Sit in private

Parliament voted on 25 April 2025 on a motion to sit in private, which would have closed the House of Commons chamber to the public and press for that sitting. The motion was defeated heavily, with only 1 vote in favour against 73 votes opposed. The sole Aye vote came from a Labour and Co-operative Party MP, with the overwhelming majority of those present voting to keep the session open.

A motion to sit in private is one of the rarest procedural devices in Parliament. If passed, it would have cleared the public galleries and excluded journalists, making the proceedings entirely closed. Such motions are constitutionally significant because open access to parliamentary debate is a foundational principle of democratic accountability. The defeat meant proceedings continued in the normal manner, with full public and press access maintained.

The vote drew almost no party-political division in the conventional sense. Every party whose members voted did so against the motion, with the single Aye coming from within the governing Labour and Co-operative party grouping. No Conservative, SNP, Green, or Independent member supported it. The lopsided result, 1 to 73, reflects the near-universal parliamentary consensus that sittings should remain open. A handful of similar motions have been brought in subsequent months, on 4 July and 11 July 2025, each defeated with similarly small Aye tallies, suggesting a pattern of isolated procedural challenges rather than a coordinated campaign.