lords Science and Technology Committee, Lord Patel, on 22 January 2020. The minister reassured Lord Patel that the risk was low, and that the country was well- prepared for the emergence of novel viruses. The next day, Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, made an oral statement to the Commons. It was moderately reassuring: the House was told that the risk had been assessed as having risen from “very low” to “low”. The subject was also raised that day at First Minister’s question time in Holyrood, and by a written question in the Senedd. Again the answers were reassuring. That early optimism was a chimera. We all know how events spiralled downwards quickly over the following weeks. The World Health Organisation (WHO) gave the novel coronavirus the name of COVID-19 on 11 February. Scotland made COVID-19 a notifiable disease on 22 February, followed later by Northern Ireland and then by England and Wales. The first Briton died from COVID-19 on 28 February. On 3 March the governments of the UK published a coronavirus action plan, and eight days later a pandemic was declared by the WHO. A tsunami of activity followed over March and subsequent months – primary legislation in the Coronavirus Act 2020 and the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020, cascades of secondary legislation in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, legislation in the Crown Dependencies, regular addresses to the nation by the Prime Minister and the First Ministers, statements and urgent questions, as well as wholesale changes in ways of working for parliamentarians and their staff. There were even changes in how we think of the state: different jurisdictions of the British Isles all had health responsibilities that obtruded on to civil liberties, and the quasi-federal constitution was better illustrated by crisis than it ever had been by academic treatise. This collection of essays is about how the parliaments of the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies reacted to a medical and economic crisis that has dominated everyone’s lives in a way that has not happened in modern times. 1 There are two essential elements to that: how the parliaments have adjusted their own ways of behaving to reflect the duty parliamentarians share with other citizens to curb the spread of the disease together with their special duty to set an example; but also how the functions of legislation, oversight and representation have changed (and become more difficult and more challenging and, often, less effective) because of the pandemic. It would have been remiss of the Study of Parliament Group (SPG) to remain silent when parliaments were changing so fundamentally. The fact that there are now three unicameral legislatures and one bicameral legislature in the UK means that each institution can learn from the others. That they did so as they reacted to COVID-19 has been valuable, and the essays are an opportunity to compare and contrast practices that each institution adopted. What happened in the UK has, of course, also happened in every other country, and therefore has challenged parliaments, parliamentarians and parliamentary staff across the world, as the Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU) has chronicled.2 This collection contains two essays that look beyond our islands. Their perspective is illuminating: as systems were devised in the hurried months of 2020, it was helpful to know that others throughout the world were grappling with identical issues. 1 Even if there have been national health crises in 1349, 1433, 1625 and 1665 as Paul Seaward’s essay on page195 reminds us. 2 https://www.ipu.org/country-compilation-parliamentary-responses-pandemic 2 Study of Parliament Group, January 2021 There are two caveats to mention. Most essays go up to 30 September. The fact that the crisis continues means that this collection of essays will certainly not be the last word. Nevertheless, we believe it is worth telling the story to date. We are also conscious that every aspect of public and private life has had to adjust to COVID-19 and that parliaments are not special in having stories to tell about the way they have done so. But because parliaments are central to our system of government, we believe their COVID-19 stories are significant. The essays contain facts, statistics and sequences, but also opinion, reflection and speculation. They explain voting methods and the protocols for virtual sittings and physical attendance. They ask how successfully the parliaments balanced the need to keep democracy functioning with the need to keep people safe, and therefore how well priorities were set. They demonstrate how parliaments had to learn quickly. The essays consider whether the governments that the parliaments scrutinise were truly held accountable, and whether the balance between legislative speed and adequate scrutiny was achieved. They also ask about the transparency, accessibility and gender diversity of the parliamentary process during the crisis and how these have been affected. And there is speculation about whether some of the measures that might have made sense in the crisis will prove convenient for the future–to the detriment of parliamentary oversight. In a final postscript, we try to draw together some of those themes. As we write in the autumn of 2020, we are very conscious that the baleful story of COVID-19 is not over.