No, I will not give way, I am sorry. To put that another way, anyone who has chaired a remote online meeting—whether in a local council or any other context—will know that the internet, accessible as it is to most of us, is nevertheless, by its very nature, a barrier between people. To chair a council meeting online is therefore to experience the considerable responsibility of trying to ensure that debate is both reactive and interactive, that the right balance between different arguments is achieved and that decisions are taken in the light of arguments that have been presented to those assembled in the most effective fashion.
I do not for a minute deny that the ability to conduct virtual meetings during Covid served a useful purpose—but we were making do. We have only to think of how things were in this Chamber during that time. Did we really think that a succession of prepared speeches transmitted from noble Lords’ kitchens or armchairs constituted the kind of effective debating that we experience in Committee or on Report for a Bill?