Hello and welcome. This is another episode of Inside Briefing, a special episode. I'm Bronwyn Maddox. I'm delighted to have with me, Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the House of Commons, who's actually speaking to us from his office in the Commons. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Observing careful social distancing, you'll be glad to know.

Excellent. Well, a very warm welcome and thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me.

We are going to discuss how Parliament is working in the lockdown and some of the new steps that

have been taken and whether that is really adequate and whether there could be some interesting innovations.

So let's kick off.

And before Parliament rose early, and as the government began to ramp up its warnings about the spread of coronavirus,

plenty of people were commenting on how packed the Commons Chamber was at that point,

even as some MPs were falling ill.

And then, of course, we had members of the

cabinet and indeed the Prime Minister falling very seriously ill. Was there a danger in a mixed

message that MPs were sending out to the nation? Yes, to some extent there was, that

the nation was being told to observe social distancing. It was also being told to carry on with essential

work, and it seems to me that the work of the Commons is essential, but that being so close

together was muddying the waters. It was making things less clear than we would have liked

them to be. That was one of the reasons we rose early,

but that we had to come back, that short of a prerogation, which I'm not sure anybody wanted,

we had to come back on the 21st of April. That was simply the way our systems operated.

And let's talk about the process of Parliament setting up, the virtual Parliament that we have now,

of most MPs working remotely, communicating with the Chamber and the House of Commons remotely.

Was there a lot of debate about how that was going to happen?

Well, the main debate really was about what was technically possible. The week

before we rose for the Easter recess, there was considerable nervousness about whether anything

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