Procedure of the House

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Berkeley

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[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.