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.