Procedure of the House

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, if we start sending more things to Committees off the Floor of the House, we will soon discover that variant of Parkinson’s Law: talk expands to fill the time provided.

I would far prefer us to go back to what we used to do not that many years ago, which was to vote in Committee on the principle of amendments—even if they were defective, we looked at the principle. At Report, we tidied them up, which took much less time. That is why debates on Report are much more focused and we are not allowed to do the to and froing. Third Reading was purely confined to sorting out the typos, the essential little mistakes, not dealing with anything of principle. If we started to go back to that system, with voting in Committee, we would have far more abbreviated proceedings later on. All we are doing is talking it through in Committee and again at Report.

We have to use that as a brake on the deluge of legislation that is coming on us these days. If we give more time for talking, we will just get more to talk about.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I shall talk just briefly about my amendment on Written Answers during times when the House is not sitting. We have talked about Written Answers long and hard already today. Unfortunately, holding the Government to account does not stop when the House is not sitting. I am not an abuser of the system, and I am sorry that some people are, but I think that it would be a very good idea to be able to table more Questions during the recesses, and to be able to get Answers back rather more frequently than we do at the moment, which I think is once every five weeks in the Summer Recess. I am therefore very grateful to the Chairman of Committees for offering to take it back to the committee, and I hope that we can take it forward on that basis.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, while we are all on this matter, which we very rarely are, may I take the opportunity to point out another reason why we are actually where we are? It is not simply the volume of legislation, or the number of pages going on the statute book. In fact, it is the number of Peers speaking, the length of time that they speak and the number of times that they repeat themselves on the same issue. There are notable offenders, and it is for members of their parties or groups to bring them to task. However, if we were all aware of the fact that once a point has been well made and accepted, there is no need to make it again, and that when 12 people want to make it, it is really only necessary to hear from two of them at the most, we would then save a very great deal of time.

Being a hereditary Peer, perhaps I might just cast noble Lords’ minds back to the time when there were over 1,100 Members of this House—far more than there are now. Far fewer of them attended than attend now, and the only people who came to speak were people who knew a great deal about their subjects and knew that they would be listened to. The result was that the speakers’ lists were about a third of the length that they are now, and that the speeches were about three times as good. If we could exercise a little self-restraint and not talk too often about things that have caught our fancy the previous week—or if, when we did so, we could keep it short and not do it too often—we would get a lot done much quicker than we do now.