The British Parliament for the first time in 700 years of history will hold a virtual meeting

The lower house of the British Parliament – House of Commons – this week will hold a meeting online, announced on its website April 16.

In a statement this meeting is called historic, because the pandemic coronavirus for the first time in 700-year history of the house of Commons MPs to ask Ministers questions virtual – using the Zoom application.

It is expected that online the work of the Parliament will take part in 120 of the 650 members of the house of Commons, another 50 deputies will be able to be in the courtroom according to the rule of social distancing.

In the courtroom will set a few screens to the speaker and members of Parliament who will be present in the room, could see their virtual counterparts.

“I don’t want the members and staff of the house of Commons have subjected themselves to risk”, – explained the speaker of the house of Commons Lindsay Hoyle, the need to change the format of the work.

Newspaper The Guardian reported that the new scheme will finally approve April 21, when the House of Commons will be right back to work. On March 22 parliamentarians can hear the premiere online.

In this format, as noted by “Russian service of BBC”, the deputies until the weekly will be able to listen only to the reports of the government and to ask him questions. How to organize a full-fledged work of the Parliament in the remote mode, the leadership of the house of Commons had not yet been invented.

The broadcaster said that overall, the work of the British Parliament well digitized, but the vote in the House of Commons is an ancient method: MPs pass through the two foyers – lobby for and lobby against the sides from the main conference room and the clerks think their heads.

The British Parliament went into quarantine on March 25. It was also a historic event, said the BBC. For 300 years the regular meetings he interrupted his work only on holidays, during the election period and for the preparation of the government program. The British Parliament continued to operate even during both world wars.

Britain ranked sixth in the world in the number of infected and fifth in the number of victims of the epidemic. As of the evening of April 19 in Britain, the coronavirus has infected at least 120 067 people, of them 16 060 killed.