House of Lords: Domestic Committees

Baroness Fookes Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

My Lords, speaking fairly late in the debate, I am reminded of that horrible sentence, “Everything has been said, but not everyone has said it”. It is a mark of the quality of the debate that so many noble Lords have made quite different and very important points about this very excellent report, on which I congratulate the Leader’s Group. The report was down to earth and—thank the Lord—had no highfalutin mission statement, which I am increasingly allergic to. I will make one or two points that I hope will be helpful.

I am reminded of when I was chairman of the Refreshment Committee, some years ago now. Then, we were supposed to be a user group, and in many ways I found it very interesting. I went behind the scenes as much as I could and relayed, with as much enthusiasm as I could, the innumerable complaints I received from individual Members—which actually continued for up to four years after I had left the committee. However, more seriously, I was concerned that I seemed to be operating in what one might call a vacuum. I was quite unaware of what was happening above with the House Committee—indeed I am not sure I was fully aware it existed, any more than my noble friend Lord Fowler was about the Liaison Committee until he came up against it.

There was certainly no remit or terms of reference to which one could work—you did it as best you could, which was a very real weakness. In particular, one did not report to Members of the House, issue reports or do anything of the sort. When I saw this new report, I was extremely pleased that this is going to be considerably tightened up: there will be terms of reference, and committee members will be given a much better idea of what they should be doing. Above all, it is very important that the committees report in some way. Several suggestions were made by my noble friend Lady Shephard as to how this might come about, but again we need to experiment with that and then perhaps review it, to see how effective these various means are.

The noble and learned Baroness who spoke just before me anticipated the very point I was going to make about it being a major commitment for anyone to serve on the new services committee, bringing together as it does not only the Information Committee, with all that does, but the Refreshment Committee and the Administration and Works Committee. That is very major indeed, and those who serve on it will have to be prepared to give considerably more time and effort than would be expected of any of us on a single committee. I hope that any preparations made for those who are willing to serve will look at that very closely. They should be asked, in my view, whether they are prepared to give that amount of time and effort.

I turn now to the question of non-executive members. I fully approve of the idea that they be added to the senior committee—by whatever name that is known—although I take on board the suggestion, made by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, that there may not be enough. I notice that there is no suggestion that the services and finance committees should have similar members permanently attached. I just wonder about that. I noticed the paragraph which says that they should be able to call upon expert advice from time to time if they so choose, and maybe we should start with that, but I suspect that it would be very helpful indeed to have permanent members from outside this House to assist with what will be a very major remit.

All in all, this is an excellent report, but clearly we need to have a running review of how this will operate. The mistake in the past has perhaps been to say, “Right, we have done this: forget about what may happen to it”. We ought to have a regular period of reflection on how we are doing—not necessarily in order to have major changes or upheavals, but a running remit to see that it is as effective as possible.