House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Wolfson’s Amendment 93. I totally disagree with my noble friend Lord Hailsham on this. It is a matter of significant importance to families, whether it is about a peerage or about entitlement with regard to due process around issues such as inheritance and legitimate descent.

For my part, I exceeded the 100 days set out in the Tony Wedgwood Benn renouncement Act, which was passed in 1963. Post 1963, you could not renounce further than 100 days unless you had clarity within that 100 days about renouncing. I was a Minister in another place at the time. I therefore went through six years of process to satisfy my family, and indeed my grandfather and father, that the rightful inheritor of the title and a small estate was indeed one of three boys, I being the man at the time—there were two young boys. I say to my noble friend that I felt duty-bound to go through that process and, on behalf of the family, to come to the right conclusion. My experience lasted some six years of detailed work: it went through the Tunbridge Wells Magistrates’ Court and the Family Division and ultimately came here.

I think my noble friend is trying to seek clarity and find a Bill in which that clarity can be made available to disputes outside this Chamber as well as, as currently, to people within it. In many respects, the burden of proof is very significant. In my case it was the first use of DNA, to refute the paternity of my half-brother’s fourth wife’s child and then to finally render his son illegitimate from the fifth wife because of a bigamous marriage and forgery of the divorce papers. I simply put that in the context of the difficulties that some of these cases lead to.

The monarch’s role, while symbolic, still carries weight in recognising or confirming legitimacy of hereditary peerages and of a claim. Each case is unique. The process can be lengthy and complex, especially where controversy and legal disputes apply. I believe the Moynihan case underscores the intricate nature of peerage succession and the legal challenges that can arise concerning legitimacy and inheritance. As I say, that is not primarily because of a seat in the House of Lords: it is a matter of family. I think everybody here and their families want to make sure that they know who their parents are and that, especially if some great act has been done by a forebear, it is recognised in the family and there is due process. Given that peerages are granted ultimately through the symbolic role of the Crown, I think that the simple amendment that my noble friend has put forward, and the Lord Chancellor’s response, will be very helpful in this context.

The process outlined by my noble friend Lord Wolfson, drawing on the House of Lords Reform Bill in 2012, is right. My only concern is that the cost of the process should never deter to prove a legitimate case being heard. I represented myself in court at each stage of the process. That is not always possible for people who genuinely want to make sure that the right outcome is determined.

I am sure the Attorney-General will give us clarity as to the process to be followed. If there is the opportunity and necessity for an amendment to be made, it could well be made through this Bill in order to clarify the position moving forward, without any relevance whatever to a seat in the House of Lords.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I will say two things very quickly. The first is on Amendment 93A. The Lord Lyon is also a King of Arms, so that ought to be added after “the Lord Lyon”. He is in fact King of Arms for Scotland, whereas Garter is not. His jurisdiction is north of the border, over the Scottish titles.

The second thing is that I have a feeling that, sometime in the past, titles could be heritable property in Scotland and have come under some of those laws there, so if someone does something it probably has to be dealt with by law courts and not in the very casual way that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, is talking about. I am afraid I disagree with him. This amendment, which may need to be modified, goes some way to clarifying the situation that it ought to go here—otherwise, I think we will have a mess in the courts later. I thoroughly approve of Amendment 93 and, with a slight caveat, of Amendment 93A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 25th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I have resisted so far the temptation to participate in the debate on the Bill. I shall keep to that, in the sense that I will resist the temptation to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on the byways of nomenclature for the House itself.

However, I urge the Government Front Bench to think seriously about and respond positively to two issues raised by the noble Earl, Lord Devon. The first is the inappropriateness of this House in any way involving itself in the determination of peerage claims. This was an argument that I made, and lost, before the turn of the century, but I still agree with what I said then and I believe that it would be far better for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to take on that responsibility.

Secondly, we need to right the implicit wrong in the hereditary peerage: the sex discrimination against generations of women who should have inherited not only the title but the estate—which in many ways is much more important. I hope the Government will give us some hope that they will make progress on that.

I talked about inheriting the title. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, pointed out the other anomaly of the husbands and wives of baronesses and barons. We should not right that wrong by creating another anomaly of giving someone else a title because of their sexual relationship with another person who has a title. That does not seem to make a great deal of sense or to be progressive in any way. I would just stop anyone giving their partner a title because of something that they have inherited or achieved.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that while I am a hereditary Peer, I am not here to try to stay here; whatever happens, happens. The reason that I and the other 91—92 in all—stayed here was to ensure the further democratic and proper reform of the House of Lords. That was the promise given; not that we would be turfed out, 20 or 25 years later. The whole point is that the Government are trying to do one bit, and I bet we will not see more. That is why Amendment 55 is essential, to try to start putting a timetable on reform happening. Otherwise, after this, nothing will happen; we will end up with a House with no democratic legitimacy, and that will be a problem. I therefore very much support Amendment 55.

I am here because my mother was here before me. She was one of the first five Peeresses to sit here when they allowed Peeresses to sit; she was the Countess of Erroll, in her own right. It was quite amusing, as my mother and father used to have trouble getting tickets for the train. If they were travelling from Perth, where they were known, they could travel down in the same compartment as the Countess of Erroll and Captain Iain Moncreiffe, as he was when they were first married. If they booked from London, they had to go up as Mr and Mrs Moncreiffe, or otherwise that would not be allowed—they did not allow that sort of behaviour. In fact, Claridge’s would not give them a room on the night of their honeymoon for the same reason, so this has been a perpetual problem.

Interestingly, there was always that issue of equality. My mother was also Lord High Constable of Scotland, as that has been in the family since about 1314. As such, at the Coronation, when the Queen went up to receive the Honours of Scotland, my mother was not allowed to carry the sword, as it was not thought suitable for a woman to do that. The Earl of Home carried it as her deputy, but she stood next to the Queen as the Queen received the Honours of Scotland. She had to be there to supervise and to make sure that it was done properly. As a woman, there was no bar to her holding what was traditionally thought of as a male position, and there is no reason why there should be in the future.

I heavily support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Devon, which I think are very sensible. We have got to move forward. There comes a point when it gets too difficult.

I want to say a little about how things get taken over. My father always told me that the communists took over the colour red, not as the people’s blood but because the nobles in Russia, as everywhere, used red as their colour; it is the colour of nobility. What they were doing was usurping the nobles, and taking over their mantle and structure. That is why the communists wave a red flag.

Personally, I am looking forward to future reform of this House, to bring it forward into the 21st century and onwards, in a proper form, not just as a whole lot of people appointed by one person who may be so-called democratically elected but not necessarily by the majority of the country. It is wrong.

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Devon. I declare two interests: first, as a hereditary Peer, and, secondly, as having three daughters and no son.

I promoted the Succession to Peerages and Baronetcies Bill, which said that daughters should be able to inherit the title when there were no sons. This upset the House; the mood was that the eldest child should be enabled to inherit titles regardless of sex, as per the Royal Family. My concerns are over existing expectations, as mentioned by the noble Earl, and matters such as long-established family trusts. I am not sure about children born to unmarried parents—this might lead to some title-hunters. But I like his amendment on this, which gives some flexibility.

As regards the name of the House, I feel it should perhaps be called the Senate, and that we should go with the Wakeham commission’s idea of LPs—lords or ladies of Parliament—or senators.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Swire (Con)]

I am not saying that the Front Bench has accused anyone of filibustering, but we have been accused of filibustering when we have probed the reasoning behind some of these rather strange proposals.

To be honest, I am equally confused as to whether this Bill is about reducing the numbers in this House or whether it is about getting rid of the hereditaries. We have heard that the hereditaries contribute far more than some life Peers who do not attend this House. So is the Bill about getting rid of the hereditaries or about reducing numbers? It seems to me that it is not about both.

I have a real problem with this clause. We can argue until the cows come home about what “participation” means; some of the speeches have already conflated “attendance” and “participation”. I fully endorse what my noble friend Lord Blencathra said. During my early days in this Chamber, we listened to the electric exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Lord, Lord Winston. I did not understand what they were talking about—and neither did my noble friend, so he confesses. As he said, I do not think that those in the Box understood a word of what they were talking about, and Hansard probably had to stay up overtime to work it out. It was on such a different level that only a fool would have intervened at that point. I was reminded of the adage, which has been attributed variously to Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain, that it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

That makes me think about “participation” as defined in subsection (3)(a), in the new clause proposed in Amendment 26, which refers to “speaking in the Chamber”. Will we really judge noble Lords by how often they speak in the Chamber? Without naming names, we all know that, among our goodly number, there are people who pop up on every occasion to speak. Are we to judge the validity of their existence by the fact that, like Zebedee, they bounce up and ask a question on every topic? Alternatively, will we be a little bit more circumspect in how we judge noble Lords’ contributions?

I heard what my noble friend Lord Bethell said about his forebears, but that is nothing compared to John Erle-Drax, the MP for Wareham in the mid-19th century, who was known as the “Silent MP”. He made only one statement in the House of Commons: on a particularly hot evening, he inquired of the Speaker whether it might be possible to open the window just a bit. He is not recorded as ever having said anything before or since. This ought to be a question of what noble Lords say, rather than how often they say it.

The other issue I have been going on about is the quality of noble Lords’ speeches. I know that not everybody has a background in public speaking, has served in the other place or has the natural fluency and eloquence that the gods vested on my noble friend Lord Hannan. But, increasingly in the Commons—and, I am afraid, here—speaker after speaker gets up and reads out a pre-prepared statement. That is not a debate. That just means that they want to publicise what they have decided; or, worse, what they have been handed by a foundation—very often the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, I regret to say—or some PR outlet. I have sat in this Chamber and heard a speaker read out what was clearly provided to them by some kind of lobbying group, and they got their text muddled up between what “we want”, “they want” and “I want”; it was clear that they had not even previously read what they were reading out. We need to improve the quality of debate in this Chamber, and not judge people on how often they pop up and ask a question.

On

“serving on committees of the House”,

there are not enough committees for all Members to serve on. Are Members who are not fortunate enough to serve on a Select Committee going to be penalised because they do not?

On “asking oral questions”, that is perfectly good, but you do not always get in on an Oral Question session; you have to jump up and down very often, and you are lucky if your hit rate is high.

On “tabling written questions”, let us not look at the quantity of Written Questions; let us look at some of the Answers—let us try to get an Answer. I have noticed over the years that Answers are masterful in their evasiveness. They do not even attempt to answer the Question, and if the Question is too difficult, they say it is at disproportionate cost to gather the information. Why do we bother asking some of these Written Questions, particularly when they cost hundreds of pounds to the public to provide a non-Answer? But we can all do that, if we are going to be judged on asking Written Questions. We can do it remotely, lie in bed and table hundreds of Written Questions. Lo and behold, we will all be judged to be doing terribly well in terms of participation. I rather think not.

The amendment talks about

“any other activity which the Committee considers to be participation in the work of the House”.

What does that mean? That is an all-encompassing statement. What can it possibly mean? This is a terrible amendment.

We should concentrate far more on the quality of what and how we debate here, on the quality of the speeches and levels of engagement. To seek to prescribe and identify how each and every one of us—individuals here for completely different reasons—should behave in some hideous template way to be decided by a committee is not the way to improve what goes on in this place.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to quickly say something about participation—I think back to a long time ago when I was involved in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. What goes into the law does not happen in here; by the time a Bill gets into Parliament, it is already set in concrete—the anchor is in the ground. If you want to see what goes into legislation, you have got to influence the thinking behind it with the Civil Service. I, and many others, certainly spent some time on that.

The statutory instruments and regulations that come out of it are the real things that affect how it works and operates. You need to talk to the civil servants behind it, before those regulations appear, because we cannot amend them or do anything about them. It was on that Bill, or perhaps another one, where we said that they had to come back with regulations within a year and that was seen as revolutionary because it almost seems beyond our powers. We did not actually turn them down and it has always been a big problem here.

How do you measure participation in the all-party groups, the discussions behind it, the influencing you have done and what comes out? It happened with that Bill, and it happened again with identity cards—there was a huge amount of work behind the scenes on that, and on the Digital Economy Act, Part 3, and all the age verification stuff—I chaired the British standard on that. The Government had something which they totally ignored, but it has become an international standard. There is all the stuff we do which may not be on the Floor of the House, because, in general, it is too late by the time it gets to the Floor. You have to get to the people who are writing the stuff before it gets here, and that means participation in other groups, such as the all-party groups and other influential ones, which you do not have recorded.

I do a lot with entrepreneurship—in fact, I am on X today, encouraging MPs to support entrepreneurship in their local areas. There is a huge amount of other parliamentary stuff and influence you can do. How on earth do you measure that? Maybe you say that the only thing that counts is talking on this Floor. For many, it is the last thing that counts.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that I intend to retire in the spring and would need a great deal of persuading not to do so.

I did not speak to the previous amendment. I had speaking notes, but I chose not to make a speech because I did not need to. I do use notes; I use them to regulate how long I speak and, actually, in my notes I have cut out several paragraphs because it was not necessary to use them. This is largely a presentation issue, and I agree with what my noble friend Lord Hannan said, but I would very strongly counsel against making any changes, especially strategy ones, because to do so could have perverse effects.

However, we are all grateful to the Guardian for its research, for pointing out that some Peers have been claiming large amounts of allowances while making little or no contribution to the work of your Lordships’ House. It will be obvious to the Committee that it is not just activity in the Chamber that should count as participation. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, made that point. However, it is what the public are encouraged to think. Some Peers are not so good in the Chamber but are invaluable in Select Committees.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 10th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newby, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

As I have said in earlier debates, the 1999 agreement always envisaged that the House would, as stage 2 of that agreement, adopt proposals for introducing elected Members to the House of Lords. However, I am not sure that all were firmly agreed that the elected Members should be directly elected. I believe that some kind of indirect election system—perhaps one representing the new estates of the realm, such as the CBI, the TUC, the BMA, the Bar Association, et cetera—should also be considered as an alternative way to introduce a more democratic and representative element of the House’s composition. The difficulty would be in agreeing which organisations should be entitled to select or elect representatives, but the possibility should certainly be explored. An alternative way to select indirectly elected Members of your Lordships’ House might be by granting election or selection powers to devolved legislatures and principal councils.

After the Second World War, and under pressure from the American occupation forces, the Japanese Government introduced constitutional changes that replaced the House of Peers with the directly elected House of Councillors, to which elections from large multimember constituencies are held. This introduced an element of proportional representation. Japan has two elected houses and, while they sometimes clash, the new upper house’s powers are restricted in a similar fashion to those of its predecessor House of Peers, and so it more or less works most of the time. I am not supporting moving directly to an all-elected, alternative second Chamber, but the Japanese example should be closely looked at.

Although I support the outcome that could flow from this amendment, it is wrong to make changes to the membership of the House before shaking the sand out of the shoe. To let the Bill go through with this amendment alone will not guarantee that it would definitely lead to any enactment of a Bill laid before your Lordships’ House and another place.

It is clear that the 1999 agreement was that the 92 hereditary Peers would remain until the enactment of proposals incorporating a democratic element. Nevertheless, I will support this amendment, but I believe the House should also adopt something similar to Amendment 6, as previously debated. I will support my noble friend Lord Lucas if he brings back on Report an amendment that would retain an elected and independent element within your Lordships’ House, which would keep the sand in the shoe. A combination of Amendment 6 and this amendment could well be developed to a level where a programme of change would enjoy a broad level of support across your Lordships’ House.

I also support Amendments 11A and 11B in the name of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, both of which seek to ensure that referenda will be held to make certain that proposals for an elected House really would be enacted with popular support. As my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, some sort of popular support should be sought in making a constitutional change of this nature.

I cannot support Amendment 70 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, because a review would most probably conclude that a House composed of only appointed Peers and Bishops would lack appropriateness—that is an understatement. Such a review would just be kicked into the long grass.

I like Amendment 72, but I think that the 92—or 88—should remain until the end of the Session prior to the new House being convened, following an election under a new electoral model.

I am not sure about Amendment 90D in the name of my noble friend Lord Brady, although I agree with much of what he said in his most thought-provoking speech. Clearly, a House comprising only 200 Members would have no room for people retaining activities outside the House and would lack the capacity to scrutinise legislation as it does at present, or to operate the number of Select Committees it does today. It would be a very different kind of House. However, I am certainly attracted by my noble friend’s proposal that elections should be held one year later than general elections. That should be considered as a part of any move to a partly elected House.

Lastly, Amendment 115 makes sense. The Bill should not be enacted without the adoption of at least a partial democratic mandate at the same time.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I thoroughly support Amendment 11. People have tried picking holes in it, but it does not say that all have to be elected. It says:

“introducing directly elected members in the House of Lords”.

The proposals, which would be thought through and brought with a Bill within 18 months, could contain all sorts of different proposals, which I know everyone wants to debate in a moment. I will leave that to everybody else because there are some very good ideas in there.

The whole point about Amendment 11 is that it gives voice to that promise of Privy Council oath, given from the two Front Benches, that there would be further democratic reform of the House of Lords. That is what Amendment 11 states, and it puts a time limit on it. Therefore, the Secretary of State has to do something about it, not just kick it into the long grass. We will not be here, but those who follow us will be here to see proper further reform of the Lords, introducing a democratic bit to it. As I said before, without that democratic element, it will eventually have all its powers removed because it will have no democratic legitimacy.

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Brady spoke very eloquently, but he did not refer to his Amendment 90C:

“A person can only be a member of the House of Lords if they are not a Minister of the Crown”.


I do not know why he did not refer to that, but it is a very bad idea.

One of the most striking features of politics in the more than 50 years since I was elected to the House of Commons is that as the diversity in gender and ethnicity has widened—which is a good thing—the diversity of life experience has narrowed considerably. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, there were people who had a lot of business experience, people who had been active in trade unions—

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 3rd March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I read this amendment with some surprise, because the noble Earl says that everybody is going to be nominated by the Prime Minister. I was not nominated by the Prime Minister and there remains, I think, 20% of this House who were not. As far as I know, this Government have no intention of getting rid of the way in which we are appointed. As I understand the noble Earl to have said, the wording of the Bill from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was different. Of course we are appointed, but the noble Earl has limited it to the Prime Minister. To that extent, I profoundly disagree and I hope noble Lords will at least support the Cross-Benchers.

I recognise the manifesto and that this Bill must go through. I regret that there are so many amendments to slow it down. There are a large number of issues that need to be dealt with. I am not at all sure that this is the best place for them to be discussed when there is really a single issue occupying the Committee.

I hope that the Government will look at those whom they are removing and compare them with the Members of this House—at least 200—who virtually never come. I can speak as someone who is not a hereditary Peer but has been here for quite a long time. I have observed the enormous work done by hereditary Peers, who have been of invaluable use to the legislation that has been passed. For us to lose them and keep those who do not come and do not work seems profoundly wrong.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I was going to speak to the last amendment. I will say very quickly now that it needed a little bit inserted to say, “Also to remove the power of the Prime Minister to have total control over the membership of this House”.

I remember and was very involved in the whole debate in 1998-99. In fact I and a bunch of Cross-Benchers produced a report on it at the time. The real problem with the whole thing is that it put the Prime Minister in total control of everything. He is the Prime Minister of the Civil Service and therefore the supreme person there. He is the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons and therefore controls that. The judges are also no longer separate and are now a Civil Service department, the Ministry of Justice. There were a lot of promises about independence, but it is no longer a third pillar of our constitution in the way it was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to say that, as the royal representatives and great offices of state—the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Earl Marshall—are being removed from the House, is it reasonable not to sever the Royal Family’s link entirely with the Floor of the House? I might draw the line at the Duke of York or the Duke of Sussex, but I could tolerate some others.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

I think the noble Lord is speaking to the amendment in the next group. While I am on my feet, I will say very quickly, because this has made me think of it, that if the King does get removed, we will end up with something very close to the constitution of the People’s Republic of China.

Financial Services Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I speak as someone who is going to be going through this Bill in great detail. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that I had no idea that this Motion was going down until today, so I am not part of any great conspiracy that he might imply. I looked at this legislation with the understanding that Grand Committee was not meant to be a second-rate or second citizen process but was one for dealing with highly technical Bills. Having tried to do an interview with the BBC on the latter parts of the Bill, I know that it is extremely technical. I assure the noble Lord that it passes the “eyes glazing over in agony” test. I have seen Grand Committee, thanks to the consumer insurance Bill, and seen how effective it is in being able to get and exchange a great deal of information very quickly on highly technical issues, so I would have supported the whole Bill being in Grand Committee.

I can understand the desire for some of the most prominent parts of the Bill to be debated in the Chamber as recognition of the level of concern following the financial and banking crisis of 2008 and the need to look again at the architecture of regulation—for some of those key issues to be addressed here. However, it is more in order to satisfy that kind of recognition of the level of concern rather than to give us almost the best practice for going through the Bill in detail, so splitting the Bill strikes me, as someone without much of an axe to grind in this matter, as a very appropriate mechanism and a sensible and practical one. That is how I have always viewed this House—as sensible and practical and willing to take on the issues simply as they are and to come to a solution. I spent time in the other place, where one might say that the principles are not the same—and I know that this House dislikes the kind of principles that the other place operates on.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I can remember when the whole Grand Committee thing started, and the first assurance was that only non-controversial Bills would go to Grand Committee. The whole point was that in the old days—not that they are so very long ago—we used to divide on matters of principle in Committee, which meant that we tidied up on Report, and that was much more efficient. The challenge with Grand Committee is that it delays everything, and then we have a huge argument on Report that goes on interminably.

Then we have the problem with the limited rules on amending at Third Reading. Before, we would divide on principle in Committee and tidy up on Report, with half the length of debate. Then at Third Reading we would discuss things only when there had to be a final little adjustment because a mistake had been made. It was very unusual to put forward amendments at Third Reading, which is why they were so restricted. With the new procedure of going to Grand Committee, you can have wonderful debates but then you have to do it all over again on Report, which causes problems at Third Reading. We must either have yet another reading to tidy up before Third Reading or go back to dividing in Committee. We should remember that not only the person putting forward the amendment in Committee has the option to divide; anyone in the House can call a Division on an amendment that is proposed. So if noble Lords think that someone is wasting time by withdrawing an amendment in Committee to bring the whole thing back on Report, I suggest that someone stands up and calls for a Division.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, having sat next to my much missed friend Lord Williams of Mostyn, I wish to set the record straight. I am sure that the Leader of the House did not wish in any way to mislead the House, but having sat next to Lord Williams of Mostyn through all the discussions on the introduction of Grand Committee procedure, I fear that he would be appalled that there was Division in the House over the issue. He was a man committed to sensing the House’s mood, reaching a compromise and avoiding this sort of unseemly debate in your Lordships’ House.

Secondly, it is my understanding—this is not my area of expertise—that the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, is absolutely right about what happens at the different stages. It is confusing for everyone if some parts of the Bill can be voted on in Committee and others cannot and if rules apply to certain parts of the Bill at Third Reading but not to others. I think that will lead to confusion. It is also my understanding that the Bill tackles a serious problem; if sizeable numbers of people in your Lordships’ House—I am not talking about majorities—feel unable to support the compromise, to use the Leader’s words, surely it would be better to accept the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, and work in the way that I know Lord Williams of Mostyn would have wanted.

Procedure of the House

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, I have never felt so lonely for such a long time. I voted for this report in committee and I will vote for it again today. The noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, has also indicated how incompetent I am that I cannot get a letter to all Members of the Cross-Bench group. We all—well, a large proportion of the House—supported the Leader’s Group, but when it comes to implementing its recommendations the debate demonstrates how difficult it is to get agreement across your Lordships' House. It may be that I am too innocent to be allowed out, but I have tried to address the issue before the House and not be dragged into other, wider issues. Perhaps that is a failure on my part.

Having considered the report of the Leader’s Group on these matters in recommendations 9, 20 and 22, it seemed to me that the committee had addressed the issues with great care and concern. I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on one point: this House needs to preserve as much flexibility as possible for a self-regulating House. I regret to say that I cannot support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, because it states that all Bills should go to Grand Committee except in exceptional situations or when they are very controversial. If we think about this Session, there is not one Bill that could have been described as anything other than controversial. The amendment of the noble Baroness is altogether too restrictive for a self-regulatory House.

It is very important that this House takes forward the need to change in a way that enables us to manage the business as effectively as possible. I have formed a high regard for the usual channels and the way in which they try to deal with the business of this House. I believe that the usual channels can be relied on to reach sensible decisions which will command the confidence of the House. The recommendations are for a trial period. We have the opportunity to rehearse them in due course and we can learn from experience.

On Written Answers, the point was made about the expense that has been accrued by some noble Lords. Of course we want noble Lords to fulfil their responsibilities within the House, but that has to be balanced against the proper use of public finance, particularly at this time. I commend the recommendations relating to both Committees and Written Answers.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, if we start sending more things to Committees off the Floor of the House, we will soon discover that variant of Parkinson’s Law: talk expands to fill the time provided.

I would far prefer us to go back to what we used to do not that many years ago, which was to vote in Committee on the principle of amendments—even if they were defective, we looked at the principle. At Report, we tidied them up, which took much less time. That is why debates on Report are much more focused and we are not allowed to do the to and froing. Third Reading was purely confined to sorting out the typos, the essential little mistakes, not dealing with anything of principle. If we started to go back to that system, with voting in Committee, we would have far more abbreviated proceedings later on. All we are doing is talking it through in Committee and again at Report.

We have to use that as a brake on the deluge of legislation that is coming on us these days. If we give more time for talking, we will just get more to talk about.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I shall talk just briefly about my amendment on Written Answers during times when the House is not sitting. We have talked about Written Answers long and hard already today. Unfortunately, holding the Government to account does not stop when the House is not sitting. I am not an abuser of the system, and I am sorry that some people are, but I think that it would be a very good idea to be able to table more Questions during the recesses, and to be able to get Answers back rather more frequently than we do at the moment, which I think is once every five weeks in the Summer Recess. I am therefore very grateful to the Chairman of Committees for offering to take it back to the committee, and I hope that we can take it forward on that basis.