House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Judge Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Government for making time, in government time, for this debate, which is obviously a very important one. I also personally say thank you to those who have made it possible for us to work during this pandemic. However, I cannot help reflecting that that means that, after six hours, everything has already been said, and I cannot think of anything very new to say. I shall therefore ask myself this question. Have I detected during the course of the hybrid House that too many of us—I had better be careful how I put this—are speaking for far too long and that too many of us are being far too repetitious? I am afraid that the answer to my question is yes. I will give your Lordships this trivial example; it is not meant to be a discourtesy to those who have made maiden speeches in the House in the last few months.

When I was introduced and I made my maiden speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, made a lovely, charming, welcoming response and said it was terrific and that the House wanted to hear me for ever and ever—but nobody else did. I was very hurt. At least, I was not hurt until recently. We have suddenly developed the habit that just about everybody who follows a maiden speech congratulates the maiden speaker on his or her speech. We have even reached the stage where people anticipate a maiden speech and say how good it is going to be. That is a misuse of our time, and we have had a misuse of time.

All that said, being present in the House rather than speaking remotely undoubtedly has its own disciplinary impact. We are aware of the mood of the House, as it has been described hundreds of times. I am not worried about Ministers; I am now talking about us. I know when your Lordships have had enough of me—I am sorry; I will not sit down yet. I am a member of the commission and a member of the Procedure Committee. If your Lordships want to know, I am a member of the Liaison Committee; name the committee, I am on it. But the reason I am here and put my name down is that I came to listen, to learn and to reflect, because there are significant opposing views throughout the House.

I want to make two points. One is a commendation of something that I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hain, mention. He was a member of our Covid-19 Committee. We should all read the report produced by that committee, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. It introduces me and, I suspect, most of us to a future world with which we are totally unfamiliar. If your Lordships have read the report, you will see the arguments for and against this or that possible proposal in a much better perspective.

My second point is—I will use words very carefully—that we must return to a fully functioning House. How do we best perform our function? Not, “It was all wonderful before and we must return to it”; there are aspects of the way things ran before that could also usefully be attended to. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, mentioned Second Readings—do we need them? That question needs to be answered. Do we have to allow speeches to go on for ever if somebody has their name down on an amendment, somebody supports it, somebody else supports it, or four people support it? Do numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8 have to be able to speak for as long as they like? Questions arise from the House as it ran. We have to look at voting, and at committees. I cannot imagine we will ever go back to the possibility that a witness from the United States of America has to fly here. Even in the law courts we had actual meetings on digital machines that enabled us to get expert evidence 20 years ago.

All these need to be subject to something that I feel very strongly about, and it is the only thing I feel very strongly about in my responsibility as a member of the commission. I do not believe that technology is not available that would meet the needs of those who have spoken in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, spoke. I simply do not believe that the technology is not there for it to work, not as it does now to create a hybrid House, but to enable her and those like her, with her problems, to be able to make a contribution to the House. I add as a PS that that is not for those of us as we get old. I am on the threshold of my old age. I do not want to be able to use that—that is, the disability problem—as a way of staying on in the House. When we get too old, we should go. Let us look at all this as a whole and think about it.