§ 40. Mr. Tony BanksTo ask the Lord President of the Council if he will carry out a feasibility study into the use of electronic voting in the House of Commons.
§ Mr. NewtonI have no plans to do so.
§ Mr. BanksMay I point out to the Leader of the House that my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Ms. Hoey) was talking about the time that is spent voting, not thy issues on which we are spending the time? Would not voting machines be one way of speeding up the voting procedure? Is not it about time that this place was dragged into the 20th century?
The Chamber is not particularly historic; it dates back only to the 1950s. Should not hon. Members have allocated places and desks where we could sit and write properly? From a personal point of view, one of the advantages of 20 having allocated places would be that I would not have to fight off the buttocks of the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) every Tuesday and Thursday?
§ Mr. NewtonThe prospect of moving to electronic voting would not command universal support, as has been made clear, and my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) advanced quite an important argument. I will say that the prospect of the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) being replaced by an electronic bleep is quite exciting.