Procedure of the House

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crickhowell]

I am interested in that point, because I expressly asked the Leader of the House in his room, at about 2.05 pm, whether all Members had received the same letter. He told me that actually a rather different letter had been sent to, I think, the Cross Benches. I am merely quoting my noble friend, no more.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

I offered the noble Baroness a letter. I rewrote it several times last week. Sadly, she refused to accept it.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, perhaps I may clarify the situation. Forgive me, but we had agreed that we would have an exchange of letters which we would find mutually acceptable, which could then be put in the Library of the House. That is quite a different letter from the one that other noble Lords received.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

That may be so. The recommendations of the Leader’s Group referred to the Companion in this context, indicating that it was preferable to have a rule rather than a presumption. I beg to submit that the House would do well to consider that original recommendation.

The formidable speech made by my noble friend Lord Cormack will have arrested many people’s prior commitments and considerations. However, if his amendment is not carried, there is a considerable case for recognising that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, is a better reflection of the Leader’s Group than the proposal that we should act on a presumption and agreement through the usual channels. I hope very much that that will be taken into account in reaching a decision.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, this might be a useful opportunity to say a few words, but I begin by joining the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in paying tribute to Lord Newton of Braintree. Anybody who had seen him—as we all had—over the past six months could not but admire his tremendous courage and extraordinary pluckiness in being here in all his physicality and playing a real part in Bills. I worked with him very closely when he was Leader of the House of Commons and I was Government Chief Whip here. He was a joy to work with—a pleasant man in all respects. We as a House and as a party will miss him; he was a great Conservative and a great parliamentarian.

Turning back to this debate, during the course of this afternoon my eye has been drawn to the screens. I could not help but see that in the Moses Room, there is a debate on the Lord’s Resistance Army and I wonder if some noble Lords have not wandered into the wrong debate.

We are currently considering a report from the Procedure Committee and it is no coincidence that we are considering alongside it a report from the Liaison Committee. Both reports have the same origin; namely, the work of the Leader’s Group on Working Practices. Both address the same welcome phenomenon, which is that more Members are participating more actively in our proceedings. In short, the proposals are intended to accommodate increased demand from Members who wish to take an active part in our proceedings, and to reduce the number of late sittings that have been taking place after 10 o’clock at night. Average daily attendance has risen considerably by comparison with the last Parliament, as has the average number of votes cast per Division, the number of Questions for Written Answer tabled each day, and the number of short debates being tabled. From that point of view, my noble friend Lord Elton has hit the nail on the head.

These trends have had an impact on our scrutiny of legislation. This Session has seen more Bills take longer than eight days to consider in Committee than did so over the whole of the last Parliament. That is a quite a significant statistic. More Members are speaking for longer on more amendments. At the same time, we have sent fewer Bills to Grand Committee than was the norm across the last two Parliaments and, indeed, since 2001. In combination, these trends have put pressure on time in the Chamber, in particular on our rising times.

One response, although I hasten to add that it is not one that I am suggesting now, would be to go down the route that the House of Commons has chosen: fixed rising times in combination with taking the bulk of Committee stages off the Floor of the House along with the timetabling and selection of amendments. That is what my noble friend Lord Cormack has warned us against, and I agree with every word he said. I could not possibly support what he fears or what I have just mentioned, and I do so for the same reasons as my noble friend and other noble Lords who have spoken.

The proposals from the Procedure Committee actually take a very different approach, one that maintains and protects the freedoms of Members of this House to table amendments and have them spoken to by a Minister without selection or guillotine, a freedom which I hope we will never lose. By introducing additional flexibility in the sitting hours of the Grand Committee on Bills and creating a presumption that we should look to commit Bills arriving from the Commons to Grand Committee, save when there are good reasons not to do so, the proposals would help us make better use of our time. They would provide the necessary extra opportunities for Members to take part, and in doing so would ease the pressure on time in this Chamber, thus making it easier for the House to rise on time. If the House rejects these proposals, it would mean that we might have to become used to sitting regularly beyond our target rising time.

The Procedure Committee has also taken the view that a presumption would be useful. I support that view. The question why was framed by my noble friend Lord Cormack in his speech. He fears that we are handing something over to the Executive. That is quite a hard thing to do in a House where the Executive has no majority, but let me try and explain.

[Noble Lords]

The coalition.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, you do not have to be a mathematician to work out that the 37 per cent of the House which makes up the coalition is not a majority.

I support the view on presumption because the experience of this Session shows that there are Bills that we could and should be sending to Grand Committee but do not, and that this detracts from the time we have available to spend on those Bills that do merit consideration on the Floor of the House and on other kinds of business. Let me give some examples. If the Academies Bill had gone to Grand Committee, perhaps we need not have sat at 11 o’clock in the morning to take the Health and Social Care Bill. If the Postal Services Bill had gone to Grand Committee, perhaps we need not have finished the proceedings on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill at two o’clock in the morning.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord the Leader of the House, but as all noble Lords will recall, the Academies Bill was the first Bill to be introduced in this House, and there was simply no other business. The Health and Social Care Bill came forward towards the end of the parliamentary Session, and therefore it is inconceivable that had the Academies Bill been taken in Grand Committee, it would have made an iota of difference to the Health and Social Care Bill.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, if it made no difference, presumably the noble Baroness would not have refused, as she did, to put it into Grand Committee in the first place.

We could make better use of this Chamber. Let me give another example. Last December, the Grand Committee had an urgent debate on the eurozone crisis attended by some 50 Members of the House. The Chamber was not available because the Protection of Freedoms Bill was in Committee of the whole House with about a dozen participants. Many noble Lords at the time raised the question whether we were using the time in the Chamber wisely. The presumption, which the Procedure Committee recommends—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I am terribly sorry, but I have to set the record straight. The Protection of Freedoms Bill was an interesting Bill because it was the very first time that the House as a whole agreed that half of the Bill would be taken in Grand Committee and the most controversial aspects would be taken on the Floor of the House. Therefore, I think a very good agreement was brought to bear in that instance.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I have no quarrel with the decision the noble Baroness made in that instance. The noble Baroness thinks I am getting at her—I will get at her in a moment, but I am not getting at her for that. I am simply pointing out that these were decisions—we took them using the usual channels and we took them together—to do things in a certain way. I am simply suggesting that in retrospect we might have done them rather differently and in a way that might have suited more Members of the House.

The presumption that the Procedure Committee recommends will also not open the floodgates to a Commons-style system, where the bulk of Committee stages are taken off the Floor of the House for two simple reasons; first, because the House will not let it. If this Report is agreed to, no Bill will go to Grand Committee without the express permission and agreement of this House. Therefore, the House will, quite rightly, retain control of which Bills go to Grand Committee, a point that my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury raised.

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[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right in his description of the effectiveness of Grand Committee for the Welfare Reform Bill, but that was not the nature of it being exceptionally controversial. The difficulty was that we had a number of substantially disabled colleagues who wished to take part who were unhappy, with good reason, about the physical layout of the Committee Room. What my noble friends proposed was that the segments of the Bill that affected disability issues should be taken on the Floor of the House while the rest went up into Grand Committee. That would have been a solution, had the usual channels on both sides accepted it, which would have satisfied the entire House and improved scrutiny and attendance.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I wrote to many of the participants and all those to whom I wrote without exception said how well they thought that it had gone. Allowances were made by the House authorities to make the Committee Room more acceptable to those Members in wheelchairs. The point about the presumption is that it would give us the flexibility to make that sort of judgment again in future.

If the report is agreed to, the House would remain the arbiter of which Bills and what proportion of the Bills were sent to Grand Committee. In my view, the House is the best judge of which Bill should be sent where, and that decision should be made case by case.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord and I thank him for the good humour with which he has handled the debate, in which he has found himself without a huge amount of support. However, could he perhaps skate a little less rapidly over the point that the proposal in the Procedure Committee actually enhances the power of the Government? The two parts of the sentence in question—the presumption, and the fact that if there is no agreement between the usual channels, the matter will be taken in Grand Committee—give the Government a complete lock, apart from the nuclear option of coming to the House at the end of Second Reading and asking for a vote. That is a substantial increase in the power of the Executive, because the Government can always instruct their Chief Whip to refuse to agree to the matter being taken in the House. I would be grateful if he could address a little bit more that enhancement of the power of the Executive, which I hope was not his intention—and, if it was not, either of the two amendments that have been moved would be preferable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not think that there is any intention to give the Executive more power, or that it is a by-product of what I am suggesting. What would give the Executive more power would have been to accept the original suggestion from the Goodlad committee that there should be a rule, with certain exceptions, that all Bills emanating from the House of Commons should go to Grand Committee. We very much see it as continuing on more or less a similar basis to the one we have, by gaining agreement in the usual channels. The difference is that, if a Bill were not to go to Grand Committee, there would obviously have to be a vote on the Floor of the House. With a really controversial Bill, I cannot imagine that the House would support that view if it did not wish to do so.

[Lord Elton]

Am I right in thinking that under the proposals, when at the end of the Second Reading, the Lord Speaker or Deputy Speaker stands up and moves that the Bill goes to Grand Committee or the Floor of the House, any noble Lord could then speak, and a Division would be held if there was no agreement? That would take the power that the noble Lord thinks is being put into the hands of the Executive right out again.

[Lord Strathclyde]

Yes, my Lords, my noble friend has got it entirely right. There would still be a Motion before the House and any noble Lord could put an amendment down to it or divide on it.

I see the potential extra hour and a half as an addition of welcome flexibility to the scheduling of Grand Committee and not a requirement to sit to the maximum each day. That was the point that my noble friend Lord Alderdice made. I have already made that clear to the Leader of the Opposition in a dialogue off the Floor. It would sometimes suit the participants to complete a Committee stage in a smaller number of longer sittings than to have to find time in their diaries for a larger number of days. Therefore, my noble friend Lord Alderdice has nothing to worry about.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that people would get too tired, but we are already sitting until 10 o’clock on the Floor of the House, so there is no reason why they should not be able to do so in Grand Committee—and, as I pointed out, that would not necessarily happen all the time.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, again, I speak with reference to the Welfare Reform Bill, where the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, who was the Whip, and the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, were admirable in their courtesy, openness and responsiveness to the Committee Members; it was impeccably handled.

The point is that Report is easy, because you have traversed the ground already in Committee. You have the evidence, you have had the meetings, you have had the seminars, you have had the briefings, you are making one speech perhaps to move or in support of your amendment—possibly a minor one to wind up—and that is it. It is easy. The difficult, demanding, tiring and heavily detailed work is done in Committee, particularly on a Bill such as the Welfare Reform Bill, where you are continuously interrogating the Minister in order to get the detailed information so that you can come back to it in subsequent, reiterative amendments. It is hugely demanding, and going on as late as 7.30 pm has meant that some of our older Members and more disabled Members have been severely tired. I have very great concerns about lengthening sitting hours on the grounds that Committee stage is as easy and straightforward as Report; it is not.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, all we are doing here is extending the envelope by which the Grand Committee can sit. It will not necessarily have to sit as long as that every single day. What is more, a presumption towards committing Commons Bills to Grand Committee cannot release any capacity that does not exist already. We already have the capacity to have a Grand Committee sitting on legislation four days a week, and the Companion already enables any government Bill to be committed to Grand Committee, as recommended by the first working group on this subject by Lord Rippon of Hexham as far back as 1994, and even he gave no exceptions.

Meanwhile, the proposed extension in the sitting hours of Grand Committees would affect how the time spent on each Committee stage is divided up across sittings and among Bills. It would not reduce the number of hours spent on each Committee stage and so make room for more legislation.

Last of all, I turn to what my noble friend Lord Cormack called the elephant in the room over the last three days. I have been struck by—indeed, I have been astonished at—the number of Members who have spoken to me in the corridor or have sent me a text message to say that they think that this process is all part of a sneaky government ploy to push through a Lords reform Bill without anybody noticing, and to minimise collateral damage to the rest of the programme —to do it by stealth, said the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. Well, I have been waiting a long time to find a good wheeze to get such a Bill through the House of Lords without anybody noticing. I assure noble Lords, this is not it. This is not a great ploy or a great scheme; if it were, obviously we have been horribly found out.

If the House agrees this report, next Session the House will decide, case by case, which Bills are considered in Committee here on the Floor and in the Moses Room. The House itself will decide at what pace it progresses and which amendments are made to which Bills. I have every confidence that, if a Lords reform Bill makes it into the Queen’s Speech, the House will take every decision it wishes next Session.

[Baroness Noakes]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Strathclyde]

Let me just finish my point. This report will have no impact on the passage of such a Bill if it came forward. I would give way to my noble friend, but I have obviously pre-empted her question. I hope I gave her the confirmation that she required.

The proposals in this report were born out of the working practices group and the Procedure Committee. They are designed to resolve the problem of there simply not being enough time to accommodate all of those who wish to speak to their amendments to Bills. Either more goes to Grand Committee or we sit beyond 10 pm.

I hope that I have said enough to explain the proposals from my perspective. They build on the work of the working practices group. They seek to accommodate a more active membership by making better use of the Grand Committee and better use of this Chamber. I hope that the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, will not find favour with the House. I understand why she has put it down, but equally I do not think that it will be effective or workable. I urge my noble friend Lord Cormack not to move his amendment for the simple reason that the Procedure Committee has already given the proposals careful and prolonged consideration. The committee has made the recommendations that are before the House today, and it is time for the House to make a decision on them. I commend the report to the House.