Business of the House

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Strathclyde

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The point of my amendment is that these are very serious matters. We are making a dangerous and unprecedented assault on the part of this House, to quote the former Lord Chancellor, and this should not be nodded through as part of a business Motion. We should be in Committee and consider all the implications. The implications are enormous. The noble Baroness laughs, but this is a revising Chamber. What do we do? We take huge quantities of legislation from the other place which has not been discussed or even debated because it has a guillotine procedure. When I left the House of Commons in 1997, we did not have any of that. One had to go through numerous hoops to get a guillotine. Now everything is guillotined and everyone in this House knows how legislation comes here in a completely unscrutinised way. That is the purpose of this House. If we are to have a guillotine procedure in this House, Governments will absolutely love that. It is extraordinary that Opposition Members, of all people, should be proposing it.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, is not the position even worse than that? The noble Baroness is currently Leader of the Opposition. She must have considered the possibility that in the next few weeks she could be Leader of the House—that is, if the Labour Party concedes to a general election. If the noble Baroness is willing to push forward a guillotine when in opposition, just imagine what she would do if she had the full powers of government behind her.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My noble friend makes a very important point. Of course, we all know that Labour Party Members are busy making speeches around the country saying that they are standing up for democracy, when the very last thing they are prepared to do is give my right honourable friend the Prime Minister the opportunity to have a general election where they can put their views to the people.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Strathclyde

Monday 8th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House. However, having read the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report, the wisdom of us having an opportunity to consider it is reinforced. It makes some serious recommendations, which no doubt we will be able to deal with later this afternoon.

I very much agree with my noble friend the Leader of the House in her assertion that she hopes that the treatment of the Bill will not act as any kind of precedent. It arrived here as an orphan, it was being supported by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, it is now being supported by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who is acting on his behalf, and the whole thing has been done at a great pace. The very fact that the Opposition are moving a business Motion is undesirable. I hope that in the future, the House will consider whether what we all thought was the position in line with our constitution—that only a Minister should move a business Motion—will be the position going forward. However, I hope that we can now proceed.

I put on record my gratitude to the Chief Whip for the way in which he dealt with business on Thursday, which enabled us to carry out our duties speedily—or relatively speedily, compared to what might have happened.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, I too will reflect briefly on what happened on Thursday, when the House did not serve the interests of the people we serve, Parliament, or indeed this House and ourselves. I hope that my noble friend the Leader of the House might consider asking the Procedure Committee to examine what happened on Thursday, either to make sure that it is not repeated or so that we manage ourselves in a better way. In addition, the usual channels should acknowledge that the House operates considerably better when the usual channels are aligned, as they are today, rather than when they are not, as was the case on Thursday.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Strathclyde

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move that this House resolves itself into a Committee on the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, pursuant to Standing Order 62.

This has nothing to do with Brexit. It has to do with the procedures of this House and of our constitution. I am very disappointed. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is held in very high regard in this House, and we have—I will not say “enjoyed” but we have had good-humoured discussion over and over again on issues arising from Brexit. But this is about how the House operates and how our constitution is carried out.

As I listened to the noble Baroness, I had a look at her CV. I see that she contributed to a book entitled Prime Minister Portillo and Other Things That Never Happened. Obviously she is doing one on Brexit at the moment, judging by the contribution she has just made. I am very surprised indeed that she of all people, and the Opposition, should be joining the insurgents in the House of Commons who have sought to undermine the process and procedures of the House of Commons.

If that sounds an exaggerated point, I will quote from what the putative Prime Minister in the House of Commons, my friend and former colleague Oliver Letwin, had to say—I do not know whether he had a word with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. He said in response to a colleague in the other place:

“My hon. Friend can rest assured—although this may not be of any comfort to him—that those of us who are promoting this course of action have taken the trouble to identify Members of the House of Lords who are well able to carry the Bill forward in the House of Lords.


My hon. Friend may also wish to know, although I fear that it will also be of no comfort to him, that there is overwhelming support in the House of Lords for this measure, and that we therefore anticipate that it will, in all probability … pass through the House of Lords very rapidly. To that end, the House of Lords has in fact already passed a motion that provides for the expeditious consideration of exactly this form of Bill … My sense, for what it is worth, is that although the House of Lords procedures are arcane and it is impossible to determine from the outside the time that will be taken, there is very substantial support for the Bill there, and it is therefore very unlikely that anything other than technical amendments, which might be wholly welcome, would come back, and they would therefore be accepted. I do not think that is an issue we … face”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/4/19; cols. 1067-71.]


To describe our role as a House in protecting the constitution and reforming our legislation as “arcane procedures” shows an extraordinary arrogance, which is matched only by the way in which he and others have sought to turn the House of Commons into the Executive and to prevent the House of Commons and indeed the Government carrying out their proper duties.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am sorry for intervening on my noble friend, but I find it utterly extraordinary that we have just listened to a Motion being moved by a leading Member on the Opposition Front Bench who simply would not take an intervention. This debate can be solved so easily. Over the last two or three decades, the House has developed an extremely successful practice for dealing with urgent Bills. We do Second Reading on one day and we take Committee and the remaining stages either the next day or the day after that. I understand that the Bill is urgent, but there is absolutely no reason to have all stages taken on one day.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is not making an intervention, which means a short question—he is making a speech. I wonder whether he would look at the Companion and see what it has to say.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) (Abolition of By-Elections) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Strathclyde

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 15th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 2A is not on the Marshalled List. I apologise; it was tabled rather late yesterday and I did not have an opportunity to discuss it with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I had a eureka moment in my bath yesterday morning, when I was thinking about the noble Lord and his Bill, and came to the conclusion that it was an appropriate way to deal with this legislation and solve a very serious lacuna at the heart of the Bill.

Before I go on, I join my noble friend Lord Cormack in saying how right it is that this House should stop at 11 am for one minute to mark the terrible attacks in New Zealand. I hope that my noble friend Lord Young will direct us at a suitable time so that we can honour that moment with appropriate dignity.

Given the sort of parliamentary chaos that has been going on over the past couple of weeks in another place, it is wonderfully reassuring for people to come to this House and find that we can have a straightforward debate—one we have held many times in the past 20 years—discussing in detail how to progress with reforming your Lordships’ House.

As the House knows, I have been involved in many such debates, as has the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, but this is the first time I have spoken on this Bill during this Session. I have no idea how long this Session will last, but even if it lasts just another couple of months, I hope the noble Lord will agree that it is extremely unlikely that this legislation will get into law. I do not know whether we will finish Report today or when the Bill will receive its Third Reading. However, to be clear, I oppose the legislation because it would create a wholly appointed House. As the House knows, I am broadly in favour of politicians in the United Kingdom being elected, not appointed, but I know that that is not a popular view in this House.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

If my noble friend is so certain that the Bill will not make it on to the statute book, why on earth is he moving this amendment?

[Lord Strathclyde]

I was just about to come to that. My amendment is small and humble but it deals with an important issue. As it is unlikely to become law, we now have time to study it in some detail—if the principle behind it is accepted today, as I hope it will be—before Third Reading, when we can add detail to it. I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to clarify that.

What is the most difficult part of this Bill? It is the third and fourth lines of Clause 1, which say,

“thereby making the House of Lords a wholly appointed Second Chamber”.

This is the central part of the legislation, to which I would like to add the words,

“and create a statutory House of Lords Appointments Commission”.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and for his integrity and tenacity in coming back time after time with this legislation. However, it is a profoundly political Bill. In Committee, my noble friend Lord True explained why that was. By doing this, we will remove the ability of 40-plus Conservative Members of this House to replace themselves without a guarantee that they would be replaced in any other shape. I wholly understand why the noble Lord thinks that is a desirable outcome, and I hope he will understand why I think it is an undesirable outcome. He certainly does not duck the issue. The noble Lord is completely up front about his objective.

The lacuna at the heart of the Bill is that it removes the ability to have hereditary by-elections but does absolutely nothing to improve the way others are appointed to this House. I want to put that right. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, will agree with me that it is something we need to tackle, and why not tackle it in this Bill? It has been promised for more than 20 years by the party that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, supported so ably in government. It appeared in several White Papers in the early part of the century. Now is the opportunity to debate it further and, I hope, to put it in this Bill. I have said that it is a humble amendment but it deals with a big issue, and I hope very much that the House will accept at least the principle behind it.