Written evidence submitted by Dr Wang Leung Ting (EVO 22)
1.Summary
1.1 This written evidence responds to the House of Commons Procedure Committee call for evidence on the use of electronic voting to allow members to vote in division without physical presence in the parliamentary estate. It draws on evidence from Hybrid Proceeding (HP) during the Covid-19 pandemic to inform the committee’s discussion on whether electronic voting should be adopted in the House of Commons.
1.2 Analysis conducted on the experience of HP during the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that providing Members with opportunity for remote access improved the participation of women Members in parliamentary proceedings by making it easier for them to take part while managing increased domestic and caring responsibilities caused by disruption to essential services. This evidence therefore suggests that procedural reform, such as electronic voting, could provide similar benefit to Members with protected characteristics, including women, parents of young children, and carers for family members.
2. Author
2.1 This submission is authored by Dr. Wang Leung Ting, formerly Lecturer of Comparative Politics at the University of Reading. I have recently conducted research on how the use of virtual parliament and HP during the pandemic has affected MP’s behaviour, especially their participation in parliamentary proceedings. I submit the following summary of my research on why the Committee should consider the role of electronic voting and other forms of remote participation in procedural reform and in improving the equity and accessibility of the House’s working practices.
3 Background
3.1 In early 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic created major disruption, the House of Commons, like many other parliaments around the world, took extraordinary measures to ensure that it could continue to function. One such measure was the adoption of HP, which allowed Members who could not be physically present in Westminster to participate remotely by teleconference. HP were intended to maintain parliamentary business during the pandemic while also reducing the number of Members physically present in the Chamber.
3.2 HP went through several phases during the pandemic where the scope and application of virtual participation by members changed over time. Initially, all Members were able to remotely participate in all parliamentary proceedings. However, during the Summer and Autumn of 2020, a more limited version of HP was put in place, restricting HP to scrutiny business such as asking oral questions and responding to ministerial statements. Members who wanted to speak in substantive proceedings, such as debates on legislative bills or motions, had to be physically present in the House’s chamber. Moreover, Members who wished to speak remotely would also have to self-certify that it is of necessity. It was only when the new wave of COVID infection swept through the communities in December 2020 that HP reverted to its original, more expansive form.
4. Benefit of remote participation
4.1 Although it was originally conceived as an emergency measure, adopting some form of remote participation, such as electronic voting, as part of parliamentary procedure could improve equity and accessibility in parliamentary practice, particularly for women Members.
4.2 A major obstacle to women’s participation and representation in politics is the difficulty of reconciling domestic and caring responsibilities with a political career. Because of traditional gender roles, women are more likely to carry domestic and caring responsibilities than men in the household. Research on political recruitment has long shown that such concern is one reason that hinder formation of political ambition among women and kept them from entering politics. It has also affected the view of some party gatekeepers responsible for candidate selection, who have worried that women Members’ difficulties in balancing these responsibilities could detrimentally affect their constituents.
4.3 This potential conflict between domestic commitment and parliamentary duties can also make it harder for women Members to carry out their roles, especially when they are caring for family members. This may be especially true for Members who have young children. Such conflict of responsibilities could potentially lead to the underrepresentation of these Members should they find it impossible to physically travel to Westminster to participate in parliamentary proceedings if they are otherwise occupied.
4.4 These challenges that affected the work of women Members have been well recognized both in the political science literature and by parliamentarians themselves. Women Members of the House frequently raised concern about balancing family and professional life and have repeatedly urged for greater support and accommodations to be made to the House’s procedures and practices. A number of measures have been adopted by the Houses of Parliament, devolved assemblies, and legislatures across the world to address this issue by facilitating members balance domestic and professional responsibilities. These family-friendly measures may include the provision of childcare, flexible hours as well as vote by proxy.
4.5 A major benefit of electronic voting is that it could enable Members, particularly women Members, to better balance domestic and parliamentary responsibilities by allowing those caring for children or relatives to vote in divisions without needing to be physically present in Westminster. Integrating electronic voting or other forms of remote participation into parliamentary procedure should therefore be seen as a practical step toward making parliamentary practice more family-friendly. More generally, the availability of such arrangement may also reduce the concern among women who are deterred from pursuing a political career because of the difficulty of reconciling domestic and political responsibilities. Over time, this could help encourage more women to stand for public office and improve representativeness of political institutions.
5. Evidence
5.1 In a recently published research paper, I have found that the adoption of HP during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the presences of women members in parliamentary proceedings during the pandemic. By comparing the behaviour of Members between the different phases of HP mentioned above, I have found that women Members made more contributions in parliamentary proceedings during the more expansive phases of HP in comparison to the more restrictive phases in the Summer and Autumn of 2020. This suggests that increasing the opportunity for remote participation in parliamentary proceedings can have a positive effect on the representation of women Members in parliamentary proceedings.
5.2 Further analysis has also shown that this increase in participation by women Members mostly linked to tackling the challenges created by the pandemic, which disproportionately affected women. As the pandemic has disrupted numerous public services, such as childcare, schools, and care homes, this significantly increases domestic and caring responsibilities within households. Numerous research conducted during the pandemic showed that this extra works was borne mainly by women in the household.
5.3 A similar pattern can also be seen in the behaviour of Members in the House. I found that women Members spoke less in parliamentary proceedings when the pandemic is spreading quickly in the community and disrupting essential services. I estimated that for every 1000 COVID-related deaths across the country in a given week, there was a corresponding 7 per cent drop in the number of words spoken by women Members in the Hansard in that very same week, whilst the changing intensity of the pandemic makes little difference to the participation from men Members. This indicate a clear gender gap in the impact of the pandemic on the work of Members.
5.4 However, this gender gap in the adverse effect of the pandemic was only visible during the more restrictive phase of HP in the summer and autumn of 2020. When the scope of HP was more expansive and Members could participate remotely in both scrutiny and substantive business, the aforementioned gender gap disappeared. This further demonstrates that HP has helped mitigate the challenges posed by the pandemic to women Members, including the sudden increase in domestic and caring responsibilities.
5.5 The lessons learn from the implementation of HP during the COVID-19 pandemic could provide valuable evidence about the potential benefit of electronic voting in the House of Commons. While the widespread disruption by emergencies such as the pandemic is hopefully rare, it is not unusual for individual Members may still face changes in household circumstances, such as birth of a child or the deteriorating health of a loved one, which could create similar challenges in balancing domestic commitments and parliamentary responsibility. The experience of HP during the pandemic therefore demonstrated the value of remote access, including electronic voting, in helping Members manage those competing responsibilities. Electronic voting, or other forms of remote participation in parliamentary proceedings, could therefore improve equity and accessibility of Parliament by enabling Members, particularly women Members, to maintain their presence in parliamentary proceedings when facing sudden increase in domestic and caring responsibilities.
6. Potential drawbacks
6.1 The adoption of electronic voting as part of procedural reform does pose some potential risks. Parliamentary business and policy discussions are not confined to formal proceedings. Informal interactions between Members and officials that took place in the corridors and voting lobbies play a significant role in the exchange of information and ideas, as well as helping new Members learning the rope in Westminster. If Members with certain protected characteristics become reliant on remote participation, this may effectively exclude them from these informal discussions that take place outside of formal proceedings.
6.2 These risks do not outweigh the benefit of HP in improving the presence of Members who are unable to be physically present in Westminster. Not able to mingle with other Members in informal settings is still better than being entirely absent from all parliamentary proceedings. This unintended consequences of remote participation do merit further studies and the associated risk need to be taken into account when the Procedure Committee consider the role of electronic voting and other forms of remote participation in any future reform of parliamentary procedures.
7. Recommendation
7.1 In light of the clear benefit of remote participation in enhancing the presence of women Members during the pandemic, the Procedure Committee should consider the evidence presented here when discussing whether to adopt electronic voting in the House of Commons that allow Members to vote remotely, away from the parliamentary estate, as part of procedural reform of the House.
7.2 Specifically, the experience of HP during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that remote participation is most valuable when it helps Members respond to sudden changes in their circumstances that increase domestic and caring responsibilities. As a first step, the Procedure Committee may therefore wish to consider allowing Members to use electronic voting remotely on a basis of necessity. Limiting the use of remote participation on an ad-hoc basis should maximise the benefit to individual Members while reducing the aforementioned potential risks that associated with such reform. Electronic voting should also be considered as part of a broader discussion about the future of parliamentary procedure, including whether some form of remote participation might eventually be extended to speaking in proceedings, similarly to those practiced during the pandemic.
7.3 It should also be noted that, although the benefit of electronic voting may be concentrated among women Members, given the continual importance of traditional gender roles, men Members may also benefit from such reform. Men increasingly take on caring roles in their households, and Member of any gender may also need remote participation because of their own health or the health of their loved one. Electronic voting would therefore not be an exclusive benefit for women Members, even if they are likely to be the main beneficiaries.
8. Reference
Ting, W. L. (2025). You are unmuted: The impact of virtual arrangements on women and old age legislators’ participation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parliamentary Affairs, 78(2), 279-303.
May 2026