In the UK, what is pairing?

Question

In The Guardian on July 19 2018 I found this under the headline "Tory MP casts doubt on claim pairing breach was honest mistake as row escalates - Politics live".

Up to five Tory MPs were told to break pairs on Tuesday, Sun claims

According to a story by Tom Newton Dunn in the Sun, as many as five Conservative MPs who were paired on Tuesday night were asked by the chief whip, Julian Smith, to break the pair and vote regardless. The paper quotes an unnamed MP who was involved as saying:

Julian told me I was needed and told me to come in and vote. Of course he knew I was paired. I didn’t vote and honoured my pair, and he demanded to know why not afterwards. It then appears Julian told the prime minister it was all an innocent mistake ... What happened was unacceptable. We cannot behave like this.

In the event only one Conservative, the party chairman Brandon Lewis, did break a pair. Theresa May, Smith, Lewis and Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, have all claimed this was an innocent mistake.

As a continental European, I have no idea what a pair/pairing is exactly, other than some sort of Gentlemen Agreement. What is it intended for? Have breaches occurred in the past and what were the consequences?

Answer 1

It is when two members from opposite parties agree not to vote when the other is absent.

pairing is an informal arrangement between the government and opposition parties whereby a member of a Legislative body agrees or is designated by the party whip to be absent from the chamber or abstain from voting while a member of the other party needs to be absent from the chamber due to other commitments, illness, travel problems, etc.

Intention

It is a courtesy to allow members to be absent without affecting non-critical vote counts

The member that needs to be absent from their chamber would normally consult with his or her party whip, who would arrange a pair with his counterpart in the other major party, who as a matter of courtesy would normally arrange for one of its members to act as the pair.

Breaches

The Wikipedia article also lays out several breaches or suspensions of pairing by country, for example:

In 1976, the Conservatives broke off pairing after accusing the Labour whips of bringing in an MP who was supposed to have been paired off.

and

pairing lost trust again in the 2017 parliament. In June, Labour MP Naz Shah was controversially pushed through the lobby in a wheelchair, still under the impact of morphine, claiming that pairing was not offered, which was denied by the Conservative government.

Answer 2

Pairing is essentially an agreement between some number of parliament members to not vote on some issue(or vote a certain way) in order to have a fair balance when some members cannot vote.

For example, if a member of Party A had to be absent due to illness and thus could not cast a planned 'Yes' vote, they can be paired with a member of Party B who planned on voting 'No'. After agreeing to be paired, the Party B member would simply not show up for the vote. This means that the vote goes ahead exactly as it would have if both members had attended and cancelled out eachother's vote, and Party B does not get an unfair advantage from Party A being down a member.

Obviously, this is done with the expectation that the agreement makes the vote even, and that all parties who use pairs to even out their own past disadvantaged vote will offer to pair when the pair would take away a future advantage. Unsurprisingly, this is not always the case. Most breaches of trust seem to turn into standard political scandals since it is more-or-less an informal agreement rather than law, though on a few occasions pairing was suspended entirely due to major votes being lost.