House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on securing this debate and on all his efforts to maintain momentum on the much needed modernisation of the working practices of your Lordships’ House. I speak as a relative newcomer to this House and, after just under two years, hope to add the perspective of someone who is still able to view its often rather arcane and mysterious workings through fresh eyes.

It was clear to me that it is important to view the recommendations in the Goodlad report as a coherent package that needs to be addressed in the round. I was therefore encouraged when the Leader of the House in our debate last year said:

“I … intend to ensure that a large number of the group’s recommendations are considered promptly by the relevant committees of the House so that the House may take a view on them at the earliest opportunity”.—[Official Report, 27/06/11; col. 1552.]

As we have heard today, some of those recommendations have been addressed and indeed accepted by the House, and I welcome that, but to me the response has felt rather piecemeal. To the best of my calculations, and I am more than happy to be corrected on this point, roughly half of the recommendations have yet to be addressed. One good example of that is what I felt were the very good recommendations for pre-legislative scrutiny and post-legislative scrutiny and the establishment of a legislative standards committee, which I strongly support as part of the package. In my view, a legislative standards committee would provide a powerful incentive to improve the quality of legislation coming forward and ensure that legislation was being used for the right purposes and was capable of being implemented.

My almost 20 years as a civil servant in Whitehall taught me that hurriedly drawn-up legislation often backfires, and nothing has more forcibly underlined that to me than the many hours I spent with others debating all stages of the Health and Social Care Act. It was the first Bill that I had scrutinised in depth, and something of a baptism of fire. I am conscious that the Bill left this House in a very different shape from that in which it came in, which in my view is very much to be welcomed, but I am also conscious that after the myriad amendments that were passed there was no proper opportunity to look at it in the round and ask whether it all hung together sensibly. I have to ask myself whether that is a sensible, let alone optimal, way to make the laws of the land.

I also strongly support the proposal for a Back-Bench debates committee to help with the choice and scheduling of debates. I hope that it would be able to use criteria such as topicality, interest to the wider public, variety, coverage of key subject areas and the opening up of the process to much-needed transparency.

I welcome the setting up of two additional ad hoc Select Committees and have the privilege to sit on the new Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change. This is an excellent example of taking a longer-term view of some very cross-cutting issues; indeed, I can hardly think of a more pressing social challenge facing this country. We should have more such committees to allow others to contribute their expertise, and perhaps fewer of some of our more traditional types of business.

There are many other issues that I would have liked to have talked about, not least how the House’s highly unpredictable nature impacts on part-time Peers, colleagues like me from all Benches, who are still active in their professional and external lives—with one foot in the outside world, you could say—in a way that helps to ensure that the much vaunted virtue of this House, expertise, is indeed up to date.

I shall conclude with a suggestion that I suspect some will find rather barmy. Most modern-day institutions have regular satisfaction surveys to gauge the views of their members or their staff. We have surveys, but they are generally to do with the satisfaction or otherwise with the services and facilities of this House. I would like to see a survey sent to all Members asking how satisfied they are with the way that business is currently conducted and what else could be done to make better use of their skills and expertise. I recognise that this would be quite an innovation but I ask my noble friend the Leader of the House to give it serious consideration. As an incentive, should one be needed, I am more than happy to offer my services in suggesting what questions we should be asking.