Procedure Committee

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I thank the committee for its work. I support the recommendations before the House, but I strongly support what previous speakers said about the Chair’s role. Of course, that applies not just to the Lord Speaker but to all the others who take that position. Therefore a lot of people will quite rightly be involved.

Since I have been here I have found two things most difficult to cope with. The first is the squealing match that goes on every day when people are trying to be called to speak, which is a very undignified business. What people think about it when they look in I do not know. Today was relatively modest, with only a couple of incidents, but on some occasions it is much more brutal. It is very undignified and inefficient. The Chair could, at the very least, identify the group from which the speaker should come, even if we do not go the whole hog and identify the Member, as they do in the other place. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, physically in the Chamber a third of the House is behind the clerks and half is behind the Front Bench. Obviously the current approach does not make sense.

The other thing I would like the committee to look at if it has not already done so is how Oral Questions are identified. We have a situation where people have to sit for hours outside the Table Office. If we were to accumulate the number of person hours per annum wasted sitting there to table a Question, it would be most off-putting to a lot of Members. We would get a greater number of Members tabling Questions if we were to look at that. Personally, I would eliminate it and have ballots for all Questions, but if we were to take it in stages we could encourage more Members to participate in Oral Questions. Not everybody is prepared to sit twiddling their thumbs for an hour or an hour and a half outside the Table Office to table an Oral Question. We should look at those two items. Nevertheless, I welcome the report as far as it goes and fully support it.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a Deputy Speaker. I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for nearly 44 years and I have seen a lot of changes. I remind noble Lords who want more power for the Speaker that, apart from this, we are a self-regulating Chamber. It is up to us to discipline ourselves in the length of our questions and our answers—incidentally, this includes Ministers—to speak to the time allotted and not go beyond it, and just to behave properly like good, civilised human beings.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I have the greatest respect for the noble Countess and she is absolutely right to encourage people to have self-discipline. But the truth, as the noble Lords, Lord Grocott and Lord Tyler, said, is that we do not have self-discipline or self-regulation at Question Time. We actually have regulation by the Government Front Bench and while I cast no aspersions, as I know the Government take great care to do that in as equitable a fashion as they can, I believe it is wrong in principle that the Executive should choose who speaks in the legislature.

I should have declared a past interest, although I have to say that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, never accused me of looking decorative on the Woolsack, so I am slightly concerned about that. The House’s view of self-regulation and its anxiety about the role of the Speaker has changed dramatically in the experience of three Lord Speakers. I hope the House would now feel that it was possible to create a greater role for the Lord Speaker without invoking—this was always in inverted commas—a “Commons-type Speaker” in this House. I believe we are perfectly capable of creating the light-touch Speakership that has been referred to, and I hope the Procedure Committee will look at that in the near future.