Procedure of the House

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I will speak just for a moment from the point of view of a Back-Bencher on the Cross Benches without political commitment. Many noble Lords in my position—other colleagues, although perhaps not all—believe that the best way that we can serve the House is to have a specialist interest which we take a deep concern in and spend a great deal of time studying and following. Mine happens to be disadvantaged children and parenting, but there are others. If I come across a situation in which I believe a Question needs to be asked of the Government, all I have to do is give up my lunch, go in an hour earlier and I will be at the front of the queue. If we had a system of ballots there would just be a pot of Questions there and people would put down a Question on the odd chance of it coming through. The value of the Questions would not be so good because they would not be pressed by the deep interest and commitment of the noble Lords asking them. I would plead for a continuation, if necessary, of queuing, but not for a ballot.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am sure that the House will be anxious to come to a conclusion. This is of course a matter for the whole House and not for the Opposition or the Government. I have attended Oral Questions regularly for 15 years now and I echo the point raised by my noble friend Lord Reid—that the quality of Question Time at the moment is of a very high order. It is the focal point of our day: Ministers are held to account, the House is full and Members are attentive. I believe that one should be very wary of changing a part of our daily life that is so successful. I wonder whether the Chairman of Committees—having heard the debate today and that there is some disquiet, to say the least, about this change—would agree for his committee to be asked to give further consideration to this matter.

I carefully intervened on the noble Lord, Lord Laming, whom I respect enormously, on the question of whether this has been subject to a consultation with Members of the House. I think his answer was that the members of the committee are broadly representative of the House. However, given today’s debate, surely it would be entirely appropriate for the committee not only to set out its proposals but to pick up some of the very useful suggestions that noble Lords have made about how Question Time could be enhanced in the future and to engage in a proper consultation with Members of the House. At the end of that process the committee would be well able to reach conclusions, come back to the House with suggestions and arrange for a trial period. We would then see that this process has had the ownership of all Members of the House. I am very wary of a situation where a major change is made to the way we are allowed to table Questions but which clearly does not have ownership among a significant number of Members of the House. On that basis, it would surely be appropriate for the committee to be asked to think again.

The current quality of Questions is particularly high. Looking through the list of Questions, one sees that they are almost all of a very high order and on key issues of the day. As a number of noble Lords—such as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the noble Baroness, Lady Knight—have suggested, there is a clear pathway to asking Questions on a certain day. On International Women’s Day, World AIDS Day or similar occasions, it is entirely possible for there to be a Question that was put down four weeks before. We will lose any way of doing that in the future. Choosing Questions out of a hat is no guarantee that we will have high-quality Questions and the House may well end up debating second-order issues of little interest to members of the public or your Lordships’ House. I will not go through all the questions that have been raised about the practicalities of balloting but will just make three points.

First, it is not at all clear why research assistants should have any role to play in this matter—I see the shaking of heads. However, it is clearly set out that Questions will be accepted from researchers if the text is also confirmed by the Member in person or by telephone. Why does a research assistant have anything to do with this at all? My understanding is that in December, when the committee discussed this matter, it was stated clearly that Questions would not be accepted from third parties.

The second area, which my noble friend Lord Harris raised, is that of no more than one Question on a subject being accepted for inclusion in the ballot. This follows the current practice for topical Questions. However, the topical Question is different: a bar is set that it has to be topical. We are talking here about all Questions being subject to this test, presumably set by officials in the Table Office, as to whether the Question is a general one which can be accepted—