House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the proposals of the group and, like others, extend my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and his colleagues, on such a comprehensive review. I also extend my gratitude to the Leader of the House for keeping to his word and establishing the Leader’s Group. Some of us thought at one time that we might lose it but he has happily redeemed himself.

I will say little on the legislative processes because previous speakers have said far better than I ever could how best the recommendations can be taken forward, but I will comment briefly on working time. The Leader opened the debate by saying that we must make better use of our time. We all like to develop evidence-based policy but one of the issues that struck me was that I do not know how we use our time. I know the number of days that we attend in the year. My noble friend Lord Grocott, probably from his previous government experience, knows about the number of hours that are worked overall, but I do not think the House knows. When we come to review how we are working, we ought to know the number of hours we work and an attempt should be made to divide the number of hours that go to the Government, Back-Benchers and party politics. That would help us to ensure that we are developing evidence-based policies that we fully understand.

Speaking from an opposition point of view, I would say that one of the few things we have is time, or an opportunity to try to influence the way in which time is used, in the Chamber, Grand Committee, and so on. We need to have better knowledge on that. In this instance, I am not sure whether the Government or Back-Benchers are the major gainer, or whether the Opposition lose. The Opposition now seem to be prepared to accept that more legislation should go into Grand Committee but I recall the Leader, when in opposition, being very reluctant indeed to let more legislation go into Grand Committee. He was fearful of losing the opportunity to have Divisions, and I suspect that a similar problem may arise again if we let that go too easily. I would like more facts when we come to address these topics.

On the role of the Lord Speaker, I broadly agree with the experiment we have before us, but I fear that unless somebody is prepared to have a look at the fundamental problem that is causing difficulties in the Chamber, the Lord Speaker, whoever they may be, will be in trouble in the future. We need clarification and we need to get back to the former practice we had when we were in government, where you had a government speaker, then someone from the Opposition and then, if they wanted to come in, someone from the Lib Dems and then a Cross-Bencher. We now have the problem with the coalition Government that there is a misunderstanding, certainly on this side of the House, about whose turn it is next. Should the Government have one speaker or two speakers? My view is that we should go back to the past practice and there should be one speaker only for the Government. I believe it is important that clarity on this is secured fairly soon in this experiment; otherwise, the Speaker, whoever he or she may be, will be in trouble with the House. I earnestly hope that the usual channels, or whoever may be appropriate in this instance, will take an early decision on this.

This is a minor issue, but I welcome the proposal that Select Committees should elect their chairman. I am sorry that the group has not gone a stage further. I would have thought that, having taken that democratic decision and given confidence to the chairman, the chairman should have the role and responsibility of answering directly to the House, on the Floor, whenever the committee produces a report. The chairman should respond to any questions that might arise during the course of the debate on the committee’s reports.

Of course, that would mean that we would no longer need the Chairman of Committees to perform the functions he performs at the moment. Do we really need a Chairman of Committees in the changed circumstances that we are moving into? Should the committee or the usual channels have a look at whether we will need the Chairman of Committees in future, given that we have not done the job we should have done on the Speaker’s role by examining fully what they are doing and where they may go in the future and recognising that there are opportunities for the Lord Speaker to take on more duties in the areas where the Chairman of Committee undertakes a number of functions at the moment? I hope that those issues may be looked at.

One benefit of those proposals would be that we would save a minimum of £150,000 a year. I looked at the section dealing with costs. It is a nice saving for the Leader of the House to secure, if he so wishes. That £150,000 could go towards using what is the most innovative piece of work—if we get it put into place—which is the introduction of post-legislative scrutiny. That would be a major breakthrough for the House in parliamentary terms, and I believe that if we do it, before long, the Commons would, in due course, endeavour to follow on similar lines. It should also be linked with deregulation, which would certainly make the business case for its effectiveness and the cost-effectiveness.

Those are my comments on the report. Overall, I am very pleased with it, but I hope that the two or three points that I have made will be looked at urgently.