House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, it is quite rare to participate in a debate and find that you agree with practically everything that everyone has said. That being the case, it is tempting to do the generous thing and sit down immediately, but I am not going to do that. I am sorry. I added my name to the list of speakers mainly in order to support my noble friend Lord Filkin. He has now been compared to a terrier and to an engineer, which suggests a sort of particularly enthusiastic Jack Russell, digging away furiously. However, I think his approach to these issues is a little more sophisticated than that suggests and I want to express my personal gratitude to him for the huge amount of time and energy he has put into keeping alive the issue of how we improve our working practices. He has set out our agenda today with admirable clarity and so much better than I could that I certainly do not intend to try to emulate that.

I have had the privilege over a decade or so of being a Member of this House of looking at its work from a number of different standpoints. I have been a member of several Select Committees, of domestic committees, of pre-legislative scrutiny committees and of Private Bill Committees. I am a Deputy Speaker and I hope that I have participated to the best of my ability in the Chamber in terms of Questions and debates. What I see is a House that is, in depth, formidably strong. It is particularly so, as has been said by many other speakers, in the cross-party work that goes on in our widely respected Select Committees. However, at present there are two issues. The first is that there is not enough of this work to satisfy the ambitions of Members to participate and to make proper use of the expertise that is available. Secondly, this kind of work is woefully underreported, which allows a false impression to perpetuate of what Members of this House actually do. For example, that much-used website theyworkforyou.com completely ignores all the work in committee and only gives as metrics the appearances that noble Lords make in the Chamber. You can literally stand up and say, “My Lords”, sit down again—because you do not get in on a Question for example—and that gets recorded as participation in a debate. That is a bit bonkers. It unfortunately gives a very misleading impression. We need to address this and many other issues.

I share the disappointment expressed by a number of other noble Lords about why so much of the admirable Goodlad report, which did just that and is nearly two years old, has yet to be brought forward to the whole House. I hope we can hear from the Leader of the House, whose excellent initiative it was, whether he intends to give us a chance to talk about some of the issues in the report, now that the issue of wholesale reform has, for the moment, been set aside.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, the fact that it has been set aside is both a threat and an opportunity. We can do something to reform ourselves using our own mechanisms and without legislation. If we do not, the pressures that are built into our current system will inevitably result in further damage to our effectiveness and reputation. We have the opportunity to be active and creative about our future, and to look at refining our contribution to political life, not only in the interests of Parliament but in the interests of the nation as a whole. We are repeatedly reminded that we are self-regulating. I hope that this debate will be a first step towards using that strength to do for ourselves what we know we can do, and what needs to be done, rather than allowing the initiative to be taken from us.