Senior Conservative MPs have criticised the government’s decision to make MPs cast their votes in person, amid chaotic scenes in the House of Commons.
Others complained that a kilometre long queue to vote, which was compared to the lines at amusement parks like Alton Towers, was “how infections spread”.
Inside the chamber some MPs struggled to remember the new protocol for casting their vote, as they were urged by the Speaker to hurry up.
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Outside MPs snaked across a lawn as they queued to get inside the building to vote.
There were also complaints that social distancing rules had to be abandoned after a group of MPs got stuck in a ‘traffic jam’ at the bottom of an escalator.
Steve Baker, the former chair of the ERG group of eurosceptic Tory MPs, described the system as a “farce”.
“I think we will be back to remote voting before we are all much older,” he predicted.
Conservative MP and former minister Nusrat Ghani described the set-up as “very British”. “We could vote electronically and crack on with business in Parliament or we can stand in queues.”
Michael Fabricant, a former Conservative whip, tweeted: “Anyone watching the voting live (on television) would see what an embarrassing shambles it is.”
Another former minister Jeremy Wright added his voice to fears that MPs with underlying health conditions or other concerns would feel unable to travel to Westminster to vote.
He told MPs that “excluding those who would be here were it not for the Government’s instruction cannot be right on principle…
“And neither, it seems to me, is it unavoidable. Imperfect though of course it is, we do have a system of remote voting we have tested and used over the last few weeks. Of course it should only be used for this period of restriction, but while that period continues it remains the only way those excluded from this place can vote.”
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Caroline Nokes, another former minister, said the decision to scrap virtual voting was “discriminatory”.
Labour MP Rachael Maskell tweeted that the voting system was “completely unsafe. This is how infections spread.”
Wes Streeting, the shadow exchequer secretary, described the waiting around to vote as “an outrageous waste of time”.
The face was “bringing the (Commons) into disrepute”, he added.
