COVID-19 proceedings: Urgent questions

To be judged as urgent, a question should relate to a very recent or imminent event or development on which a government minister may reasonably provide an answer that same day.

Applying for an urgent question

As with normal proceedings, MPs had to apply to ask an urgent question by emailing the Speaker's Office.

Under the temporary arrangements, applications need to be made by:

• 1pm on the previous day for urgent questions on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays;
• 9am on Mondays for urgent questions on the same Monday.

The Speaker would reach his decision on whether to grant any urgent questions by 2pm on the day applications were made.

Notice to speak

If an urgent question was granted, all MPs were notified. Any MP who wished to make a spoken contribution had to apply online to do so.

The deadlines to apply to speak were 11.30am on Monday for the same day, or 3.30pm from Tuesday - Thursday.

The Speaker's Office ran a shuffle to produce a list of MPs. From this list, a call list was produced indicating which MPs would be invited to speak in the debate. Not all MPs who were successful in the shuffle would appear on the call list.

Participating in an urgent question

Only MPs who were named on the call list were able to participate in the debate on an urgent question. MPs who intended to be physically present in the Chamber neede to be present at the start of the debate. For MPs participating virtually, they were expected to join the conference call in good time before the urgent question was asked.

All MPs, whether attending physically or virtually, should wait to be called by the Speaker. If present in the Chamber, MPs rose in their place when called to make their contribution. The broadcasting team were responsible for unmuting the microphones of MPs who were called to speak and were participating virtually.

If there were technological problems that prevented any MPs from participating, those MPs could be called later in proceedings.