Procedure of the House: Eighth Select Committee Report
The Chairman of Committees
That this House takes note of the 8th Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 213)
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)
My Lords, I beg to move that this House takes note of the 8th Report of the Procedure Committee.
This is an unusual Motion, since normally I would invite the House to agree the report, and the House’s agreement to the Motion would give effect to the committee’s recommendations. However, this report makes no recommendations; it contains a number of proposals, and each of these proposals is listed on today’s Order Paper as a separate Motion. In other words, the Motion that I am now speaking to is purely preparatory. It gives me an opportunity to describe the procedure for today’s business, but does not itself commit the House to anything. The substantive decisions will be taken when we come to the Motions on proposals 1 to 9.
The Procedure Committee’s report contains proposals arising out of the Report of the Leader’s Group on Working Practices, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. The report was commissioned by the Leader of the House, and debated fully in the House on 27 June. As the report was made to the Leader of the House, it is for him to decide how to go about implementing particular recommendations. The proposals on today’s Order Paper were brought before the Procedure Committee either by the Leader himself, or by the Clerk of the Parliaments at the Leader’s request.
The committee has decided that, rather than express a view on the individual proposals, we should simply present them to the House in a neutral form, so that the House may take a view on them. Members of the Procedure Committee themselves have different views, and the committee did not attempt to come to a single view on the merits of these proposals.
What we did do was to try to put the recommendations into a clear, workable form. In some cases, therefore, we agreed modifications to the original Leader’s Group proposals. However, the committee’s agreement to these modifications does not mean that the committee agreed the proposals themselves.
The Procedure Committee’s report covers 10 distinct areas, which the Leader invited us to consider. The Leader’s Group made many other recommendations, and my understanding is that the noble Lord the Leader of the House will, in due course, bring forward more proposals, in a similar format, either to the Procedure Committee or to other committees of the House, such as the Liaison Committee.
But this is a matter for the Leader, not for me, and I would like to emphasise my own neutrality as Chairman of Committees and Chairman of the Procedure Committee. As I have said, the committee did not agree or even attempt to reach agreement on the proposals before the House today. I therefore have no mandate from the committee to speak either for or against them. My only job is to assist the House in coming to decisions. I therefore propose simply to move each Motion formally as it is called. In the case where there is an amendment down, that amendment will then be called. Even where there are no amendments on the Order Paper, noble Lords may wish to speak to particular proposals. I shall do my best to assist the House where possible but I will not address the merits of any of these proposals. Similarly, I shall not prevent the House from coming to a decision on these Motions by begging leave to withdraw any of them. Today is a day for decisions, and I shall move each Motion when the time comes. I beg to move.