Arrangement of Business
Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Ashton of Hyde
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.
Business of the House
Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Ashton of Hyde
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, the Government Chief Whip gave the House no explanation as to why this exceptional action should be taken. I do not know why he did not feel it was necessary to inform Members of the reason for this. Is it because there is not time? I put to him that we are due to prorogue on 28 April—he makes an expression, but he has a lot of days to play with to allow legislation to continue to be debated. I do not think it is acceptable to allow this Bill to go through its stages on one day. The noble Lord has many days to play with between 28 April and the Queen’s Speech on 10 May.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for allowing me to explain why. One of the reasons I did not do so before was because I wanted to hear these questions—of which I was given advanced warning. I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, as he was a distinguished Chief Whip himself. I have no doubt that things went smoother in his day than they do now. However, we are where we are, and I will do my best.
I should say to the House that, although my noble friend the Leader of the House could not be here—because she is going to a meeting which involves the usual channels and business for the whole House—I also count myself as having responsibilities for the whole House, as well as for my party. So I understand the issue at stake here. In this particular case, this was an agreement with the leaders of the noble Lord’s party and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. In return for having more time than we had allowed for Committee, so that more discussion could be had, it was decided that we would have two days on Report, and that we would also have Third Reading on the same day. This was an agreement between us, and not a question of the Government steamrolling business through the House, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said. In fact, in some ways, I would love to be able to steamroll any business through this House, but, when I start every vote 250 votes behind, I think it is pretty unlikely that I could steamroll much through this House.
The noble Lord made the perfectly valid point that one of the provisions was on the Electoral Commission and its relationship with the Secretary of State. Of course, this is what will come out at Report. There has been plenty of discussion in Committee—in fact, six days of discussion, including some evenings that were quite late—so there has been plenty of talk about that. On Report, noble Lords will be able to vote on exactly that provision, and we will be able to send it back, if necessary, to the other place for Members there to consider it. Not only that, we will then have the opportunity for ping-pong.
In many cases, when we come to the end of a Session, deals are done with the Opposition. They concentrate on the things they think are important, and we schedule the business accordingly. All the business is scheduled in discussion with the usual channels. So I take the noble Lord’s point and agree that this should not be done often. However, in fact, most Third Readings recently have been formal and short, and I hope that we can prove that after this is over. Therefore, in this case, I ask that the Motion be agreed to.