Procedure Committee

Oral evidence: Elections within the House of Commons, HC 535

Wednesday 23 April 2025

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 23 April 2025.

Watch the meeting

Members present: Cat Smith (Chair); James Asser; Bambos Charalambous; Sir Christopher Chope; Graeme Downie; Mary Kelly Foy; Tracy Gilbert; Richard Holden; Gurinder Singh Josan; Joy Morrissey; Lee Pitcher; Michael Wheeler.

Questions 1-39

Witnesses

I: Natascha Engel; the Rt Hon. the Baroness Primarolo.

II: Rt Hon. Nigel Evans; the Rt Hon. the Baroness Laing of Elderslie DBE; the Rt Hon. the Baroness Winterton of Doncaster DBE.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Natascha Engel and Baroness Primarolo.

Chair: Good afternoon. Today we are holding our first oral evidence session in our inquiry into elections in the House of Commons. In 2010, our predecessor Committee recommended that the three Deputy Speakers of the House of Commons should be elected by the whole House in secret ballot, and this year marks 15 years since the first of those elections took place. That provides us with a really good opportunity to examine the rules governing those elections, now that the House has been through multiple election cycles, to see whether the arrangements remain fit for purpose.

Today, my fellow Committee members and I are delighted to be joined by two former Deputy Speakers of the House of Commons, Natascha Engel and Baroness Primarolo, both of whom were elected under the system designed by our predecessors. We are very grateful for the opportunity to hear more about their experiences of being elected to those roles in the House of Commons and of participating in such elections to the House. Good afternoon to you both. Before we start this afternoon’s session, I would be grateful if you introduced yourselves formally for the record.

Baroness Primarolo: My name is Baroness Dawn Primarolo, and I was elected as a Deputy Speaker in 2010.

Natascha Engel: I am Natascha Engel. I was elected in 2015, and I lost my seat in 2017—so two short but glorious years.

Q1             Chair: Thank you so much for that. As is traditional, I will ask the first question. Could you tell me and the Committee how you found the nomination process? Did you have any issues getting the required level of support from Members from across the House?

Natascha Engel: My election was slightly different, because I was elected unopposed, so it was really just the nomination process that was significant. I found that quite good. The barrier was quite high, which suited me at the time. Basically, having to have two Members from the Government side and two from the Opposition side seemed very low, but it wasn’t. It actually really helped to make sure you had support across the House. I thought the nomination process was relatively straightforward and worked very well.

The only bit was—I don’t know how this works now—that if you had somebody who nominated two people, you wouldn’t know, so a lot of people overcompensated by getting more people on to their nomination forms; otherwise, after the close of nominations, it would obviously be too late, so I wonder whether there is anything that can be done about that. That is really my only observation about the nomination process.

Baroness Primarolo: In 2010, because it was the first time that the Deputies were going to be elected, there was quite a lot of interest in it. As you know, before the recommendations of the Procedure Committee, Deputies emerged, decided by the Whips. The reforms proposed by the Wright Committee really interested new MPs, of whom there were a lot in 2010—not as many as last year, but a lot—so there was discussion about the fact that we were going to be able to elect the Deputies as well as the Speaker.

I didn’t experience any difficulties getting the required number of nominations. I look back at the booklet that was circulated, and it does state who nominated you. It was very important at the time to make sure the nominations had a party spread, because of the intention, first, that you should have only serious candidates—in other words, those who stood a chance of getting elected, which is why the bar was quite high—and, secondly, that they should demonstrate support from across the whole House, not just through the voting mechanism of STV. If you are going to chair debates, you have to command the confidence of the House, not just your own side. I personally did not have any difficulties, and I don’t think anybody else did. From memory, I think there were nine candidates on that occasion, and they all got the required number of nominations.

Q2             Joy Morrissey: You mentioned a booklet—they printed a hard copy booklet when you stood. Was your 500-word supporting statement published widely throughout the House? Did you produce any additional campaign material?

Baroness Primarolo: There were quite a lot of questions there, so if I forget one—

Joy Morrissey: Sorry. Answer whatever you feel like.

Baroness Primarolo: I will answer them, so please come back and ask me.

On your first question, yes, there were photographs, who we were sponsored by and either our statement or our CV. The statement was very strict. I know we might compare and contrast with Select Committee Chairs. The Deputies were not allowed to have a manifesto, because we weren’t campaigning in our own right to say how we would like to see the House develop—although everybody said they signed up to the Wright Committee reports. It was to be part of a team that had specific responsibilities, along with the Speaker, so the discussion was much more around your suitability in terms of experience, your understanding of how the Chamber operated, and informal discussions. There were hustings as well, but—I don’t know where this came from—we were not allowed campaigning material. You had to be there and be questioned by MPs. This is just for the Deputy Speakers; Select Committee Chair is an entirely different job, so I can understand why it is a bit different.

Q3             Joy Morrissey: Did you have several hustings, or just one?

Baroness Primarolo: From recollection, I think there were two, and they were very well attended and all the candidates were there. You weren’t allowed to stand up and make a long statement and use up all the time; you could just introduce yourself, say a few points, and there were private meetings, and then you would take questions.

Q4             Graeme Downie: I understand why the procedure was a bit different for Select Committees and that you weren’t standing on a platform so much. What kind of questions came up at the hustings? Did you get any feedback afterwards that people had found them valuable?

Baroness Primarolo: Obviously we were all circulating and talking constantly because we were waiting for the coalition to be formed. The then Queen’s Speech was in September, so there were a lot of Members around, generally talking about reforms. From my point of view—I can only speak personally—my experience was that I had been a Back Bencher, I had been a shadow Minister, and then I had been a Government Minister for 13 years, and I had a pretty good idea of how the Chamber works. Back Benchers push at the envelope, at the edges, because they want to get their point across; shadow Ministers are there to do a particular job; and Ministers are there to get their legislation through. So the discussion was around, first, whether that was relevant experience; and secondly, whether someone who had been a Government Minister—this was personal to me—could demonstrate that equal-handedness in debates.

I did find that very helpful. It forced me to think more and more about the Chamber itself and what we expect it to do—to show off parliamentary democracy at its very best.

Natascha Engel: To add to that, we didn’t have hustings because there was only Lindsay and myself. When this all happened in 2015, Lindsay was Deputy Chair of Ways and Means. With the Speaker being a Conservative, it meant that the Chair of Ways and Means had to be Labour, or another Opposition party. I was not interested in being Chair of Ways and Means, so I was quite happy to say, “Let’s just let that go,” but we had to have an election. So I was in this bizarre situation where I was saying to people, “I am really not interested, so do please vote for Lindsay first.” It is a bit of a topsy turvy situation. But we didn’t have a hustings because there was no question of that.

I actually think a hustings would have been really helpful, because it is like a job interview. As you were saying, Dawn: at a job interview you get to really think about what it is that you want to do, why you have put yourself forward, what kind of Deputy Speaker might you be, your motivations. Absolutely right, no campaign materials, because you were the Deputies to the Speaker in a sort of support capacity. But there are differences in the way that Deputies behave in the Chair. Some are very strict—we were just talking about the stricter Deputy Speakers in history—and some of them are less so. There are definitely different styles, such as some being real sticklers for procedure. That kind of thing comes out in a hustings, and it also makes you think about things that you may not have thought about before. After the election, when Lindsay was the Chairman of Ways and Means, I felt quite unprepared. I think hustings would be a real benefit, if that situation ever occurred again.

Graeme Downie: There could be mock Chamber sessions in future.

Natascha Engel: Honestly, that would have been great.

Q5             Graeme Downie: May I pick up a small point, Dawn? You mentioned that previously it was the Whips who essentially chose the Deputy Speakers. Did either of you detect any kind of dead hand of Front Benchers or Whips still in your own selections, when they came through, either to stand or during the process? Obviously, you are bit different, Natascha, because you did not have an election, which almost makes me more suspicious.

Natascha Engel: Definitely not. It goes back to what you were just saying about the period between a general election and the Government forming being a bit of dead time. Actually, the Whips were very busy doing other stuff, like getting roles in the Whips Office, so there were definitely other things that were more important to do. I do not think there was any real issue about either Lindsay or myself, so I would say definitely not.

Baroness Primarolo: I agree with Natascha. I did not sense any of that. In fact, I found the reverse: people were very open with me. Those who thought it was not appropriate, given my ministerial experience, even on the Labour side, were quite blunt with me. Again, regardless of whether they thought that it was appropriate, I actually think it is good to have an understanding of the Chamber. We all have roles in there, and Back-Bench Members in particular really struggle. They need to get their voices heard, and sometimes they are going to overstep the mark, and you have to learn how to rebalance that and pull them back without humiliating them. So I did not experience that. I do not want to get ahead, but I do not know whether we will come on to the gender issue—I have some things to say.

Chair: I think we may, but we are going to need to have slightly quicker answers and slightly shorter questions, if we are going to keep to time. Lee is going to demonstrate that for me.

Q6             Lee Pitcher: Dawn and Natascha, do you think a longer period between the closing of nominations and the actual election taking place would impact either the election process or the candidates in any way?

Natascha Engel: I do not think so. Actually—this also applies with the Chairs of Select Committees—returning Members have a huge advantage over new Members, who are finding their feet. However well you know this place, it is quite daunting when you first come in. Maybe with such a vast new intake, that might have been different—maybe a longer time would have been better. Certainly, when I did it, I thought that time was just about right. Again, there was a lot of finding offices and dead time, so there was quite a lot of opportunity to speak to people, and I thought it was okay.

Baroness Primarolo: I think it was quite unusual for us because we were waiting for the coalition to be formed, so there was a gap at first. If you wanted more hustings as a way for newer Members to get to know the candidates, the time period was quite short. I did not think that it impeded discussion, and we have to remember that it is an absolute imperative to get the Speaker and his or her team in place as fast as possible to start the process of Parliament operating properly. I did not experience that, but if you had a hustings slotted in, you might need a few days more.

Q7             Mary Kelly Foy: First, before you took part, did you fully understand the single transferable vote system that was used in the election? Secondly, did other Members come to you to raise concerns about the system, or even to ask for advice about how it worked, just to ensure that their preferred candidate got across the line?

Baroness Primarolo: I did not receive any questions about the system. Obviously, if people do not use all their votes, that affects the weighting in the system, but it is the best that it can be. Members of Parliament, even new ones, are pretty up to speed on voting systems, so no, I do not think that caused any issues that I can recollect.

Natascha Engel: No, not at all.

Mary Kelly Foy: Did you also fully understand it?

Baroness Primarolo: Hmm. [Laughter.]

Chair: There is no exam question on describing different forms of STV.

Baroness Primarolo: Reading the results is a bit more tricky.

Q8             Gurinder Singh Josan: Was the cross-party requirement of the election an important aspect of the system? Should it be retained?

Natascha Engel: The cross-party nature of it? Yes, I think that was really important. Probably the most important part of being Deputy Speaker is that you have the support of both sides of the House. It is quite difficult, when you come from a political party and you have been a political party politician, to get across that you are neutral when you are in the Chair. We may go on to talk about smaller parties, but now that there are more smaller parties in Parliament, getting more involvement and engagement from them is something that ought to be considered.

Baroness Primarolo: I completely agree. I would only add one rider: it is very important, after the election, how the Deputies behave in terms of their discussions and meetings, which they may have. Having an open-door policy—for the smaller parties and for individual Members of Parliament who feel that they might not be being treated fairly—is important so that those people can come and say that directly. There is also a role post election.

Q9             Tracy Gilbert: I will touch on a point that you raised. With this Parliament having the highest number of women MPs—at 40%—and with the three Deputy Speakers all being women, do you think that there should still be a requirement to keep the balance of having at least one woman voted in?

Natascha Engel: Yes, absolutely.

Baroness Primarolo: Yes, of course I do. I was just thinking: perhaps four women Deputies, and the Speaker? I could live with that. [Laughter.] I think it is important, and I think it is just accepted now but in 2010, it caused some disagreement among some Members of Parliament—why did they have to vote for at least one woman? Of course, because of the way the weighting of the system works, they do not absolutely have to do that. However, I think it is just taken as read now, as far as I can see. We never thought it would so quickly become three women and one man in the team of four. It is very good.

Q10        Michael Wheeler: Good afternoon. I understand that one of the concerns raised with our predecessor Committee about the introduction of elections in the first place was that introducing that mildly partisan element might undermine the cohesion and strong working relationships between the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker team. In your experience, were those concerns justified? Did it pan out that way? What were your experiences of working as part of a team?

Natascha Engel: It is fascinating. You are elected and suddenly you are the Deputy Speaker, or you are elected and suddenly you are the MP. It just happens the minute the results are read out. I found the whole experience like a baptism of fire—you literally get put in the Chair. A quiet moment is chosen, but it is still really, really daunting. The first thing I did was to go to the Deputy Speaker corridor; Dawn was still in her room, which later became my room. There was the handover, and because Eleanor and Lindsay had been so experienced, and Dawn also, it was highly collegiate. Everybody works very closely together. It was really supportive. There was no sense that you were from a political party—you were a Deputy Speaker team. It was really fantastic. If I could not be in the Chair there was always somebody else who could do it, or the other way around. If anybody was ill or whatever, there was absolutely no question. It was really a team.

Baroness Primarolo: I agree. The three Deputies worked really closely together. It was very collegiate. We tried to help each other out when one of us had to go back to their constituency or there was something else. I understand that fear, pre the election, but certainly that was not my experience. It is a small team, and inevitably there might be slightly different views about how something might be handled, but that is the day-to-day running of the House. There was not a problem at all.

Q11        Michael Wheeler: There was not any potential friction, as a hangover from a competitive election?

Baroness Primarolo: Oh, I see; I didn’t think of that. If there was, it passed me by. No, I don’t think so. You may want to ask Nigel later. No, not at all. We were straight into doing what we had been elected to do, and working together to deliver that.

Q12        James Asser: Mine is a two-parter. Thinking back to your time in the role and the workload and the time pressures, do you think there would be any value in having an additional Deputy Speaker? If we had a fourth Deputy, given the growth in the number of small parties and their size, and the move away from two large parties only, would there be any value in having that fourth Deputy Speaker reserved for the smaller parties? If that were the case, would that cause any difficulties in the cohesion of the team?

Natascha Engel: That is an interesting question. Certainly when I was there, the Speaker that we worked under was in the Chair a lot, so there was not so much need for an additional Deputy Speaker. But I know that in the Parliaments after 2017, there was so much more activity in the Chamber that it looked like it was valuable to have the option of a fourth Deputy. I do not know whether we are going to talk about the Backbench Business Committee, but the representation of minority parties was a big issue in that—and certainly in the Wright Committee, which I sat on as well. But bringing in the smaller parties and giving them some kind of representation—I know they are very different, but having at least an acceptance, an understanding that the minority parties need a bit of representation—could be valuable.

Baroness Primarolo: I absolutely agree with Natascha. When I was in the Deputies team the Speaker spent quite a lot of time in the Chair, so sharing out the remainder on a rolling basis—taking the end of the day, the middle of the day or whatever—was pretty straightforward.

There was a period when I was Deputy Speaker when I had hip replacement surgery, so I was off for six weeks. Lindsay, Nigel and Speaker Bercow covered me, and then arrangements were made for me to come back in six weeks, rather than having longer. We did shorter stints in the Chair.

The answer to your question is that I don’t know, because one of the things about the Speakers is that we are balanced. We cancel each other out; we do not change the composition of the political forces—the parties—in the Chamber and we do not vote. If we increased the number, that principle would need to be thought about, but I cannot really come up with a principled reason why we would not. I agree with Natascha about smaller parties, if it is possible without them thinking that they are delegates, and that they are only there to represent that particular view. I think there may be value in exploring that, but I have not been able to think it all through; I do not know whether it would work.

Chair: That is really helpful.

Q13        Bambos Charalambous: In the recent elections for Select Committee Chairs, we saw accusations of excessive canvassing by some candidates for those roles. Can you recall anything similar happening when you were voting in those elections before you became Deputy Speakers?

Natascha Engel: I was the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, which was a new Committee that came out of the parliamentary reform under the Wright Committee. A lot of people did not know what it was, and thought it was a business Committee, as in Business and Trade, but obviously it was a House business Committee. The role of the Backbench Business Committee and why it was important was very parliamentary and a very niche interest. The campaigning involved explaining to people why that really mattered and why setting it up gave Back Benchers an additional forum where they could voice their views. It was very different from the kind of campaigning that started with the elections for Select Committee Chairs. But it sounds completely bonkers now.

On the other hand, that is the danger of having elections, isn’t it? Everyone around here knows that campaign materials are very important to make the point. If you do not campaign, you might not get elected. I know that it was part of your campaign, Chair, for this Committee, so that proves that having an anti-campaign campaign can sometimes also work.

One of the things that really changed—I do not know what you thought about this—was in the 2010 Parliament, when Select Committee Chairs were being elected for the first time. That really changed the way that this place worked. It is difficult to think about it, but across parties, we did not make eye contact with each other when we walked past each other; we stayed very much in our different parts of the Tea Room. Then, you suddenly became their electorate and they started talking to you.

I remember a couple of weeks into chairing the Backbench Business Committee. The requirement was that people had to come from different political parties, so it could not just be one political party coming to ask for a debate. It was the first time that, across parties, people called each other “hon. Friend”. It sounds ridiculous, but I had never heard it before. It really changed the way that this place works. Its impact has been so positive, so sometimes maybe we should just take the hit on the campaign materials. I used to keep them because they used to make me laugh when I was a bit depressed. Some of them were hilarious.

Chair: I have them from the last cycle and it is quite a stack, I tell you.

Baroness Primarolo: I agree entirely with that, particularly with the last point. Since 2010, Select Committees have become more powerful, more influential and key in holding the Government to account on decisions, as well as on policies and Departments. I think that has added legitimacy, it has improved the status of the Select Committees and it has improved the status of Parliament to see that powerful—in my opinion—and independent voice.

The Chairs have to campaign on their vision of how they would lead the Committee. Again, as Natascha said, maybe we should just take it on the chin, and the materials with it, because what we get is very vibrant, important structures that hold the Executive to account, and that cannot be overstated.

Chair: Our final question, from Lee, is just for Natascha because it is about the Backbench Business Committee.

Q14        Lee Pitcher: You talked passionately about it already, Natascha. I know you were the Chair between 2010 and 2015. I know that the election is conducted very differently from the other Select Committees, being at the start of each Session rather than for the duration of the Parliament. Did that electoral cycle cause any issues in the effective working of the Committees at the start of each Session?

Natascha Engel: I did not mind it. I think the problem was that we had to prove it. It was an innovation and changed how Parliament worked, so—this is an understatement—it took both Whips Offices quite a long time to get used to it. They saw it as something really destructive at first, or something that unbalanced things, but it turned out to be something very positive. It gave Back Benchers an outlet that they would not otherwise have had. They have the option of abstaining, rebelling or voting for, but they could air not even grievances, but ideas about different policies in a more neutral environment, and that really worked. Once that was seen to work—it was like a valve to let off steam, and then everything was all right—things changed quite a bit and there was not that concern any more about whether it would really unhinge things.

I was elected unopposed; there were no elections. I know that the other Chairs have done it differently, but because it was a new Committee and quite successful, people tried to load loads of other stuff on to it, such as making decisions on private Members’ Bills rather than having a ballot, or having it handle petitions. I spent pretty much the first five years batting everything off. We wanted not more powers, because the way that the Committee worked was really good. It was for all Back Benchers; it was not a public engagement Committee. If we had started to select private Members’ Bills and chosen 10, that is 640 Members who would hate us—we did not want that. I think it worked itself out. Now, it is for a Parliament, isn’t it, or is the Backbench Business Committee Chair still elected on a sessional basis?

Chair: It is still by Session.

Q15        Lee Pitcher: That is my follow-on question: do you believe that the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee should be elected for the duration of the Parliament, based on your experience?

Natascha Engel: Yes, definitely. I did not realise that. In that settling-in period, I could understand why they did it by Session. Also, while I was there, we established that the Chair is a member of an Opposition party, not the Government party—I think that is important. But yes, definitely, I would have that; it makes no sense to have it every Session now that it is established. It is like every other Select Committee.

Chair: Thank you both for the evidence you have given us. If you wish to add anything, we are very happy to take any further evidence in writing. We will now suspend the sitting briefly to change over to the next panel.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Rt Hon Nigel Evans, Baroness Laing and Baroness Winterton.

Chair: We now come to the second panel of today’s session, in which we are delighted to be joined by three more former Deputy Speakers: the right honourable Nigel Evans, Baroness Laing and Baroness Winterton. We are grateful for the opportunity to ask you questions about your experiences in your time in the role. We will be asking you questions that we did not ask the last panel about electronic voting and call lists, given your experience as Deputy Speakers during the covid-19 pandemic. I suspect that you have valuable insights for our Committee on those issues. Will you introduce yourselves for the record?

Nigel Evans: My name is Nigel Evans. I was Deputy Speaker from 2010 to 2013 and from 2020 to 2024.

Baroness Laing: I am Eleanor Laing, now Baroness Laing. I was elected Deputy Speaker in a by-election when Nigel left for a little while in 2013. I was re-elected as Deputy Speaker in 2015 and 2017, and in 2020 I was elected Chairman of Ways and Means, in which capacity I served until 2024.

Baroness Winterton: I am Rosie Winterton, Baroness Winterton of Doncaster. I was elected Deputy Speaker in 2017 and again in 2020 until 2024.

Q16        Chair: Thank you. My first question is about the nominations process and how you found that. How easy was it to source the required number of nominations, and did you submit a 500-word supporting statement for the elections booklet? Anyone can go first.

Baroness Laing: As Chairman of Ways and Means, it was normal for me to go first—they are very kind. [Laughter.]

Nigel Evans: I know my place.

Baroness Laing: The simple answer to your question is that I found the nominations system absolutely no problem at all. I would suggest that if you cannot get eight or 10 nominations—how many do we need?

Chair: Ten.

Baroness Laing: If you cannot get 10 people from across the House to happily and readily nominate you, you should not be standing. So that was pretty simple. As for submitting 500 words, that was also pretty simple and straightforward. It was quite useful to be able to say something—not, as was said in the last session, a full-blown campaign, but to put out your case, your experience, et cetera.

Q17        Chair: Did you produce any additional campaign material alongside that, or was it just the 500 words?

Baroness Laing: I do recall that I produced little cards that effectively had just my picture and the 500 words on them, but when I was clearing out my office at the time of the election I found hundreds and hundreds of them, so I obviously didn’t do very much with them. I am sure we will come on to this later, but the four elections in which I was elected were all quite different. In 2013, it was a by-election because Nigel had temporarily stood aside, and that was very, very heavily fought. There were seven candidates, and it was at a very quiet time—there wasn’t much going on in the world at that point. We can’t remember such times. It was a very heavily fought election, and very stressful. The others were not: they were perfectly nice.

Chair: That is good to hear. Rosie?

Baroness Winterton: I have nothing to add to that. I agree with everything Eleanor said, and I know you want to move on to other things.

Chair: That’s wonderful, thank you. Nigel?

Nigel Evans: I was the first to be elected, in 2010. John Bercow decided that they were not going to have smoke rising from some chimney in Westminster and the names being announced, which is what happened up until then. I was really pleased that they were having elections for the first time. I phoned Lindsay Hoyle, my neighbouring Labour friend, and said, “Listen, I’m thinking of standing. How about you?” We both agreed that we were going to do it. Lindsay actually said, “I hadn’t really thought about this. Yeah, why not?” That is what we did.

Let’s just say that the campaigning was somewhat different in 2010. Lindsay and I had a sort of Lab-Con pact. We spent a lot of time in Portcullis House and we drank a lot of tea and coffee, because we glad-handed a lot of people. It was just bumping into people you knew. I think I put one piece of literature out, but it was nothing fancy. It didn’t go to an official printer, as I recall.

The second one, if you recall, was the winter election of 2019, and I was in Australia. I spent a lot of time getting up at 4 am texting and emailing my colleagues, who were clearly not at Westminster because it was Christmas. I found that to be rather effective, and I got my nominations—people from all parties who agreed to support my nomination. It was only when I got back that we had a very small window to campaign. Yes, I did get something officially printed, and I handed it around the Tea Rooms. Again, a lot of it is knowing the people who are there. You have a very small electorate of only 650, minus yourself—well, I voted for myself, so 650. It is basically about the friendships you have built up over your time as a Member of Parliament, and it seemed to work. Yes, I did my 500 words saying what I was going to do should I be elected as Deputy Speaker.

Q18        Graeme Downie: Obviously, as you described, you had very different elections at different times. May I ask each of you briefly to describe whether you undertook hustings events, either inside or outside Parliament? What were they like, and did anyone find them useful?

Baroness Laing: I don’t think we did any hustings in 2015 or 2017, or even in 2020. Back in 2013, when it was a by-election—that was, of course, something new because, as Dawn and Natascha told you, this only started in 2010—it was an unusual and unexpected situation. It was Nigel who had to be replaced, so the candidate had to be from the Opposition—I mean the Government—

Chair: You were in government then.

Baroness Laing: I have to admit that I never considered the coalition to be Government, but there we are. That’s another matter.

The candidate had to be from the Government party, and yet the entire House voted. There were hustings then. I remember appearing before the 1922 committee and the parliamentary Labour party. I also appeared in front of the Liberals, but that was just a little meeting and perfectly nice. There were very heavy hustings then.

Was it useful? Actually, I think it was useful, because when I stood in front of the parliamentary Labour party, there were a lot of people I did not know and who did not know me, so I think the hustings were quite useful.

Baroness Winterton: I cannot remember doing any hustings, but Eleanor is quite right to say that there is some use in it. Particularly when you have a new Parliament and new Members who do not necessarily know, or have not met, the person they are supposedly voting for, a hustings probably is a good chance for people to ask the relevant questions and understand a bit more about what the Deputy Speakers actually do. Whether they would want to go to the hustings is another matter, because at that point people are extremely busy doing a lot of things and may think it is not the top of their agenda, but I think having the opportunity to do it should be a bit of a must. I remember in one of these elections, I was the only person standing for the Labour side.

Nigel Evans: In 2010—the first elections ever—there was a hustings, and I thought it was really useful. It was not overly crowded in the hustings room that we were in, and even some of the MPs turning up had an open mind about who they would vote for, so it was not totally loaded in favour of one person or another. In 2020, there were no hustings, because they said there was not enough time. I agree with Rosie and Eleanor that having hustings is an important thing, so that people who do not know the candidates are able to ask whatever questions they like. There may be things that are more important to some MPs than others, so why not give them that opportunity? Yes, you can meet as many people as you like during the relatively short period of a campaign, but having a proper hustings is the proper thing to do.

Q19        Lee Pitcher: Do you think that a longer period between the closing of the nominations and the election taking place would affect the election process or the candidates in any way?

Baroness Laing: Yes, I think it probably would. You said longer, but longer than what? We are really talking about five different elections that have occurred, each one in different circumstances, and it is hard to make a comparison.

Just before I finish, Madam Chair, there are some other points that we would very much like to make that you did not cover in the last session, which are more fundamental and possibly very important.

Q20        Chair: Absolutely. Are the points you would like to make about the elections for Deputy Speakers?

Baroness Laing: Yes.

Chair: That is fine—and they were not covered in the previous session?

Baroness Laing: No.

Chair: In that case, while it is on the top of your mind, now might be the opportune moment to make those points. Let us break from Lee’s question and hear your points.

Baroness Laing: Thank you. The fundamental issue is that the election of the three Deputies together on one ballot paper simply does not work. Suppose you have 10 people on the ballot paper: you do not have 10 people competing for three jobs; you have four people competing for two jobs, and the other six people competing for one job. That does not work.

The example I would give is that in 2015, my name appeared on the ballot paper along with Natascha Engel and Lindsay Hoyle, but there was no other Conservative, so I was elected unopposed, but my name was on the ballot paper and I had to get some people to vote for me; otherwise I would look like Nobby No-mates. As Natascha told you, she did not want to be Chairman of Ways and Means—Lindsay was the obvious person to continue in that role, so that was also not a real comparison. It was a very strange election. Certainly, it was actually quite embarrassing for me to have my name on the ballot, because everybody said, “Well, there is no point in voting for Eleanor, because she is elected unopposed.” That was true; there was no point at all. I am surprised I persuaded anybody to put a cross there.

The other way that it does not work is that, with the single transferable vote, a lot of people thought that if they were voting one, two, three, four, they were choosing: one, who they wanted for chairman of Ways and Means; two, who they wanted for the second position; and three, who they wanted for the third position. That is how they thought they were voting. Lots of people came up to me and said, “I gave you No. 2, and I put No. 2 because obviously Lindsay is going to be Chairman of Ways and Means.” It is total confusion because the system does not suit the practice.

Baroness Winterton: I completely agree. They should be separated so if the Speaker is or was a member of the governing party, the Chairman of Ways and Means is of the Opposition, and the First Deputy Chairman is of the governing party. That is what I was after Lindsay was elected, and Nigel was the Second Deputy Chairman. You have to separate those out. If people argue, “Well, what if there was only one person?” as it was in my case because I was the only person standing, you could still have an election in case everybody said, “Well, we do not want that person at all.” We should certainly separate them out, because then it is clear exactly what you are voting for.

Nigel Evans: I endorse all of that. It was ridiculous. I said to Eleanor at the time, “You are the only nomination. You really do not need to campaign. Let’s just throw all our support behind Lindsay,” because of the demarcation of the various positions Rosie has just explained. It was a bit dull. Eleanor quite rightly said, “Well, what happens if nobody votes for me if I do not campaign?” It seems to me, that if you are the only candidate there should be no election and you are declared the winner. As far as the other positions are concerned, there again, they are separate from the Chair of Ways and Means. It would be a lot easier if you had single transferable votes for the two bits. I know I am not really good at maths, but it is so complicated a voting system that I could not comprehend it as it stands. It is complicated.

Chair: Anecdotally, that is something colleagues have said to us about the most recent results as well.

Q21        Bambos Charalambous: I was elected in 2017, and there was a vacancy for a Labour nominee for Deputy Speaker. Rosie, my recollection is that you were the only candidate for that.

Baroness Winterton: No, in 2017 there were two candidates. In 2020 there was only one. It was 2019 or 2020, wasn’t it?

Bambos Charalambous: I thought that there was just no vote for that one—that it was just yourself.

Baroness Laing: Yes. I had huge arguments with the Clerks in 2015, because of the embarrassment of having my name on the ballot paper when nobody needed to vote for me. By 2020, the Clerks had accepted that and Rosie’s name did not appear on the ballot paper. There were only however many of us, and it was all Government Members at that point. That was quite straightforward, because you had five or six candidates and the top two were going to be elected. That was pretty sensible. That election worked, but it only works when the two sides of the House are not mixed up on the ballot paper.

Baroness Winterton: Just to be clear, we are not talking about only Government Members being able to vote for the Government. We are talking about the whole House voting for everybody on all the occasions.

Baroness Laing: Incidentally, that is terribly important because it has been suggested, somewhere along the line, that perhaps Labour people should vote for a Labour candidate and Conservatives and minority parties for candidates from their parties. That would be totally against the principle of the authority of the Chair coming from having been elected by the whole House.

Chair: I will not come to some colleagues who may have expected me to come to them, because I feel that you have covered quite a lot of ground with that answer, which is really helpful. Thank you so much.

Q22        Tracy Gilbert: This is similar to the question I put to your colleagues. Given that we now have more women MPs—about 40%—and the three Deputy Speakers are all women, do you still think it is important to have a process in place to secure at least one woman as a Deputy Speaker or Speaker?

Baroness Laing: Yes, and indeed one man.

Tracy Gilbert: Yes, by default.

Nigel Evans: I think it is important, too. It was great when Eleanor became the first female Chair of Ways and Means after however many centuries—it was ridiculous. The rule is important, as Eleanor emphasised. There should be at least one of each sex, which is what we have. And, for the first time ever, we have three female Deputy Speakers and one male Speaker. As long as there is one representative, I think it works.

[Bambos Charalambous took the Chair]

Chair: I have seamlessly assumed the Chair in Cat’s absence.

Q23        Michael Wheeler: I understand that one of the concerns raised with our predecessor Committee was that elections for Deputy Speakers might introduce a partisan element of friction within the Speaker and Deputy Speaker team. In your opinion, from your extensive experience, was there any hangover from competitive elections? Was there any element of friction? Was there any downside to the introduction of elections for Deputy Speakers?

Baroness Winterton: No.

Baroness Laing: No.

Nigel Evans: Absolutely not. How long have we been electing Speakers? If you think about it, once the Speaker is elected, they immediately give up their party credentials. There has never really been any problem that we have come across because of that. We certainly acted as a great team, both from 2010 onwards and from 2022.

Q24        James Asser: Thinking back to your time as Deputy Speakers and the time pressures—I am aware that you were all in the Chair during fairly turbulent times at points—do you think there is any value or need for an additional Deputy Speaker, given the work pressures? Secondly, if there were to be a fourth Deputy Speaker, given the rising number of Members from smaller parties and independents in this Parliament, do you think that reserving that fourth space for a Member not from the two main parties would be of value? If so, would it cause any problems within the team or for the cohesion of the system?

Baroness Laing: You will all know that Sir Roger Gale served as an additional Deputy Speaker for part of the last Parliament because I was very ill and had to be covered for. Dawn explained what happened when she was absent in hospital, when everybody covered. Let’s be blunt about this: John Bercow spent an enormous amount of time in the Chair. The current Speaker spends a perfectly reasonable amount of time in the Chair, and he has a lot of other important things to do.

It was important to have somebody else to cover when I was not there. When I came back, the Speaker and Sir Roger agreed that it was a good idea that Sir Roger was still there sometimes so that I could be eased back. I would rather not go into all of this, but those were unusual circumstances. We all feel that having four occupants of the Chair is right. In normal circumstances, we don’t need another person.

Baroness Winterton: To pick up on something Natascha said, the balance is very important because you have representatives, if you like, from His Majesty’s Government and His Majesty’s Opposition. They balance each other out, in both voting and balance.

When it comes to the representation of the minority parties, in many ways it is the job of the Speaker to make sure they have their shot. We would all be very aware, and the Speakers I have worked with did go to some lengths to do that. We have daily conferences, and if there are times when minority parties wish to put in an urgent question or whatever, that is dealt with in its own way.

I had some discussions with minority parties. This was raised with me by somebody who said, “What about having a fourth Deputy Speaker from a minority party?” The other thing to remember is that sometimes those parties can be very small. When you are the Deputy Speaker, you cannot vote or speak, so that takes out one of your members. When I explained that to the person in question, they said, “Oh, I hadn’t really thought of that.” Of course they want to have maximum representation and ability to put their views over in the House. There will be some parties, perhaps nationalist parties, that do not want to participate in the running of the House, because really the idea is to get clear of it.

It might have been either Dawn or Natascha who said, “You are not there to represent a particular party, so how would you make that balance?” As I say, it is very much the job of the Speaker—and the Deputy Speakers, to a certain extent, but mostly the Speaker—to ensure that minority parties are represented. I think it would be very confusing to have a fourth one.

What you could do in times of need, which I think happened in the emergency recall, is have somebody from the Chairmen’s Panel step up to chair. You could maybe have a system in which that was more recognised, so the Chairmen’s Panel could nominate people in times of need. But it is very important that that goes on the Order Paper, so that the House can pass it. That is what happened with Roger: every time his period was extended it had to go through the House. You were not sneaking somebody in; it was a decision of the House.

Baroness Laing: In the past, we considered it an intrinsic part of our job to make sure that the minority parties are properly represented. It is something you have in your mind the whole time. Do not forget that the balance between the Speaker and the Deputies across the House is not Labour and Conservative; it is Government and Opposition, and the minority parties are part of the Opposition. At the moment, one of the minority parties is extremely large in the Opposition. There would be nothing to stop a Liberal Democrat standing to be Deputy Speaker—absolutely nothing at all, so that would work.

Nigel Evans: I remember once receiving a letter from a constituent who said, “Mr Evans, I’ve always considered you useless, and since you have become Deputy Speaker I understand that you can’t vote and you can’t speak in the House of Commons, so now I know you’re useless.” I thought it rather unkind, but nonetheless I saw their point. There is a heavy responsibility on anybody who wants to go into the position of being a Deputy Speaker. You do give up quite a bit, to be honest.

The other side is that you have three Deputies and the Speaker and, normally, a given number of hours in the day. It is way more regulated than it used to be. When I first joined the House in 1992—Mr Chope, you were here well before then—we used to have Maastricht sittings until 2, 3 or 4 in the morning. Each of the Deputies had a bed on the premises to accommodate that, just in case the proceedings went on well beyond 10 o’clock.

Now it hardly ever goes beyond 10 o’clock, and everything is mostly finished by 7 on a Tuesday and Wednesday, and by 5 on a Thursday. With the amount of time we are in the Chair, the rota sort of works: two hours and a bit each, or longer if somebody is temporarily incapacitated. I remember that once a Deputy and Lindsay were on an interview panel to select a Clerk, and I had to sit in the Chair for about five and a half hours on the trot. It was before covid, so there was none of this saying “Order, order. We will sanitise the Dispatch Boxes,” and then going to the toilet. You never stopped proceedings; it just continued as it was. I do not know how John Bercow carried on doing the Brexit stuff for several hours at a time. It was almost against biology, I should imagine, to be able to do that. I certainly could not do it.

It seems to work, anyway, so I would have kept it as it is. As Eleanor said, after 2029, if that is when the next general election is, and if some of the parties are much closer together, there will be nothing to stop a party that is not currently represented with a Deputy from giving it a go.

James Asser: That is incredibly helpful. Thank you.

Q25        Chair: Just to clarify, there is nothing to stop one of the smaller parties nominating somebody as an Opposition Speaker. Is it open to them to do so, if they want?

Baroness Laing: Absolutely, but it is very important to bear in mind that you are not elected to the Chair to represent anybody. It is not a representative role; you are there to help the Speaker carry out the duties of the Chair, which is quite different from anything to do with party political stuff.

Q26        Chair: We have Sir Christopher here, who presided over the sitting Saturday for a period of time. Would you like to give us some thoughts about that?

Sir Christopher Chope: I think the system works and is flexible. I certainly would not be in favour of having any more people; I think three Deputies and a Speaker is more than sufficient. Edward Leigh and I were appointed at the beginning of this Parliament to deal with the interregnum when there was a gap between the election of the Speaker and the election of the three Deputies. I think the interregnum went on for about a fortnight, but—to go back to the earlier discussion—I do not think it would have done anybody any harm if it had had to go on for three weeks, because we are talking about electing Deputies for a whole Parliament. I do not think that the time constraints should be the main consideration in having a proper election with hustings.

Baroness Winterton: Am I right in saying that there was some pressure to make sure that things were sorted before the King’s Speech?

Nigel Evans: In 2020, a view was taken that it should be done as quickly as possible, but I take Chris and Lee’s point that maybe there should be a given number of days after the election when you actually allow time for the hustings. Look at the situation that you have just had, with a huge influx of new Members of Parliament who really did not know some of the characters involved who were putting themselves up for election. More time for hustings would have given people a greater opportunity to gauge who the right people for the job were.

Sir Christopher Chope: In this Parliament, the Deputies were appointed temporarily until the end of the King’s Speech debate. That was the best part of a fortnight after the House had come back. [Interruption.]

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming—

Q27        Chair: My script says that I should hand back to the Member who was in the process of asking a question when the Division bell rang and suggest that they do so again. But I think we concluded that question, so I will move on to the next question, which, by a strange coincidence, is from me.

We had reports of excessive canvassing by some candidates for the Select Committee Chair roles. Could you give us your recollections of whether that was an issue when voting in Select Committee Chair elections?

Baroness Laing: That is an interesting question. It is not something that affected us as Deputy Speakers, and I do not recall being aware of it in that capacity. However, I do recall being aware—it must have been just after the 2017 election—that there were elections for Committee Chairs. You could hardly see the table in the Tea Room because of the amount of paper. If all these people who said they cared about the environment had not wasted so much paper, it might have better.

More importantly, I have picked up concern that because of the way in which the voting system is constructed for Chairs of Select Committees, it has been suggested—I could not give an example of this—that sometimes the Government party would vote for the person likely to give least trouble, perhaps because they might not be as good at it as some other candidate. If that is the case, that would be a pity. At the same time, the Opposition parties would vote for the person likely to cause the most trouble and be most awkward, rather than the person who could actually do the job. That may or not be the case; I simply throw it into the arena.

Q28        Chair: Do you think that having a Deputy Speaker oversee the election process, maybe as a returning officer, would be a help or a hindrance? 

Baroness Winterton: Is there a lack of trust in the process? I have never been aware that there has been any sort of a lack of trust particularly.

Chair: I think it is more about the policing of the process, to make sure that it is not excessive.

Baroness Winterton: There may be a case for saying, as in some party selections, that you can produce a statement and one piece of supporting literature, so that it does not give an advantage to people who might spend an awful lot of money. That could make it more equal. I think in the Labour party that is the system now for selections, to prevent overspending.

Nigel Evans: I do not think it is overly problematic. As Eleanor said, having the Tea Room full of leaflets almost becomes counterproductive in the end. If you keep pushing too hard at people, that is counterproductive, too. I would tend to agree that if you wanted the Deputies to do anything, I would get them to oversee the APPG elections, to ensure that they had the requisite number of people coming and it was all in order, rather than the elections for Chairs of Select Committees, which seem to be well regulated and well ordered.

Baroness Winterton: I think that does happen now.

Baroness Laing: That is now happening, isn’t it? Certainly, it was the intention at the end of the last Parliament.

Nigel Evans: It was the intention.

Baroness Laing: Yes, because I had some kind of duty in that respect, but I did not have a chance to exercise it because the election came along. Actually, we were just looking back to remind ourselves about some of these elections and remembering that booklet that was produced by the House. Maybe it would be a good idea to do that for the Select Committee Chairs, but as to overseeing them or being returning officers and so on, the Clerks are extremely good at that. In my experience, the Clerks are absolutely made for the job and are very good at it.

Q29        Chair: We will now move on to call lists and other things that happened in the last Parliament. The next question is also from me.

In October 2020, you gave evidence to our predecessor Committee and outlined a number of issues that had arisen from the operation of call lists during the pandemic. Looking back, what do you see as the key challenges posed by the introduction of call lists? To what extent do you think that challenges were posed or exacerbated by other changes to the usual behaviour and courtesies of the House, such as the relaxation of the requirements to be present in the Chamber for opening speeches or for most of the debate if you are on the call list?

Baroness Laing: It was dreadful. It was awful. It was amazing that we kept Parliament going during the pandemic, and Mr Speaker and all the Clerks who worked really hard deserve enormous commendation for having managed it. I hope we helped, but it was dreadful. Don’t let us ever let Parliament turn into the creature that it was during the pandemic, where people made three-minute speeches that they read not even from a bit of paper, but from behind their screens, so they could not see the Chamber. We were sitting in the Chamber watching whoever was speaking on a screen like that. I realised that—they had all caught on to this somehow or other—they did not have to look at anything except their speech in front of them, so you could see that they were reading a speech.

It would be three minutes, and, of course, it was a great pleasure to cut people off bang on three minutes if they went on, only because if you’ve got something to say, you can say it in two and a half minutes. Once you go on past that, it is good to stop you. Joking apart, it completely changed the nature of debate. There was no debate. I believe that discussion and holding Government to account was done, and it was done adequately, but as to debate and Parliament performing its proper function as the heart of our democracy, it was gone.

Baroness Winterton: I think you need to understand what happens when you are in the Chair. You have a list of people in front of you, although, of course, we always say there isn’t a list; there is guidance for each of us as to what order people should go in. We can come to the situation in the Lords, because some people have compared it. I think we could try to explain some of that, but when you are in the Chair, and you have your guidance list in front of you, certain things can happen. Somebody can come up and say, “A really urgent thing has happened in my constituency. Could you please put me a little bit further down, as I have to go out?”

You can have a situation, particularly where there might be time limits in place—you might like to discuss the issue of time limits, because we made the point previously—in which somebody might constantly intervene during a strict five-minute time limit, intervening on every single person. You think, “Hang on, this isn’t really fair. I’m going to move you down the list, because not everybody is going to get in. You’ve taken a lot more time than everybody else.” People might come up in the opposite way and say, “I’ve desperately got to be at a Committee between 5 and 6,” and they would really like to be put in a position. We will say, “Check in when you come back. I will pass on to the next Deputy Speaker that you have told us that you will be out and will come back.”

To the idea of the published lists, we did try to enforce that people needed to hear what other people had to say. We are not reading into the record, as happened during covid, and then you go away and people may or may not have heard what anybody else has to say. This is a debating Chamber; it is not just reading something out and then going. You do need to hear what the Minister has to say and the Opposition as well. We used to make the point very clearly that Members needed to wait and hear all the opening speeches, and be back for the closing speeches, because they may be referred to. It is really important, in terms of the public perception of Parliament, that they think Members are listening to each other.

When you go to the Lords, there is a call list system there, but remember that in the Lords, the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers do not play any role in calling people or monitoring the debate; it is what is called self-regulating. There is a list published and people very rarely intervene on each other in the Lords, so it is much more relaxed, if you like. There is not that same intervention. It is much easier to have a call list in those circumstances. More people do, I think, tend to stay in to listen to what other people have to say.

Baroness Laing: It is a courtesy.

Baroness Winterton: I think to translate one to the other is unfair. The Commons needs to preserve the idea that the Deputy Speakers and the Speaker have a role to play in managing the debate. You can’t manage the debate if it is already decided where exactly everybody is going to speak. That is what happened during covid—everybody knew when they were going to speak—but it wasn’t a debate as we understand it.

Baroness Laing: It has developed over the years. When we were first elected, you would not dare ask the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker where you were on the list. You would not dream of it, because if you did, you would find that you weren’t on the non-existent list. You just had to sit there. We have been much more relaxed about these things and tried to be helpful, but if the House requires the Deputy Speakers to prove why they were right in calling so-and-so before so-and-so, then the whole system falls down. There has to be trust and authority.

Baroness Winterton: In the Lords, we do not have an end time—am I right, Eleanor? You get through the list. You can go on forever.

Baroness Laing: Yes.

Baroness Winterton: And the speaking time, as it happens, is only advisory. It is not implemented. The Deputy Speakers cannot implement it in the Lords. Sometimes, people will say, “Well, hang on a minute—it is only advisory, so I am going to speak as long as I want.” If the Commons wants that as well, there are so many more votes, and the Commons likes to know when its votes are coming, by and large, and it does have an end time, unless there are specific reasons to go beyond that. So, no. We may be coming on to the time limits. We have strong feelings on that, which we can share with you.

Nigel Evans: I agree with the other two witnesses. Having flexibility for the Chair is very important. Also, if people know when they are speaking, they are unlikely to turn up in the Chamber until just before they are on, because all MPs have lots of pressures on them. I think it would make the Chamber of the House of Commons into a very sterile place, to be honest.

I was on the Council of Europe for many years, and they use a list system there. It is fairly sterile. Somebody stands up, gives their three-minute speech and then sits down. There are no interventions there at all. The nice thing about Parliament is that you come in and you listen to the openings, which I think is very important. Everybody is coming in. If they weren’t in for the openings—I think we gave them two minutes, didn’t we?—they did not speak at all. I think that is important, because you are responding to what the Minister or whoever opens the debate says. That is part of what a debate is all about.

I've seen the American Congress and I think they must use a list system too. My goodness me, how sterile and boring is that? I think they can even just read things into the record if they do not give a speech. Is that where we are going next? I just think that what we have now works. It may seem inconvenient to people who would love to know when they are speaking, but I’ve got a good idea: if you are interested enough in the debate, don’t just come in for your soundbite; come in for the debate. 

Baroness Winterton: There used to be a system, when we first came in, where people—never mind being moved down—could sit there for eight hours and not even get to speak. That was considered perfectly normal.

Nigel Evans: In 1992, I sat there for several hours and did not get called. Some of the best speeches I never gave. [Laughter.]

Chair: We look forward to you reading those in future.

Baroness Laing: The other side of this coin is that it is very important that new and inexperienced Members understand that they are not meant to speak on everything, every day. That is not how Parliament is meant to work. Let’s put Jim Shannon aside here, because we all love Jim. Jim is sui generis—it is just him. Taking everyone else into consideration, it is not reasonable for people to give their constituents the idea that they will post a speech, and put something that they have said in Parliament on Twitter or Facebook, every two or three days. That is not reasonable. Not everyone can do that because there are 650 Members, but there is an expectation, some of which is driven—dare I say it—by lazy journalists who want to find something to criticise, or do not perceive matters as they really are.

Q30        Graeme Downie: Those points have been well made, but I have two questions. First, do you think there could be a hybrid system where you could prevent someone coming in for just their three minutes and then leaving again, so that the Chamber was still active? You could publish an advisory call list but keep the Chair’s right to move that around.

Another issue that has been told anecdotally to me, and I am sure to other Members too, is that, as you say, MPs have draws on their time, so they may not decide to spend six or seven hours in the Chamber to perhaps not get called. You would then end up with the Chamber far more empty than we would all like it to be. How do we find a solution to that problem?

Baroness Laing: You said “hybrid”; you are looking for a balance. In the last several years, I have not experienced the situation that you described, where someone would sit for six or seven hours and not get called, and I was in the Chair for 10 and a half years. We are talking about what it was like 27 years ago, when we first came here. It was, of course, difficult for Rosie to get called because her party had a huge number of Members of Parliament; ours had hardly anyone, so we got called all the time—remember that comes into it.

In recent years, I cannot think of a time when someone has sat for six or seven hours and not got called because, after the first three hours, they would have said to their Whip, or the occupant of the Chair, “Have I any chance of getting in here?” Any of us, being reasonable, would have said, “The way it’s working out, the chances are, you’re not getting called. Would it be better to withdraw your name and come back next week?”

Nigel Evans: I just think that things have moved on from the time when we were first elected. In 1992, it was under Betty Boothroyd, Michael Martin and their Deputies. There was this thing about seniority—if you were a Privy Counsellor, you were called first for everything—and the time limit was incredibly novel. There were no three-minute time limits in those days. If they put a time limit on, it was 15 minutes. Can you imagine that? It was boring. A lot of them were foreign affairs or defence debates, and I remember sitting in one literally all day and I did not get called. You are talking about a sort of hybrid; I think the answer is in the time limits that have been introduced, which give people the opportunity to make a point. They may not be able to meander for 15 minutes, as they used to before, but quite frankly, they can get a point across in the time—three, four or five minutes, depending on how many people want to speak. I think there has been an answer to what was a bit of a problem when I was first elected in 1992.

Baroness Winterton: You can also think about this the other way around, and we discuss this quite a lot. Those people who choose to speak a lot are not entirely fair on others who choose not to speak all the time: those others end up being penalised by only having a short time to speak because we try to get everybody in. There is a real issue about whether we tried too hard to get everybody in because that meant everybody, but some people had judiciously thought, “I’m really interested in this particular subject; I’d actually like to have a fair amount of time to make a speech.” We would look at the number of times that people had spoken. Sometimes people would come up to us and say, “Why am I always called last?” It was because they tried to speak on everything, and it was not fair on other people. It is not fair that other people do not get a fair whack.

People can tell when they go into a debate because, as the Chair always says, “Don’t think you will get called just because you’ve put your name in. You have to keep bobbing.” Somebody looking around them will think, “Hang on a minute—I know that I’ve spoken at least five times in the last week. There are 50 people standing. Should I not go up to the Chair and say, ‘Why don’t you pull my name from the list, because I know that, at the end, you might be down to two minutes, and I will have sat here the whole time?’” That is another way of looking at it. We have almost gone from one extreme to the other. That then comes down to the issue of time limits, and how that becomes part of managing the debate, because that is another part of exactly that question.

Baroness Laing: You asked about the publication of a list. I will go as far as to say that suggesting that a list ought to be publicised is sort of saying you do not trust the Deputy Speakers. It is really important that the House leaves with the Speaker and the Deputies the authority of the Chair to manage the debate and does not artificially tie their hands by, for example, publishing a list. Rosie has explained to you how it works in the Lords. It works because it is a completely different set-up—it is a self-regulating House, and it is completely different.

We, sitting in the Chair in the House of Commons, understand that there will sometimes be a debate about something that is really important to certain constituencies and not really very important to other constituencies. We know that, and we would make sure that the people who have a serious constituency interest, and whose constituents will be watching to see what they are saying, will get to speak, whereas somebody who just speaks all the time will not get to speak when it is a short debate like that. There has to be trust in the Chair, and I do not think anybody really suggested that it was not really being done properly with us.

Baroness Winterton: If you did publish, people would come up and say, “I don’t understand why I’m there.”

Baroness Laing: Yes, that is right—all the time.

Baroness Winterton: Somebody would come up to you and say something like, “I have a personal problem—can you move me?” If you had a draft list, and then started messing about with it, Members would say, “I don’t understand why that person has come up.” Then you would have to start saying, “It is because of X, Y or Z.” You would have to start explaining other people’s difficulties, which would not be appropriate, rather than exercising your judgment and doing that. Remember in the Lords, with the published list, you now have to put your name in, I think, almost two days before. Whereas, in the Commons, people are used to saying at the last minute, “There has been a development in my constituency, and I’d really like to get it on this debate. I haven’t spoken at all in this Session.” You would say, “I’ve got it—we’ll put you in.”

Baroness Laing: And you don’t have to have done that in advance. It is perfectly proper, as long as you are there right at the beginning of the debate, to indicate that you want to speak. This is an evolving place, and we must not allow there to be so many rules that it closes down effective debate. It is perfectly proper to come in at the beginning of a debate, sit and listen to it, and suddenly realise that you do actually have something burning to say because somebody on the other side, or—more likely—someone on your own side, has said something absolutely ridiculous that you want to counteract. You only decide then that you want to speak, so you start to bob and go up to the Chair and say, “Could I speak?” You can do that.

Nigel Evans: On the evolution of Parliament in the 32 years that I was an MP, some of you will find this really difficult to understand, but if you wanted to make a point of order in 1992 during a Division you had to put one of those opera hats on in the Chamber. That was only modernised in 1998. Things do change, and I think the change should be for a good reason, not just for the sake of change.

Q31        Chair: Let’s go back to time limits, which we have touched on. We have talked about call lists. Obviously, time limits are the bane of anyone who is at the bottom of the pile and has to make their five-minute speech into a two-minute speech, or sometimes shorter. You mentioned to our predecessor Committee, Eleanor, that injury time should not be added for interventions when there is a time limit of five minutes or less. Do you still think that? If so, why?

Baroness Laing: I am so glad you asked that; we all are very glad that you asked that—I had forgotten that that had happened. It had become obvious to us and to Mr Speaker that it was not fair: if you had half an hour left and 10 people, and you said, “You’ve each got three minutes,” and you sent the Whips round to say, “You’ve got three minutes each—let’s do it,” one of them would intervene on another, and he would intervene back on him, simply to add a minute to the speech.

I think I wrote formally to the Chair’s predecessor, Karen Bradley, asking for that to be looked at. The Procedure Committee was minded to support what we had suggested, but unfortunately—Sir Christopher is not here—my recollection is that when it came to the Floor of the House, Sir Christopher objected to it, and it did not go through.

Baroness Winterton: The argument is that you are stifling debate, but we were very clear that we were not stopping interventions; we were just saying that if there is a five-minute limit and you choose to take an intervention, you have to take it within the five minutes. It is not stopping debate; it is just being fair to other people.

I can’t quite remember whether we said this, but there is a case for saying that a five-minute limit should be the lowest you can go; then people have an idea that they may not get in, but they will then be put down and recorded as somebody who did not get in at that point. Some people say, “I simply cannot say something in three minutes, and I have sat here all day.” So there is that option.

Within that, you can say that, even though we cannot go lower than the five-minute limit, if colleagues want to be fairer to each other and help others, they can stick to three minutes. We would sometimes do that. If we had six people, there had been lots of people intervening—so they had stretched their own turns—and the poor people at the end were only getting two or three minutes, we would say, “If you stick to two minutes, 90 seconds or whatever, you could all get in.” Sometimes people did that; sometimes they did not.

Baroness Laing: Always remember that the reason that those people are at the end is that they have spoken so many times. We try to be fair on that.

Nigel Evans: Some MPs were gaming it, as Eleanor said. I remember one Tory MP intervening on another. He said, “Will the hon. Member give way?” They gave way, and he said, “I just thought I’d give him another minute,” and sat down. That was it.

Baroness Laing: Juvenile.

Nigel Evans: It was awful.

Q32        Chair: I know that some colleagues want to come in, but before they do, can I just clarify something? Rosie, did you suggest that there should be a maximum five-minute limit?

Baroness Winterton: I think it could be considered. Maybe five is too long—maybe it should be four, or something. If none of the people had really spoken very much during a Parliament and they all wanted to speak in a particular debate—

Nigel Evans: Would that be without injury time?

Baroness Laing: Coming back to your question, we feel very strongly about injury time. We were very disappointed when the recommendation of the Procedure Committee in the last Parliament did not go through the House, because it really would have helped. As Rosie said, we were not suggesting for a moment that there should be no interventions, merely that the occupant of the Chair could get to a certain point and say, “We are on three minutes now. There will be no injury time.” It would change the pace of the debate.

Baroness Winterton: I am just throwing that out there. You have to judge the mood of each particular Parliament. People might feel that they ought to be given at least five minutes. They don’t always take five minutes, but they might feel that they ought to be at least given that opportunity. That is just another way of managing the situation.

Michael Wheeler: I want to press this, as someone who has occasionally found myself towards the bottom of the non-existent list in a debate, despite being not an incredibly frequent speaker. It is fair to say that it is a real and apparent problem when people are donating time to colleagues who are ahead of you. I agree with your assessment and I think it is valid, but I do want to press this point. Whether or not our colleague, Christopher, expressed a previous opinion, it would be a valid counterpoint. We do not want a stifled debate. The practical outcome of procedure in this case would be a potentially severe deterrent to people taking any sort of intervention, so I want to press you on your assessment from your experience of being in the Chair. There would be a dampening effect on interventions, but do you think it would potentially be a severe disincentive for people to donate some of their time for an intervention when they don’t know how long that time might be?

Baroness Laing: No. My opinion is that it would not have a dampening effect. Actually, not that long ago, people did not read speeches. You would get up to make a speech with a feeling that your notes would be quite a lot of words on a page for a three-minute speech. If I were making a three-minute speech and had that many words, I would cut those ones out and just say the ones at the top and the bottom, because I would have to get it in in three minutes.

If we get to the stage where Members of Parliament are not capable of making a speech off the cuff, but have to have every word written down and have it timed to three, five or eight minutes, we are losing a quality of debate to a worrying extent. However short your speech has to be, you ought to be able to take an intervention if you want to, without getting a lengthening of your time, and say either “I totally disagree; the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong,” or “My hon. Friend makes a very good point and I am glad he has had the opportunity to make it.” How long was that? That was 10 seconds.

Q33        Michael Wheeler: If I might, I want to really press this in case it becomes an issue. I might agree that we should and we might, but in terms of a practical impact on the Chamber and the real psychology of our colleagues, do you not think there would be less willingness to take interventions?

Baroness Laing: No. This is only my opinion, but I think there should be more cut and thrust short speeches, interventions and quick points. We should cut out the “Umm, errr, and in my constituency of blah blah blah because I want to mention my constituency’s name as often as I possibly can.” That takes up half a minute. It is not necessary. Take that out and make your point. That makes for a much better debate. I feel quite strongly about this. I don’t know whether Rosie and Nigel agree.

Baroness Winterton: The other thing that would sometimes happen is that people would come in at the very end of the debate, not having sat there listening to what anybody else had said. They would think, “Oh, this is quite a good wheeze. I’ll just get up and intervene” and then they would get their name in “What your MP does for you”, or whatever it is, because they had intervened. That used to infuriate me because I thought it was so unfair on the other people who had sat there patiently, even though they may have spoken on a lot of other occasions, which is why they were lower down the list.

There are some strict rules, obviously, because if you had referred to somebody, you would almost be obliged to take an intervention. A colleague might say to you, “I’d really like to have the opportunity to intervene,” and you might say, “Okay, just very quickly”, because you are both making the same point and you want somebody to back you up if others are challenging. It has to be viewed in the sense of whether it is being used to game the system, or if it is a genuine to-ing and fro-ing. Sometimes it will depend on how long is left. If it is a five-minute limit, and an intervention can easily be three minutes, people are giving away quite a lot.

Nigel Evans: When you are down to three minutes, it means you really are pressed for time. We try to fine-tune it so that we leave time for the Minister or the shadow Minister to respond, and if it is a debate where somebody else has introduced it, they get one minute at the end. So we try to fine-tune it as much as we can.

That does not mean that people should not intervene. It could end up with people stifling debate, saying, “No, I’ve only got three minutes so I’m not taking any interventions at all,” but I have seen people on five and six minutes saying, “Oh, I haven’t got time”. I think that this may lead to pithier interventions and people making their points way more quickly. When the Chair’s limit comes down to three minutes and you are trying to fine-tune it, you are trying to be fair to everybody who is in the Chamber, and some of them may have sat there for a long time.

Chair: We have just a few more questions, but it would be helpful if people could speed up their questions and answers.

Q34        Mary Kelly Foy: I want to go back to the arrangements during the pandemic. But before that, I want to say in my defence that I was one of the intake who came in in 2019, so we had about 12 weeks of what seemed like normality and then it was changed to being online. I gave my maiden speech and then the next day, or the next week, it was lockdown, so my first question to a Minister was at my dining room table on Zoom. If we had speeches, we were given a time limit, which is probably why we started reading off paper, because if we did not, someone could press a button and you would be gone. We had to make sure that we got everything in, and we were new and inexperienced. I do not know whether some of that started from that time, where people have their speeches written out and they followed it word for word, but in our defence, it was a very strange time for newbies.

On that theme, remote voting was put in place for a very short period. Did you think that remote voting had any challenges for you as Chairs?

Baroness Laing: Sometimes there were technical problems, but that is all. In fact, our technical people were brilliant at being on hand and sorting it out. If there were any suggestion that it was going to go on for any length of time, that would have been awful, but the fact is that it was getting us through the pandemic and through a serious emergency situation. It is amazing that we did it at all.

Mary Kelly Foy: I remember the lines as well, when we went back into social distancing—

Nigel Evans: We had the conga—we conga-ed out of Westminster Hall. That was ridiculous.

Q35        Mary Kelly Foy: But for new people, it was all normal; it was all normal for us.

Moving on from that, these measures were put in place during the pandemic. In the Division Lobbies, we had the pass readers, which of course we have kept. It is the Tellers’ count that provides the result to the House, but if the House were to move to a fully electronic voting system, do you think the Tellers should still play that role?

Baroness Winterton: You don’t mean remote voting—you just mean electronic voting?

Mary Kelly Foy: No, we have moved on. The pass readers remain, but say the House moved to a fully electronic system, which is one of the things that we have been looking at.

Baroness Winterton: Does that mean not going through the Lobbies, though? Is that—?

Nigel Evans: On your phone.

Mary Kelly Foy: Yes—the fully electronic system, where you can do remote voting if you are anywhere on the estate. That has been touched on by the Modernisation Committee.

Baroness Laing: That is one of the things that would change the character of the House of Commons, and I think it would change it for the worse—significantly worse. I have seen some of the things that new Members have said in their ideas for modernisation. I think it would have been humble of some people perhaps to spend six months here before they started saying that what has developed over 300 years is just wrong. There always has to be evolution, but there are good reasons for the way in which things are done.

I do not think that using your pass to register your vote in the Division Lobby is any problem; that’s fine. You still nod to the Teller and the Teller still counts the votes, so it is instant. The Tellers then are responsible and it is backed up by the electronic system.

You are suggesting that, in the Division that occurred about an hour ago, for example, you would all just have got out your phones and voted. I seriously suggest that that would mean that you, as Members of Parliament, would miss out on an essential part of being here in Parliament and in the House of Commons, which is meeting your colleagues, Ministers and others in the Division Lobby, and talking about whatever you wish to talk about, and all being in a “parlement”—a place for speaking all together. That is just my view.

Baroness Winterton: As a former Minister and a former Chief Whip, I can tell you that when you know that you have to go through the Division Lobby and that you will meet your colleagues there, and somebody who has raised something will grab you—I mean, how often do you say to your constituents, “I will make sure I see them in one of the votes and I will take that up with them”? Ministers have to come to the House in the same way. In my view, it is really important for Ministers to have to do that, because you always used to think, as I say, “I’d better find the answer, because I know they are going to they’re going to grab me when I go there.”

That interaction is absolutely vital for the Opposition, because in the Lobby afterwards, Opposition Members can go up to Ministers and say, “You have sent me this reply, but I really want to pursue this—x, y, z.” As Eleanor says, talking—interacting—is really important.

From a Whip’s point of view—you may not want to hear a Whip’s point of view—it is quite good that you know that people are coming along and saying what they feel about different issues. You do not get that if they are thinking, “Well, I don’t really need to come to Parliament, because I can just vote somewhere else.”

There may be something to be said regarding proxy votes, if people have proxy votes for very particular reasons, because that is what we have in the Lords. Rather than having a proxy do it, they might say that you can check in and vote that way, but that is just a suggestion, because some people think that you hand it over to somebody who just makes up their mind on what way you want to vote, and that might be different. But I would not easily give away going through the Lobby if I were you.

Nigel Evans: When I am giving Americans a tour around Parliament, I have to spend some time explaining why we do not vote where we sit and all that sort of stuff. It is quite difficult for them to get their head around it until I explain to them why we physically vote and the importance of physically being in a Lobby and, if you are on the Government side, being able to pin a Minister to the wall and say, “Why are you closing my hospital?” or “Why have you stopped the money going into the schools?”—all that sort of stuff. Having that ability for just a few minutes, when Ministers are not surrounded by their civil servants, is really important, and if I were still a Member of Parliament, I would think long and hard before giving away that privilege, I really would.

I am more neanderthal than Eleanor: if I were a newbie, I would not wait just six months before I made any decisions; I would wait two years and try to work out why this practice has existed so long before I tried to reform it. I remember when Janet Anderson and I—some of you will remember Janet—started altering the hours of the House, because we used to sit beyond 10 o’clock most nights, and during Maastricht we used to sit till 2, 3 or 4 am; sometimes we actually went right through the night. That was way before the Jopling reforms. It was never clever—absolutely—but all of a sudden truncating the day to 7 o’clock on a Tuesday and Wednesday was giving away a lot of time, which meant that you then had to work out whether you were sitting on a Select Committee or were in the Chamber with a question. You made that decision, because the day was truncated. The reforms were made, but I remember that Janet and I got Tuesday back to 10 o’clock. That lasted only until the next Parliament, when it went straight back to 7 o’clock.

My advice would be to ask, “Hold on, why do they do it this way?” Yes, get rid of the top hats because that was old hat, but I would think long and hard about ending voting in person and getting what may be the only opportunity to pin a Minister, or even a shadow Minister, against the wall, or to see somebody you have not seen all day. MPs are really busy; their diaries are packed full of seeing people from the time they get here till the time they leave Parliament. Getting a time to chat to your colleagues and doing a bit of plotting in the voting Lobby—you can’t replicate that. Not even a WhatsApp group can replicate that.

Q36        Mary Kelly Foy: So it is actually not physical voting that is at stake here; it is what else happens in the voting Lobbies?

Baroness Winterton: You asked about Tellers. The important thing about the Tellers is this. If the pass readers crash, your Tellers will say, “Well, these are the numbers of people who went through.” It is a check. We still have that in the Lords; we have Tellers.

Baroness Laing: Absolutely; we have Tellers.

Q37        Mary Kelly Foy: I do not know how that would work if it did go fully electronic. What role would the Tellers have? How would they do it if you were not physically going through?

Baroness Laing: Exactly. If something goes wrong with the electronic system, you do not get the result of the Division because people are, well, everywhere. And if people do not want to be in the Chamber, taking part in debates, voting in person and talking to other MPs, why did they want to stand for Parliament? It worried me a bit when I saw some of the suggestions on modernisation that came forward from new Members at the end of last year. I came to the conclusion that quite a lot of people have been elected against their will, which is such a pity for them, because there was always someone else who would have liked to be elected instead!

Chair: You have pretty much covered the next question, unless Lee has anything he wants to ask.

Q38        Lee Pitcher: Yes, specifically on your learning if that is okay, Baronesses. Is that the plural for Baroness—Baronesses? I don’t know what the plural is, so Eleanor and Rosie, if I may call you that, I want to ask about people with a long-term disability and your learning from the Lords in particular. I understand that there, if you have a long-term disability, you can apply to vote online or by telephone, whether you are on or off the estate. Could you ever see that being replicated here?

Baroness Winterton: That is what I was trying to say; you have the system of proxies, and you could maybe replace that with this.

Lee Pitcher: Okay, so you could see that happening in that particular situation?

Baroness Winterton: You would have to have a very—there is quite a strict system of saying who can have a proxy and who cannot, or who can have an electronic vote.

Baroness Laing: I think that system is already in place, and it is for very specific circumstances.

Q39        Lee Pitcher: But having been Deputy Speakers, you could see that being replicated in the Commons in those very specific circumstances?

Baroness Laing: It is already, but through proxies.

Baroness Winterton: It tends to be for people who cannot get there for a particular reason, rather than—I do not think there is a long-term thing. When you say people with disabilities, do you mean people who are simply not well enough at a particular point?

Lee Pitcher: No, I am not talking about illness; I am talking about people with a long-term disability. We have talked about examples of people maybe having an illness that is degenerative, and it gets to a stage where they can still perform their duties, but they cannot come in and have to do that away from Parliament.

Baroness Winterton: I see. That would be a case for the proxy. I was just getting slightly confused about whether you were saying that somebody with long-term disabilities, which they had always had, might say, “Well, Parliament should find a way of accommodating me to be able to get through the Lobbies in the same way as everybody else does, rather than going over there and having an electronic vote.” Do you know what I mean?

Baroness Laing: Parliament has gone a long way in accommodating people like that; you haven’t seen Rob Halfon zooming around on his Segway. Certainly, there is absolutely no harm in accommodating people in a very specific position. Of course, we have come a long way now in that pregnant women are able to have a proxy, and that is absolutely correct. I remember struggling through the lobbies; it was horrible. We have come a long way on that, and that does not do any harm.

The distinction is that what we are talking about there is a specific person with a specific problem, and that can always be accommodated because it is one person out of 650. What goes wrong is if there are sweeping changes that affect everybody without having thought them through.

Nigel Evans: Can I just add one thing on this? I do not know whether changes happened to this in 2020, but when I got into legal difficulties, there was no exclusion; I kept coming in and I kept voting. There was no problem. Things have moved on since then, and a number of people since that time are told, “Please do not come on to the premises.” I think that their constituents deserve the opportunity to be represented in voting, and we are talking about proxy votes. I may be talking out of turn as far as whether changes have already occurred on that, but I do believe that constituents still ought to have the opportunity to have their votes counted during that process. That may be one area where some investigation could take place.

Lee Pitcher: Thank you.

Chair: The last question is from Graeme, although it has already been answered a little bit.

Graeme Downie: To be honest, I think they have answered all of it, so I have nothing else to add to that.

Chair: Thank you very much. I want to thank our speakers today—our Deputy Speakers, I should say, or former Deputy Speakers—so Eleanor, Rosie and Nigel, thank you so much for coming and giving evidence.

Baroness Laing: Thank you very much indeed for inviting us. It is very touching that you want to know what we think.

Chair: If there is anything further that you want to add in writing later, please do so. That concludes today’s proceedings.