3. Will the Commission make a statement on arrangements to support Senedd business as the lockdown is eased? OQ55376

As you know, with the agreement of the Business Committee, the Senedd will trial hybrid Plenary meetings on 8 and 15 July. Under this model, up to 20 Members can participate from the Siambr, whilst other Members will participate virtually. In addition to developing technologies and proceedings to allow us to support virtual and hybrid proceedings, Senedd staff have developed a remote voting application. This will enable Members to vote individually from remote locations. This will be used for the first time in Plenary next week.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the efforts that you, the Commission and the staff have made in enabling us to work as we do. It strikes me, Llywydd, as I look at you on the screen and look at other Members, too, that we have an opportunity here to consider not just how we arrange our business, but how we consider that business, and I would like you, as Llywydd, to use the opportunity that we've had during this period to lead a debate among Members and others in terms of how we arrange our business and the kind of business that we do discuss in our Plenary and committee sessions, and to look, before the end of this Senedd term, to test new ways of working, new ways of arranging business, so that when it comes to the end of this Senedd term, we will have had the opportunity to consider alternative ways of working before the next elections.

Well, thank you for those comments and for the question. I do agree with you that we are having to work in very different ways at the moment, and I'm looking at you all on the screen in front of me in various locations across Wales, and we are succeeding to carry on with the day-to-day activity that we're elected to undertake. But, the point that you're making is about not only how we stage our work through IT and meeting virtually particularly, but the content of what we do and what our agenda looks like, and how that business is delivered. And I do think that this provides us with an opportunity, once we have been able to draw a breath in responding to the pandemic, to look creatively at not only how we carry out our business, but what our business is and should be, and to give some consideration to all of that. So, I am happy to take that recommendation forward and to ask not only the Business Committee, but the Commission to look at the important lessons that emerge from this period, and how we can think about our agenda for the future in a way that reflects somewhat on the experiences that we've had over the past weeks and months.