Liaison Committee: Third Report

Debate between Lord Brabazon of Tara and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

I wonder if the noble Lord might be prepared to withdraw that remark about the “massed ranks”. It seems contemptuous of the serious point that we as scientists are trying to put to the House of Lords.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Would the noble Lord also refer to the massed ranks of europhiles who came to the defence of those committees?

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I certainly was not trying to be contemptuous of the noble Lord, Lord Winston—rather the opposite; I was impressed by the number of scientists who had spoken. I am sorry that the noble Lord misunderstood me, or maybe I did not express myself well.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, it is a question of resources. We cannot continue to spend more and more money. In this report we have recommended one additional unit of committee activity—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, does not like that phrase but it describes rather well what we do—and the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, mentioned how we had followed the recommendations of the Goodlad committee. We are going to have two pre-legislative scrutiny committees, one more than we have at the moment; one post-legislative scrutiny committee—I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, about adoption, and obviously if something develops on that we can review the subject later on—and two brand new ad hoc committees on topical subjects. I think that that is what the House wanted. It would be even better if we could just go on with the old committees as well, but it would be irresponsible of our committee to continually recommend more and more.

On the point about the European Union Committee, we will still have six sub-committees and a main committee so there will be seven committees in action in that area. They will still be better resourced than most, if not all, such sub-committees in other EU national parliaments.

We were grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for coming to see us and explaining things. We had intended to be helpful in telling him roughly what we thought, and we had intended that he would therefore know what to expect and what to argue. We also did not want committees to plan work beyond the end of the Session that they would then have to alter. Indeed, the noble Lord persuaded us not to reduce the size of the EU Committee to five but to keep it at six. I had thought that it was the European Union Committee’s desire that the membership of the sub-committees should go up from 12 to 14; that is the impression that we on the committee were given. If that is not the case, though, it is only—

Procedure of the House (Proposal 5)

Debate between Lord Brabazon of Tara and Lord Pearson of Rannoch

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Chairman of Committees]

To resolve that where a statement of exceptional length has been made in full to the House of Commons and made available in the Printed Paper Office before it is due to be repeated in this House, the Minister in this House may (with the agreement of the usual channels) draw the attention of the House to the statement made earlier without repeating it; and proceed immediately to the period for exchanges with the Opposition front benches;

That the text of the statement should be reproduced in the Official Report;

That the guidance in the Companion to the Standing Orders on backbench contributions on oral statements should be amended, to indicate that “ministerial statements are made for the information of the House, and although brief questions from all quarters of the House are allowed, statements should not be made the occasion for an immediate debate.”

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I am afraid that this proposal does not really make sense in practice. When a Statement is coming, it is normal practice that the Printed Paper Office does not release it until the Minister or Prime Minister in the Commons has sat down after making it. Under pressure of business in your Lordships’ House, the time between the Minister sitting down in the Commons and a Minister getting up here to repeat the Statement is often extremely limited.

Many of your Lordships who want to contribute by asking questions may be in other parts of the House and do not know when the Statement is coming—it is “at a convenient time” after whatever piece of business has been decided. By the time one gets here and gets into the Printed Paper Office to get hold of the Statement to read it, the Minister is very often several paragraphs down the track. It is rather useful to have the Statement from the Printed Paper Office to catch up with what the Minister has said that one has missed because one did not know it was coming. The monitors over at your Lordships’ House no longer ring the bell when a new piece of business is there, so if you are working in the Royal Gallery or wherever you happen to be, you have to keep a beady eye on the screen to know when the Statement is coming.

I do not feel that this proposal really works. I cannot see why yet again we cannot go on with the existing position. It cannot be taken for granted that, if one wants to contribute to the debate, one will have been able to have absorbed the Statement.