House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for his comprehensive introduction, which covered all the points that the House needs to consider.

The main point, to my mind, is that we need to get back to being a functioning House of Lords, with Members here, and to wind down the so-called special measures. We are moving dreadfully slowly. I had a talk with one of the senior officials in the Library yesterday. They said that, yes, they are definitely moving forward: they are going to be open for an extra hour a day from Monday to Thursday, starting on 20 June. They will then be open for four whole hours a day. This is a snail’s pace.

I am going to say it: I am afraid that working from home has been a great boon to many people. Many of our staff probably quite like not having to commute; they quite like having to provide their own lunch and to work at their own pace. We have got to put some effort into getting people back, and if that involves lobbying the Department of Health for vaccinations—the latest of a series of excuses that I have heard—then so be it, but we have got to get people back. Here is one good indicator: I have an office on the fifth floor of Millbank House and we share a kitchen with staff. You can tell how many are here because the fridge in the kitchen is absolutely empty; usually it is packed full of sandwiches and lunch. The staff are just not here; they have got to be got back.

I differ from my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on one issue. The Question Time list has actually been a great move forward. For those of us who do not have a background in the other place, the bear pit of people jumping up and down at Question Time put a lot of people off. I would like whoever responds to look at having some sort of list and order for Question Time, but it should come back and we need to have this House in charge again.

I will also make a point about interventions in debate. I spoke in the Queen’s Speech debate on Monday and asked the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith:

“so all I am going to ask him to do is to say that he will pass my comments on to the Transport Minister and ask her to respond to me in writing.”—[Official Report, 17/5/21, col. 390.]

When he came to wind up, he did not mention it. Even though I had spoken to him privately and asked him to just give me that assurance, there was no assurance. Even though I was sitting here, and he was sitting just in front of me, I could not get up and intervene, even to say: “Will the Minister kindly agree to the question I put to him during my speech?” This has led to a situation in which, to my mind, Ministers frequently do not answer the questions that are put to them, because they know that there is no feedback. We do need to get back to people being accountable to this House.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, spoke about our moral obligation to arrange our lives in order to contribute to the House. As I have said before, when I came into the House in 2013, the only question David Cameron was interested in was, “Will you attend and vote?” He forgot to ask me which way I would vote. He was very keen to say, “Richard, we really need people who will attend and vote. Will you do that?” It is important that we do organise our lives. Frankly, if people are too ill, we have sympathy for them. My good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has just had another year’s leave of absence from the House and that is the way to deal with it. You cannot cast the House around this sort of thing.

I hope that we will get back to a functioning House. I hope that we will end our remote voting, because that is not the way to run a democratic institution. Even though I am not sure whether I support the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I certainly support the date and the sentiment within it. I hope that we will move to get back to the House so that, when we come back in September, we are recognisably in a democratic assembly.