SPECIAL REPORT: COMMONWEALTH PARLIAMENTS' RESPONSES TO COVID-19
IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL SITTINGS IN THE OLDEST CONTINUOUS PARLIAMENT IN THE WORLD DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Context Like the rest of the world, the Isle of Man is a part of the interconnected global community. The spread of COVID-19 has touched countries, big and small, rich and poor and the Isle of Man has been no exception. The Parliament of the Isle of Man, Tynwald, is the oldest continuous Parliament in the world, and in its history, which stretches back over 1,000 years we have faced many crises, but nothing quite like this. Although our chambers are large enough to be reconfigured to allow for social distancing of its Members (by utilizing the public gallery). It was far from ideal and it was difficult for Members to achieve social distancing at all times, especially as we had to rotate around the building to allow everyone to use their voting button in the chamber. More concerningly, with an increasing number of Members needing to self-isolate for various reasons, the numbers able to attend started to drop which put our ability to achieve a quorum at risk. Prerequisites A virtual solution seemed to solve a lot of the problems, particularly around the participation of those who were self-isolating, but this has brought additional challenges. The Isle of Man has been in a fortunate position with regards to all of the prerequisites to achieve a virtual sitting. First, there is no legal or constitutional barrier to our sitting virtually. We do not have a written constitution, but no law requires us to meet physically in any particular place, just standing orders. The provision of an online sitting also requires a willingness and ability of the Members to make it happen. The COVID-19 outbreak has seen a real pulling together in our community and our Parliamentarians shared a unanimous desire to echo the 'stay safe, stay home' message of our healthcare professionals.
The Isle of Man also has exceptional broadband penetration at over 93% and all Members of Tynwald already have access to broadband internet. Fortunately, all of our Members have enough technical savvy to use the technical solution that was worked up. We are though talking about manageable numbers. The House of Keys (the popularly elected branch) has 24 Members, with the Legislative Council (comprising the President of Tynwald, Lord Bishop, Attorney-General and Members elected by the House of Keys) has 11 Members. In total, around 40 people are included in the virtual solution, including Clerks, Hansard, a legislative drafter when needed, and the technical team, who ensure the live feed is available on the internet and on local radio. We have also been supported by a small, but absolutely firstclass team who make Tynwald function. Their ‘can do’ attitude across Clerks, Chamber Service and Hansard has been remarkable and they worked up the whole solution from concept to reality in a little over a week. The virtual sittings would have been challenging at the best of times, as they involved not just an emergency sitting of Tynwald but also of both branches of Tynwald, sitting separately one after the other. Primary legislation was taken, and a Bill completed its passage through the branches. It was successfully amended. The IT Solution All Members have an issued iPad for the purposes of accessing their parliamentary papers, which was configured with a basic version of Microsoft Teams, which provides audio and video streaming. The sittings were based in the Legislative Council Chamber which already had the set up for Hansard and the live link. Admittedly the interface between Microsoft Teams and the live link / Hansard audio feed was a bit ‘Heath Robinson’, but on testing it worked perfectly fine. We found that audio quality was particularly improved if Members wore headsets with built-in microphones.
Hon. Juan Watterson, SHK
is the Speaker of the House of Keys and Member for Rushen, Isle of Man. Formerly a Chartered Accountant with KPMG, he has held a number of government posts since first being elected in 2006 including Minister of Home Affairs and he is currently also the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.
108 | The Parliamentarian | 2020: Issue Two | 100 years of publishing 1920-2020
