Recommendation 18

It is regrettable that the potential impact of social-distancing requirements to tackle a pandemic had not been considered in Parliament’s business continuity planning. We note that such an omission was not unique to Parliament; many other organisations faced the same dilemma of operating in a different manner without any plans for doing so being in place. We recommend the House of Lords Commission conducts a lessons-learned exercise on Parliament’s response to the pandemic as part of revising its business continuity plans. In doing so it should seek input from members and take into account the importance of Parliament continuing to hold the Government to account whatever the circumstances.