Arrangement of Business

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, in many respects I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I apologise to the House, and particularly to some of the government Front-Benchers who were working all weekend, as was my office, who have received the list of amendments. I agree with the noble Lord that this is not the way things should be done. I accept that. It is not totally without precedent, but the fact that it was done before is not a good excuse.

As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, last week, I have taken more than 200 government amendments through and the way we had to do it then and the way we are doing it now is by talking to the usual channels. I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham. We have decided to stop at the point where there is a particular problem for the Opposition Front Bench so that they have more time to prepare for the group, so we are going to do only the first three groups. It might help the whole House to get the Marshalled List a day earlier so that the majority of the amendments with their numbers would be made available to Members earlier so we would know the order in which they are coming. That would still allow manuscript amendments and other additional amendments later. That can be taken forward in the Procedure Committee.

We will do only three groups today. The usual channels have agreed that that is the way to go forward. I agree with the noble Lord that this is not an ideal way to proceed. I will certainly take the message back to other parts of government. I can only apologise again to him and to the House.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Chief Whip for what he said, and I agree with him about the Marshalled List. Since I have a considerable number of amendments in the Procurement Bill, can he assure me that, given only three groups are to be debated today, there will be ample time to deal with all the other amendments in this important Bill and, if necessary, to allocate further days in Committee for that to happen?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

I think you can take that as read, because one of the features of this House, and one of the nightmares for the business managers, is the fact that noble Lords can talk for as long as they like. If we do not finish within the appointed number of days, we have to find more time. I accept what has been said. One of the things we will try to do is to indicate more clearly what is genuinely a technical amendment and what is a substantive amendment that needs discussion.