Yesterday marked two weeks since the day my appearance in parliament to cast my vote – in a wheelchair, with my sick bucket in my lap, on morphine – caused upset across the political divide and further.
I’m still struggling with nerve pain, which has worsened over the last few years. However, it is what it is, and there’s not a lot I can do. However, I can handle that because I’m in the hands of a brilliant pain specialist team in my local hospital, for which I am utterly grateful. But nobody should be expected to handle what I had to that day.
Andrea Leadsom can try to hide behind a cloak of bureaucracy, but the reality is that I was lying on a sofa less than 50 yards behind the Speaker’s chair in the ladies members’ room for the three-hour debate. I was taking liquid morphine to manage my pain, aggravated by the four hours I spent lying in the back of my office manager’s car, who kindly drove me to London that morning. I endured this despite being told that I would be “nodded through”, as is customary when people are very unwell, although they have to be seen in the grounds of the estate by whips from both sides to confirm their voting intention. The Tory whips had three hours to agree to nod me through. It takes a simple conversation. It’s not rocket science.
Last Thursday, I ventured out to the Bradford literature festival opening dinner. Out of kindness and goodness, people asked after my health. Many expressed their shock, having seen what I was put through. I did my best to find the humour in it, finding myself repeating to people, “Hey, only I could pull off going to vote in my PJs”, but the truth is that it was degrading, humiliating and downright horrible. It should never have happened. The experience of having to take my sister’s hijab, and put it over myself to give me some coverage and dignity, while being forced into such an undignified position epitomises it. I wasn’t expecting to have to “attend work” among my 650 colleagues, or to appear on national television and splashed across newspapers for having to vote like that.
The fact that Laura Pidcock said she felt she had to prove she was pregnant, that Jo Swinson was voting two days past her due date is shameful. It is not something you should have to do in any job, yet to do it in a place that sets the laws, a place that is supposed to set the standard for the whole country is depressing. It is reflective of a system that remains male dominated, and a legacy of class politics.
As MPs, it is hard to explain the expectation and pressure, but also the absolute desire, to want to be able to represent our constituents. Even more so for votes like the one two weeks ago, which could be defining for a generation. It is an immense privilege to be in this position, a responsibility we don’t take lightly.
Today parliament will debate proxy voting, largely focused on MPs who have just had children. However, it could also set a precedent about how we deal with voting in the future. It cannot be right that our constituents are unable to be represented if we fall ill at an inconvenient time. We cannot allow physical presence to be the only determining factor when it comes to who can vote on such important matters.
With some votes, many members could have campaigned for years about specific issues and then be unable to attend when it matters because of circumstances that prevent them from being in parliament in person. Surely, when even basic compassion and dignity are denied to me and others, we have to ask ourselves if there is a better way.
It would be fairer to answer these difficult questions now than to allow a perverse, archaic practice to continue where people like myself are stripped of their dignity just so they can represent the people who elected them.
• Naz Shah is Labour MP for Bradford West
