Adult Education: Part-time Attendance

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Sharples (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of my noble friend Lady Sharples, then I am sure we will go next to the Labour Benches.

[Baroness Sharples]

Can my noble friend say how many adults learn English on these courses?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I am afraid that I do not have those specific numbers to hand but I will be happy to try to find them and get back to my noble friend in writing.

House of Lords: Oral Questions

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sharples]

To ask the Leader of the House whether she intends to make any proposals for changes to Oral Questions.

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, we are a self-regulating House. With that in mind, my proposal is that we uphold the responsibility shared between us all to observe the courtesies and rules of conduct at Question Time. For me, that means short supplementary questions and answers, and a considerate approach to deciding who is next to get in. I look forward to working with all noble Lords in pursuit of those standards.

[Baroness Sharples (Con)]

How can we persuade noble Lords to read the Standing Orders, which state that supplementary questions should not be read? Even iPads are brought into the House with already prepared questions. Would that make a difference to the number of Peers who are able to enter a question? That would give them more time, would it not?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I would like to say first of all that we as a House offer something different from the other place. It is not just about what we do but how we conduct ourselves. Our customs and conventions are there to help us do just that. On the point about reading, my noble friend is absolutely right. Paragraph 6.29 of the Companion is clear: questions should not be read. In my view, if a question needs to be written down, that is a sign that it is probably too long. I urge all noble Lords to comply with the rules on that and ensure that questions are kept brief.

House of Lords: Question Time

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sharples]

To ask the Leader of the House what plans he has to improve the conduct of question time in the House of Lords.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)]

My Lords, as a self-regulating House, we all have a responsibility to uphold our rules of conduct at question time. The rules on supplementary questions set out in the Companion could not be clearer: no reading and no statements of opinion. Supplementaries,

“should be short and confined to not more than two points”.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Sharples (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply. Does he agree that Standing Orders should be compulsory reading for anybody who enters the House? If questions were briefer, would it not allow more people to enter the fray?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree very much with my noble friend that brief questions are to be encouraged: brief questions tend to elicit brief answers. I think that it is incumbent on everyone in the House to make sure that they understand the rules set out in the Companion. I think that over time behaviour sometimes slips. This is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of those principles to which we all say, “Hear, hear,” but which we need to put into action.

House of Lords: Oral Questions

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I have a number of points, my Lords. First, on the question of having a Lord Speaker, I know that the House looked at it in the previous Session and concluded by a considerable margin that it would prefer to keep things as they were. As for regulating the House, it is the responsibility of all those on the Front Benches not to speak too long and not to hog questions and take them away from the Back Benches, but it is also the responsibility of the whole House to make its views known if it thinks that Members are going on for too long or are asking too many questions.

[Baroness Sharples]

Does my noble friend agree that a single supplementary question is much better than a double-barrelled question, because the Minister does not have time to think?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As is often the case, my Lords, I do think that less is more. The Companion is extremely clear. It says that supplementary questions should be,

“short and confined to not more than two points … they should not incorporate statements of opinion. They should not be read”.

I think all of us will want to remember that.

Procedure of the House (Proposal 1)

Baroness Sharples Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, for two years while the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, was the Leader of the House, it was delegated to me to perform the functions of the Deputy Leader. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, that the Lord Speaker can see more people around the House than the person sitting on the Front Bench can. There were a number of times when I had to be elbowed because I could not swivel my head to see other groups. That is a fact. On the other hand, the configuration of this House is not the same as that of the other place, where not only do the Clerks sit in front of the Speaker but the Speaker’s secretary usually stands alongside him giving tips if he does not spot something.

I take very much what the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said. As a government Minister, it is not appropriate to choose who asks questions of the Government. That is the fundamental principle we are dealing with here. That should not be the role of a government Minister, and we need to find a suitable way. I can understand those who do not want change. Those who did not want a Lord Speaker in the first place can see, in years to come, the neutral person in the Chair calling the supplementaries. That in itself would be an advantage. I do not have the statistics in front of me, but something like 50 per cent of the supplementaries are asked by 10 per cent of the Members. That is because they have the loudest voices. It is a bully boy’s tactic. We try to encourage people to come into this House in order to use their expertise, but when it comes to Question Time, they look at what happens and say, “I am not playing a role in this”. Doing it that way is not professional and there has to be another way. I think that this is just a small modernising step.

[Baroness Sharples]

My Lords, I have been in your Lordships’ House for 38 years and I should just like to say that I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. I think that the Leader of the House should be on his feet rather more quickly when two people are trying to ask a question.

[Lord Campbell of Alloway]

My Lords, I want to make a very short intervention because everything I have on my notes has been said by my noble friend Lord Wakeham and the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, so really there is little more to say but this. The question is: are we to retain a self-regulating Chamber? If so, why dabble with the concept of opening a gateway that can never be closed? To what end and where is the justification for it?

Last night I read the official reports on this. There is not a shred of evidence to support proposal 1. Whatever was said about the Leader of the House and the Convenor of the Cross Benches, it forgot to mention the interests of the spiritual Benches. They are all the people who will decide what to do; they have the authority. You cannot land this job on a Speaker who does not have the authority and should never have it. I am not criticising any person or Speaker; I am talking about how the House should be run. It should be run by the arrangement of consultation that was referred to by my noble friend Lord Wakeham.

The last thing is that this is a question of crucial importance which also relates to other outside concepts that would have to be considered in legislation. It is quite wrong that we should now, without justification or evidence simply to please some concepts, do away with the maintenance of self-regulation of the House. It is the same sort of problem that we will have later on with retention of the ethos of the House.