Arrangement of Business

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

My Lords, the Leader of the House will recall or, if he does not recall I am sure that someone in his office can find the previous instances, that time after time when he was the shadow Leader of the House he was in the habit, quite properly, of reminding my noble friends at the time—I can recall three or four of them—that their duty as Leader of the House was to the whole House, the convenience of the whole House and observing the normal practices of the House as well as, and I recognise this as much as anyone, his duties and loyalties to his own party.

The noble Lord is trying to describe today’s events almost as a routine day at the office. I remind him that on two successive legislative days the Government’s business for the day has been withdrawn at the last possible moment: Wednesday’s business on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill was withdrawn on Tuesday night, and Monday’s business was withdrawn today—he quibbles about the word “withdrawn”— when it was quite clear that that business was going to go ahead today. That is not a routine day at the office. He is very fond of clerks’ advice, so to begin with I will ask him one question. Has he received any advice from the clerks as to the efficacy or advisability of a government flagship Bill which the House was preparing to consider being withdrawn on two successive days with virtually no notice?

The second point I want to make is to remind the noble Lord of what he said to this House last week. He withdrew the business on that day because,

“the House needed the opportunity to reflect on that advice”—

the advice from the clerks—

“before taking a decision on this matter”.

He went on to say:

“I would prefer an informed debate next week to an ill-informed, disorderly row today”.—[Official Report, 31/10/12; col. 619.]

I think that he could claim to have been speaking then for the House as a whole. Indeed, there were Members of the House who thought that that was not such a bad argument, but it cannot conceivably be used—as he has tried to do—as a justification for delaying consideration of the Bill again today. You do not need to be Sherlock Holmes to work this one out. It is quite clear that something happened between the Leader of the House making a solemn undertaking to the House at 3.15 pm on 31 October and then at 6 pm on 1 November, a day that is memorable not least because it is my birthday and All Saints’ Day, deciding that his advice to the House the previous day no longer obtained. The whole question of having enough time to consider and reflect over the weekend was not enough. I would simply ask him this question: what was it between 3.15 pm last Wednesday and 6 pm last Thursday that made him reverse by 180 degrees the advice he had given to the House?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, perhaps I may speak on behalf of some of the bewildered. My noble friend the Leader of the House is rightly reluctant, as I think all noble Lords should be, about simply overriding the learned views of our expert clerks. If an amendment is inadmissible, why is not possible for the four great gentlemen, the four noble Lords who drafted the amendment—on what is obviously a red-hot political issue, let us not pretend otherwise—to go away and draft an amendment that is admissible? Why are they so insistent on pushing through an amendment over the rulings of our learned clerks, whom we are accustomed to recognise for the validity of their judgments? Why is it suddenly the judgment that we should override them? I cannot see the necessity for that.

I think that the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition has made a wrong judgment call. She is anxious to pursue this issue, and why not? It might damage the Government—but to do so by overriding the clerks seems an absurd and clumsy way of proceeding. I suggest that she or her noble friends who have signed the amendment should go away and cook up a sensible amendment. They are learned and experienced noble Lords, so why on earth can they not cook up an amendment that is admissible?

[Lord Elis-Thomas]

My Lords, reference has been made to the signing of this amendment by my noble friend Lord Wigley. He consulted me before doing so because, in a party of two, consultation is essential. I rise to speak on this issue because for 12 years as the Presiding Officer in Cardiff I always took the advice of the clerks. It is not possible for a parliamentary assembly to function without taking seriously the advice of its clerks. However, we are in a different situation in this Chamber. We are a self-regulating House, which means that there is a democratic and moving relationship. The Speakership of this House—I defer to the Lord Speaker in this—is divided between the Leader of the House and the other parties in this House. The discussions that take place behind the Speaker’s Chair—as it would be in the other place—are essential to the progress of the business of the House.

We have to face two issues here. First, the Government have a right to take their business through, but the Opposition, along with other Members of the House, have a duty to oppose that business when they have the opportunity to do so. That is what is at loggerheads in this situation. I ask the Leader of the House to reconsider his tactic of continually withdrawing the opportunity for the rest of this House to vote on this matter, because that also is contrary to the principles of this House and of parliamentary democracy.