Lord Cormack
Main Page: Lord Cormack (Conservative - Life peer)Procedure and Privileges
Lord Cormack Excerpts
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, I have two quick, minor points. First, I am not looking for crowded Lobbies. Like many other Peers, I have gone through health problems that have left me vulnerable and shielding in the recent past, so I do not think we have to have crowded Lobbies. I am also not looking to take two minutes off the time of a Division. We have not come down to debating that, surely. What does it matter if we have to take a little bit longer? Furthermore, I have no criticism of any of the officials who have worked on these schemes.
I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for 20 years, but I have never found out who runs this place. I feel continually bounced. It is as though they have been to the Barnes Wallis bouncing school to get things through your Lordships’ House. This is a classic example. Take Question Time: look at today. We were bounced into the system. There were seven and a half minutes when nobody could participate. Seven and a half minutes was the time for a Question before Covid, so we are wasting the time for scrutiny. Today was a classic example: I could not have planned it better when I saw the Order Paper today.
Voting should be a serious matter in a legislature. It is not an administrative convenience, or something where you tick the box, it is absolutely serious, both for us and the other place. Having served in the other place for nearly three decades, I have always defended the system of voting, going through the Lobbies, and I still do so on the Peers in Schools programme. I say to people, there is a big advantage, probably more so for Government Back-Benchers than for Opposition Back-Benchers, in that the Ministers cannot escape. That is quite a serious issue, believe you me. It is less important here, but it is the case that we have Ministers here who cannot wait to get out of the Chamber, and having discourse and conversation with Ministers is crucial. There are no civil servants present, no praetorian guard; it is a better system, it works, and my experience is that I am prepared to defend it.
If I had seen my noble friend’s amendment, I probably would not have put mine down, but I just thought this is going too far, too fast. I am not seeking to turn the clock back or seeking crowded Lobbies, but we do not have to rush this today. There is a better way of doing it, so I support the noble Lord.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I agree with a very great deal—almost all—of what both my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said. There is a real seething feeling within your Lordships’ House that we are being confronted with decisions in which we have had absolutely no opportunity to participate. We should have had this debate before the committee deliberated, then it could have listened to what had been said and come up with a report that would have reflected much of that—or one hopes it would have. Because I believe that we are on that slippery slope that was referred to on Friday, perhaps inaccurately, when it comes to conducting the affairs of your Lordships’ House.
Suddenly, as we go back to normal, the clerks appear without any wigs or official garb. That might reflect the view of the House, but it does not because we have had no opportunity to comment on it. It is wrong that there have been significant changes in the way we conduct our business and the way our business is conducted by those erudite officials who sit at the Table; it is important that we have an opportunity to comment. Frankly, there is no such opportunity. Although the committees are there—I pay due respect to them—they are not elected as Select Committees in the other place are. I believe it is very important that we do not continue to put the cart before the horse.
On the matter we are discussing today, a portion of my noble friend Lord Gardiner’s speech disturbed me. He spoke about voting being “more accurate” if it was electronic rather than being counted by clerks. This House has survived a few centuries without having electronic counting. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach were right in talking about the advantages of being able to vote, to nobble Ministers and all the rest of it.
I completely accept that we are still living in very strange and potentially dangerous times. That is why my amendment says that we go back to where we were when the Covid crisis is completely under control or over. I am not proposing that we go into the Lobbies next Monday or the Monday of any early forthcoming week. However, I am saying that it is a tried and tested system that has worked well and enabled the House to be collegiate—it has enabled us to talk to each other and to Ministers and shadow Ministers in the Lobbies as we have cast our votes.
I really believe it would be wrong for us to be stampeded by any committee or Senior Deputy Speaker this afternoon. This House has a right to have its say; its say must not be interpreted as a rubber stamp on proposals we have not had a chance to contribute to. I therefore beg my noble friend Lord Gardiner to take this away and talk to his committee and, if the sense of the House during the debate is roughly in line with what my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and I are saying, to think again and come back with a system that can work. It is a temporary system; I have nothing in principle against using the readers, but where they are positioned and how long they are to be used are important. I do not want change by stealth or sloth to take over the running of your Lordships’ House. I beg to move.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, I will start in what is probably a pretty unusual way, by questioning the procedures of the Procedure Committee. I realise that the committee comprises the great and the good, and that by opposing them in this way I may be jeopardising my future career prospects, but I think they have not served the House as well as they might in how this policy has been developed.
As far as I can find from the third report of the Procedure Committee in this Session, the authority for all that has been done derives from its first report. It sat in July, when we were sitting remotely, and its first report said:
“The House of Lords Commission agreed on 15 June that a pass-reader system for voting should be developed … We anticipate putting proposals to the House in the autumn to take decisions over implementing any new system.”
I suggest to the House that what we are facing today is miles beyond taking decisions about implementing a new system to the House. As far as I can see, in all but name, the system has been virtually implemented already. The readers have been positioned in the Division Lobbies and elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, spelt out very accurately the speed with which we will have reached this decision, if we do make it today, which I clearly hope we do not. This is a bit of a behaviour pattern with the Procedure Committee. I could cite one or two other examples, but time is short so I will leave that for another occasion.
Not only have these readers been established but this appears from the current report to be not a temporary arrangement but to have all the trappings of a permanent arrangement. The wording almost gives it away. Paragraph 4 of the report which we are asked to approve today—I hope we will not approve it in its present form—says that:
“In July the House agreed the recommendation of this Committee that PeerHub should remain in use following the resumption of physical sittings in September 2021, as an interim solution pending the rollout of a new voting system involving pass-readers.”
If PeerHub is an interim solution, according to my understanding of the term, by definition, what replaces it will be a permanent solution. That is what we have been presented with, as is reinforced by another part of the report. Paragraph 7 talks about resilience and says of the pass-reading system that:
“The Lords and Commons systems will … be interchangeable, so that if either House temporarily has to sit in the other House’s Chamber, it will be possible to conduct divisions in the other House’s division lobbies without significant disruption.”
Could someone give me a timescale for when it is expected that the other House will sit in here or we will sit in the other House? I am not ready to call it a day yet, but I doubt that this will happen in my lifetime. We are therefore establishing a system which is not interim and, by definition of the wording in the report itself, is something which will be with us for a very long time.
Like my noble friend Lord Rooker and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, I think Divisions in their previous, pre-pandemic form played a very important role in this House. As far as I can see, there are only two occasions on a normal sitting day when the House comes together. The first is with a Division. Quite often people sit here while the wind-ups take place—there is a small element of drama involved—and it is an occasion during the day when the collegiate operation of the House is demonstrated and when the House is generally relatively full.
The other occasion—I am so glad my noble friend Lord Rooker mentioned this—which is a collegiate part of the day, normally well attended and listened to, is Question Time. This has been eviscerated, basically. It is a spectator sport for 90% of the House. If we continue with it in its present form, it should happen in a small committee room somewhere. The only people who can participate are the named people on the list—the full quota is filled up, and none of us are allowed to intervene in the 10 minutes allocated. What is the point of being in Parliament if you are just a spectator? What is the point of being a Member? You might as well sit in the Public Gallery—you are not a participant; you are just part of the audience. The sooner that gets changed, the better.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, of course, by withdrawing this part of the report, the House will continue as it is. We have no sanction to bring to the House for that decision, so I can absolutely confirm to the noble Lord that how we vote now is how we will continue to, until the House chooses to change the current arrangements.
As to the further detail, obviously I think it is very important that, in the consultations and consideration that now need to take place, we have a broad reflection on this matter. It would be unwise, at this moment, to start to rule anything in or out. Today’s debate has shown me that we need to look at this matter and come back to the House, having picked up all the points that have been made today, as well as some further reflections. My door is always proverbially open, and I am very interested in hearing—indeed, I am going to speak at the ACP on Wednesday—and working with other noble Lords from other groups so that we can come to a reasonable consensus and find ourselves in a less difficult place.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, will the noble Lord just consider one thing, which I put forward as a constructive idea: having, at least once a quarter, a session for two or three hours in the Moses Room that he would preside over and to which all Members would be able to come? He could bring us up to speed on things that were under discussion. Members would genuinely feel that they were being consulted, which is terribly important.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am interested in that concept because, obviously, I need to think about ways to ensure that we do not have a similar debate to today’s. This is not because I do not welcome the fact that noble Lords have expressed themselves strongly—they should. To all noble Lords concerned about progress, I say: the very essence of this place is that we are brave and say things that we believe in. That is very important. I will take that back. I will need to ensure that I have the facility of whatever room it is. I welcome noble Lords coming to see not only me but, on other occasions, others so that we can work together constructively and feel that we are doing things for, rather than to, the House, which is probably the impression that I have gained from today.
Lord Cormack
At the end insert, “but that when all the COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted the arrangements for conducting divisions will return to the way they operated before the pandemic”.