Procedure and Privileges Committee

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think anyone in this House would accuse the noble Lord of paranoia, because he is held in very high respect. However, frankly, whatever the consultation process—maybe only 49 people replied, although in aggregate there were many more—surely we have the information here today. We have a report and we are obviously going to have a very long debate. What is wrong with deciding on this matter today? I do not understand why the consultation is deemed to be so at fault that it negates the whole operation.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

As the noble Lord will know, my amendment is based on the idea that we should have change in this House. The House can cope with change—of course it can—but it needs to be less precipitate than this process. The general view on the referendum in Scotland, for example, is that, having had one, we should not have another for 10 or 20 years —once in a generation. I am not suggesting for a moment that this House operates on that sort of principle, but I am suggesting that there has been an impatience to get to this point. Why did we not have a debate today on these proposals and then vote? Why did we not have options?

The report was sent to us after the decision had been made to mandate the chairman of the committee to propose a Motion for change here. That is the wrong way to go about these things. It is mainly because of this that I am on my feet today; I would like to think that we could do things better. We can get agreement in this House for change—we will need some, because it is not functioning particularly well at the moment, if I may say so. Therefore, we ought to have an acknowledgement that the membership of the House is here to contribute to this change and not to be ridden roughshod over.

I fear that this proposal—coming so soon after the House decided that it would like to go back to the hours it had before Covid—is a mistake. I think it will lead to bad feeling in the House and make it a less pleasant, congenial and sociable place to work. Of course it is a place of business and earnest intent, but we are earnest because we are a collegiate body in our thinking. I think of all the assets of this House; it has expertise and people of talent, but it does things together. That is why I propose a different way of going about change, in this case and in future.

In the meantime, I back my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment, because I believe it is the only way in which we can bring the Procedure and Privileges Committee to realise that there is a way of going about these processes.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

Of course, for some of us who live further than just outside London, we could not finish at 8 pm and still get home. I just wanted to make that point.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, surely the best way to allow people to get home is to have more reasonable sittings, during sociable hours.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

It probably is, but I do not want to upset the rest of the balance of the House, and I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has said. I often stay fairly late, but on occasions we have family matters and other things which mean that we need to leave a bit earlier. At the moment, my wife is none too well, and I need to get home by 10 pm at the latest—so there is a bit of special pleading here, I agree.

If we are going to have a committee to look at things, this is one of the things it should look at—although if we do not have a committee, there is nothing to look at—because inevitably, coming down the track, there is going to be a demand for fixed voting times. It is fairly common in most legislatures in Europe—indeed, it is not unknown for the House of Commons to have fixed voting times. So, there might be something to be said for this.

If my noble friend Lord Taylor moves his amendment, I hope that this small amendment can be carried to extend the extent of the options that are looked at. If it is carried, I also hope that whoever carries out this consultation will do it on a much wider basis than the last one. We need to have a full consultation where all Members can have an input and make their point. I am not against reform, but I am not sure that this reform, at this time and in this form, is exactly what we want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

If the noble Lord wants to put down an amendment saying that the 8.30 pm rule or the 10 pm rule should be compulsory and there must be a guillotine at that point, that would be worth considering, but I do not want to be too revolutionary.

I will try to conclude now, and I want simply to say this: all changes in this House of any procedural kind have nearly always been ferociously opposed. The one that I still bear the scars of is one we dealt with some years ago: changing Wednesdays and Thursdays. I know that most noble Lords will look blank when I mentioned this, especially if they have come here reasonably recently. Until this change took place, Wednesdays were the day on which general debates took place, along with Private Members’ Bills and non-divisible Motions. On Thursdays, we reverted to government business and— I will say this slowly—we started at 3 pm, finishing at 10 pm. It was not very friendly for people who do not live in London. That change of swapping those two days, which I suggested, was ferociously opposed. I do not think—although I will happily be intervened on if necessary—that there is a soul here now who would say, “Let’s go back to that. Let’s go back to starting at 3 pm on Thursdays and finishing at 10 pm”.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I see that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is about to rise. I want to remind my noble friend that, when the noble Lord was Leader of the Opposition, he thought that the end of civilisation would come if we swapped Wednesdays and Thursdays. The reality is that we are still here.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

The memory of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, may well be considerably better than mine but I remember being very much in favour of swapping Wednesdays and Thursdays, because it made such good sense. I am sure that the noble Lord will check the record, but I think he will find that I am right. However, I agree that there was some opposition, for all sorts of perfectly good reasons that, I am glad to say, turned out not to be favoured by the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

As it happens, this particular Lady no longer lives in London, so it is not that London-centric. I try to do lots of things wherever I am.

The report says:

“earlier sitting and rising times would allow a more normal working day”.

I emphasise that, as has been said very well by the noble Lord, Lord Moore, and others, this place should not be normal. It is a great privilege, but it is not normal. The report also says:

“Earlier rising times would allow members to get home at a safer and more convenient time”.


I thought a number of things about this, because a number of points were made about being a woman and so on. I hate late Sittings and having to hang around until midnight, but who cares? I am, by the way, an old woman—I say that for Hansard—but what can you do? Thinking about the public’s response to this place, I remind noble Lords that some people work nights and really long hours servicing this society, working in sewerage, rubbish collection and all the rest of it. They get night buses, late Tube trains and so on; they cope, and we can too, so I do not agree with those points.

Finally, on the 8.30 pm finish, one of the things I regretted about coming here—there have been other things at times—was that I have to turn down a lot of public speaking in the evenings because community groups and political meetings all start at 6.30 pm, 7 pm or 7.30 pm and I cannot guarantee that I will be there because of the timings. If we were arguing to change the sitting times so that we could all be part of the public square, be participatory, do community work and so on, that would be good—but 8.30 pm does not work on any level. You cannot speak at anything; all you can do is go home and put on the telly. So it seems to me that this is much too focused around our convenience, and my instinct is that working late into the night and starting later, if we have external or outside things to do on either side, is all to the good. When we say, “We’re working too hard”, just do not say it too loudly in front of the public—come on.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the change. I am disappointed by some of the contributions, although I have enjoyed the mostly good-natured spirit of our debate. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about Parliament and this House. I have been privileged to be a Member of this House for 25 years now. What I have observed and experienced is that the best changes have been made incrementally and have been piloted, which is why I would support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Young, should we reach that point.

My noble friend Lord Grocott has described some of the history of the changes to this House. When I arrived in 1997, very late sittings were commonplace—up to 2 am, 3 am or 4 am, two or three times a week. However, my noble friend Lord Grocott then became Chief Whip and introduced more civilised hours, so we moved to this position of finishing generally at 10 pm. Governments of all hues have generally abided by the spirit of that convention, which is why I do not think that the transformative decision to end at 8.30 pm two nights a week will suddenly hand huge power to the Executive. When we moved debates from Wednesday to Thursday, the House continued to operate effectively.

As for personal convenience, there is of course some personal convenience in ending at 8.30 pm rather than 10 pm. However, this House is not working after 8.30 pm at the moment; my noble friend Lord Grocott has already described the figures for noble Lords working in the Chamber after the dinner break. We have all experienced this House being almost empty except for the Front Benches of the three main parties. Do we really think that the edifying sight of a House with about seven or eight noble Lords present at 8.45 pm does us credit? Surely, now is the time to move to more social hours of working.

I heard with great interest the description by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, of Select Committees and the problems they would have. However, having observed the Select Committee schedules on page 23 of our business papers today, I note that 10 of them across this week will meet during the Chamber’s sitting hours, so the noble Lord’s argument really does not stack up. It is just pure luck whether you are on a committee that sits outside the Chamber’s working hours or not.

In the end, I think incremental change is the best way we can move. Moving by an hour and a half two days a week is not revolutionary; it is incremental. I was not going to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Young, but he made a persuasive case that, in view of the clear disagreements among noble Lords, if we are to make a change, it is best done over a short period, which then allows for a review. I hope the noble Lord will press his amendment.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Con)]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation to speak on this issue, particularly because I think I shall be a rather lone voice on this side of the House. On the basis that I spend my time, as part of Learn with the Lords and the digital schools project, telling young ladies not to be frightened about speaking up for what they believe, I cannot just sit here this afternoon and allow the impression to be given that, on this side of the House, there is really only one view on the Motion, because I do not think that is case. I fully take the point that any change to the House’s procedure is of course an incremental process, and I realise that I am a relatively new Member of this House.

I will briefly talk about three particular areas. My first question is: why have this debate now? I thank the Senior Deputy Speaker and those on the Procedure and Privileges Committee for bringing this Motion before us this afternoon. Given the number of new Members who join this House regularly, it is right to keep testing how the House functions and to ask whether noble Lords think it is time for a change. We should not be frightened of asking those questions. As we have heard, we are talking about changes to two days. Mondays and Thursdays, and Fridays where they apply, would remain as they are now.