 Welcome, everyone, to the 11th meeting of the Standards Procedures and Public Appointments Committee in 2022. Can I remind those members who are joining virtually to place an hour in the chats function on blue jeans, if they would like to come in on any of the issues. Our first agenda item is a decision on taking business in private. Are the committee in agreement to take agenda items three and four in private? The agenda item three is consideration of the evidence that we are going to listen to today as item two and item four is consideration of the lobbying act impact assessment or the committee in agreement to take it in private. I'm very grateful for that. Our next agenda item is to take evidence as part of our future parliamentary procedures and practices evidence session and joining us today on our first panel are the right honourable Karen Bradley MP who is chair of the procedure committee in the House of Commons and also Lord Gardner of Kimball who's the senior deputy speaker at the House of Lords. Can I welcome you to this evidence session this morning and perhaps can I start if I can ask you Karen Bradley to perhaps just introduce yourself, introduce where the House of Commons is with regard to these matters for about two minutes. As you say chair the House of Commons procedure committee and our responsibility in that committee is the conduct of public business so putting it simply when business starts with an order order and finishes with order order we do the bit in the middle so that is in the House of Commons Westminster hall in standing committees, bill committees as you would know them and also select committees when evidence is being taken and therefore parliamentary privilege applies. I think that's the key point that we are concerned with making sure that public business is conducted in such a way and privilege is rightly observed. We also have the privileges committee which deal with whether privilege has been abused but we look at the procedures around conduct of public business. In terms of the House of Commons and our current procedures we are exactly as we were before the pandemic. We are now entirely back to every single procedure that we had prior to the Covid pandemic. Everything that was brought in was time limited and has stopped. The only thing that we are doing now differently from before the pandemic is that when we walk physically through the division lobbies to vote instead of a clock recording our name we now record our name using our security pass on a pass reader and that is how our name is recorded in the vote but everything else is exactly as it was. That's very helpful. Lord Gardner could I turn to you for a similar short introduction about where the House of Lords are at the moment. Thank you very much convener and thank you to your committee for this opportunity. I think it's fair to say that the as both houses we reacted very swiftly to the pandemic and went from virtual to hybrid very quickly and I think we achieved much by doing so. However, as has been said in the House of Commons, we have returned to much of what we did before the pandemic in terms of procedure because of loss of spontaneity and being a self-regulating house. It was felt by an overwhelming majority that we needed to return to previous procedures but what we have retained is a number of issues. We have for instance continued with an extension in question time from 30 minutes to 40 minutes private notice questions from 10 to 15. We have retained some of those matters and we have also, which I think is very important, we have an eligible scheme for members with long-term disabilities who will continue to be able to participate virtually but we have 11 eligible members and so we have achieved that. As far as voting is concerned, we adopted something called peer hub, which enabled all peers to vote using a peer hub situation. We are moving to, as in the House of Commons, to a pass reader situation. Our lobbies are narrower than the House of Commons so we have retained peer hub because of social distancing reasons but will be in the new session having pass readers. The other thing very quickly is on select committees. We have autonomy for committees, the select committees, therefore they have the opportunity to take their meetings physically, virtually or hybrid and we have had a very considerable number of witnesses very successfully through these means. We have upgraded our committee room facilities but we do also think that ministers really ought to appear in person because we think that the dynamic is more valuable. Those are some of the areas that we have been attending to. That is incredibly helpful. As you will both expect, I am going to move around the committee members who have various areas of interest to explore but I would, with taking the privilege of convener, like to kick off to discuss something that should and rightly does predate the pandemic, which is the role of proxy voting, which is something that does not exist in the Scottish Parliament. Karen Bradley, if I can come to you first, would you like to briefly explain how the proxy voting works in the House of Commons for the record? We currently have only one category of member of Parliament that can apply for a proxy vote and that is a proxy vote for those taking baby leave. Baby leave is for fathers, mothers, adoptive parents and also for those who have a miscarriage. We have tried to mirror the length of time that a pregnant or a new parent would receive in terms of parental leave in the private sector, the public sector and the employee, six months for a mother and two weeks for a father. On that proxy vote, there is a provision that is that if you are on a proxy vote for baby leave, you are not allowed to participate in the proceedings of the House on the day that you have a proxy vote, which is something that the committee is looking at because there have been representations that that is not acceptable. That is because people have got used to during the pandemic proxy votes being available to everybody. I would like to say on the record that I was firmly at the view that we should continue with the electronic voting on our phone. The member hub that we had that mirrors the peer hub that is in the House of Lords, I felt that a member having to press a button at the time of the vote and being part of the democratic process at that time meant that there was better engagement and that, as members, we were more alert to what was happening in the chamber. The powers that be determined that they did not want us to vote by phone, which was a fantastic thing that the digital services in the House of Commons developed very quickly and was subsequently adopted by the House of Lords. We saw the House of Lords reaping the benefits of all that work, but we moved instead to a proxy system. By the end of the pandemic, I think that there are only about 10 members who did not have a proxy vote. We did have a point where the deputy chief whip of the governing party, the Conservative party, was delivering something in the region of 330 votes at every vote. I personally had a difficulty with what that looked like to the public, but it was exceptional circumstances, so I think that we can understand that. During the pandemic, we were able to participate in the chamber while still exercising our proxy vote. That meant that, on the baby leave standing order, we are now considering whether to decouple the participation of the chamber from the proxy vote. The other thing that I will say is that we are conducting an inquiry at the moment. We have not completed that inquiry, but in the comments that we are conducting inquiries to introduce a system of proxy voting for those with long-term sickness or medical conditions. We have all recognised that, if somebody is away for a few weeks or two or three weeks, it may be because they are on parliamentary business, and it may be that there is a reason that you cannot be there. In most cases, your constituents will not probably notice that you have been away, or if they do, you can explain it as a short-term absence for parliamentary or constituency reasons. However, if you are away for longer than that because you are having long-term medical treatment or you have a condition that means that staying late in Parliament and voting, as we have been doing this week, close to midnight, is not conducive to your health, then it probably is something that we need to consider whether a proxy vote should be given to people in that situation to allow them to still participate in the democratic process, but not have to stay for that vote, which may just being there may damage their health, and so we are considering that within the committee at the moment. That is extremely helpful, and I am sure that as a committee here we will follow your investigation on to that. If I pick up one aspect of that, because my understanding is, and please correct me if I am wrong, that the application for a proxy vote effectively goes to the speaker who authorises it. Is there any control about who can hold the proxy after that? Is it the member's own decision? A number of people have pointed out to us that individuals hold basically the whips hold the proxy, whether that was an active decision or something that just came about because of circumstances. I know that you have indicated your view on it. What would be your preferred way of someone holding a proxy vote? It is entirely down to the member as to who holds the proxy vote. I know that in Wales, when they introduced proxies for the pandemic, they did allocate the proxies to the whips, and like what I believe Canada did the same when they were operating proxies, but we have always kept it that you gave the proxy to your member of choice, and for those who believe, it is usually somebody that you are close to, somebody that you are friends with, somebody that you trust, somebody perhaps in the same sort of political persuasion as you in terms of moral issues, because I think that that is where this gets very difficult. It is fine when you are voting with the party whip, but once you get into moral issues or perhaps things where you have a constituency issue, expecting your deputy chief whip to rebel and to be fair to our deputy chief whip during the pandemic, he voted against the Government more than any member of a Government has ever done before, but he was exercising a proxy on behalf of people—I include myself in this—who did vote against the Government on certain measures, including some of the pandemic measures. He did do so in good faith and all credit to Stuart Andrew, who was the deputy at that time, for being honourable and doing the right thing. We ended up with the whip taking the votes, and that was true in all parties, because we just did not want to have people in the commons any more than was necessary. Social distancing, the state of the pandemic at the time, the fact that we were trying to control the virus meant that we were really dissuaded from being physically in the building, although you could physically turn up and speak if you wished to, or you could speak virtually if you preferred, but the whip took the proxy votes at that time. We need to remember that it was an exceptional time, and in normal circumstances, normal times, the parental leave proxies are allocated to whichever member wishes to have them. That is very helpful. Lord Gardner, can I turn to you, because my understanding from ancient school history is that the House of Lords had proxy many hundreds of years ago, but abandoned it? What is the position at the moment? As my understanding is, there is no formal proxy system, but is there another method that is used to assist members to vote if they are unable to be there? Thank you. You are absolutely right. There is no provision in the Lords for proxy voting. Indeed, our standing orders prohibit such. It has not come forward for consideration during this pandemic time, because we thought that the app that was devised, what we call peer hub, could be voted anywhere. As the situation improved somewhat, from September 2021, members were required to confirm on the app that they were present on the parliamentary state before voting. Now, as I say, the House voted that we should proceed to return to using the lobbies with the pass reader, which we believe will assist accuracy, speed, accessibility and so forth. With the rider, as I say, we have a distinct scheme, which I should emphasise is for people with a long-term disability who wish to continue with active participation. There is a group of us that consider mindful of the definition of disability, but we need to be mindful that this is not in our view in the House. It is not an option as a pre-retirement or because of frailness. It is absolutely for people to actively participate, but it may not be in a position to attend the House all day, and it may wish to participate virtually at different parts of the day. It is a very distinct scheme that we have come forward with, and I think that it is well appreciated. Thank you. That is very helpful. As always with committees, I am conscious of time and I am not going to steal any more as convener, but I am going to hand you over to the very capable hands of Colette Stevenson. I want to say that I explore about your views on virtual and hybrid proceedings. You have touched upon several areas and where it works and what not. I know that, from some of the paperwork that we got, there was a sense that there was more contributions throughout the pandemic, and I know that the actual virtual voting system in the House of Lords has increased as well. I just wanted to ask Karen whether, is there a shared view within the legislation on whether there should be different rules in relation to virtual participation for chamber business and committees to basically time preserve the debate within the chamber? There were different roles during the pandemic for bill committees or Westminster hall for the chamber and for select committees. Start with the chamber. We introduced hybrid participation in the chamber, that meant that you could participate physically and you could participate like this on a screen. The difficulty there where people did feel frustration was that it had to be very pre-planned and organised. There was a call list. You could not intervene. There was very little debate within the debate. We only introduced virtual participation in debates very late on in the pandemic. We had participation by the questions very early on, but we did not introduce it for debates until much later into the pandemic because there was a feeling that there was not going to be that debate, the custom thrust of the commons that people were looking for. You are right to say that what we saw was more members participating. There is no doubt about it. The statistics are very clear that it was more women who participated virtually. People who lived further away were able to participate more than they perhaps would otherwise have been able to do. However, the House of Commons decided that they did not want to continue with any virtual participation once the pandemic was over. That was a decision by the House. That is the majority view of the House. On my committee, there was a majority view of the committee that we needed to return to pre-pandemic participation. On Bill committees, there was never any virtual participation. That is one of the criticisms that we are seeing now around the scrutiny of and particularly in statutory instruments. During the pandemic, it was just so much of what was changing, was being changed through statutory instruments. There was a real sense that there simply was not the scrutiny. I suspect that we will find—I do not know if you have seen Hannah White's book, which has recently been published, Held in Contempt, which talks about that lack of scrutiny and the way that instruments were debated after they had actually come into force. There was no opportunity for members to have a say. The small committees upstairs, where there would just be the quorum number of five, so it would be the minister, the shadow minister, the two whips and another member from the governing party who would be part of that debate. Therefore, things were going through without debate and without scrutiny, and that is something that I think we will come back to room. Westminsterhall, we did allow virtual participation. There are no questions, of course, in Westminsterhall. It was another one that was very late to be introduced, but we did then start to allow virtual participation in the debates. Again, that has gone. The area where I think there is a sense that the House may want to move is on select committees. We have always been able to take evidence remotely on select committees, but members have to be in the room. The liaison committee, which is the committee that made up of all the chairs of select committees, did make representations that there should be something around the chair's discretion to allow members to participate virtually. I became a victim of that when they said that it was not possible. I contracted Covid in the new year. That was the week that the leader of the House was coming in to take evidence. I could not participate as the chair of the committee in questioning the leader of the House, who is our minister on our committee. I could not even be in the room virtually. I had to watch on the Parliament TV channel and I could not take part in any way. Clearly, I could message members of the committee and I could make my points through letting other people know some of the things that I have been listening to. However, it is very frustrating to be a chair of a committee and not able to scrutinise the minister that reports to your committee in effect, because I could not participate virtually. I think that there is a sense that many chairs—I am not saying that they are all chairs, but many chairs of select committees would like to reintroduce virtual participation for members, particularly while we still have relatively high levels of Covid. The medical advice is that, even if it is not Covid, you are not tested positive but you are under the weather. You should not come in because we have learned the lesson now that carrying on regardless is perhaps one of the reasons that Covid spreads so quickly in those early days. I think that there is a view within the select committees that we would like to have virtual participation back for members of select committees. However, I do not get the sense that, at the moment, the House has a majority for virtual participation in any other of our business. I know that one of my colleagues will probably come in on the scrutiny aspect of it. I want to pose that question to Lord Gardner and see what his views are. The House of Lords moved quite swiftly, so we started virtual proceedings in April 2020 and then hybrid proceedings in June 2020. We had quite a time of having those proceedings. As I said, a lot of legislation was scrutinised, but I think that there was a strong feeling that the scrutiny and the proceedings were not as dynamic and not as immediate. Therefore, on the mood of the House, the majority was that we should, as the situation improved and that the pandemic and the medical advice were that we would return to previous procedures. Interestingly, a matter of detail, however, we decided that we would retain speakers lists for oral questions by majority. We continued with that process, whereas we got rid of speakers lists for everything else because it lost the dynamic of debate. The House concluded, having gone through some months of having the speakers lists for oral questions, that they became anodyne, that ministers were not under the pressure that they should be. I say that this is a former minister who was one of the few that enjoyed oral questions and that atmosphere was that you did not get the right dynamic. The House decided that it would return to having 10 minutes for each question, but with a free flow. Interestingly, the free flow has probably increased the numbers of people that are posing questions because it was more staccato when it was a list and there was a tendency for some people to ask too long a question and the minister therefore to reply with too long an answer. In fact, I think that there is a feeling now that we tried an experiment with continuing the speakers of this, but it did not quite work for the House. Just picking up very quickly on the select committees, I think that very strongly the mood in our House is that the autonomy that each committee has to decide how best to conduct their business has worked well, and not only for members but more particularly I think in terms of the range of witnesses that have become much more prevalent so that our international committees are interviewing people all around the world. Those are the areas that I think we have had successes and we will wish to retain. No, thanks very much for your answer. We have a similar problem here in our Scottish Parliament regarding succinct questions and answers, so we are well aware of it. One of the things that I wanted to ask, and I will come back on to you, Lord Gardner, is if virtual participation was limited to certain circumstances, what are your views on how decisions about virtual participation should be managed? Do you think that it should be through political parties, the speaker or the discretion of the individual? Well, our process is that our strategic direction comes from our—can you hear me? Yes, you have just come back on Lord Gardner. We missed the start of that answer. I am so sorry. The House of Lords commission issues what I call the strategic direction and then the Procedure and Privileges Committee consider and bring forward reports to the House. Though it is for the House to decide, being a self-regulating House, all of these processes and procedures now come to the House, though it was a truncated because of during the hybrid situation, where the House agreed that changes had to be made very promptly and therefore I think 11 different guidances during this period were issued, but our process of change comes through the Procedure and Privileges Committee putting forward proposals to the House and then the House debating it and then agreeing to the report or not. I have had instances of both where it has been agreed or that we have taken it back for further consideration. That is the process that we get our sort of buy-in from the House and also the structure of the Procedure and Privileges Committee with having a large number of crossbench as well as political parties. Obviously, the membership of that committee very much takes the whole range of the House of Lords. Thank you very much. Karen, do you have any views on that at all? The Commons is different in that the hierarchy is very difficult to explain and there isn't one body that is responsible for any one bit of what we do. Certain things are at the discretion of the speaker. The speaker, for example, introduced call lists and then could reintroduce them at any time. The speaker was able to determine the way voting worked. These are not set down in standing orders. They are not prescribed. They are really down to the speaker to make a determination on. The commission would have a role in that, but the speaker ultimately decides. Anything that requires a change to standing orders, though, whilst my committee can make recommendations, it is only the Government that can put those motions on the order paper. The Government owns and controls the order paper and is able to determine the business. We did have a situation in which, when we were trying to introduce virtual participation in debates, the Government had put that motion on the order paper—I am not going to comment how willing it was or not to do that—and put that motion on the order paper in such a way that it could not be amended. If it was amended, it would not proceed. That meant that members were very frustrated because it was called a nod or nothing. Either it went through or it did not. There was no debate and no option. A debate was concocted and people got very frustrated because they felt that the members of the House were not being heard. I have to put on the record that I believe that the House business should not be whipped business. That recent development, and it is a very recent development of putting a three-line whip on House business, is a very dangerous precedent because this is not a Government. The House is there to scrutinise the Government. Of course, Parliament exists partly so that the Government can get its business done, but it also exists to scrutinise. If the Government is determining how that scrutiny happens and the Government is whipping its members to ensure that they determine how that scrutiny happens, scrutiny will not be as good. Even if it is as good, no-one will quite believe that it is as good. I would firmly say that the House business should never be whipped, but we have that difficulty at the moment. I will hand you over to the capable hands of Edward Mountain, and I think that we will have a few questions on it. Thanks very much, convener. I probably should put on the record that the last year I have had to be in hybrid or virtual format, with no choice of my own. I think that views are on it, but Karen, if I could come to you to start with, is to talk about and get your view of spontaneity and the ability for people to make interventions and actually participate in debate when you were hybrid. We have a wonderful system in Scotland that we know that debates for the next three weeks and the whips choose the speakers, and the speakers are notified to the presiding officer and the presiding officer calls them, and that is it. You cannot make any interventions if you are remote. Did you find that it was as sterile as that when you were a hybrid, Karen? Yes, so it was not whips who decided who spoke. You put into a call list and on questions, on statements and questions, it was a lottery. The first out of the hat were the ones that were called, keeping the balance so that it was always government, then opposition, benches. I think that I will make the point that Lord Gardner touched on this. I was a minister before. If I had known exactly everybody who was going to ask me a question in a question time, that would have been a much easier process, because I would have had a good idea of the kind of question they might ask. Whereas in the system that we have always had with topicals and follow-ups or substantive questions, you never really know who is going to come in. I will make the point that if you are a minister and you want your officials to be completely on the ball and you want you to be completely on the ball as a minister, that prepping for all of the questions when you have no idea who is going to ask you what is incredibly important, and it is really part of the challenge that we have ministers to their officials to make sure that a policy is robust. If you cannot answer a simple question that has put you on the floor of the house that you do not expect, then there is probably something wrong with the policy. It is worth making that point. Good scrutiny makes for better government. That is another point that is worth making. In the debates, the real frustration was that we had no intervention. Even if you were participating physically, you could not intervene. You could not intervene on someone who was participating virtually. Once the screen came on, it was the person on the screen who spoke with no intervention and nobody interacting with them. It is a debating chamber and that interaction is incredibly important. We ended up with a very frustrating debate where you ended up with most speakers getting no more than three minutes. They read a speech into the record, which means that, yes, you have got a speech on the record, but there was no further ring of the issue. I was a whip at one point and whips would say that you can go and listen to a wonderful debate, but it really should not change the way you vote. Again, I would not say that that is such a good policy, but most whips would probably believe that that is the right way to do things. Yes, have the debate, but then go and vote with the Government or vote with the Opposition, depending on your party allegiance. I think that you need to have that cut-and-thrust debate and the ability in the debate to move the argument on and to consider the argument more fully. We did not have that. It was very sterile. The frustration for me is that there are technical ways that we could have looked at doing interventions, but there was a reluctance to even try, because I suspect that people did not want to find that it might be quite good and that they would rather go back to fully physical. I suspect that, at some point in the future, we will want to look at this again. There certainly is not an appetite to do it at the moment, based on the experiences during the pandemic. Can I go to the Lord Gardiner and ask him to say that our committee system is slightly different in the Scottish Parliament, because it is effectively our second chamber to scrutinise legislation and, whilst committees can take evidence very effectively, do you think that they are in a position to scrutinise legislation on a line-by-line basis if they are doing it remotely and they are not round the table posing the question, saying that if you had 200 amendments on one bill that I had, do you think that that could be done remotely to the Government, or do you think that that would be impossible? Having taken the agriculture bill and the fisheries bill through the House of Lords during this period, it was done, but it could have been more dynamic if we had had the system that we have now of meeting more fully, because I think that the whole ethos of our assemblies is that discourse and exchange. Picking up what Karen Bradley has said is one of the reasons I think the House of Lords wished to return to having the physical sense in the chamber and in the grand committee was precisely because of that lack of ability to pose questions, to challenge a minister, it became more formulaic, there wasn't the sort of electricity, particularly with question time, but particularly in the House where the whole essence is that we are seeking to scrutinise line by line our committee stages, which are either in grand committee or in the chambers. That is absolutely the challenge and the ability for a number of members to play in with each other trying to get the right words and discussing an amendment. I think that that became, I found, much more sterile. As a minister, I always wanted to be at the dispatch box, because it was very difficult to have dealt with it, I think, dealing with it if I had been remotely somewhere. My experience, but also the sense of the House, was that we wanted to return because of that spontaneity of challenge and the fact that ministers really didn't have a satisfactory sort of scrutiny of their proposals this way. I think that that's why the House overwhelmingly wanted to return, because of those facets. Recognising, I think, that all of us in all legislatures have done our very best to achieve legislation, even if it might have been better in the form that we're seeking to undertake business now. Thank you. I have one more question if I may, which is to Karen. I've heard Lord Gardner's point on that, and it chimes with me about the fact that ministers, if they're not at the dispatch box, just talk time out and you can't intervene, you can't shut them up, you can't get them back on topic and they just waffle away for the 20 minutes that they've got for their questions, giving you non-answers. Do you agree with my summation of that? Do you think that ministers, when they're participating in any event, should be in front of the committee or in front of the Parliament so there's no way to wiggle out of answering the question while there is or was less of a way? Certainly right at the beginning when we first introduced the hybrid model, which was you could participate by Zoom to ask a question, but the speaker was very keen that ministers should be in the room to answer the question. Now, there were some who for very good medical reasons or other reasons were not able to do so, and I think I'll say it wasn't just ministers, I think there became a difficulty. If you're in the chamber and you start to go on too long asking your question, Mr Speaker catches your eye pretty darn quickly. Mr Speaker, it's very clear that the house is losing patience. You'll start to hear people saying, you know, sit down, is it intervene, is it lunch yet, you know, there'll be somebody who will make some quip that will put you off your stride. Nobody really can go on that too long when they're in the chamber. If you're on a screen, you can just keep on going, and you know that is true of all of them. It was true of everybody participating, ministers and participants, but you know it's also true. I mean, I did quite a lot of media over that time, and I remember speaking to one of the journalists afterwards who said, it's really difficult to keep time when you're on a screen because I can't catch your eye and say, news is coming up in a moment, could you sit down? So I think that that is one of the problems of any virtual participation. It's much too easy to go on and not be stopped. Thank you, Karen, and yes, I agree. Having been a convener, it's very easy in a committee room to turn off the minister's microphone, so he shuts up. You can't do that remotely. Thank you very much, convener, and thank you. Thank you. Finally, I realised that time is tight, but I'm going to hand over to Bob Doris. Thank you, convener. I'd like to ask a couple of questions, I suppose, around recruitment, retention and diversity of elected representatives. I'm just wondering, we know that Mr Mountain's had to be hybrid for a significant amount of time, and hybrid has supported that. It's interesting to hear in relation to proxy voting in Westminster for babyleaf but also looking at long-term sickness and conditions. We lost some parliamentarians from the last session, very high-quality parliamentarians, because of work-life balance. More generally, I wonder if we could go to Karen first, if that's okay. I mean, putting to one side that we have to make the technical and the dynamic aspects of hybrid parliaments work effectively, what are the benefits of retaining members of your legislature or any legislature with hybrid parliaments in terms of that work-life balance and retaining, perhaps, mothers who just don't get to spend time with their family if something's got to give? So I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are on that. I think that that's the other side of the argument. There's no doubt that the scrutiny that we had during Covid wasn't as good, but let's get back to the reality. If it hadn't been for introducing that hybrid parliament right at the sort of straight after Easter 2020, we would have had no scrutiny. So the idea that this was a bad thing is just wrong. It was just plain wrong. We were one of the few parliaments that did sit through the whole pandemic that were able to do some scrutiny. Now, I think the problem we had was that we sort of imposed a hybrid system on a model that is very physical based. The model of scrutiny that we have in parliament does require people to be there to get the maximum benefit from it, but the question shouldn't be, oh well, we'll just get rid of hybrid because it clearly can't work on the system. Do we need to reform the system to allow for more hybrid participation? Because you're absolutely right. The statistics were clear. The people participating virtually were more women were participating virtually than the overall average in the house. We have more people with long-term conditions who simply wouldn't have been able to be anywhere near, but not even a parliament today where Covid is not the public health emergency that was back in the lockdown era, but simply just couldn't travel. We all know of those instances and we've had some very powerful evidence given to my committee on that. There is a point, and maybe it's a point that comes from lots of other things that we're discussing at the moment around culture, approach and attitude, but maybe we have to look more fundamentally at the way Parliament operates to make it culturally and physically a better place for all people to participate. We want Parliament to represent the public, and it's not going to represent the public if we insist on it being like a sixth form debating society. I'm going to come back to you again very briefly. I'm hybrid, and I'm remote working today. It allowed me to feed my baby and give my son breakfast this morning, albeit at a constituency regeneration event this lunchtime. The one time this week I'll get to have dinner with my family. I don't want to do that every week for hybrid working, but it gives a work-life balance. I've overcome the barriers, the MSPs, the MPs that are in Parliament. We've already overcome those barriers, despite the fact that you don't always get the work-life balance that you want. For those who are not putting themselves forward for election, are there barriers that exist that the hybrid Parliament could overcome, be that those from ethnic minority backgrounds, those with disabilities, those with long-term conditions, those with young families or any other group? Looking at it from the other end—this is supporting me currently, but I had already overcome those barriers to be elected in the first place—could hybrid Parliament do something to make sure that all our Parliaments look a lot more like the people we wish to represent? As I say, it's not just about hybridity, it's around the whole way we work. I would go back to our select committee system, which is very similar to the committee that I'm giving evidence to today. I don't think that stopping members of a committee from being able to participate unless they are physically in a room is actually helping the debate and helping scrutiny. The way our select committee system works allows for a hybrid approach and for virtual participation, not just of witnesses, but of members of the committee. That is a model that we perhaps need to look at. We have a lot of challenges in Westminster. We have restoration and renewal that may or may not be happening, which is going to force us into changing the physical way that we operate. We have the challenges of the culture that is so live at the moment and is so in the headlines. We have the challenges of how we make sure that scrutiny really works so that the Government is properly scrutinised, even with a massive majority. All of those challenges, I think this is a point at which we need to think very hard about the Parliament that we want to be, so that we can attract the best people that do make Parliament look like the rest of the country, make people look at Parliament and say, yes, that person is like me, that person, I could be one of them. This is not just about hybridity, it is about everything that we do. Can I just check, Karen Bradley, that hybridity has a role to play in encouraging people from underrepresented groups to step forward and to increase the pool of talent for those who may wish to seek election? You said that it is more than hybridity, of course it is, but does hybridity have a role to play within that? I think that just like every workplace in the country, we all now know the way that we can operate. We are able to hear from President Zelensky in the House of Commons because of hybridity. We are able to have meetings, and I am regularly participating in meetings with Ukrainian MPs hearing what is happening on the ground because of hybridity. This simply would not have been possible. We would never have thought to do it until the pandemic showed us that we can. The whole world is looking at different ways of doing things and making sure that more people can be part of it. My background is a tax accountant in the city. I see my old colleagues are now operating in a different way to attract different people into the profession. It has to be right that we look at this. My apologies, Bob. I just need to cut across you because of time. Just to see whether or not Lord Gardner of Kimbell has any comments, because he needs to depart in a way in the near future. That is precisely what I was going to ask. Lord Gardner, I am conscious that it is not an elected chamber, but we have seen the benefits of getting greater contributions in the House of Lords, so I welcome your reflections on that, too. Thank you very much. One of the reasons why we decided to open this eligible scheme for members with long-term disability was very much along the lines of wanting the active participation of members who had long-term disabilities, many of whom wanted the option of coming to the House and wanting to play their part in the House, but also wanting the option that there would be moments of the day or periods when they would need to not be in the chamber. One of the reflections of what we had was very much on this area of disability. The other thing that I would say is that, very quickly, on the select committees, whereas we have this autonomy and it is working very well, I think that there is a general consensus that, if a select committee is asking for evidence from a minister, that the dynamic is much better if the minister is there physically. I think that that has come across, and I think that both ministers and members of committees have observed to me that that has been a better dynamic. In the sense of whether one is hybrid or not, I think that what we have tried to do is provide this option for people to attend because, overwhelmingly, everyone who is eligible has said, I wish to attend whenever I possibly can. They want to be absolutely on equal partnership in the chamber, in the grand committee or whatever, but it provides that opportunity, which is working, I believe, very well. Thank you for asking me. I hope that both witnesses would not mind if our clerks were to correspond with you to have the option of placing some more evidence on the record in respect of some other matters, but I thank the right honourable Karen Bradley for attending this morning, and I thank you, Lord Gardiner of Kimbell, for attending and giving evidence, which has been most helpful. Thank you very much indeed. I'm now going to adjourn this meeting for a short time while we change over panels. Can I welcome people back to this meeting and indeed to our second panel? Joining us today are Dennis Norton, TD, who's a member of the DAAL, and Garrett Vermillion, director of legislative services from the Flemish Parliament. I'd like to welcome both gentlemen to this meeting. We were going to be joined by the right honourable Lawrence Skelly, the president of the Tynwold, but unfortunately the right honourable Lawrence Skelly is unwell. On behalf of myself and the committee, can I hope that the president makes a swift and full recovery? We'll begin shortly. There doesn't appear to be anyone on the screen. I think that we're broadcasting fine. I was about to... Oh, sorry. No, that's all right. That's all right. The wonders of technology can I again introduce Dennis Norton from the DAAL. Good morning. As you are aware, the committee are looking at the future procedures here based on our experiences coming out of Covid and the use of hybrid parliament facilities so that people can contribute both within chambers and remotely. Would you like to make an opening statement so that the committee are aware of what the circumstances were in the DAAL? Yes, just very briefly, and thank you for inviting me to contribute to the evidence this morning. We're slightly unique, I suppose, compared to some of the other parliaments within our catchment in that we have a written constitution that can only be amended by the Irish people. Our constitution, Bonrach naherdon, clearly states that the houses of the Eroctus, both houses of parliament, the DAAL and the shannot, shall sit near or in the city of Dublin or in such other place as may from time to time be determined. There is a clear unambiguous statement in our constitution that the Parliament must sit in a physical place in the vicinity of Dublin. Also, within the constitution, there is provision that decisions and questions of each house shall be determined by a majority of the members present and voting. Again, that is written into our constitution. The third aspect that is relevant to the discussion this morning is the issue of privilege and parliamentary privilege. Under our constitution, utterances made in either house of parliament have absolute privilege, and the legal interpretation of that is that they must be made physically in the Parliament itself. That means that, for all plenary sittings and public committee hearings, members must be within the precincts of Lentster House or within the Dublin area. During the most restrictive element of the Covid-19 restrictions, we had a dual campus approach in the DAAL. We had the plenary session taking place in the national convention centre on the other side of the River Liffey. The committees were still operating from the traditional Lentster House complex. For members who were involved in plenary during the main restrictions, only one third of members were present in the chamber at any one time, so there was a role to put in place. One third of members contributed, one third of members voted. One of the first things that colleagues wanted to see change was that abolition of the reduced voting numbers, not just because they wanted to be able to record their position on a particular motion before the DAAL, but also because they provided them with an opportunity to meet with and engage with ministers and colleagues. I am happy to go into further detail in relation to that later. On foot of all of this changing dynamic, the cancoral of the Speaker of the DAAL established in March 2021 a family-friendly and inclusive Parliament forum where we had the staff of the Eropthus as well as the members of the Eropthus looking at how we could make Parliament far more family-friendly. One of the issues that was looked at was the introduction of hybrid sittings in terms of the DAAL, the Shannon and committee business, where members would actually choose to participate in certain business remotely or be physically present. To do that would require extending the designation of Parliament to other physical locations. The way that is being looked at in relation to that is to introduce regional hubs located in existing state buildings where members from surrounding constituencies could participate in certain DAAL, Shannon or committee business without the need to be physically present within the parliamentary complex in Dublin. At the moment, members can participate remotely in committee business, whether it is select meetings dealing with legislation or joint meetings where we have outside witnesses, but they must be on the Lenster House complex, so they must be coming from, like I am today, from my parliamentary office. That would just give you a flavour of what we are looking at here in Ireland at the moment. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Milton. That was a fantastic flavour. Gareth Vermelian is director of legislative services. You perhaps have the privilege of the not being the elected person here today, but perhaps that gives an insight that we don't have. Would you like to explain how the Flemish Parliament managed over this period, please? Of course. I would be happy to. Greetings from Brussels. Thank you for having us, for inviting us to give us the possibility to explain what we have done during the last more or less two years. In principle, Flemish Parliament has its meetings in Brussels. Our standing rules determine that, by the way, but we switched to virtual and hybrid meetings, but it depends. I have to make a distinction between the plenary sessions and the committee meetings. The plenary meetings continue to be physical meetings, but we have 124 Members of Parliament. As far as the presence of those MPs goes, we have had limited meetings. During the different phases of the pandemic, we have had purely physical meetings, with the exception of the voting. I will explain in a minute. We have had purely physical plenary meetings with not the 124 MPs present, but most of the time, either 39—we have had a period with 39 members present—and the last six to seven months, we have had 70 of them present. The others had to stay at home or elsewhere. They couldn't come because of the rules of social distance, etc. We have had our debates with a limited number of MPs present—the debates. Those were not hybrid meetings. The members who were not present in Brussels couldn't participate in the debates, but at the moment the pandemic started, our IT guys immediately developed and wrote an IT application to enable the MPs to vote from elsewhere, from home or wherever they were. Voting in the plenary meetings always took place via that application from a distance. Also, the members who were present physically had to use the new digital application to vote. It worked perfectly, so they did a hell of a job. The plenary sessions kept on being physical meetings with a limited number of MPs physically present. The committee meetings—that's another thing—we immediately switched to, in the beginning, purely digital virtual video call meetings. With few exceptions, it could be decided to have physical meetings for the committees, but in general we had purely virtual meetings. No hybrid meetings meant that members can choose to be physically present or to participate from a distance. Purely virtual means that they couldn't come to Brussels, so they had to stay away. With the exception of the chairman of the committee, he or she had to be present in Brussels together with the committee clerk. It was decided that someone should be physically present to be able, technically, to broadcast our committee meetings. All our committee meetings, in principle, are public meetings, and we broadcast them with a live stream. To be able to organise that technically, from a technical point of view, someone had to be present, and it was decided that not only the civil servant, not only the committee clerk, had to be present, but also the chairman of the committee, so the MP sharing the committee, had to be there. In the beginning, we only had one committee room, which enabled, technically, to organise hybrid meetings. In the meantime, we have six. During the period of the pandemic, there was a tendency to go back to normal, as far as possible, and we organised ourselves in a way that not only purely virtual meetings became possible, but also hybrid meetings, so that the members can choose to be physically present or to participate from a distance, and also the ministers. It works. Virtual meetings, hybrid meetings, it works. The debates can take place. Ministers and members of government can be questioned, et cetera, et cetera. One of the reasons that it is me, that it is a civil servant, who is talking to you at this moment, is the fact that the opinions within the Flemish Parliaments, among the MPs, go in quite different directions, as far as the future goes. In the meantime, we are back to normal, and there are no longer measures—covid measures—that there are no longer any measures, so that we can go back to normal. However, it was decided that the committees themselves themselves can choose to either have purely physical meetings or hybrid meetings. Our committees keep on meeting hybridly, and we continue to have hybrid meetings. I think that maybe 60-70 per cent of our committee meetings take place of our hybrid meetings at the moment. That's very helpful. So, our MPs have very strong opinions about physical meetings versus hybrid meetings. Some of them are very, very much in favour of hybrid meetings. That's very helpful. I think that's part of what the intention of this morning is to explore. I would like just to start taking the privilege of convener to talk about proxy voting. I understand that, certainly, Mr Norton, that again your constitution prevents proxy voting. I was just wondering whether or not there is any growing tide towards proxy voting to allow access during times when elected members perhaps should be able to take off the elected member's hat because of personal circumstances but that their constituents still to be represented. I wonder whether they had any thoughts on that, Mr Norton? From our experience, it has been that there has been a demand for members to get back to physical voting in the chamber. As I said, we had a reduced voting system for a period of time when only one third of members were present. That reflected the view of all the different groupings and parliamentary parties or parties within Parliament. However, no, there doesn't seem to be demand. The demand seems to be very much that we would try and confine the voting to a specific period over the parliamentary week so that members could plan their time around that. However, we have tried to do in both the last Parliament and in this Parliament is to have the voting business on a Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday evening and to dispose of all the votes during that particular period. That is also the time that most of the parliamentary parties would meet their colleagues and it would also be when all the other political groupings would have their group meetings to decide policy issues. We have tried to truncate that aspect where people are all required to be physically present in Parliament to that particular period to provide that level of flexibility, but there isn't a demand for remote voting for members. Do you think that that comes from the cultural importance of your Parliament's physically meeting in set spaces? As you say, it is one of the fundamental precepts of the Constitution that the Parliament should physically meet in the demand for transparency and understanding drives and perhaps overshadows individual circumstances that mean that they cannot attend? I would be a strong advocate to expand as much of the remote participation as we can. I chair one of the parliamentary committees and I facilitate that as much as I can. We need to remember that politics is the art of compromise and that a lot of the parliamentary work is not done on the floor of the chamber. It can be done over a cup of coffee. For example, even this week, I have had engagement with three separate ministers on three different pieces of legislation where I am pushing a particular approach. One of them was in the lobby within the chamber before voting. One was outside the committee room after discussing a piece of legislation and one was over a cup of coffee in the canteen. Those aspects are very important in terms of trying to get compromises and to get solutions in terms of the passage of legislation. They do not happen in the chamber itself. That is an important part of Parliament. Parliament is not just about the chamber, it is about the complex itself, the engagement that takes place bilaterally or multilaterally before legislation is presented on the floor of the house. That is very helpful. Mr Vermillion, my understanding is that the Flemish parliament does not have a proxy voting for members who cannot attend. Is there a review to move to that or has the electronic voting that has come along perhaps removed any demand for it? In the meantime, we went back to normal. The voting takes place in normal circumstances by pushing a button physically in the meeting room. We switched back to that kind of voting so that the voting from a distance does not happen any more for this moment. Part of the MPs are very much in favour to install that way of voting for the future. Members who are sick cannot attend because of their sickness, but they are well enough to be able to watch the meeting on television or on their computer screen from a distance and to participate in voting at the end of the meeting. That is something on which discussions take place for the moment, but I think there is no majority to go in that direction. The physical presence will keep on being necessary to be able to participate in voting in the future. I am going to pass over to Colette Stephenson, a member of the committee, who has some questions. I really want to explore your views on the virtual and hybrid way of working. There have been suggestions, and you have mentioned it yourself, about unintended consequences and disadvantages to some members as they are not present in the actual Parliament itself. I know from some of the statistics that have come out that the House of Lords said that there was more contributions that increased because there was a hybrid arrangement in place. Albeit there was a slight decline in the number of different members that contributed. It was really just to explore your views on what you think the barriers are to change and how a balance could maybe be found there. If I could direct my question, I have completely forgotten my apologies. I think that we need to look at how we can address barriers. Covid has changed the dynamic of Parliament. There is absolutely no doubt about it, but we are all more used to using remote tools. I use it on a weekly basis in dealing with constituents where I was physically travelling to meetings the length and breadth of my constituency. Now some of those meetings are taking place remotely, even with community groups. Even when I am here in Parliament, I can now have meetings with groups in my constituency at the same time. That is very important. The committee bell is kicking off there, so apologies in relation to that. I think that it is important that we look at how we can remove as many barriers as possible. One of the things that I have been advocating is the whole area of witness evidence being given before a parliamentary committee. At the moment, in order to have privilege, that witness must present within the precincts of Lenster House. It requires a change in the legislation so that they would have privilege no matter where they present from. I chaired the parliamentary committee that has covered responsibility in terms of policy for our island communities. We have had quite a number of members from island communities that have participated in the committee proceedings, which would normally take them three days to physically travel to Dublin, give evidence and travel home. Now they can do it sitting at their kitchen table. What we are trying to do at the moment is to explore the idea of a number of regional hopes so that members of Parliament would participate, particularly in committee hearings, from one of those regional hopes, rather than having to physically travel to Dublin for every single meeting. Doing that and then confining the voting to the Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday evening is a good compromise. It allows for more flexibility in terms of engagement. Members are not having to travel to Dublin as much, but it also provides them with what I believe is important—that ability to engage with colleagues. I think that the parliamentary whips probably would be very anxious to keep the physical voting in place. I, for one, was a member of a Government and voted against that Government back a number of years ago and went against the party whip. I knew that I had to physically vote inside a Parliament, and every other member of the Government was looking directly at me when I pressed that button against the Government, so it makes it more difficult to vote against the Government. The other side of it is that you need that collegiality in terms of difficult decisions that have to be made to be able to vote with colleagues on those. You can only build up that relationship once you have those interpersonal relationships built up already. One of the things that has come out of Covid-19 is that surveys have shown that 44 per cent of people have reported that they have found it harder to build trust with co-workers through this remote process. That also applies to Parliament. In our case, we had our parliamentary election on the month before Covid hit Ireland, so there is that deficit particularly among newer members. I must say that I have to second almost everything that Mr Alton has said, especially as far as flexibility goes. It makes it possible for example to easily invite, for example, foreign experts for hearings or to give evidence in the committee meeting without having to travel to Brussels, etc. I am convinced that hybrid meetings will be staying among us. We were obliged to learn to use those new possibilities. We have learned what the advantages are, of course, so we will keep on using it when necessary. Of course. On the other hand, there is a strong feeling amongst a lot of members of Parliament that the quality of the debates suffers from using those hybrid possibilities. As I said earlier, we broadcast all our plenary and committee meetings and broadcasting a virtual or a hybrid meeting. We do not have a lot of viewers in normal circumstances. We do not have them. However, we have to watch a parliamentary meeting that takes place in a hybrid parliamentary meeting. I am sorry to say, but that must be horrible. It really is not attractive at all. One of the reasons for that is that the debate simply is not as as feeling as in a physical environment. I am glad to see that, no matter where the Parliament sits, we are all governed by bells ringing in various places. Bob, can I come over to you for your set of questions, please? Of course, convener. Putting to one side any technical issues with hybrid, the dynamics of debate, interventions and all that, Mr Mountain may raise some of those issues in relation to the opportunities of a hybrid Parliament, not by default, but whether a caring need or a long-term condition or parents or a disability or another reason, that flexibility for individual members. Does either of our witnesses start with Dennis Mountain to think that there are opportunities there in terms of pretension of members of Parliament who have difficulty with their work-life balance or have other barriers that they have to overcome? I will roll both questions together. For time constraints, so by definition, those MSPs that we have in Parliament have overcame those barriers. Some think that the price to pay is too much and then leave the Parliament, but there are lots of people who do not decide to stand for election because of the nature of Parliament, because of the challenges and the barriers that they have, be that same groups, disabled people, long-term conditions, people juggling family life, other opportunities in relation to a hybrid Parliament to make all our registers look a little bit more like the society that we all represent. So pretension of work-life balance but also making those registers more diverse and more representative, so maybe come to Dennis Mountain first. Yes, definitely. I think that there are opportunities there in relation to hybrid working. I for one, at the end of January ended up having Covid, so I had to isolate, but I was still able to chair meetings of the committee. There were private meetings, but I was still able to chair those. I was still able to participate in other parliamentary meetings that were not being broadcast, so it did facilitate that happening. It provides for a level of consistency. If you have the same members at the same meetings every week, it is much easier to get decisions. I am a member of the business committee, which decides the schedule each week. If we had different members turning up every second week, it would be much harder to get agreement. You build up a relationship and a rapport with regard to that. There is an opportunity absolutely in terms of illness or physical disability. We have had members who, for one reason or another, are immunocompromised and have been able to participate actively in meetings from their parliamentary office that would not have been possible for them if that facility was not available to them. There is an opportunity absolutely in terms of people with disabilities, people who are isolated for one reason or another, to contribute either as members of Parliament or to the parliamentary process. For example, I chair the social protection committee. It is very hard to get family carers as witnesses before a committee hearing because of their commitments that they cannot give that time, where it is possible for them to give evidence remotely. I think that the opportunity is there to do that. There is also an opportunity if you have a minister that is not available or avoiding engagement with a committee saying that they are out of the country. Our ministers have to attend the council of ministers at European Union level. There is no reason why they cannot plug in remotely in relation to that. The other aspect of your question, and I think that it is an important aspect, how do we increase diversity and can remote technology help in relation to that? I think that remote technology can help in greater participation, particularly at committee level within our system anyway. However, I would hesitate about members participating exclusively from a remote setting. We have had senators who have represented our Irish communities abroad who were physically based in the United States but also physically attended Parliament. They were able to give us an insight through offline engagement in terms of some of the issues that you do not see reflected in an actual debate. It is important to remember that. The other thing is that we had an election back in 2020, in February 2020. We have a lot of new, very capable TDS now, but they have not had the opportunity to learn. Remember, the parliamentary process is an apprenticeship. It is about learning from seeing and learning from doing, and it is very hard to do that remotely. I feel disappointed for some of those members who have not learned the skills of the trade up to now. We need, as a Parliament, to make up that deficit with them now in terms of using the parliamentary tools that are available to them. If you have someone who is participating exclusively remotely, yes, their voice will be heard, but will they make an impact in terms of policy changes? Will they make an impact in terms of legislative changes? I think that it is very hard to do that remotely because so much happens through the interpersonal engagement with ministers, with their officials, with the people who are drafting legislation, not necessarily physically in the committee or in clean recession of Parliament. Thank you, Mr Motton, for that. That is a point that is very well made. I am not sure of suggestions that we have had that should be exclusively remotely, but you make a really good point about those relationships that have to be built and fostered in the first place before you can get that really positive dynamic with hybrid. I think that we are grasping with that here in the Scottish Parliament as well, so thank you for putting that on the record. Gerrit, do you want to come in and give your observations to the questions asked? Gladly. Concerning what work-life balance we have seen at the time and during the period the plenary sessions took place physically, of course, but with a limited number of members, that at Wednesday afternoon or Wednesday evening when we have our plenary votes, most of the members could participate in voting, so 124 MPs, and during all that period we have had at least 115 to 120 members participating in the plenary voting. Now that we are back to physical voting, those who are present can vote, the others not, we see that about 100 to 105 members participate and are present, so thanks to the virtual voting system we've had during the Covid period, more members participated in voting, and I suppose work-life balance could play a role. We see that, for example, MPs who have small children are very much in favour of hybrid meetings and continuing to have hybrid committee meetings, but not only work-life balance, but also what I'd like to call work-work balance. For example, other MPs who are very much in favour of hybrid meetings are those who are mayor of their own town or village and who have work in their own town as well, being the mayor or have some other responsibilities in governing their own town. Work-life balance and work-work balance, I think, but as I said earlier, yes, hybrid meetings give us a lot of opportunities to operate in a more flexible way, but can that play a role in encouraging other profiles to participate in elections and to go for public office? I don't believe it. I really am convinced that that doesn't play any role at all, that that wouldn't make a difference or doesn't make a difference, but once they are elected, it surely gives more possibilities and more flexibility for the elected members of Parliament. Thank you, Gerard Vermiland. No further questions, convener. Thank you very much, Bob. Can I hand over to you, Edward? Thank you, convener, and I'm trying to keep this short, but there's a lot of questions that have been answered, but I'd like to come to Dennis with what I made first. First of all, I'm delighted to know that the parliamentary privilege exists for your Parliament. It doesn't exist for the Parliament in Scotland, and that anything that we say is not subject to privilege. Your point about politics and relationships is really well-made, and I part back to evidence that we heard from somebody else. You don't bump into people on WhatsApp, and I think that's right. Having the ability to talk to people is really important. Dennis, have you watched other parliaments debating in a hybrid format? If so, do you think that they're informative or sterile? Yes. I have watched other parliaments in the hybrid process. I do believe that they are stable. Body language is a key issue. I was talking to some of your colleagues last week. I serve on the inter-parliamentary union working group on science and technology. We were elected last April of 2021, and we had all-remote meetings up until last December, and we were working on a particular paper. Last December, we had our first opportunity to physically meet, and we did more in the three hours that we physically had met in the previous eight months of work. None of us had met each other before that. We were 21 parliaments from across the globe. Body language, facial expression all paid a key role in progressing an international paper that we were working on. I see it as being very important. I served on the EU council of ministers, particularly where you have 27 member states and 27 ministers. That interpersonal relationship that you build up with your colleagues makes a huge difference in getting agreement, and, as an EU level, you have to get agreement. I see how important that is in relation to it. In terms of going back to your question regarding the actual debates themselves, they are a bit staged. I think that Parliament, particularly in second stage debates, are quite stagnant anyway. I think that they have become more so in our Parliament anyway since Covid-19, because we had a restriction that debates could only last for two hours, then plenary had to be ceased and the whole place sanitised before you started again. We are now finding that, even though the time restrictions are removed, a lot of debates are not lasting much longer than those two hours. It has spilled over into the day-to-day plenary aspect of it now, which is a concern. It is something that we need to be conscious of. One other thing that is important that we think about as well is that, absolutely, hybrid working has been great. It has reduced the amount of travel that we as members of Parliament do travelling across our constituencies or travelling to and from Parliament in Dublin or Edinburgh or wherever it is. However, we are also losing that bit of time while we are travelling, travelling in the car on our own, and time to mull over a problem to contemplate it. The reality is that many of the very good innovative policy developments that take place take place in that period in the car when we are on our own, undistracted. In today's society, where we have technology all around us, where the phone is there the whole time, whether it is WhatsApp or emails, having that bit of time and space is also important to contemplate a problem and come forward with a practical solution that can get the agreement of your parliamentary colleagues and your peers right across the parliamentary divide. I am not sure that my office would agree with you, because when I leave on the train at 5.30 and start firing off emails, I am not sure that they are particularly pleased with that. Gareth, if I could just come to you and ask you a very brief question. The question is, do you think that ministers, when they are called before a committee or the Parliament, can be held properly to account if they are doing it virtually? Or do you think that they just waffle on and talk the clock down, and there is no way of controlling them? It is difficult for you to answer that, Gareth, but I am sure that you will not say it. Not really. I think that it does not make a difference. How did you call it waffle on? They also waffle on in physical meetings, so it really does not make a difference. They can be held accountable also in a virtual way of working. I do not think that it is a cultural thing also. I do not see any reason to tell you that it can make a difference. Maybe I can add something, and I do not know if they are allowed in your Parliaments, but a lot of members and even sometimes ministers tend to mute their camera during hybrid meetings when they participate from a distance. Mr Naughton talked about body language, eye contact, etc., which is of course more difficult in hybrid meetings, but it is impossible when participants mute their camera. Pardon my French, but it is a pain in the ass that there is a tendency to do that. Other members participating or viewers do not even know whether that MP is present or not. You can mute your camera and go do something else in the garden or whatever. That is something that takes place here, but we mark it and ask them not to do that, but it does not really help. That is another element, but it is something that is taking place and does not help to make hybrid meetings attractive to participate in and to watch. Thank you. Our broadcasting services control our cameras, so if you type away from keyboard, they do not turn them on. However, I am always conscious of being in the room with the convener that we have at the moment because you get a glare when you are overstating if you are welcome more speech. I can feel that pouring into me at the moment, so I am going to hand back to the convener. It would be more physically threatening if I was in the room with him, rather than just doing it remotely. Thank you very much. I am very grateful for your empathy there, Edward. Mr Norton, you wanted to comment on that as well. Can I just come to you before I pass on to the final committee member? I would be very brief, but I have been on both sides of the table, being a minister before the committee, under scrutiny, chairing the meetings and being someone who has quizzed ministers in the past. Having a minister physically present is much easier. It is much more difficult to avoid the questions. It is not just the questions, but it is the reaction of your Government colleagues inside the committee room to what you are saying. It is not purely the response that you are giving to the individual member, but the reaction in the facial expressions that you can see from your colleagues. We have been lucky that, in our procedure, ministers have always had their camera on throughout the committee hearing where it has taken place remotely. Personally, I believe that the default should be that ministers should be physically present unless there is a real and justifiable and legitimate reason why they would not be. It is not just because of the engagement, but a lot of the time, you can have a discussion with the official who is advising the minister offline outside of the committee meeting and get a better insight into why the minister is taking a particular position on a particular issue and that may lead to getting a compromise solution on the issue. Thank you. I am slightly conscious of time, but I would like to draw in Tess White. Good morning. I think that Mr Norton has just answered that question, but I would like to go to Mr Vermeiland, if I may please. In terms of the hybrid proceedings and the impact on openness and transparency, that is a philosophical question. Mr Vermeiland, can you share with us your high-level view in relation to representative democracy? You are almost forcing me to give you my personal opinion about the whole business of hybrid and physical meetings, but I will be happy to give you my opinion. If I were the one to decide on how Parliament should work, although there are certainly advantages, although it gives extra opportunities and it gives more flexibility, more possibilities in terms of time management for the MPs, et cetera, et cetera, a Parliament that takes itself seriously and takes the debating and everything happening in Parliament seriously and wants to work in an optimal in the best possible circumstances should have only physical meetings. Its virtual or hybrid meetings wouldn't take place in Flemish Parliaments if I were the one to decide on that topic. It's as simple and plain as that. If I can just follow up just a final one, so that's very helpful to be clear. In terms of transparency and robust scrutiny, is that the reason why you say that? Absolutely. Okay, perfect. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Mr Norton, could you give your philosophical view as well on that question in relation to representative democracy and hybrid proceedings? Well, look, I think we're seeing right across the world at the moment a polarisation in terms of political positions in many Parliaments and in many countries. I think if you were only having a remote Parliament or a hybrid Parliament, I think that that polarisation would actually snowball. I think that it is important that Parliament is just not about the chamber, the plenary chamber or the committee chamber. It's about the engagement that takes place within the precincts of Parliament, indirectly with ministers, with various interest groups that give us their view, engagement with other colleagues and trying to find solutions on particular parliamentary issues. It is important that you have that physical presence. We should try as far as possible to facilitate as many voices in terms of the deliberations that take place. I think that hybrid can facilitate that both in terms of members who, for one reason or another, can be physically present to give their perspective on a particular issue or witnesses. Ultimately, decisions need to be made in the physically in Parliament and that you do need that physical element to it. I think that that is imperative. Thank you. That's very good, very clear. Thank you very much, Tess. That brings us to the end of our selected questions. So can I thank both of you for attending this second panel today? It's been fascinating and to have the opportunity to hear from other legislatures an advantage of IT. Always a disappointment that we can't share a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and for that chat outside of the room where certainly I think all parliamentarians are aware that so much of the work is done. But Mr Naughton, TD and Mr Vermillion, director of legislative services, can I thank you very much for your contributions today? Thank you. That draws to an end the public aspect of this meeting and therefore I close this meeting.