House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I begin with a word of thanks to the Front Bench opposite for giving us this debate today, which has proved to be an excellent event. I express my gratitude to the Lord Speaker for her speech to the Hansard Society that acted as a spur for a number of us to come together and work in a variety of ways. I personally thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, for leading the small committee of which I had the pleasure and privilege to be a member, which spent much of its time focusing on the issue of how we use our time.

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, will be pleased to hear that I am not indignant today—in fact, quite the opposite. I hope only that he will not be indignant when the noble Lord the Leader announces that we might be looking to work on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings in future; I remind him that when we were members together in the Leader’s Group under Lord Williams of Mostyn, it was the Lib Dems who opposed working on Thursday mornings when we tried to effect that change. I hope that the coalition has sorted itself out on that issue and there will not be any problems between its members. That is an area where, if there are to be changes of that nature, a poll among Members of the House would probably be appropriate.

Most of the issues that I wanted to touch on have already been dealt with in some depth. There is not much, frankly, on which I can add a great deal more. I can, however, introduce something new regarding the Lord Speaker’s role. The sub-committee that I was on recommended modest changes: the powers presently held by the Front Bench should be transferred to the Lord Speaker but without the right of the Lord Speaker to call individuals, merely with the right to indicate which group is to speak. I support that view.

Noble Lords will be interested to hear that during the course of 2009 my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours carried out extensive consultation among Members of the House. The result indicated that 241 were in favour of transferring responsibility from the Front Bench to the Lord Speaker, 58 were against and 18 were neutral on the issue. That was in 2009, and since then we have seen further changes take place. I share the view that Question Time in particular has become rather more unruly than in previous years, and perhaps it is time that we had a look at this. I am pleased to hear that the terms of reference will include a review of the role of the Lord Speaker. I hope that it will be confirmed that they will extend to seeing whether there is a possibility of transferring responsibility from the Front Bench to the Lord Speaker along the lines that I have just described.

I support the view, which has been expressed by my noble friend Lord Rooker in particular, that in areas where we may have worries we should be prepared to embrace trials or experiments for certain periods. I should be grateful if the Minister would respond on whether the Government are willing to run some trials. One issue that we will have to address at some point—it has been the subject of a number of Questions recently—is the appropriateness of post-legislative scrutiny. Again, a growing number are in favour of it, and this House ought to give it a trial and see how we can make it work. If we are looking for candidates for post-legislative scrutiny, my Government’s attempt at a Licensing Act in 2003 might be a worthy candidate for close examination and possible review.

Another topic that came up in the group overseen by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and which has given rise to a number of Questions, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Cope, is the idea of a Leader’s session. Again, this has some history and some background to it. When we had a Leader’s Group back in 2002-03, the idea came from the then Leader of the House. Lord Williams offered to do a half-hour session on business and any other issues that might arise. That is the source of the recommendation in the paper of the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It is worth reviewing again and I would welcome a comment from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on this. We had the recent experiment of Secretaries of State taking Questions for half an hour specifically on their areas of departmental responsibility. I think that this was an experiment that ran up to the end of the previous Parliament. I presume that they have now been abandoned. If I have got that wrong, perhaps the Minister will put me right.

An alternative that would help us all would be seriously to consider a Leader’s session of about 20 minutes or half an hour—I would prefer half an hour. I think it would be primarily about the way that business was being run, but additionally it would give Members an opportunity to raise other topics in the Chamber where they see no alternative way to raise such questions under the way that business is presently run. I have been one of those who wanted to raise topics and have invariably ended up with the Chairman of Committees being responsible for trying to reply. Given that he has limited areas of authority, my Questions have had to go back to the government of the day.

We now need to give serious consideration to having a Leader’s session. It would be helpful in terms of business, but more particularly it might release some of the tensions that have been building up and which we have been witnessing during the course of the four Questions each day, when people are increasingly seen to be frustrated at not being able to get their view heard. I hope that the Minister will say whether that will be looked at.

With regard to other issues that we find difficult to raise, it is good to see that the Institute for Government is doing such sterling work. I suggest to those who have some influence within that organisation that they might try to persuade it to give some thought to the following: instead of merely looking at the Commons separately and then maybe looking at activities within the Lords, perhaps there is a case for taking an overall view of the way that the two Houses interrelate in a range of areas. I find it interesting that soon we will be looking to local authorities to find savings in the order of 25 per cent to 30 per cent. I am sure that the Government will be encouraging them to look at closer working relationships with their neighbours in the same way that they have been talking about encouraging the police to work more closely with different areas. Similarly, perhaps there is a case for closer working relationships in the way that we run our business here.

When I first came here, we had separate IT operations for the Commons and the Lords. That set-up was quite impractical for dealing with the way that technology developed. We then had to pass an Act of Parliament to bring the two together and have a combined operation, which was the right thing to do. There is a range of other activities that take place and affect staff and Members in both the Commons and the Lords where, if we are encouraging others in different parts of society to come together, work better and effect efficiencies, there is a case for doing something similar within the Palace of Westminster between the Lords and the Commons. Again, though, there is no mechanism for doing that. I look to outsiders to explore the possibility, or maybe, if we get a Leader’s Question Time and nothing is happening on that front, I will get the opportunity to raise such a Question with him then. At the moment, there is nowhere else where it can be raised.

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[Lord McNally]

I am very grateful. I hope that, from now on, when some people—I will not name them, but we know who they are—start shouting and screaming from those Benches, we can mention that, in the first week in June, the Labour Party had 42 per cent of questions, as against 19 per cent for the Conservatives and 16 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. In the second week, it was 48 per cent for the Labour Party—well done—21 per cent for the Conservatives and 13 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. In the third week, it was 40 per cent for Labour, 19 per cent for the Conservatives and 16 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. In the fourth week, it was 44 per cent for the Labour Party, 18 per cent for the Conservatives and 18 per cent for the Liberal Democrats. I hope that, as this Parliament settles down, we can get away from that Millwall supporters’ attitude.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Is the noble Lord being indignant?

[Lord McNally]

No, I was just getting to the nice bit of my speech. I just thought that we could get something on the record, especially as there has been so much praise for the Library, which is busy producing statistics for both sides, as it should.

I welcome the assurance from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that the Opposition intend to play a constructive role. We share his approach that the test must be the overall effectiveness of this House. I will return to that. As to how the House will work in the circumstances of the coalition, again, we have to see how things go. It is a different circumstance, but there have been other times when this House has been effective before reform. If people go to the memoirs of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, they will find that she constantly complained about the defeats that the Government suffered in the House of Lords.