Why MPs can't be barred from the House - by anyone

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Oct 21

RE: MPs, staff must be fully vaccinated to return to Commons

Your country is in trouble when fundamental laws and traditions of government are unknown at the very seat of the Federal government.  You kind of expect that parliamentary procedure is well-known in Parliament, but apparently, not the more arcane parts.

It is maintained that the Board of Internal Economy made a rule that all MPs must be fully vaccinated in order to attend the House.

For starters, a Board of Internal Economy cannot be said yet to exist.  Parliament was dissolved, and an election held.  The membership of the old Board ended with the writs of return of that election, even if all the members of the old Board were re-elected.  The first sitting of the new Parliament has yet to occur, and it requires a sitting House to approve the membership of the new Board, and to confer anew upon it the authority of the Board.  So, “Speaker” Rota, who was Speaker of the last House and may be chosen Speaker again at the first sitting of the new Parliament, speaks out of turn when he makes announcements upon the authority of a pretend Board that would exclude duly elected MPs from sitting in the House.

A deeper problem is the ad hoc and unconstitutional nature of new criteria for a person to sit in the House.  Going back to the Great Parliament of 1265, the Sovereign summons the people to send representatives to discuss and make decisions about the nation’s business.  An MP is selected from among the people to represent them upon the summons of the Sovereign.  It is not the business of other MPs to decide whether or not a particular MP or a group of MPs should be allowed to sit, debate, and vote on matters of the nation’s business.  If this principle were allowed, entire opposition parties could be excluded from the House by a majority vote of the House, or even of the Board!

The ad hoc principle that vaccination status is a criterion for admission to the House is a scientifically a bad one.  In the first place, those who have already had, and recovered from, COVID are known to have vastly superior resistance to re-infection than the vaccinated.  Vaccinating them may is not just unnecessary, it may cause them harm.  Second, unvaccinated does not mean contagious or even infected, and it is the contagious person who is medically hazardous to others.  Condemning unvaccinated misses the mark.  Finally, vaccination is supposed to confer resistance to infection from the contagious, and so vaccinated MPs are supposed to be in no danger of infection from an unvaccinated MP, whether or not they’re contagious.

The admission of new and ad hoc principles for excluding MPs from sitting in the House has no principled endpoint.  Perhaps being ambulatory could be made a principle of admission, excluding those in wheelchairs.  Perhaps being insufficiently proficient in both official languages can become a reason for exclusion from the House.  A creative mind could come up with all kinds of plausible reasons for excluding elected representatives from sitting in the House.

The unconstitutionality of this ruling by an alleged Board can only be settled in one of three ways.  The first is sensibly.  No duly elected MP can be excluded from sitting in the House except by some mutual agreement, as occurred in the last sitting.  The second is to submit, and the third is by force.

“Speaker” Rota is respected by members, and he should find a way to settle the matter sensibly

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