House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness Seccombe Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Seccombe]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, for securing this debate, giving us the opportunity to look at our role in Parliament. We have just been through an unsettling and miserable period so now is the time for us to take stock and look at our procedures, never forgetting that our role is to scrutinise legislation, sending back to another place any matters this House believes should be looked at again.

I will make two points. First, we have in this House a distinct character and we are different from the other House. We are a part-time House of non elected Peers. We sit at different times from the other place so that those who have continuing work experience and expertise are able to share their knowledge with the House, whether it is in legislation, debate or in the important reports of the Select Committees, to name just a few. The last thing I would wish us to become is a replica of the House of Commons, with a House entirely made up of full-time politicians. We must retain that difference and concentrate on the essential role we play.

Secondly, during my time in your Lordship’s House I have seen an increasing amount of time spent on legislation. For instance, in Committee we have Second Reading speeches with the proposer of an amendment taking up to 15 minutes in opening. That should easily be achieved in five minutes by not going into all the surrounding issues but instead concentrating on the narrower point of the particular amendment. Third Readings also seem to grow longer when the same arguments are made yet again. I thought the rules for Third Reading had recently been tightened and that that stage was only for the purpose of clarifying any remaining uncertainties, improving the drafting and enabling the Government to fulfil undertakings given at earlier stages of the Bill. Somehow we seem to take more and more time, sometimes even a whole day.

Of course, there are many other issues that we could debate but my main concern is that we continue doing the real work of this House: scrutinising legislation. That is why the other place respects this House and did not vote for an elected second Chamber. That is why we are here today.