Lord Hughes of Woodside
Main Page: Lord Hughes of Woodside (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hughes of Woodside's debates with the Leader of the House
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberAs I have said, there are a number of ways in which we can all try to make it easier for debates to be more spontaneous. If people are not stuck to a script, they are more likely to listen to the debate that is going on and respond to the points that are raised in it. It is open to any Member to take suggestions forward to the Procedure Committee—for example, as to how one might make improvements in this area—and I know that all noble Lords are concerned to ensure that the quality of our debates is as high as it possibly can be.
My Lords, is it not the number of speakers in particular debates that causes the problem? Indeed, in some debates the time allocated is three minutes, an unrealistic time in which to expect someone to give way in a debate. Will the Leader of the House look at the possibility of limiting the number of speakers so that the minimum amount of time available was between seven and 10 minutes?
It would of course be open to the House, if it put proposals to the Procedure Committee, to decide that one way of addressing the problem that the noble Lord raises would be a limit on the number of speakers. As with so many things in this House, there is another side to the argument: if one had a fixed limit and the first noble Lords who put their names down to take part all had the same view, we would not have much of a debate. As often, then, this issue is not straightforward, but that is the kind of thing that one could look at. It is also true that there are a number of debates where we are short on speakers, so we have the problem of undersubscription as well as oversubscription.