Arrangement of Business

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Friday 30th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I cannot do that. What I can say to my noble friend is that, in my 16 years in the House, I have found that some groups take longer than others and some get dealt with very quickly. I think we all need to use our best endeavours to make some more progress. We cannot set minutes per group; it does not work like that. Sometimes, I have sat here, and a group has been dealt with very quickly in two or three minutes; other times, I have sat here for three or four hours. I just think that we should all try to make more progress. If we have sat for four, five, six or seven hours and done only two or three groups, that is, in my opinion, quite slow, and we should look to do more than that. I hope that that helps my noble friend.

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, first, some of those groups have had nearly 100 amendments in them, which is quite a lot. Secondly, in this week when we remember the Holocaust, your Lordships’ House—which, in making laws for the whole country, is required to respect people’s rights, including their right to freedom of religion—is compelling us to sit until 6 pm.

Our Jewish Members are unable to do so, and I have seen them very quietly leaving Friday after Friday. Members of the Muslim community are also adversely affected by the sitting arrangements, and those who have a disability and who cannot attend because of the current arrangements are also prejudiced against. We do not do ourselves a service when we discriminate on grounds of religion and disability.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

As the noble Baroness knows, this issue has been raised over a number of weeks now, and I have met several noble Lords to discuss it. As I have said before, it is up to any noble Lord to move at any time that the House do now resume if they wish to do so. I said that I would not come back until 6 pm, but the point is that we set a target every day for Members to get to. If we get to the target, we can go home. If we get to it much earlier, we can leave earlier. The 6 pm time is a maximum—we do not have to go until 6 pm. We could get to our target and go home much earlier if we wanted to. In my discussions with colleagues, I have tried to put in place procedures to help people who need to leave for reasons such as disability or religion.