House of Lords: Domestic Committees

Baroness Shephard of Northwold Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Leader of the House for her kind remarks and congratulate her on her initiative to introduce some practical and modest reforms to the domestic governance of this House. I give my warmest thanks to the noble Lords who served on the committee: the noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor, Lady McIntosh and Lady Doocey, and the noble Lords, Lord Kirkham and Lord Turnbull, many of whom are here today. We are all most grateful to our clerk, Judith Brooke, who was outstanding in every way, especially in her energy and attention to detail.

The committee was informed by a study of earlier reforms to the governance of this House, and I am pleased to see in his place today my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. We met at least weekly, sometimes more, from June to December last year, and we decided from the outset to invite as much participation and comment as possible from noble Lords and from staff. We used Red Benches, emails to everyone, even posters in the corridors, and we were delighted and grateful to have the number of responses that resulted.

Many noble Lords and members of staff attended the regular drop-in sessions that we organised. Many also gave generously of their time to give oral evidence to the committee. We met the Lord Speaker and the Speaker, party and Cross-Bench group leaders, past and present officeholders and members of staff and colleagues from the other place. As a result, we received a huge amount of evidence and dozens of submissions.

As my noble friend has said, since the publication of the report committee members have presented its findings to their own party and Cross-Bench groups, where it has been positively received. I was also delighted to be invited to answer the questions of a well-attended meeting of the Cormack and Norton group, with again, I think, a largely positive reaction—I am bit hesitant but I think it was okay; yes, I am glad to say that my noble friend Lord Cormack is nodding enthusiastically.

We agree strongly with the remarks of the Leader of the House today. Given the accelerating change and increasing scrutiny affecting all public institutions, it is right that our much enlarged House should be concerned with the transparency and accountability of its decision-making processes. There is a self-evident need for ever closer working between the two Houses of Parliament given that—we were surprised by this statistic—64% of their total spend is already managed jointly. We were also mindful of course of the complexity of the restoration and renewal programme, where the interests of this House will need to be strongly represented.

We acknowledge the inherent constraints on governance and administrative systems in a political setting like the House of Lords. How often have we all heard, “Why can’t you do it as they do it at ICI?”? Well, there may be internal politics at ICI—I have no idea—but what we do know is that there are internal and external politics in a political setting like this, and some decisions have to be taken for political reasons. Clearly, there are unavoidable tensions between the parties, the two Houses, and the Front and Back Benches. Unlike in many large organisations with which we are sometimes unflatteringly compared, we have no control over our own size nor of the number of days that we sit. The support needed by noble Lords to fulfil their responsibilities varies enormously, as does their interest in governance matters. Some noble Lords have neither time nor inclination to engage in them; others are keenly interested and have much relevant experience and expertise to contribute.

Although our report strongly advocates change in a number of governance areas, we were struck by the way that goodwill on all sides of the House currently succeeds in supporting its work—which is important—even despite a less than satisfactory governance system. We hope that, if the main thrusts of our report are accepted, less time will have to be spent on working round the system and more on using it.

My noble friend the Leader of the House has outlined the main findings of the committee and the changes we recommend. All of us on the committee were struck by the extraordinary unanimity of the evidence we received. We have long experience in large organisations—we represent between us the worlds of business, government, the NHS, local government and voluntary sectors—but none of us has ever known quite such a uniform response.

My noble friend the Leader of the House summarised in her speech today the findings of the committee—that is, the areas where there was overwhelming consensus for change—and the reforms we recommended to effect that change. I emphasise again that our remit was modest. We were asked to examine the functioning of, and interaction between, the House Committee and the Administration and Works, Refreshment, Information and Works of Art Committees. We were not asked to look at the work of the Liaison, Procedure, Privileges and Conduct or Selection Committees, nor to comment on any other procedural matters, including conduct in the Chamber.

My noble friend divided the proposed reforms into three main areas, and I will comment briefly on each area. On reform to structures, the evidence received by the committee was overwhelmingly of the view that the current remits of the domestic committees are unclear. We were told that, on occasion, some issues may be considered by two or more committees, and those committees may have contradictory approaches. In such cases, staff had to prepare papers in different formats—but on the same issue—for the different committees. It turns out that printer ink is dealt with by one committee and printers are dealt with by another. Worse, one committee, after a great deal of thorough and good work, might take a decision only to find, because of the unclear remits, that that work and that decision is overturned by another committee. Our guiding principle should surely be accountability and transparency. The structure as it is too often delivers neither, and there has to be change.

We therefore propose that the new House Committee—we call it the senior committee and so I shall say “House Senior Committee”—should, as its first task, define its own terms of reference and report them to the House for ratification, making clear which decisions might need approval from the House. Thereafter, it should approve the terms of reference for the two new supporting committees, services and finance, and, most importantly, decide questions concerning delegations.

The establishment of a new services committee, which brings together all the services which support the work of noble Lords, would avoid confusing and time-wasting duplication and clarify accountability, as we also propose that the chair of that committee,

“should be the first port of call for … questions or comments about services and facilities”.

The chair should also be accountable to the House for Oral Questions and Written Answers.

The job of the proposed new finance committee will be to do the groundwork on financial matters and to make recommendations to the House or senior committee, thus enabling that committee to make timely and appropriate strategic decisions. In turn, these proposals would allow the Chairman of Committees to concentrate on deputising for the Lord Speaker, focusing on the proceedings of the House and, of course, chairing the Procedure, Privileges, Selection and Liaison Committees. We thought that perhaps an appropriate title for this post would be senior deputy speaker, although I do not think that any of us want to wander down the path of legislating for this kind of change, and I hear what my noble friend says. We also propose that the very special and specialised role of the Works of Art Committee be recognised through making it an advisory panel reporting directly to the Lord Speaker. We were not asked formally to consider the role of the Audit Committee. Its members have different membership tenure from other domestic committees, but we did suggest that it become a formal sub-committee of the House or senior committee.

I turn to reforms to membership of committees and ways of working. The report lays out proposals for the membership of the new committees and, as importantly, strongly recommends that there should be two non-executive members of the House or senior committee, thus bringing decision-making in this House into line with the pattern we find in most large organisations. We also propose that members of all committees should be chosen for their expertise and experience of the work in hand. I am looking especially at the usual channels as I speak, but that is what we meant.

To encourage strong collaborative working between the senior House committee and the management board, we propose that the Select Committee format of meetings be abandoned in favour of a round table approach, and that there should be a detailed memorandum of understanding to specify which matters are delegated to the management board and which matters need endorsement by the House or senior committee. Moreover, the all-important matter of communication with noble Lords on committee decisions must be tackled head on. We must know who to go to when there is a change in the car park. We never know and we need to know, so we have to have better communication for all noble Lords. One way of enhancing what is already done through Red Benches and emails would be to require committee members routinely to report back on discussions and decisions being taken to their party groups or the Cross-Bench group.

I hope that today noble Lords will judge that the committee took its work seriously. We did a thorough job and we made sensible and realistic proposals that we believe go with the grain of the way this House works. All of us have the interests of the House at heart and we strongly hope that our modest proposals find favour with your Lordships today.