Procedure and Privileges Committee

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Strathclyde

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I see that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is about to rise. I want to remind my noble friend that, when the noble Lord was Leader of the Opposition, he thought that the end of civilisation would come if we swapped Wednesdays and Thursdays. The reality is that we are still here.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

The memory of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, may well be considerably better than mine but I remember being very much in favour of swapping Wednesdays and Thursdays, because it made such good sense. I am sure that the noble Lord will check the record, but I think he will find that I am right. However, I agree that there was some opposition, for all sorts of perfectly good reasons that, I am glad to say, turned out not to be favoured by the House.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

All I can say is that, if the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, backed the proposal I put forward at the time, he did it in a very opaque way. Check the record, by all means, but I fear that his memory may be serving him as badly as the Prime Minister seems to be serving him.

The other change, of course, was to the functions of the Lord Speaker. Every single stage of that was resisted as being a serious threat to our democracy.

At all stages, once a change has been tried, no one has ever suggested going back. So let us get this in proportion. At the very least, let us finish at 8.30 pm and start an hour and a half earlier, if necessary accepting the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, and doing it on an experimental basis. Let’s not get too worked up about it—let’s just do it.

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

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Strathclyde

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 13th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

I just say amen to my noble friend. I thank him for his earlier contribution and his steadfast support for the Bill. It is not long before we reach levels of absurdity in trying to defend the continuation of the present system. I thought my noble friend Lord Snape was pretty effective.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, having sat through this entire debate, I am not sure that anybody has made a case for the continuation of the hereditary peerage. I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, is going on about: the only people who have been talking about DNA or the so-called superiority of hereditary Peers over life Peers have been members of the Labour Party. This is all utter nonsense. Nobody has tried to make that case. The hereditary peerage came to an effective end after the general election of 1997. We are talking about a by-product, as some of my colleagues said, of the failure of the Government to then come forward with stage 2 reform. That is what this debate is about; it is not about the continuation of the hereditary peerage.

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, I have to say that I do not think the second speech of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was an improvement on his first. He should read the speech—he could not have been listening very carefully—of his noble friend Lord Mancroft, who made precisely the point about the particular skills and insights of hereditary Peers that are denied to the rest of us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, at this stage it is the job of the proposer of the Bill to move that it be committed to a Committee of the whole House, and I do indeed wish to do so. But, in fairness to the House and in the tradition of openness and transparency, I will say that the last two Bills were filibustered and destroyed in Committee, in a way that was embarrassing and out of any kind of tradition of the norms of behaviour in Parliament. The result was that after the previous Bill’s second full day in Committee on the precious Floor of the House, we had not got through even the amendments to Clause 1 of a two-clause Bill, whereupon even my tolerance ran out and I put down a Motion that further consideration of the Bill should not be on the Floor of the House but in Grand Committee. That Motion carried without dissent because no one could argue seriously against it. It went into Grand Committee, and went through in a smooth and orderly way.

I say, not as a threat but a promise, that if Committee on the Bill is announced, when we go into Committee that if the Bill does not complete that stage—it has had four days in Committee already, over two years—in ample time on a Friday for a two-clause Bill, then at the earliest opportunity thereafter, in prime time in the House, will put down a Motion to ensure that it is completed in Grand Committee. With that proviso and explanation, I beg to move.

[Lord Strathclyde]

A Motion has been put forward by the noble Lord. I would like some clarification on the rather odd statement that he made.

This is a constitutional Bill; I do not think that anybody can disagree with that. It is a convention in both Houses that such Bills go to the Floor of the House for Committee stage unless there is agreement that they should not. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, explained that, last time, there was agreement across the House that this Bill should go to a Grand Committee, having had one or two days on the Floor of the House. After that, I was slightly confused as to what the noble Lord said. Did he say that he would insist and ask the House for it to go to a Grand Committee, even though it is a constitutional Bill and even if there is not a consensus for it so to do? If that is what he said, does he not feel that that would create a dangerous precedent for constitutional Bills? If I am right in understanding what he said, does he then accept that other constitutional Bills that the Government may or may not bring forward during this Parliament should also go to a Grand Committee?

[Lord Grocott]

My concern is with my Bill, not with any Bills that may or may not be introduced by the Government. This House is the master of its own procedure. If the noble Lord wishes to continue filibustering in Committee, which he was openly involved in last time, he has the perfect right to do so. But the decision on whether—

[Lord Strathclyde]

I must object in the strongest possible terms. If the noble Lord looks at the number of times that I have spoken on this Bill over the past few years, he will see that it is considerably less than he has, if I may say so. At no point have I chosen to filibuster or even be part of a filibuster; I have moved only one amendment on a statutory and independent appointments commission, which I note the noble Lord did not mention at all in his winding-up speech.

[Lord Grocott]

I do not know who is doing the winding up at the moment, my Lords. We have all heard enough.