House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for asking this Question for Short—perhaps far too short—Debate, as hitherto I have been unable to give my counsel on this matter. I spent 13 years in opposition, but I did not find any difficulty in holding the Government to account, even though I was a very junior member of the Opposition; I felt that I had all the tools that I needed.

I found little to agree with in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, although I did have some sympathy with some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours about the size of the House. My noble friend Lord Dykes commented on our new Leader. I gently point out that my noble friend the Leader was a Government Whip for some time, and she understands how this House operates left to right, back to front, and inside out. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, talked about the difficulty of securing a QSD debate. My understanding is that, very often, the usual channels offer a day for a debate but it is not taken up.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

On that point, I forgot to say, by the way—and I meant to say in my introductory remarks—how grateful I was to the staff of the Government Chief Whip and of the Leader, who were very helpful in guiding me to an appropriate day and getting everything organised. I was really grateful to them.

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I know from my own personal experience that they are extremely capable.

Most of us pride ourselves on the extraordinary fact that we are a self-regulating House, and most noble Lords believe that we should stay that way. My understanding of the situation is this. When we are not quite sure what we should be doing, or a noble Lord has forgotten some detail hidden in the Companion, the Leader of the House expresses the sense of the House. In other words, she tells us what we should do if we had the time to work it out for ourselves.

A great advantage is that the Leader can be flexible and pragmatic by taking account of the circumstances of the time and not adhering slavishly to precedent or the rulebook. There are some who believe that the Leader might act in a partisan manner, but I have never seen it as a real problem, even when I was in opposition. The Leader will be careful not to do anything that will lose her the confidence of the House and, in any case, a competent Minister, properly briefed, can answer any question that may arise at Question Time. My noble friend Lord Gardiner, responding just now to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, demonstrated a brilliant intervention to help the House with what we should be doing.

There is one particular reason why a stronger Lord Speaker is not a solution to the alleged problem of a partisan Leader. Yes, the Lord Speaker is neutral, but the Deputy Speakers and Deputy Chairmen are often rank and file party members on a Whip.

As for Question Time, when I was a very junior Member on the opposition Benches, I had no difficulty in asking a reasonable number of supplementary questions —and I still do not experience any difficulties now.

When the Leader, Deputy Leader or Chief Whip is not present in the Chamber, it falls to the junior Whip on duty to act on behalf of the Leader and in the same way. Obviously, I have a slight interest as, until earlier this year, I was a junior Whip—but I managed to escape.

Your Lordships will recall how challenging the early part of this Parliament was for all of us, with some very controversial but necessary legislation. I will take this opportunity to praise my noble friend Lady Anelay of St Johns, the then government Chief Whip. It is not generally recognised how much effort she put into training the junior Whips so that we knew what we would be doing long before we were appointed. It is fair to say that if she had not been so far-sighted, the House would have experienced far more difficulties than it did.

It is possible for a junior Whip either to get the “sense of the House” wrong or not to enjoy the support of the House. It happened to me in Grand Committee one day, but, with our system of self-regulation, it was easy to get out of. I just said, “My Lords, it is a self-regulating House and a self-regulating Committee. If the Committee wants to hear more from the noble Lord, the noble Lord should continue”.

My noble friend Lord Trefgarne suggested having extra Oral Questions. He may have forgotten that we tried that some years ago and, by the end of the fourth Question, the House was very bored and we stopped doing it. I also believe that I hold the record for a Minister answering the most supplementary questions in a seven and a half minute slot. I will now sit down.