Procedure of the House

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

Perhaps I may detain your Lordships for just two minutes. I am in the very unusual position of agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is not something that happens daily in this House, and it certainly did not happen over reform of your Lordships’ House. However, I am bound to say that I came to this debate in a wholly neutral frame of mind. I was not sure whether I liked the idea or whether I did not. One argument seems to be absolutely critical, and for me conclusive. When I was Leader of the Opposition in this House, when I was Leader of the House and indeed since, it struck me—as I suspect it has struck every other Leader—that the one great gap in our procedures is that one cannot raise an urgent issue. It is almost impossible. If one wants to secure a debate in this House on an issue such as the Arab spring or North Korea’s nuclear policy, unless the Government are prepared to give it time, one cannot get it. That is wrong. A parliamentary assembly ought to have a procedure whereby issues that are clearly urgent and topical are capable of being discussed. That gap is partially—only partially—filled by the proposals for this experiment. For me that is the conclusive argument. It fills a gap in the procedures of our House that has existed for many years, and we would then be in a position, like other parliamentary assemblies, to deal with urgent, topical questions, which at the moment we are not.

[Lord Wakeham]

I will say a word or two because I was the Leader of the House when the noble Lord was the Leader of the Opposition. I listened to my noble friend putting forward a housemaid’s baby-type argument; we will have a little experiment and it will be all right. I also listened to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. I have no doubt that if he was in charge of all this, it would work very well whatever the rules because he is that sort of person and he would make sure that it did. However, I am still worried about the central proposition that a Back-Bench committee should be able to decide which Back-Bench topics should be debated. The committee will come under enormous pressure and a great deal of lobbying. Inevitably it will end up, in order to keep the peace, taking on the big issues and leaving some of the smaller issues to one side. That is what worries me. Of course I accept the argument that we have to have more topical debates, but I am not sure that a Members’ Back-Bench committee is the way to do it. I would prefer it if we found another way. Therefore, I will vote against the experiment.

[Lord Kakkar]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Leader whether any thought has been given to the objective criteria that will be applied to the experiment to determine finally whether it has been successful or not. There is a lot of talk about this being an experiment, but at the outset it is vital to determine how we are going to judge whether it has been successful when we come to re-evaluate it.