House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I, too, pass on my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and his team for an excellent report and to the Library for its fascinating historical note on the many changes to working practices which, like the Lords itself, have evolved over the years.

I find that there is a lot to agree with and one or two things to disagree with. I give pre and post-legislative scrutiny my total backing and agree with the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, about the earlier sittings. There is so much that one needs to do—not least, cope with the flood of e-mails—whether you go out to a lunch or not.

I shall concentrate my remarks on just two aspects of the report. The first is a general point on the timing for implementing some of the proposals; the second is to welcome the change of approach suggested for House of Lords Select Committees. On timing, the issue is the uncertainty surrounding the future of the House of Lords combined with its current size. That makes me really doubtful whether, quite apart from it being relevant in future, now is the right moment to remove this House’s civilised system of self-regulation and self-discipline and replace it with rulings by the Lord Speaker.

Currently, presumably by agreement, the political parties decided to flood the Lords with proportionate political numbers of additional Peers with little or no regard to the effect that that overcrowding would have on how the second Chamber conducts its business. The result, as most noble Lords would agree, has been, to put it mildly, fairly disastrous. Whether that situation was anticipated—I certainly hope that it was not deliberately planned— the effect has been an increasingly tense atmosphere in the House, as Members either give up trying to be heard or bad temperedly compete for opportunities to contribute. That is certainly the case at Oral Questions, and today was a good example of that. Even at Second Reading of Bills, the limit of 15 minutes is now reduced to something like a “suggested” eight minutes. More general debates are often limited to two to three minutes and, as we have already heard, in one case it was as little as one minute per person. Surely, now is not an ideal time to test a change to a House of Commons style Speaker in charge of questions.

I turn to a more enthusiastic comment. I was delighted to see that the report suggests a change of approach to the appointment of Select Committees: that they should in future be allowed to cover the same ground as Select Committees in the Commons and that they should be able to choose their chairmen, rather than, as now, having the usual channels making that important decision for them. When I think of the battle we had to get the Lords Select Committee on Communications set up after the Communications Act 2003 became law, it is worth reminding ourselves that that has been a step in the right direction. With that Select Committee's history, there should surely be no bar to these committees covering the same area as the House of Commons Select Committees. Equally, they should work across government departments as well when that makes sense.

I certainly hope that the Communications Select Committee will continue to exist as what goes on in this constantly evolving media world of ours is now of crucial importance to all citizens. This House was particularly lucky to have the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, with his journalistic experience and expertise, as its first chairman. Much more valuable work can be undertaken by that committee and, indeed, by other Select Committees that can now, I hope, be set up under the proposed new terms.

Again, my thanks to the noble Lord and his team. I think we have a lot of work to do to get all that is workable onto the statute book.