Procedure of the House

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

With respect to the noble Countess, I was not sure whether it was in the Chairman’s gift to accept it or whether it was for the Committee. May I carry on for a little bit longer and then we can debate that?

Timing is very important. We started this debate an hour later than most of us thought would happen and we have had to spend an hour doing something else. We are all good at time management. Queuing in a nice soft chair once a month is not a big problem compared with the time management of all the other things happening in here. As my noble friend Lord Harris said, balloting could be a problem. Perhaps the solution is to trial going back to five Questions a day. The Chairman of Committees said that this was tried in 2002, and I remember it well. He said it was a failure, but if there are not enough Questions to fill the five, you have four Questions and you carry on with other business.

I do not know what the statistics are for the 10 years between 2002 and now, but I suspect that it would not be difficult to fill five Questions on most days when we have Questions. That would be a reasonable way to go forward. Before making massive changes to balloting or part-balloting, let us try five Questions over 40 minutes for a period and see how Members react to it. If they have to queue for half an hour rather than an hour, so be it. I do not think it is a problem, which is why I propose this amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, perhaps I may give an opposite point of view. I have been in this House since 2006 and have not yet put down an Oral Question. The main reason was that the procedure of queuing, whereby I might not get there in time and there were all these other noble Lords who wanted to table Questions, led me to the view that perhaps mine was not so important and I had better let other people table them. I would be likely to put down a Question and take my chance if there were a ballot. I am perhaps a lone voice but I support the Chairman of Committees and the Procedure Committee’s proposal.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, as a Cross-Bencher, I wonder whether I might be permitted to say something as someone who has lived in Devon for 45 years. I should like to endorse the fact that Devonians have absolutely nothing in common with Cornwall. The Tamar is a genuine barrier between Devon and Cornwall. Perhaps not all noble Lords will know that although you are welcome to go into Cornwall, you have to pay to come out. I wonder what a Member of Parliament with a constituency partly in Cornwall and partly in Devon would be expected to do if, every time he visited a constituent on one side of the Tamar or the other, he actually had to pay the toll. That is just an indication of the fact that Devon and Cornwall are quite separate places.

So far as we in Devon are concerned, Cornwall is foreign territory. Indeed, that is exactly what the author Daphne du Maurier said in her famous books about Cornwall. She wrote a splendid one that I think is called Rule Britannia in which she wished Cornwall to become independent of the rest of the country. I am not suggesting that Cornwall should be independent, but I believe it should have its own MPs and that they should not trespass upon Devon.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble and learned Baroness from across the water and probably across the frontier too. I support the amendment and I endorse everything the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said about the view of the people of Cornwall, particularly of those at the eastern end where I live. The noble Lord did not mention the treaty between the Celtic Cornish and the Saxon English signed in AD 936 by King Athelstan which started all this off. I would compare this debate about the Tamar and the problem of mixing two races with the thought of what would happen if there was a constituency that crossed the border between Wales and England. I do not think that the people of Wales would like that.

I want to mention just one other thing. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have recently been awarded a local enterprise partnership, one of the first to have been made. It is a great tribute to the county council and the other people who promoted it, and it is a fine achievement. It also demonstrates that the Government think that Cornwall is different and that it is separate. It has economic problems as well as many other ones, but the LEP demonstrates that one part of the Government thinks it should be separate. I trust that the Minister, when he comes to reply, will express his support.