House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, at a rough count, I think that we spend 15% to 20% of our time on debates. The specific question I want to address is this: are our debates as effective as they could be and are we getting as much out of the time we spend on them as we should? My feeling over the past 10-odd years that I have been here is that we are not. I shall make four or five suggestions for improving the way we organise our debates.

The question to ask is: what are these debates for? Sometimes a debate is intended to allow your Lordships to express their opinions, as in the case of assisted dying. Speakers were given barely a minute or two, which did not allow anyone to develop an argument. Such debates do not allow the development of argumentative propositions; they are largely expressions of sentiment. Alternatively, debates are intended to raise major issues which are being debated in the country at large, or because they will be appearing on the horizon in five or 10 years’ time and we would like to see them being discussed. If that is so, the question then is what happens at the end of such debates. A fascinating bunch of ideas will have been circulated and one hopes that the Minister will have made a note of them, but what next? Occasionally, and nowadays more frequently, some of us will receive a letter from the Minister setting out a response to what a Peer said in a debate, but has any action been taken? If the ideas are worth while, they should be acted upon, and if they are not worth while, Peers should be told why they are not.

The first point I want to make is that we need to debate the debate itself. We must ask how to make sure that our debates and the ideas they generate are effective. A way to do that would be to look at how we select the topics for debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, pointed out in a very powerful speech, it is important to note that Back Benchers do have ideas about issues that they would like to see being debated. I am not particularly happy about the term “Back Bencher” because many of us do a lot of active things as well. Nevertheless, as I say, a large number of Back Benchers have ideas about issues that they would like to debate. It is quite important to find a way of introducing a systematic and regularised method of allowing Back Benchers to have a say in the choice of topics for debate.

Another point to bear in mind is that when topics are selected for debate, they are largely presented in the form of a general proposition. On many occasions when I have looked at whether I want to put my name down to speak in a debate, I have not been entirely clear about what the proposer of the debate wants to discuss. The result is that the topic is a kind of peg upon which we can hang our different ideas, so the debate tends to lack focus. It would be helpful if every suggestion of a topic for debate were to be followed by two or three lines indicating what it is that is supposed to be discussed—or at least two or three specific questions. As a professor, I am used to seeing questions being asked; then I know which one I am answering. It would be useful to have a topic for debate followed by two or three specific questions that the initiator of the debate would like to see discussed.

My third point relating to our debates concerns the fact that sometimes Peers have only one, two or three minutes in which to speak. It happens because the number of speakers in the list is very large, and rightly so in the case of some important topics. It is also because sometimes a debate cannot be given any more time than what has already been allocated. How do we deal with that kind of situation? We cannot cap the number of speakers by saying, “First come, first served”. That would be rather silly because many people who sign up late might have something profound and interesting to say—although it is likely that they would not be able to make their points in only one or two minutes. As I said earlier, in debates on subjects like assisted dying, Peers put their names down to speak because they want to make a point. They want people outside this place and other noble Lords to know where they stand. Would it not be possible, as I gather happens in some jurisdictions, to have a system where everyone is allowed to put their names down but in some cases the speeches are “taken as delivered”? They could be printed in Hansard even though they might not have been delivered on the Floor of the House. That would profoundly change the meaning of Hansard and what it is for, but it should be possible to find a way in which everyone can put their name down to speak while making sure that the speaking time is not so short as to make the whole thing ridiculous.

My last point has to do with the composition of the House. Over the years we have grown so large that it has become extremely difficult to organise debates or indeed any kind of sensible discussion about important issues. More and more Peers continue to be appointed in an effort to reflect in this place the results of elections to the House of Commons. I want to make two points very quickly. First, it is absolutely right that the results of the election in the House of Commons should be reflected here in some way, but they could be reflected not only positively, as we do, by increasing the number of Peers but negatively by reducing the number of Peers. If a party is defeated in the election, it ought to be possible for us to say, “As a result of the election, party A has lost a certain proportion of seats and therefore will lose a certain proportion of Members here, and we should leave it to the party concerned to nominate who it would like to see leave the House of Lords”.

Many of us who are past 75 or about to be 75 would be more than happy to leave the House of Lords if we were convinced that we would be replaced by people from within our own party or by people sharing our professional expertise. If there was an imaginative alternative—not in terms of money; hardly any of us would be tempted or induced by the offer of one or two years’ allowance—such as people being able to keep their title, come into the building, have a cup of tea and entertain their guests, I should think that many people would be more than happy to accept the invitation to leave. We should think of this as well as other imaginative ways in which people could be persuaded to recognise that 75 years of age or being in the House for 10 or 15 years is just about the limit of their contribution.