House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Loan]

My Lords, the report is indeed a useful document and I am happy to endorse many of its recommendations, particularly those in relation to pre-legislative scrutiny, post-legislative scrutiny and the rescheduling of some of the work of the House. However, the House should continue to be self-regulating. It is one of the great strengths of the House that, for the most part, we can respectfully manage our business. When I have been engaged in Lord Speaker’s outreach, I have been very proud to point to the courtesy with which, for the most part, we manage our business. We do it for the most part without jeering, barracking, shouting or sneering, and there is something profoundly important about modelling the behaviour that we would ask of society. We can be very proud of ourselves when we can be respectful, listen and still have a proper debate.

Electronic recording of access to the Chamber and voting could save quite a lot of money. That is something that we should think of. It has seemed to me, in contemplating what we do here and how we do it, that we should consider not just our own perspective of our understanding of what would make us more effective, but also that of the public and those who provide services to them in the exercise of powers, duties and responsibilities created by Acts of Parliament and governmental action.

I want to address the simple issue of Written Questions. There is no question but that they serve a very useful function in allowing Members to hold the Executive to account and to participate in the forum for public debate and inquiry, which is such an important part of the work of the House. In raising this issue I fully acknowledge the importance of the Parliamentary Question in calling to account not only Government but those in public office, and of placing issues on the public agenda. I also welcome the use of PQs to inform decisions about, for example, calling for a Question for Short Debate. However, there is very little reference to the issue of Written Questions in the Companion or in the Leader’s Group report, and the Cabinet Office Guide to Parliamentary Work contains probably the most useful information.

Very often a Parliamentary Question is asked as the result of a genuine desire to secure information. That is entirely proper, and the public bodies that I have known and in which I have served have been fully respectful of and responsive to questions asked by noble Lords. However, there is no process to address the issue of the use of the Parliamentary Question process in what I would describe as an unnecessary manner. In the wider public domain there is perhaps a tendency to judge us by the number of Questions that we ask, but that does not reflect the work of the House when you contemplate the content of this report.

The report states that the House should make the best use of all available resources. It would be good if we could consider the resources not only of the House but of those others to whom Parliamentary Questions are directed. HM Treasury estimates the cost of dealing with a Parliamentary Question at £154 but that does not reflect the cost to the organisations outside Parliament and Government. Some 9,000 Parliamentary Questions are asked each year, and my guess is that we are talking well over £2.5 million for answering them. We could argue that that is a proper use of public funds, and in many cases it is, but there are occasions on which one asks oneself why the questioner is not capable of looking up the answer or, in appropriate cases, asking the very helpful Library and research staff here to find it. For example, I was asked in a Parliamentary Question who my accounting officer was, and I was asked under what law I operated as police ombudsman. I have also known of organisations being repeatedly asked the same question in different forms. It happens sometimes to such an extent that one begins to wonder what the purpose of the question is. Why is so much money and resource being used to provide the answer to questions that could easily be answered by the questioner? It can be simple to approach the organisation concerned and ask the question. We also now have extensive freedom of information laws that enable one to get access to information. I wonder whether it would be possible for the House to consider the inclusion of further guidance on the use of the Written Question process in order to avoid a situation in which public money might be wasted. I think it is a matter of both integrity and probity. At a time of economic and financial difficulties, it is important that as a House we are seen to act properly in the exercise of our powers and the use of our resources.

I want to address briefly the consequences of the change of method of paying Peers allowances on the working practices of the House. We recently moved to a single payment, consequential upon the difficulties resulting from previous abuses of the expenses system. It is not impossible that we have not quite got it right. By paying a single sum of £300 a day to all Members, we have created a degree of inequity. Those Members who must pay for accommodation while in London inevitably have less money to procure research assistants and so on to enable them to fulfil their parliamentary duties than Members who live in London. In an era in which we seek to establish wider membership of the House than existed hitherto, the current situation will not facilitate that.

I want to consider the issue of debates which stretch over more than a day. The House of Lords reform debate was one such example. I wanted to speak in that debate, and I put my name down, but as the timetable was not available at the time, I had other appointments on Thursday morning in Northern Ireland. Many other people have said they had a similar experience. I sat through much of the debate on the first day and on the second day I would have been happy to sit all day. I had to leave at 6 pm to get the last flight back. The debate finished at 10 pm that night so I could not speak. You could say there were sufficient speeches anyway to deal with all the issues, but I did want to speak. Our convention that we must be present at the beginning and the end meant that I had to withdraw. It is not a unique situation. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham averted to this also.

There is a solution to the problem, which would be in appropriate cases to split the issues encompassed by a topic into two separate days’ debate, inviting contributions on particular elements of the issue on a particular day, and allowing for any additional conclusions at the end of the second day. I have no doubt that noble Lords would always wish to be here and to participate throughout, but circumstances do not always permit. For those who live a considerable distance away, such flexibility would enable greater participation. I welcome the report and the increased efficiency and effectiveness to which it will inevitably lead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is why the House has to decide, and I am not sure that there is an alternative solution. You either push power to the chair or you do not. Perhaps more assertiveness from me and the government Dispatch Box may help and encourage. Noble Lords might like a firm smack of authority from the Dispatch Box. I accept that there is a difficulty and a problem. When I first came to the House, Members would regularly give way.

[Baroness O'Loan]

My Lords, I wonder whether it might be helpful to have clarification as to the way in which at Question Time the right to ask supplementary questions moves around the House. Is the order Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and Cross-Bench, or Conservative, Labour, Cross-Bench et cetera? That would be helpful to the House.

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Baroness is right; it is an art and not a science. Since I have been doing it, it looks a lot easier from the other side of the House than it does from here. It slightly depends on who is speaking. When I first came here, Peers would give way to Peers who they believed were more senior to them or had more authority or more knowledge. There is much less of that now and a certain order is quite hard to impose.

With the coalition, there has been broad agreement that we do not have a Conservative Peer followed by a Liberal Democrat Peer. Whoever is next—the Cross-Benches or the Labour Party—rather depends on the question. It all goes wrong when a right reverend Prelate speaks but that is not what I meant. It really all goes wrong when another Peer, such as a UKIP Peer, speaks, which upsets the smooth flow. I am not offering any solutions. There is tougher authority either from the Dispatch Box or from the Woolsack. You cannot have both.

On the usual channels, I felt that there was again a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of this House. That might be borne of the fact that many Members come here from another place, where the Executive are powerful and have a majority. The Executive in this House have no majority. Therefore, the usual channels, in my long experience as being a part of them, work very much in the interests of the Back-Benchers. They try to put the Back-Benchers’ interests first because the usual channels know that at any stage something can be rolled over by the Back-Benchers. That is how it works.

I believe that there needs to be more clarity about how the usual channels operate. Huge advantages and privileges are given to Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, and I understand why that should be. I will discuss with the noble Baroness ways in which we should clarify how the usual channels work, what part the Convenor, the Liberal Democrats and the Back-Benchers and so on play, and what role the Private Secretary to the Leader and the government Chief Whip play in managing the business. It is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, but once you understand how it all interlocks it is much simpler than many people believe. I am going to ask the clerks for a list of new Peers who have not been on an induction course and who therefore do not understand how the House works, yet have very strong views on how the House should be reviewed. I shall write to them to encourage them to go to an induction course.

I have completely lost my place in my speech as a result of all that, so I will move on swiftly by saying that this has been a wide-ranging and timely debate. I have probably given the impression that I am less keen on some of these proposals than I gave at the beginning. I have picked out some of the more difficult ones. This has been an immensely useful exercise, in part because my noble friend Lord Goodlad has found the kitchen sink of procedure and process in the House of Lords. He has put it all out and there is something for everyone. I thank noble Lords for their different strands of opinion. There is now a great deal of work for the Procedure Committee, the Liaison Committee and the other committees to do, but it is right that we should do it. I hope that we will have an early opportunity to have a report back with a substantial number of these recommendations on which the House can take a view and therefore see that real progress has been made. I beg to move.