Among the many issues to be considered by MPs before Wednesday’s crucial vote on the EU withdrawal bill is one particular complexity faced by a handful of them: the implications of late pregnancy.

With no formal parental leave system in place in the Commons, the precise numbers on the key amendment vote could be swayed by the fact that three MPs who would vote against the government are heavily pregnant.

While arrangements exist for MPs obliged to miss a vote to be “paired”, meaning someone from the opposite side also does not take part, campaigners in the Commons argue this robs constituencies of their voices on the issue and is based around an outdated assumption of two-party dominance.

The government backs a system for absent MPs to vote by proxy. But even after a report by the cross-party Commons procedure committee looked into ways that this could happen, as well as a formal system of parental leave, it has not been implemented. The report on parental leave followed a Commons resolution on the issue by the Labour MP Harriet Harman.

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Jo Swinson, is past her due date but plans to vote on Wednesday if she can.



“Jo was due yesterday but she has said, come hell or high water – unless she’s actually in the birthing pool – she will be voting, even if she has to bring a newborn in. But it shouldn’t be like that,” said Harman.



“She’s not able to discharge her obligation and her will to cast a vote, it’s just an abstention which is matched by an abstention on the other side.”

Labour’s Cat Smith will be absent, and is paired with a Tory MP, while another shadow minister, Laura Pidock, remains in parliament and will vote. Another Labour MP, Holly Lynch, is in the earlier stages of pregnancy.



Harman said procedures had not caught up with a Commons featuring many more women, as well as male MPs who no longer “delegate all their family responsibility to stay-at-home wives”.

“Basically, it’s the demography of the house that’s changed. Also the attitudes of men has changed,” she said. “What hasn’t changed is the House of Commons procedures, and that’s long overdue.”