Procedure of the House

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I would like to be very brief. I have just three small points; or rather, they are not small, but I will try to put them briefly. Before I do so, I should say that I found the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, very strong and, certainly for me, very convincing.

First, I want to take up what the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, just said, which was reflected by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and a number of other noble Lords. It seems to suggest that a Back-Bench Committee would be devoid of all sympathy for the more esoteric topics that might need to be debated. I think it is rather insulting towards Back-Benchers to suggest that they might not be interested in topics which are rather unusual but personally important to the people proposing them.

The noble Lord the Leader of the House is wedded to the word “balloting”. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has once again said—as I have done before—that we should not be using the word ballot in relation to the present system. It is a lucky dip. If you want a ballot then you should be supporting a Back- Bench committee because such a democratically elected committee, working on democratic principles, would be deciding on what debates should take place by balloting within the committee. That is where you get the ballot. So let us not confuse balloting with lucky dips; that is the present system and I find it quite extraordinary.

Finally, I think the case the noble Lord the Leader of the House has made falls flat when we come to paragraph 14 in the report, when he says that all Back-Benchers must,

“have an equal chance of securing time to debate issues of concern to them, without having to secure the approval of their peers”.

Peer approval is one of the cornerstones of a self-regulating House and I strongly believe that there is a case for setting up a committee where democratically elected Back-Benchers can decide and make proposals as to what they think it is in the broad interests of the House as a whole to listen to when debate slots are available. I know we have a topical debate period but it is very important that a Back-Bench committee should be sensitive to both the more specialised issues that some would want to debate—and they would be taken into consideration—and also to the broader interests of the House. This is to make sure that highly important issues do not go by the board because a lucky dip has decided that they have no place in the debating Chamber.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, is right in what he says. We are only asking for a very modest proposal to be accepted by the House. We are asking for an experimental period of one parliamentary Session. We are not suggesting that, during that period, the present system should be completely abandoned. So the House will have the opportunity, as a self-regulating House, to look at the two systems working side by side.

In answer to my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, of course there should be a form of election for this committee. I would favour the various groups— the Labour group, the Cross-Benchers, the Bishops—nominating members to sit on this committee. That would be a tidy and sensible way of doing it. The committee would then have the opportunity to listen to the proposals put to it.

It is nonsense that we have had grave international situations that have not been debated in this House. We had to wait ages for the Arab spring debate. My noble friend Lord Higgins talked about the euro crisis. If this House, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, is to be truly relevant to our nation and to its problems, it has to have the opportunity, in a timely and opportune manner, to debate the issues that are concerning people. Occasionally, these may be esoteric: I do not believe that a properly constituted Back-Bench committee would choose only grand international events to debate. Of course it should not, and I believe it would not. However, I do think we should give it a chance. We are a self-regulating House; let us regulate ourselves in this way in accordance with the recommendations of the Goodlad committee.

The greatest thing about this House, in my experience, is that it is collegiate in a way that the other place is not. We sit together on the Long Table and talk. We are not talking about debates that will end in votes. Let us discuss where we should focus our attention. Let us see how this group of colleagues works together. If at the end of the year the committee has not produced the goods, we will abandon the experiment. I do not believe that if you start an experiment you have to continue it in perpetuity; of course you do not. An experiment is an experiment, and I beg the House to give this one a chance.

[Lord Richard]

Perhaps I may detain your Lordships for just two minutes. I am in the very unusual position of agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is not something that happens daily in this House, and it certainly did not happen over reform of your Lordships’ House. However, I am bound to say that I came to this debate in a wholly neutral frame of mind. I was not sure whether I liked the idea or whether I did not. One argument seems to be absolutely critical, and for me conclusive. When I was Leader of the Opposition in this House, when I was Leader of the House and indeed since, it struck me—as I suspect it has struck every other Leader—that the one great gap in our procedures is that one cannot raise an urgent issue. It is almost impossible. If one wants to secure a debate in this House on an issue such as the Arab spring or North Korea’s nuclear policy, unless the Government are prepared to give it time, one cannot get it. That is wrong. A parliamentary assembly ought to have a procedure whereby issues that are clearly urgent and topical are capable of being discussed. That gap is partially—only partially—filled by the proposals for this experiment. For me that is the conclusive argument. It fills a gap in the procedures of our House that has existed for many years, and we would then be in a position, like other parliamentary assemblies, to deal with urgent, topical questions, which at the moment we are not.