The venue for the House of Representatives Budget Committee meetings is at the center of a predicament over the "Three Cs" -- closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings -- and a legal provision stands in the way of resolving the situation.
In the lower house's Committee Room No. 1, lawmakers from ruling and opposition parties are currently deliberating the budget for the next fiscal year, debating measures against the pandemic in the wake of the state of emergency's one-month extension issued Feb. 2 by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga for 10 prefectures, including Tokyo.
The Budget Committee meetings meet all the conditions of the Three Cs. The committee has 50 members, the largest of any in the Diet, and the Diet Law requires the attendance of more than half of them.
Opposition parties have requested a reduction in the number of attendees.
Budget Committee meetings are high-profile events. Aggressive verbal battles take place, with hisses and boos being voiced through the attendees' masks.
At the time of the first state of emergency issued in April after the 2020 fiscal year started, the committee changed the layout of its Cabinet and Diet members' seats to make it more spacious. This time, however, except when members need to vote, the committee has not taken measures to reduce the number of seats for attending lawmakers to a level that does not violate the law.
It is customary for the prime minister and all Cabinet members to attend Diet deliberations at crucial points such as during basic questions and closing questions, a practice requiring ministers who do not need to answer to be in the room as well.
The number of attendees can reach about 100, including senior bureaucrats and secretaries to ministers. Police officers who guard Cabinet members stand in the corridors, too, creating a crowded situation in which people can barely pass between them.
The committee's senior directors from both the ruling and opposition parties are discussing ways to improve the situation. From the current Diet session, acrylic boards to prevent airborne droplets have been installed in front of the podium where the prime minister and other Cabinet members stand to speak.
Although there have been no concrete measures taken yet, Shigeyuki Goto, a committee senior director of the ruling coalition's Liberal Democratic Party, said, "We always discuss the matter seriously."
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