Procedure and Privileges Committee
Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Lord Moylan
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I think we have reached that stage in the debate when everything has been said but not everyone has yet said it. However, I want to make one substantive point and one comparatively minor one.
The minor point is that I want to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Grocott. Not only did he remind us of the momentous change—I remember it vividly—that stopping going through the night quite so often brought not only to the lives of individual Members but to the quality of what we did but he managed to speak for about 10 minutes, plus interruptions, without once referring to the fact that a hereditary Peers by-election was going on while he was on his feet. That is a statement of how mature this debate has been.
My substantive point is that the Leader of the House has not been present today; the Government Chief Whip was here very briefly but has departed. A lot of noble Lords seem to believe that the Government will somehow magically be happy to stop at 8.30 pm. I recall that, under both Labour Governments and Labour Chief Whips and Conservative Governments and Conservative Chief Whips, the pressure to go on remains. We will find that it will not just be 8.30 pm. It will drift routinely; this benchmark of 10 pm, which will still exist notionally for Monday, will start to be the norm on those other two days.
As this is a House matter, we will not hear from the Government Chief Whip today. I would be grateful if we could somehow get a clear statement from the Government on how rigorously they will treat that 8.30 pm finish.
