Duke of Montrose
Main Page: Duke of Montrose (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Duke of Montrose's debates with the Leader of the House
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, I too will reflect briefly on what happened on Thursday, when the House did not serve the interests of the people we serve, Parliament, or indeed this House and ourselves. I hope that my noble friend the Leader of the House might consider asking the Procedure Committee to examine what happened on Thursday, either to make sure that it is not repeated or so that we manage ourselves in a better way. In addition, the usual channels should acknowledge that the House operates considerably better when the usual channels are aligned, as they are today, rather than when they are not, as was the case on Thursday.
My Lords, I also express gratitude to those who worked out the business to allow us time to consider the Bill before it goes into Committee. My interest stems from the fact that I had an ancestor in Lord Townshend’s Administration at the time that this order was introduced. It is easy to think that we are in difficult and dangerous times but at that point people had seen real constitutional crisis: the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Act of Settlement 1701, the Act of Union, and a European monarch installed in a situation where there was an incipient civil war, which broke out about three months later. If we think we have a crisis now, we need to think about what other people have faced.
My Lords, I have the right to speak at the end of this brief debate, but because everyone agrees that the debate should be brief, I do not intend to use that opportunity.