Procedure and Privileges Committee

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on the issue he raised about the pass reader. It seems to me that the reason that we are continuing with it is for the convenience of the administration and not for any other reason. I say to the Senior Deputy Speaker that there is a sense in which a more proactive administration is seeking to manage Members of this House in a number of ways. I caution him and the commission that we may reach a point where Members say that this is unacceptable. I think we are getting close to that point. At the end of the day, it is for Members of this House to make these decisions and not the professional administration, much as I admire the work that it does.

In relation to the Speakership, my noble friend’s amendment is so miniscule that surely the Senior Deputy Speaker will agree to it. He mentioned technical issues. I do not know whether it is that the Lord Speaker cannot see a screen from the Woolsack, but it is perfectly possible to put a screen where the book rest is—in fact, there is a screen there. Secondly, he said in the introduction that this was the third time this Session that issues have been raised about the Speakership. I put this point to him: surely it would be possible for us to have a more general review of the role of the Speaker, and then to allow us to have a proper debate.

Clearly, this has been a controversial area for many years. The House has always been keen to champion self-regulation, and page 47 of the Companion, on the conduct of the House, makes it clear that it is for Members of the House themselves to ensure the preservation of order but that it is also the role of the Leader and other Members on the Government Front Bench to advise the House.

All I would say is that while I welcome, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, the return to Question Time as we now do it rather than having a speakers’ list—because that was clearly killing the thing off—nonetheless, self-regulation is not working. Essentially, it worked when Members were prepared to give way gracefully—I am afraid that that is not happening and I sense a reluctance of the Front Bench to intervene. I simply do not believe it is working. Surely it is time for a more fundamental review, alongside, I would certainly hope, acceptance—and I hope that my noble friend Lord Foulkes will put it to the vote—of my noble friend’s amendment today.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, because I do not really buy in to this idea of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that we are all agreed that we do not want to have a Commons-type Speaker. There are many on his side of the House who precisely want a Commons-type Speaker. Let us face it: any extra powers that we give to the Lord Speaker merely move us closer to that. We have to be a little bit wary, and it is absolutely right, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, that we should have a serious debate about what sort of Lord Speaker we actually want, and try to establish how many powers he should have and how many he should not.

I did not really understand the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that the Leader of the House is constantly leaping to her feet to call people to contribute remotely. As far as I can see, it is the Chief Whip who is doing that a lot of the time, and I do not think that the onerous duties on the Leader of the House are that great when the Chief Whip can deputise for her.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He talked about not giving any extension to the power of the Lord Speaker. The point I was trying to make was that this would not be giving any power to the Lord Speaker. There would be no element of choice about who was speaking; it would be giving a miniscule duty to the Lord Speaker. I do not think we should see it as part of a slippery slope towards a Commons-type Speaker at all. We should see it as a simple improvement in process in the House.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I stand corrected by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Clearly, we are not talking about powers being given to the Lord Speaker but, as she says, about duties. As you impose more duties on the Lord Speaker, obviously the role that he or she plays in the House gets greater than it was before.

I turn now to my noble friend Lord Cormack’s amendment, which basically wants us to go back to the status quo. Here, I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. We have to ask ourselves: in having these pass readers, what are we actually achieving? I will try to help my noble friend the Senior Deputy Speaker by suggesting that perhaps this is to save money. If it is, perhaps he can tell us how much money he thinks he is going to save by doing this, because then we could get the whole thing into perspective. Otherwise, there does not seem to me to be any seriously pressing argument as to why we should change rather than go back to the original system that we had before this pandemic started, which seemed to have worked extremely efficiently. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that the onus is on the Senior Deputy Speaker to say why we should change, when it seemed to work so very efficiently before we ever started all this.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I would just like to say that my noble friend Lady Hayman is speaking such excellent sense that the House should uniformly agree with her.