House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Gordon of Strathblane Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane]

My Lords, I join those who have congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and his committee on an excellent report. Perhaps I may couple that with my apologies for not having submitted written evidence. It would normally have been my practice to do so. The honest truth is that I found the subject such a wide one that the task I found too daunting. All the greater, therefore, is my admiration for the comprehensive nature of the committee’s report. Frankly, I have been surprised at how wide it is and how radical some of the solutions proposed have been. I do not think that we shall see all of them, but I hope that we will see most of them, and very quickly.

Perhaps I may open up and unfortunately disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Reay, on the issue of the Lord Speaker. All that we are talking of here is removing the artificial constraints that we have put on the role. Going back in time, I think that this can be dated to the House still smarting from the cack-handed attempts made by Tony Blair to abolish the office of Lord Chancellor and subsequently to remove it from the House of Lords and put it into the House of Commons. For that reason, we probably had a feeling that we did not want to give the newly created post of Lord Speaker too much power. I am against giving it too much power, but it is ridiculous, and particularly unfair to Government and Liberal Democrat Benches, that somebody on the Front Bench—unless they have eyes in the back of their head, which most politicians should have—cannot see who is clamouring to speak. The sensible way to do it is to leave it to the Lord Speaker.

I support the committee’s proposal to transfer the power presently residing with the Leader or Government Whips to the Lord Speaker rather than the idea which found most favour among members; that is, the Lord Speaker calling Members. I do not like that. In a funny kind of way, in the House of Commons, it always strikes me as “Who has done the deal beforehand?” It all looks to be more like a stitch-up. I would be much happier with the Lord Speaker simply adjudicating between the rival claims of the different sides of the House. I agree with my noble friend Lord Brooke that we have to face up to the issue and make it clear to all sides of the House whether we are dealing with one party on the other side of the House or two parties, because a lot of the fundamental problem stems from that.

I warmly welcome the idea of taking Statements as read. It really is a waste of time to have a Minister reading them out. The only point on which I would disagree with the report is relegating a second or third Statement to the Moses Room. Frankly, if a Statement is important enough to warrant repeating in this House, it should be before the whole House. Let us take today’s Statement as an example. The idea of a defence Statement being made in the Moses Room is just not right.

I warmly welcome also pre-legislative scrutiny. I make a plea that this be done by Joint Committees of both Houses. That is good for Parliament; it gets both Houses together when there is very little opportunity for them so to do. It would also be very good for the public and for the interests affected by legislation. The great problem is that White Papers nowadays are so glossy that they are like election manifestos. People do not get excited until they realise that Clause 4(2)(c) of a Bill could effectively put them out of business. Then they get to work and start lobbying people. Pre-legislative scrutiny would give us the chance to harness the lobbying industry to the service of Parliament rather than the other way round. I would also give the committees the power to take evidence. Post-legislative scrutiny, too, is long overdue. If cars need an MOT, so does legislation.

On taking Committee stages in the Moses Room, I am not particularly uptight about that. I realise that there would be a loss of the power to call Divisions, but that still exists on Report. I find the atmosphere of a smaller room more conducive to constructive committee work rather than adversarial committee work, which I hope we could avoid. However, I am in profound disagreement with the committee’s suggestion that its working hours should be 10.30 am to 12.30 pm, and then 2.30 pm to 6.30 pm. Most of us here have solved the problem of bilocation, but trilocation is one step too far. The fact is that a lot of people are involved in Select Committees, particularly in the morning. It is quite wrong that you should miss out on something you might be interested in, simply because you are doing your duty as a member of a Select Committee. I would rather have the Moses Room sitting from 3 pm till 10 pm, for example,. With an hour’s break for dinner that still gives you six working hours; that is exactly the same as the committee’s proposal, and I think it would be a more helpful solution.

For all that it sounds good—that the Commons will flag up issues that it has not discussed—it will find a way of giving the impression that it has discussed everything. We are talking about issues it has not really debated, which will be quite difficult to define. Broadly, however, this is a very good report, and I hope that we will see some action on it.