Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Main Page: Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Non-affiliated - Life peer)Procedure and Privileges Committee
Lord Gardiner of Kimble Excerpts
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That this House takes note of the Report from the Select Committee Sitting times of the House: information relevant to the House’s decision (1st Report, HL Paper 12).
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, this first Motion invites the House merely to take note of the report of your Lordships’ committee on the sitting times of the House. Normally, the House would be invited to agree a report from the committee, but on this occasion our report makes no recommendation to the House. Instead, this report seeks only to provide information relating to the second Motion standing in my name, which has been tabled to enable the House to come to a decision on sitting times.
Your Lordships’ committee has not taken a formal position on the second Motion, or on the amendments to it; nor have I. Should they choose to, individual members of the committee will vote as they see fit. I shall not vote in any Divisions. I hope it will assist the House if I begin by explaining the procedure to deal with these Motions.
Today’s debate will take place on the first take-note Motion and, once that is complete, I shall respond. This is a neutral Motion to take note of the report and it does not invite the House to come to a decision. Following that debate, I shall then move the second Motion—the substantive Motion for resolution—formally, without making a further speech. Amendments will be taken in the order they have been tabled, although if the first amendment, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is agreed to, it will pre-empt the others. Similarly, if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, is agreed to, with or without the further amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that will pre-empt the last amendment, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. Finally, once the House has decided on all the amendments, the question that the substantive Motion, amended or not, be agreed to will be put to the House.
I turn to the background of today’s debate. Noble Lords will recall that on 13 July last year the House debated the first report of the Procedure and Privileges Committee of the previous Session, which proposed various adaptations to our procedures as we returned from a hybrid House to in-person sittings. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, tabled an amendment, proposing that the House should sit at 1 pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The amendment was defeated by 296 votes to 234. As I said in response to that debate, the task of your Lordships’ committee is to keep our procedures under review, and in this case we saw benefit in considering sitting times in more detail, gathering evidence and taking soundings to enable the House to have a more reflective, informed debate.
Your Lordships’ committee therefore considered a range of options, seeking advice on their impact on Members, on Select Committees, on public access and on other services. On the basis of that advice, we identified the option set out in today’s second Motion: that the House should sit at 1 pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, normally rising on those days by 8.30 pm. We identified this as manageable.
Our next step, on 6 April, was to send a parliamentary notice to all noble Lords, seeking your Lordships’ views on the proposal. We set up a dedicated email account, to which noble Lords were encouraged to send their thoughts, and those members of the usual channels who sit on the committee were encouraged to initiate discussions in party and group meetings. The results of this consultation are summarised in the report from paragraph 10 onwards. As far as we can tell, on the basis of a small sample, views are balanced between those favouring earlier sitting times and those opposing them. While some noble Lords suggested variations on the committee’s proposal, there was no clear consensus on such changes and for that reason the committee, when considering the responses to the consultation, decided to put the original option, unamended, to the House.
That is a very brief outline of the work your Lordships’ committee has undertaken, but I hope it demonstrates that a lot of time and effort has gone into the report that is on today’s Order Paper. We have received input from across the administration and from bicameral services; we have discussed options at a series of meetings over almost the last six months; and we have conducted an open consultation, providing all noble Lords with an opportunity to comment.
This consultation, in my view, was in no sense rushed. It began before the Easter Recess, when my open letter inviting views on the proposal was first circulated to noble Lords, and continued until the responses, along with feedback from discussions in party and group meetings, were considered by your Lordships’ committee on 7 June. A consultation of this kind by the Procedure and Privileges Committee is, I am advised, unprecedented, as is today’s debate, at the end of which I hope the House will come to a clear decision.
In all this work we have been motivated by a desire to assist the House in coming to an informed decision. We have sought to gather information and evidence and to produce a workable option for the House to debate and decide on. That option is a compromise and, like all compromises, there is a risk that it will satisfy neither those who want more radical change nor those who oppose change. However, we felt it was better to put a considered option on the Order Paper so that Members could have an informed debate and table amendments.
I repeat, as I said at the outset, that neither I nor your Lordships’ committee has taken a formal position. I shall not vote in any Divisions, and my role today is purely to assist the House. It is for your Lordships, as a self-regulating House in matters of our procedures, to debate and then decide. I look forward to listening to the debate. The decision is now in the hands of the House. I beg to move.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in my name. I shall want to divide the House and my understanding is that that will come at a later stage.
The Senior Deputy Speaker has explained why we are faced with this very unusual precedent and these amendments. Having listened carefully to what he said, I have to say to him that I still do not really understand why we are having this debate at all. We decided this question less than a year ago and the House rejected the idea of changing our sitting times. Is the Privileges Committee going to do an annual test? Are we going to discuss this every year? Why are we ignoring the result we saw before?
Noble Lords
The Senior Deputy Speaker
My Lords, as has been said, your Lordships have covered a lot of ground. Unless there are any strong objections, and I am looking at the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip—
The Senior Deputy Speaker
I suggest that after the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip has spoken—I am not sure if the Opposition Chief Whip wishes to speak—the House should come to some resolution.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
I thank the House. I accept that a lot of the arguments have been made, but I want to say a few words given my experience acting as a Chief Whip for my group in this House and working with the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Kennedy, and others during my term of office.
The essential issue is how we can do our job of scrutinising government business and legislation better. I sat through every single one of those late sittings in January and March, and I thought that they were unworkable for the future. We very nearly accepted a proposal last year to change the working hours. The reason we did not, as others have said, was that those who came from the north and Scotland were not prepared to vote for an early start on Monday. That is why the Procedure Committee decided to look at this issue again, to see whether there was wider support for having different working hours on other days of the week. Monday is not included today, and that is why I think there will be wider support than there was then.
I will make a number of points from my own experience. The fact is that it is only a minority of the House who actually do the detailed work on legislation; they are the people who stay late at night. There is not exactly a huge demand in this House for working late. I spend all my time as a Whip trying to get my people to stay, and the only time I have success with the Government Chief Whip is when the Benches behind him have had enough themselves because they have stayed late. I do not think this helps scrutiny, because we are doing it late at night, there are limited numbers of us, and there is no point having a vote after dinner. With all respect to the Cross Benches, whose expertise I value, the parties assume that they are going to be here in very limited numbers after dinner. That is the reality. The House is missing out on that expertise; in my experience, the people of expertise do not want to stay late. Those who have jobs outside the House also do not want to stay late. I have had several jobs outside the House during my 10 years here, and I welcome that expertise, knowledge and experience coming into the House, but the people who are trying to do other jobs do not want to be here at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock at night.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, very briefly, the position of the Labour Peers here was that this is a decision for individual Members to make, and we will have a free vote. My only message to the group has been, “Please attend today and have your say, and when the House divides, vote. Make your mind up and then we can put this decision behind us.”
My own position is that I support a change to the sitting times. However, the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was absolutely excellent; I did not agree with it but if you want to support the status quo, he set out very clearly the reasons why you should. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, gave a fantastic speech on why you should support the change. I will certainly be with the noble Baroness, voting for that change.
I have been in this House 12 years. I did not know a lot of Tories before I came here—and I did not know any bishops, that is for sure. I have great respect for many Members opposite, and I have worked with many colleagues on the other side of the House on all sorts of issues. I have got to know them, like them and work with them, and we have made many changes. However, we did not do that over dinner. We did that in the corridors, meeting Ministers outside, talking to people, having meetings in offices and so on. You can do many good things here by doing that—but it was not over dinner, I can assure colleagues of that.
I will leave it there. I will certainly support the Motion to change the sitting times, and I will also support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young. To have a trial would be a very good thing: if it is wrong, we can very quickly change it back.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
My Lords, I was wrestling with a description of our debate. Was it powerful? It was certainly feisty, but it was very strongly held. The point I always take from these typical House of Lords debates is how much we all care about the House, its work and our responsibilities and duties to it. As I said at the outset, my task is to assist the House in coming to a decision. We strongly hold the view that we are a self-regulating House when it comes to procedures, and we are seeing that today. We are seeing a House with differing views coming to decisions on a number of amendments to the substantive Motion, but that is what this House should be doing.
I want to clarify one or two points. On the issue of staff, which was raised with due sensitivity, as I said in my opening remarks, we received input from across the administration and from bicameral services. Views were sought from every office across the administration, as well as the bicameral teams, and were fed into the consideration. Your Lordships’ committee felt that this was ultimately a decision for Members, but we were assured by the Clerk of the Parliaments that staff would continue to deliver high-quality services whether or not sitting times were changed. However, I am mindful of the sensitivities that your Lordships have raised.
Lord Moylan (Con)
Would my noble friend explain why these changes, if the Motion as framed is passed, and even if amended by the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, would come into effect in September? Can he explain why there has been no consultation with staff or with their trade union representatives on changes that would have significant effects on the times of operation and potentially on the number of jobs? While consultation with heads of departments is reported in paragraphs 20 and 21, which tell us very little, there has been no consultation with staff or trade unions. Is this good practice?
The Senior Deputy Speaker
My Lords, as I have said, I am not responsible for members of staff— the Clerk of the Parliaments is. I have explained the assurance that I have received from the Clerk of the Parliaments, as indeed did the committee. He is confident that staff would continue to deliver high-quality services, and, although I am absolutely neutral on this matter, if the House does decide on an earlier finish, members of staff also would not have to work late. However, I do not want to have to spend too long on that because it is a sensitive subject.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
No, I want to make progress. I apologise to my noble friend but I think that the House has chewed over this matter, and we ought to make progress.
On educational visits—as I say, this is what I have agreed in the report—I have a note that says that the director of participation emailed to confirm explicitly that the number of school students able to see the Lords Chamber would fall from 72,380 to 67,760 per annum—a fall of 4,620 per annum, which, as I said in the report, is equivalent to some 116 fewer school visitors each sitting visit. I will pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, but that is the assurance I have received this afternoon following the remarks that have been made. Obviously, I will want to go back to that, but that has been confirmed by the visits team.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, raised the issue of the security search. This was raised with me—
Lord McLoughlin (Con)
May I ask my noble friend one question on this? I am interested in what he says on schools. However, does what he has just said not mean that visits by schools from outside London will be restricted? It would place at a disadvantage those schools that are farther away from London.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
My Lords, the report is very clear as to the numbers of visitors that will be impacted by this.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that I have looked into the security search—again, I have to be careful what I say—and I am assured that, as he knows, because I have spoken to him about it, the length of time needed for a thorough security search in order to look after the Members and staff of this House is the length we currently have. That matter was raised with me and I have deliberately looked into it because I wanted to be secure in my own mind about it.
A number of points were raised, but they are all contained in the report. They are all points made by noble Lords in their submissions. My task is to ask the House to come to some resolution on the amendments before it.