Procedure of the House

Lord Filkin Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, we do have a ballot. I have had this conversation before with my noble friend, who I know takes the view that it is a lottery rather than a ballot. It is a ballot by definition, one in which everyone has an equal chance and does not need to persuade others of the merit of their case or the wisdom of the topic that they want to debate. They have an equal chance among all their peers.

[Lord Filkin]

My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Lord the Leader has done in seeking to respond to the pressure for more Back-Bench debates and time. That is utterly commendable. However, he is proposing a mechanism whereby we would still have a lottery in which we chose from topics that were judged to be topical. Who will decide that topicality question? Clearly, from previous discussions, that topicality would have to be decided by the clerks, under whatever guidance the House had given them. That puts them in the invidious position of making a judgment about whether an issue is topical, and it would be much better if such judgments were made by the House itself by the only mechanism that it can—through a properly appointed committee.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, topical Questions each week are dealt with in precisely that way. As I have said, we would need to agree in the Procedure Committee, in just the same way as we would if we end up with a Back-Bench debates committee, the criteria by which that committee will reach decisions, because the House will want to know on what basis the judgments that the Back-Bench debates committee is making are being determined. At an earlier stage, the proposal for the Back-Bench debates committee was that it would make the consideration and would not have to give reasons, perfectly properly, for why it had reached its decisions. Whichever route we go down, we will have to have a set of criteria within which we operate, so that the House knows what the basis of the decision is.

My point, though, is that I am not proposing new procedures. The proponents of a Back-Bench debates committee are proposing a new procedure. I am effectively saying that we would still have the way in which we have already operated for a long time. There could be some improvements in terms of different criteria, cut-offs and so on, if that is what people want to pursue, but we would fundamentally stick with the current system. It is those who want to change the system who are proposing the innovation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, I support the proposal for a Back-Bench committee. Indeed, I was one of those who put the suggestion to the Procedure Committee. I start by paying tribute to the former Leader of the House for establishing the working group on our working practices. He was sometimes accused of dragging his feet and not getting on, but we have made a number of improvements, although a number remain to be made, of which this is one, and I hope that we can make progress on it today. Secondly, I express appreciation to the present Leader of the House for the extra time that he is proposing we should have for Back-Bench debates, which is very important.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked why we should go along with the Goodlad report. The answer is very simple: we should or should not go along with it on the basis of the arguments that were put forward on this issue. The letter that the noble Lord the Leader of the House has circulated strongly stresses that we should look at the situation and read the report of the Procedure Committee. I am sure that we should read the Procedure Committee report, but the report that we should be reading on this issue is the Goodlad report. The recommendations in this regard run to a full page and are supported by a number of paragraphs arguing in favour of such a committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Butler, set forward the case comprehensively. I do not wish to delay the House for long, but I shall refer to one personal experience of these matters. At the height of the first outbreak of the eurozone crisis, I sought to obtain a debate on the Floor of the House. It proved extremely difficult. I tried for week after week on a matter of major importance; meanwhile ballots were taking place on issues of relative unimportance. Eventually I managed to secure a debate in the Moses Room. The Motion was immediately hijacked by the Opposition, who added a second part to it, which was entirely partisan. The debate broke up completely in both directions and the real issue of the eurozone was barely debated. Had we had such a committee at the beginning of the crisis, we could have had what would have been, as always in your Lordships’ House, an expert debate. This is not going to happen with a ballot.

The reality is that the odds on the chance of getting a debate on a major issue as against some particular enthusiasm are not good. A large number of Members may have put in for the ballot and the odds are getting worse because there are more Members. Therefore, the chances of getting relevant, topical, important debates would be improved if we had someone, and a group of the kind suggested, who would be effective in bringing that about.

My noble friend asked a moment ago how the group would be selected. I am strongly in favour of its members being elected. That seems to me the obvious way of proceeding rather than by appointment or any other method. That should ensure that they are appropriately members of the committee and can then act in our interests as far as the overall picture is concerned.

Reference has been made to the situation in the House of Commons. Its Members are enthusiastic about the change that was made to their proceedings. Matters are never on all fours between one House and the other but I had the chance last night of speaking to Mr Bernard Jenkin, who happened to be involved in procedures in the other place and who is wildly enthusiastic about what has happened there. Perhaps that is overstating it; I am not sure that one is ever wildly enthusiastic about such matters. But he has not the slightest doubt that the change has meant that Back-Benchers have a greater influence on the matters that are debated and the priority given to them. That is what we ought to secure by this proposal and I hope very much indeed that we do, because I am frankly rather puzzled by the position that the Leader of the House has taken. I do not think that the present arrangement is working well and we ought to reform it.

[Lord Filkin]

My Lords, I will speak briefly, because I am sure that the House wishes to come to a conclusion on this quite rapidly. I was slightly troubled by the last thing that the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, said in his excellent speech, as it is almost guaranteed to ensure that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, will not now vote in support of the Motion. But you cannot have everything, can you?

The points are as follows. If we adopt the proposal on the Order Paper, we are much more likely to be able to have timely debates on issues that the public think are important and we will be seen to be relevant. That is important; it was one of the fundamental issues that the Goodlad report affirmed. Secondly, unlike in the Commons, these issues are not divisible. That is important for our traditions. The Government do not have to fear what they fear in the Commons—that you have a debate on some contentious issue leading to a headline story that the Lords voted X or Y. That would not happen and it is in keeping with our traditions that it should not. That ought to allow the Government and the coalition parties who are signatories to the letter to relax a little bit on this issue. Thirdly, the proposal makes no change to the existing procedure for QSDs. Those who are beloved of ballots will still be able to go in for ballots for a number of QSDs; that is going to continue. Finally, we all know that the Government can ensure that there is a debate on any issue that they judge to be topical and important whenever they wish to do so. Back-Benchers ought to be able to do the same.

[Lord Brabazon of Tara]

I welcome parts of this report, particularly paragraph 6, which gives us extra time for QSDs, but I am not so keen on this idea of a Back-Bench business committee. I know that it was proposed in the Goodlad report, but not everything in the Goodlad report was gospel. I well remember bringing the first half dozen proposals from the Goodlad report to the Floor of the House when I occupied the position of Chairman of Committees; three of them were voted straight out. So I am not certain one should use that as an argument for the goodness of this suggestion.

I make the point, as have other noble Lords, that balloted debates are the only chance that some noble Lords have of getting their subjects debated. Will this new committee have to give reasons for its decisions? Would it deliberate in public? How does it intend to fulfil its remit, in paragraph 10, to “add transparency and accountability”? I assume that the committee would be set up in much the same way as are most of the other committees in this House. Whether it is elected or appointed, it would still have party balance. Like, I am sure, all committees in this House with party balance, it would tend to rotate the debate subjects around the various parties. I am not quite sure why it would operate in a different way from the existing party debate days, which will continue.

I welcome the proposals in the Leader’s section—option 2 in the report. I welcome the idea of not rolling over debates from one to another, so that you hopefully get a slightly lower number of two-and-a-half-hour balloted debates on the Order Paper at any one time. I agree that there should be an element of cross-party support for the particular subject. I make one further suggestion, which is that the present two and a half hours for each balloted debate—five hours in total—should not rigidly be divided at two and a half hours each. If we were to have a situation where there were more speakers in one debate than in the other, the list might have to close slightly earlier but one debate might get, say, three hours and the other only two. I wonder if the Procedure Committee might look at that proposal.