House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for setting up this debate and, in particular, for his announcement of his intention to set up a Leader’s Group and to give it the widest possible remit on the issues that we are discussing today. That is remarkably welcome, and I am sure that the whole House is grateful to him.

There are several disobliging terms sometimes applied by natives, mostly of rural communities, to describe those that they regard as outsiders. Among those that can be repeated here are “grockle” and “blow-in”. It can take several generations for the stigma of being one of those to wear off. I have been a Member of this House for almost 11 years but, like my noble friend Lady Jones, I still feel like a new girl and occasionally like a fraudulent interloper, so I venture into this debate with some trepidation. I do so armed with a little confidence having been a member of the cross-party group chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and of the group of Labour Peers referred to by my noble friends Lady Royall and Lady Jones, chaired by my noble friend Lord Grocott, so I feel that I am slightly better informed than I might have been a few months ago.

I am not a natural radical. I have little appetite for change for its own sake. I respect and admire the resilience of things that have survived the test of time, whether they be pieces of old furniture, the language of William Shakespeare or, indeed, the traditions of this House. I especially and vehemently do not want this House to become a replica or shadow of the other place. However, in my short time here—as, for Peers, it is a short time—a lot has changed. We have seen the loss of most hereditary Members, the exit of the Lord Chancellor, and the very welcome, in my view, creation of the post of Lord Speaker. I take this opportunity to join the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in paying tribute to the enormous contribution made by the present incumbent in her time in office. There have been changes in sitting times, the working week and the working year, and we have seen a much increased use of Grand Committee. As my noble friend Lord Grocott observed, most of those changes were not universally welcomed, but have since become established parts of our practice.

However, in the world outside and, I have to say, to some extent within Parliament itself, the impression persists of this House as obstinately adhering to arcane tradition and exclusivity. We need to look only at how we are routinely portrayed in the media—it is always the ermine that gets into the picture. This is not good. It makes us vulnerable and calls into question the value of what we do. We have a duty to do our best to correct any misapprehensions but, more importantly, to try to see and hear ourselves as others do and to review our working practices and procedures with humility and on a continuing basis, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Norton.

We have just been through a very turbulent year. At the start of this new Parliament, with many new Members—to whom, whether they come from another place or from outside Parliament, I imagine that the practices of this House must appear somewhat perplexing, at least at the beginning—and faced as we are with the prospect of major reform, this House could adopt one of two positions. It could either decide to do nothing, reasserting its independence and unique character by setting its face against any challenge to the way that it does things now—thankfully, so far this afternoon I have heard no support for that position—or it could take the opportunity for some further incremental change that could significantly improve the effectiveness of the House and help to enhance its reputation. I am delighted that the noble Lord the Leader of the House, by setting up a Leader’s Group, is encouraging us to take this opportunity.

I want to draw attention to two specific points. I fear that they are the same two specific points that my noble friend Lord Filkin drew attention to, and he probably did it rather better than I will but, in the true traditions of this House, that is not going to stop me. The first concerns the observations made by his group about ensuring that legislation, when it comes forward, should,

“meet objective tests of being adequately prepared”.

That point was eloquently made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and mentioned by a number of other noble Lords. My noble friend’s group proposed a committee on legislative standards, with a remit to examine upcoming Bills against a clear set of criteria, which I will not read out because he has already enumerated them. I very much support this recommendation, and I also support the various suggestions about evidence-taking before Committee stages. I agree with my noble friend Lady Royall about pre-legislative scrutiny, an issue that has been raised by many other speakers. If legislation were consistently well prepared—this was a point noted by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who is not in his place—much of the time and effort taken by both Houses to scrutinise that legislation would be much better used and some of the difficulties discussed elsewhere in the paper by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and the paper by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, would diminish.

My second point concerns governance and accountability, which were covered by the group chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, of which I was a member. It was subsequently addressed in a very useful briefing paper from the Hansard Society, which I received this morning, and by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, and other noble Lords. I am well aware that these matters are sensitive—probably more so than those concerning the House’s legislative role. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, I urge that we do not flinch from considering whether our governance arrangements would bear the kind of scrutiny to which other aspects of lives have recently been subjected. It is no longer enough, as he pointed out, that we should understand and be content with how we do things—although, as was evidenced in what the noble Lord, Lord Luce, said, not everyone does—we must also consider whether we are taking into account the way that things are done elsewhere. In a community—I hesitate to use the word “organisation” or “institution” —as complex and unusual as this one, there is a great temptation to think that everything not only is, but has to be, sui generis. I worked for years in the arts where this kind of view was for long enough prevalent, but eventually it dawned on us all that emphasising what made us different did not always work to our advantage. It was far better to look about, adopt what was best in business and other practices and become more efficient and effective by learning from others. Perhaps paradoxically, the things that really made us unique emerged much more strongly once we began to join the rest of the world.

I hope that this House will review its own governance in the same light and take seriously some of the suggestions that have come forward about accountability and transparency. They are not frightening nor, frankly, especially radical, but they might be—to mangle Robert Burns, and with apologies to my Scottish colleagues—power that,

“…the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!”.