Shakeout 2024

The House is going to suspend to take part in ShakeOut 2024, which is a national earthquake preparedness drill. Members will either get underneath their benches or underneath the galleries on the end; they could move now. Could everyone in the gallery please just pretend you’re on an airplane and you’ve got to do that drill and move forward and hold your knees or something like that, just while we do this.

Sitting suspended from 9.32 a.m. to 9.33 a.m.

The House is resumed. Members might like to take their seat—crisis averted. I’ll just apologise to those in the gallery; we didn’t want to interrupt this important debate, but that exercise was carried out right across the country and it would have been a bit odd if Parliament had decided it didn’t need to be doing what we’re asking of everybody else. Thank you for indulging us, and I call on Dr Parmjeet Parmar.