Brexit: Single Market

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords—

Banking: Regulation

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords—

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, while it is absolutely true that—

Procedure of the House (Proposal 5)

Debate between Baroness Kramer and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, surely the most important work we do when a Statement is put before this House is to question it and scrutinise it. Making sure there is adequate time for that and that a full range of views is aired is absolutely central to our responsibility.

I have perhaps a personal prejudice. I find that speeches that are read out are extremely difficult to listen to and a second-hand speech is, frankly, even harder to listen to because no one can put any life into it. I am not sure that listening to the speech gets me a lot further in terms of understanding. Perhaps that also applies to other noble Lords in this House. If we need a time delay to make sure that everyone has had an opportunity to actually do the reading, surely that is something that can be organised. It seems to me that the precious time we have should be spent on scrutiny rather than on a second-hand regurgitation of a speech that is sitting on paper in front of us.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, further to what I said earlier, I accept what the noble Baroness has said if there were to be sufficient time to really scrutinise the Statement. Without boring your Lordships’ House too much, in the case of Statements on European Council meetings, one also has to read the European Council conclusions and compare them with the Statement because they are often very different. We need at least an hour and a half for that.

On the matter of saving time, I of course accept that our questions should be briefer, but perhaps this is another opportunity to say that if the answers from the government Front Bench could also be briefer, we would all save a lot of time. That goes for Oral Questions, too.