House of Lords: Questions

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, just on that last point, if we had a count-down, noble Lords might be like football match attenders counting down, “Five! Four! Three! Two! One!”. I am not sure that we want to go down that path.

I must make a confession before I say anything else. When I saw that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, had tabled this Question, for which I am very grateful, I thought to myself, “I must be here this evening because I might at last begin to learn about one or two things I have totally failed to comprehend”. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, I am completely inexperienced in this field, having been a Member of your Lordships’ House for only a couple of years, but having managed to speak in debates for which I am deeply grateful. I agree with my noble friend Lord Clancarty that it is a great privilege.

However, I am confused. The Companion, which often is very companionable, is very uncompanionable on this subject of Oral Questions. Let me give an example. A few months ago I wanted to ask a Question and went into the Table Office. As usual the clerks were incredibly helpful. I gave them my Question which they put down, and a week or so later I asked it. Last week I went to the Table Office—I know this shows my ignorance—and said, “I have a Question, but I am not sure whether I can just give it to you”. She said, “No, you will have to join the queue on Monday”. That had not happened last time—hence my failure to understand. Fair enough I went along. She then asked, “Is it a topical question?”. This is probably a good example, especially for the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who is very well versed in this subject. I wanted to ask whether the Government had any opinion on the recent national health statistics about female genital mutilation, which over a three-month period had been rather shocking. However, these figures came out during the recess, so was this topical or not? We had quite a long debate about it.

I suppose where I would love a bit of clarity as a new boy is: what exactly is the procedure on putting a Question down and when you have to queue and when you do not? While I accept my noble friend’s strictures about being prepared to queue because it is an honour, I cannot help feeling slightly that, with today’s technology, it is a rather archaic way of doing it. I found it slightly awkward. I was sent away by a noble Lord who was at the back of the queue, but just in the right place. He had a slightly soured, wistful air about him but also a note of triumphalism because in fact his Question would get in.

I ask these questions because I would like to learn a bit more about this process. The Companion could be a little clearer. After all, what we want, and what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, wishes to achieve, is to tap the wider experience of the House. I am not sure, as the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, has just said, that getting into the queue is necessarily the best way of doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe]

I think that is a very creative idea. Worries have been expressed this evening about what rules apply during recess and what counts as a topical Question, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out. However, I do not think that we are likely to find total unanimity on the idea of a ballot—as the contributions this evening have demonstrated—but if there is one message that has come through it is that we should think through this idea rather more carefully, as there might be some underlying balloting system that would work.

The benefit of the present system is that it gives the House four weeks’ notice of upcoming Questions. The one thing we do not want to do is add complexity to the system or reduce the notice period to, say, two weeks, as I think my noble friend Lord Sherbourne suggested. However, I am in favour of the principle of what my noble friend wants to achieve and I would not wish to discourage him from putting his ideas to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, as chairman of the Procedure Committee.

The pros and cons of the queuing system have been referred to. For clarity, I say that if there is a slot available, noble Lords do not have to queue; they can take that slot on the spot. But if no slot is available and one is to become available, as they do four weeks ahead of the period being considered, it is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, hence the queue that tends to form. I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was lucky in the first instance that he referred to and slightly unlucky in the latter instance.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton]

I thank the noble Earl as that has explained something which I have been trying to fathom. As I suggested, the Companion could be a little clearer about this, because if you are a new Member of this House, it is quite difficult to work these things out.

[Earl Howe]

I am quite sure that that is a very good general point to make. I am not at all sure that new Members of the House receive enough guidance when they arrive—on a variety of issues, this being one of them.

My noble friend Lord Trefgarne favoured introducing a slot for a fifth Oral Question. As other noble Lords pointed out, that was trialled in the past—I think it was in 2002 to 2004—but not taken forward after that. It was also not supported in the Procedure Committee when its revival was proposed in the last Parliament. I agree with my noble friend Lord Attlee that, rather than adding to our proceedings, the perception was that a fifth Question tended to switch people off, and that the energy and momentum of Question Time, which I think we all appreciate, rather dwindled as a result.

Another point to be made here is that we now often have Urgent Question repeats taken in the slot immediately after Questions. I would be surprised if the House wanted effectively to take six Questions before starting on the day’s business. For similar reasons—and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on this—I would not support extending Question Time to 40 minutes.

My noble friend Lord Trefgarne raised some issues about Private Notice Questions. As my noble friend knows, the system for PNQs has been considered several times without any changes being agreed. I certainly believe that there is a case for bringing forward the deadline by which decisions about PNQs are made. However, I am not sure that there is wide-ranging support for changing the decision-making approach as such, although I know that my noble friend is trying to put this forward for the Procedure Committee’s consideration. The key point here is that the decision on whether to grant a PNQ is one for the Lord Speaker. The Government provide the policy background to assist the Lord Speaker but do not have a say as to whether the PNQ is allowed—and that presupposes that the PNQ relates to a matter of government responsibility. The Companion states:

“The decision … rests with the Lord Speaker, after consultation”.

My noble friend Lord Trefgarne also raised the possibility of having Oral Questions on a Friday. We sit for only around five hours on a Friday if we are to rise at 3 pm, which is generally the time when noble Lords are keen to make tracks homeward. Fridays are a particularly valuable time for noble Lords to discuss Private Members’ Bills and, although it is worth a discussion, I am not convinced that people would want the time to be taken up by Oral Questions.

My noble friend Lord Sherbourne came up with the interesting idea of a countdown approach, with eight minutes per Question. Maybe it should be seven and a half minutes, if we are not to exceed the 30 minutes in total. I was very struck by that idea. The Clock already indicates the time taken during Oral Questions and the current system allows some flexibility in the lengths of those Questions, some of which run short of eight minutes as well as running over the seven minutes. My personal view is that there are some merit in the existing system over the one that my noble friend suggested, because it has flexibility built into it. We have to allow some measure of flexibility. It is always difficult for the Clerk of the Parliaments to judge this but in general he does it very well indeed.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, proposed a general review. I am not personally averse to that idea, although we have reviewed the whole system of Oral Questions in a series of forums, including the Leader’s Group at the start of the last Parliament and in the Procedure Committee on repeated occasions in the course of that Parliament. We have also had several votes on aspects of Questions: for example the issue around reading out Questions in full. I would very much welcome a general conversation about this. I am not sure we need to go as far as having a formal, full review. We have had a number of good ideas put forward this evening and we could encapsulate those in a general conversation of the kind that I am proposing.

My noble friend Lord Trefgarne, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, with whose points I very much agreed on this subject, bemoaned the tendency for supplementary questions to be over-lengthy. The Companion is very clear about this, stating:

“Supplementary questions … should be short and confined to not more than two points”,

and where they are not, the House should make its views heard. Again, I received with sympathy the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that the Leader and Deputy Leader should perhaps be more proactive in the way that we guide the House on this issue. We can only urge noble Lords to respect the guidance in the Companion but, again, there may well be greater scope for new Peers to have this point impressed more firmly upon them. For that matter, Ministers’ replies to supplementaries should also be short and crisp.