Procedure of the House

Debate between Lord Richard and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, I take the opposite view to the one just expressed by the noble and learned Baroness. The evil that the Procedure Committee is trying to redress in its proposal is that there are now too many people in this House, Question Time is more interesting than it used to be, more people want to ask Questions and there is therefore a blockage in the way in which the Questions get on to the Floor. I accept that. I do not accept that the Procedure Committee’s proposal is the right way of dealing with the problem.

There are various ways in which the problem could be dealt with. An extension of the length of Question Time is a desirable proposal that we ought to consider. The issue of whether there should be 40 minutes for five Questions or three-quarters of an hour for six is a matter of detail that we can no doubt talk about at some future date. However, the fact of the matter is that if you extend Question Time, there is an opportunity for more people to put down Questions and for more people to participate in the process of Question Time.

The disadvantages of the ballot have been expressed primarily by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. You need a degree of certainty when it comes to Question Time. Back-Benchers need some degree of certainty that what they want to ask the Government and to hold them to account for, if Members are prepared to make the effort to put down the Question, will actually be tabled, and provide them with an opportunity to put the Question and demand an explanation from a government Minister. If you have a ballot, the chances are that that certainty will go. That will disadvantage this House and diminish the value and effectiveness of Question Time.

As my noble friend Lord Harris said, there are various uncertainties—to put it mildly—on the details of how the ballot would be conducted, which again makes me slightly dubious about it. A third alternative is that suggested by my noble friend Lord Kennedy, whereby it may be possible, using the Moses Room procedure, to have ways of questioning the Government in relation to specific ministries on specific days—ways that are not available at Question Time but that would nevertheless fulfil the responsibilities of this House in holding Ministers and the Government to account on specific matters that Members of this House think are important.

There are a number of ways in which this problem may be dealt with. My difficulty with the Procedure Committee’s report is that it has considered only one option—an option that is dignified by the name “ballot” but that is, in fact, a good old honest raffle. You dip into the hat, and with any luck your name is pulled out and you get the opportunity to ask a Question. That process in itself will diminish the way in which Questions are put in this House. On the whole, Question Time is a plus for this House. The Questions that are put down are, on the whole, relevant, and the way in which they are dealt with is, on the whole, equally relevant.

My view is that this is not the way in which we necessarily have to proceed. I do not say that it is the way in which we necessarily do not have to proceed, but before we go down this particular route, even for a limited period, there are a number of alternative ways of approaching this problem that the Procedure Committee has not considered, and which, I say with great respect, it should consider.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, the first thing that has to be said is that Question Time is a very important part of the functioning of this House. It is the time on most days when the House sits when there are a lot of people here and when the House has an identity. It is full, over-full nowadays, and it is very important indeed that we do not go ahead with a pilot of more than six months that might get things wrong. Six months is a long period of time. We have to be quite sure, even for an experiment of over six months, that it is right.

The second point is that enough points have been put forward this afternoon to show that even if an experiment with a ballot is the right way forward, not enough of the detail has been worked out. There is certainly not enough consensus in the House to go ahead with this for six months.

It is unfortunate that the noble Baroness has not put forward questions, and she should do so straightaway, whatever system we have now, because they will be good questions. The problem of queuing has occurred only in the last two years or so because of the increased size of the House. It is not a problem of the system as such; it is the problem that the House is now too big for the system that we now have to work efficiently.

Thinking about the detail, one point that I picked up is the suggestion that there should be a ballot, and that if not enough questions are put forward for a ballot on a particular day, it should then be put out to first come first served. That is not a sensible system. I can see that one or two of the fanatics among the people who attend Question Time—I include myself at various times, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, and others—might be hovering around every day to see whether there are enough Questions and pouncing like vultures. Then what do we do if there is only one? This does not seem to be a sensible way to go ahead. Who will know, who will be told, and how will they be told?

I was here in 2002 when the experiment took place. I think, from memory, that it was only one day a week—I think it was Wednesdays, but I am not certain about that. It was abandoned because it was felt that Question Time on that day was running out of steam and did not have the sense of people jumping up and down and trying to compete or the atmosphere of today’s Question Time because of the numbers of Members at that time. In the present circumstances, there are a lot more people at Question Time who would like to get in but are unable to. Once a person has asked the Question and someone from the opposition Front Bench, someone from the Liberal Democrats and someone from the Cross Benches has asked a question, no one else is able to get in. The way in which it has gone is unfortunate.

One advantage of going to five Questions of eight minutes is that it is easier to time them. One of the problems at the moment is that the Clock does not measure half minutes, it only measures full minutes. If all the Questions are in demand, we tend to get a Question of eight minutes and a bit more and then one of less than seven minutes, because it is coming up against 15 minutes, and another longer one of eight minutes and a bit. The last Question is very often squeezed to five or six minutes. At least if every Question ended on a full minute, it would be easier for the House to time itself by the magic of the self-regulation that takes place.