Could parliament cope with a coronavirus shutdown?

Sean O’Grady examines what it would mean for our democracy if MPs and peers were forced to work away from the Palace of Westminster on health grounds

Working from home: tech can help keep things on track (Getty/iStock)

Parliament is a place where a good deal of handshaking goes on, in between the back-stabbing. Some 3,000 people work there, and it is a major national and international tourist attraction. It also, in the House of Lords, boasts an above-average number of members in the higher-risk cohorts in their fifties, sixties, seventies and, lucky souls, the over-eighties, with progressively sharper hikes in their coronavirus mortality rates. To speak of their lordships’ house as being a particularly well-appointed care home is unkind – some of the sharpest and most expert minds in the country make their contributions to the national debate from the red benches; but the possibility and consequences of a Covid-19 outbreak do not need spelling out.

Parliament, then, is the kind of place where coronavirus could have a major impact. To have swathes of ministers, backbench and opposition MPs and peers ill or “self-isolating” would not be in the interests of democracy (and would surely an especially harsh misery for these gregarious sorts). The alternative is to send everyone home.

Thus, there have been discussions between the speaker of the Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, and the chief medical officer from England, Chris Whitty, about what would happen if, or when, parliament could no longer meet because of the risk of a major outbreak. It would mean that, for example, ministers would not be held to account through urgent questions; legislation could not be passed without a vote; backbenchers could not raise issues of concern in debates in Westminster at all; and the essential scrutiny exercised by of the select committees would disappear.

The emergency powers now being contemplated by the government would, if parliament could not approve them periodically, lapse. There is then, a good deal at stake.

Assuming that the British people do not wish to be ruled by decree by Boris Johnson, then some other ways would have to be found to exercise democratic functions. Voting could be made remote, for example, and parliamentary debating and questioning conducted in cyberspace, though the atmosphere would leave something to be desired (Twitter is not the answer). Some non-urgent legislation could be postponed, until normal conditions resume. Other, essential, legislation such as the Finance Bill, could be scrutinised by committees submitting written queries, as if in a Facebook Live session. There is much the new technologies can offer parliament; indeed, such experiments might speed up the modernisation of this famously traditional and conservative institution. Standing orders will have to be amended.

National political debate would go on, in any case, through the media, even if MPs’ contributions had to be made “down the line” rather than in a television or radio studio. Some programmes, such as Question Time, would need a new sort of format, as would the party conferences, also at risk of abandonment. Given that they are less about policy and more about plotting and presentation, they might not be sorely missed.

Of course, even now parliament does not sit for large parts of the year. According to the timetable for 2020 announced by the leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, in January, MPs will be spending at least 63 working days this year “in recess”: the equivalent of more than 12 weeks’ worth of holiday. This, as usual, includes the whole of the summer – for the last week in July through to the first week in September, inclusive. Another couple of weeks at Christmas (unless Brexit intervenes) would bring the total of time spent away from Westminster to about 77 days, or 14 weeks, against the five or six weeks their constituents get by on. So adding a few weeks to avoid a coronavirus outbreak might not make that much difference.

MPs argue that they spend recess making important fact-finding trips abroad during the recess, as well as constituency work, and of course ministers are still at their desks for some of the time. Still, critics might think, at a time of successive national crises caused by flooding, the coronavirus and Brexit, spending a quarter of the year away is not the best way to turn a country, nor to set an example.

One obvious (partial) answer to the looming crisis of democracy would be to delay Brexit for a few months, so that the necessary democratic examination and approval of the new UK-EU free trade treaty (or lack of one) can be conducted by healthy legislators giving it proper attention. That may be too much to hope for, however.