House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to respond to what has been an interesting debate. I feel that noble Lords have had a good time this afternoon and that we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for allowing us to enjoy a debate on our processes.

Before I address the detailed points that have been raised, and I will of course try to respond to as many as I can, I would like to take one step backwards from where we started. When considering our procedures and practices, it is important that we are clear about for whom and for what are we here. My answer to that is clear: I am sure that this is one on which we are all united. We are here to serve the public by making good law and informing public policy. But over recent years, the public have become increasingly unconvinced that Parliament and the political system as a whole is totally committed to serving them. While in that context there is more focus on the Commons, I know that we in the Lords want to play our part—this is evident from our debate this afternoon—in showing that we are committed to serving the public, so that we, too, help restore public confidence in Parliament as a whole.

In doing that, we obviously we need to aim at the right target, so in my view we need first to be clear when and for what reasons the House of Lords attracts a positive reaction. The impact that we have on the things that matter to people is what counts, along with how we go about our business. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde mentioned, as indeed one or two other noble Lords did in their remarks, the recent Private Member’s Bill of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. It is not by accident that the comments in the media following the initial Second Reading debate on that Bill were about how we conducted our business.

During the summer there was also our debate on military action in Iraq, which led to Mark D’Arcy, who noble Lords will know to be the BBC’s parliamentary correspondent and regular presenter of “Today in Parliament”, tweeting about our debate. He said that we showed “stunning self-discipline” when we finished on time; a sign, he said, of our “self-regulation in action”. It is our less political, less rowdy and less combative approach which shows that we can be more considered, more collaborative and more constructive. That is what people value; it is what marks us out as different from the other place.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Was the noble Baroness in at Question Time on Tuesday and did she not consider that to be rowdy?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am here at every Question Time. I will come to Questions in a moment and address some of the specific points that the noble Lord made about them.

In responding to the debate, I consider that the points raised fall into two main categories. One is on what I would describe as conduct and how we behave; the other is about content or how we arrange the business. Perhaps I may start with conduct. Self-regulation is what distinguishes us from the House of Commons and allows us to show off all that is good about what we do. In my opinion, we should cherish it. There may well be good arguments for considering changes to our approach but we must be conscious of their potential impact on the rights and freedoms that Members currently have. As many noble Lords have indicated today, we have many more freedoms than Members of the other place do.

However, when it comes to the conduct of this House we are all responsible for good order. We currently have, as indeed we had before, a very distinguished noble Baroness as our Lord Speaker, but as recently as 2011 this House voted decisively against changing the Lord Speaker’s responsibilities. I, as Leader, do not have the same powers as Mr Speaker in the Commons. My job, and that of my noble friend the Chief Whip and the other government Whips, is to assist the House. We are not here to rule the House but to help it to do what it has already decided it wishes to do. That was clearly explained by my noble friend Lord Attlee in his contribution.

When it comes to Oral Questions, there are a few facts that it is worth sharing with noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, was right in her comment about the contribution of women Peers at Oral Questions. Indeed, of the six Peers who have asked the most supplementary questions this year, three of them are women. The Peer who asked the most supplementary questions in the most recent Session, though, was the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. We have a large number of Peers asking questions: 350 this year so far. I say to my noble friend Lord Attlee that he remains top of my chart of Members of the Front Bench answering them.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The Minister is absolutely right. That is why if it were the Lord Speaker who called Questions, as I am suggesting, I would be less likely to be called, and that would be a good thing.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am saying to the noble Lord that we are all responsible for ensuring that people have an opportunity to ask questions at Question Time. It is important to state that this House is usually keen to hear from those who are not frequent askers of questions, if other noble Lords who are more frequent in the asking of their questions are more readily willing to give way to them. That is what the House is usually keen to see.

While we are on the subject of Questions, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked why we have so few Urgent Questions allowed. The Government always consult the Opposition on which Commons UQs to repeat here, and every one that the Opposition want repeated is repeated. If he has any questions on that, I suggest that he raises them with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, referred to my noble friend the Chief Whip’s decision yesterday to go ahead in any case and repeat the Autumn Statement but I think that that was vindicated, not least because of the contribution made today by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, who was asking for more time for debates on the Autumn Statement. We are here all the time to try to ensure that noble Lords are able to debate and determine the topics that they wish to consider.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Does my noble friend not think it extraordinary that on a matter as important as the Autumn Statement the Opposition should not want the opportunity to criticise the Government? Or is it that they just had nothing to say?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I could not possibly comment. My noble friend the Chief Whip felt that the House as a whole, regardless of the Opposition, wanted the opportunity to ask questions, so he went ahead as he did. I am sure that many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Forsyth, were grateful to him for that decision.

I move on to the category of points raised under the heading, “Arrangement of Business”. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, acknowledged, we have already changed an awful lot in this Parliament to make our work more relevant and accessible to those who want to engage with it. We have indeed created more opportunities for Back-Bench debates on matters of interest, including the introduction of topical QSDs, which allow time-sensitive issues to be debated quickly, and we have significantly increased the availability of QSDs more generally. We have also devoted more resources to ad hoc Select Committees so that a wide range of cross-cutting topics are able to be scrutinised in detail by noble Lords.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked about co-ordinating sitting times with the Commons. Where we can, we do. In the main, our sittings are aligned because the two Houses work closely together. However, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, we are a separate Chamber with our own priorities, and it is right that we organise our sittings to meet our overall needs.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, also asked about the notification of business. The forthcoming business document produced by the Government Whips’ Office gives a three-week forecast of business in this House, and, clearly, we work hard all the time to ensure that we provide as much information as possible.

The role of the usual channels was raised by several noble Lords, and I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for his comments about how the usual channels work in the interests of the House as a whole, not against them. I dispute the point that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, made. Indeed, we have tried, through the usual channels—whether by ensuring that we schedule business so that we have the right people on the Opposition Front Bench in place to challenge the Government, or by beginning to publish more business calendars on government Bills—to make sure that those who want to engage with our business are able to do so because we provide enough information in advance about what will happen and when.

The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, made an interesting remark about the digitisation of our amendments. That might lead to complications, but on the general point that she makes, a lot of departments are trying to do that now to ensure that there is greater clarity on how amendments affect legislation.

The proposal for a Back-Bench committee was looked at and voted on by this House—I dispute the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Butler, described that process. The point is that everyone in this House is able to table Motions for debate themselves, without anybody else deciding it. Any noble Lord can go into the Table Office and table a debate, and they are now looked at in the order in which they were first scheduled.

Noble Lords raised several other things—

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

Will the noble Baroness accept the principle that after the next general election political appointments to the House of Lords should reflect the proportionate party votes as cast in the general election?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

The noble Lord raises an interesting question, but I suggest that it is something for a different debate. This is about procedure and ordering of business.

To conclude, a wide range of interesting points was raised today. The Leader’s Group, which I went back and looked at, considered 54 different issues in 2011—it looked at most of, if not all, the matters discussed today. It is still possible for any noble Lord who feels strongly about any particular issue to write to the Chairman of the Procedure Committee to ask for it to be considered further. Where there are sensible, pragmatic steps forward that would allow us to improve our work, we should take them. However, we have already done a lot in that direction in this Parliament, and I am grateful to all noble Lords for their co-operation in doing just that.

House adjourned at 6.08 pm.