Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, March 9, 2023

Official Report 570KB pdf

Correspondence: Proxy Voting Scheme

Our third agenda item is consideration of correspondence from Stuart McMillan about the proxy voting scheme. I know that members have had an opportunity to look at his letter, and perhaps you will be patient while I kick off the discussion. We are in a period this year with the proxy voting scheme being trialled very deliberately. I am pleasantly surprised at the uptake of the proxy vote, which has facilitated members exercising their constituents’ rights for them to vote here while still having a work-life balance that works for them.

Stuart McMillan has written to us about the particular matter of seeking an extension in relation to parliamentary duties that are outwith this Parliament, if I can put it that way. It is a valid question to ask. However, I am slightly concerned about its timing because, with discussion with members from across the chamber, we took a long time to deliberate about the pilot scheme itself. We did that very deliberately because we wanted to build support for proxy voting and we wanted members to feel that they could use it.

Part of the process is that we will review it—probably in the autumn, after the summer recess—so that we can make proposals to the chamber to make permanent what are, in effect, temporary changes to the standing orders. In my view, part of that will be an opportunity for members across the chamber to again say whether they would choose to use proxy voting; it will come back to the committee to see whether there is agreement, and then it will go to the chamber for agreement. To some extent, Stuart McMillan’s letter is slightly premature, but it definitely indicates an area that we would be more than happy to look at when we consider the permanent proxy voting scheme rather than the one that we operate at the moment.

To that end, I suggest that we invite Stuart McMillan, in due course, to give evidence, as we will collect evidence from a number of members, including those who have been granted and have used the proxy vote, because that is important. We will also offer an open invitation for members to suggest other situations in which they think proxy voting might be useful, given that we still have remote voting in this Parliament—that is now a fixture of our iterative development—and given that there are other methods that exist between parties to match members who cannot vote, when there is a number of them. Do members have any comments, or is the committee happy to proceed in that manner?

Members indicated agreement.

That is very helpful. I will obviously speak to Stuart McMillan, and, as a committee, we will write to him and suggest that we are anxious to hear his contribution when we look at the next stage of proxy voting.