Modernising the House of Commons and stand-in MPs / mySociety

The new House of Commons Modernisation Committee has made a call for submissions to reform House of Commons procedures, standards and working practices.

We’re going to make a submission to the Committee, focused around a set of practical fixes. But there are also bigger issues that will take longer to work through. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to publish blog posts on long running issues where deeper changes would improve how Parliament works.

Previously we’ve written about how it should be easier for MPs to vote, and how giving MPs more power over the timetable ultimately helps them keep promises to voters.

Today we’re publishing our research into Stand-in (or ‘locum’) MPs. This is the idea that when MPs have a substantial period of absence (e.g. parental or long-term sickness) there should be a process to appoint someone who can temporarily fulfil the duties of an MP.

The need here is to find an approach that starts with the fact that MPs are people, and we need to be able to handle prolonged absence well —both for constituent representation and the wellbeing of MPs.

The idea of replacing absent representatives with stand-in MPs is (if not universal) certainly something that happens in other Parliaments. Generally these are in Parliaments elected by party-list proportional representation, and there is a good ‘next person’ on the list to appoint. We need an approach that works for the candidate-based system we use in the UK.

Our pitch is creating a new role with speaking rights in Parliament, while voting continues to be handled by proxy vote (over an extended period). But other approaches are possible, and what’s important at this point is trying to draw out objections and views, and trying to find ways forward.

The research is consciously not comprehensive, but we’ve sign-posted what we think the next set of questions is, and how it’s possible to get more answers.

You can read the report online.

For feedback, please email me at alex.parsons@mysociety.org.

Image: Yaopey Yong on Unsplash.