House of Lords: Governance

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, I share the previous speaker’s nervousness, faced with, as we were told, the stars of this House; I feel that I am a minor asteroid, perhaps. I put my name down on the list because I wanted to listen and perhaps ask an occasional question. One thing I have learned is that, if you come to a debate, it is a good idea to put your name down, just in case. That will not prevent me making some points.

Obviously, I am a newcomer—I have been here just over a year. In some ways, perhaps that is an advantage, because I see the House in a different light. The governance of the House is certainly a mystery to me. One problem is that it lies between different words—governance, management, administration—without us being clear as to how the terms differ and what exactly each of them means.

However, I have had the advantage of serving on the Finance Committee for a year, which provides an overall insight into the work of the House; I hope that I have gained something from that. I have also read the useful Library paper; it tells us interesting things and is also interesting for what it does not tell us—I will come to that in a minute. I would be particularly interested to hear whether noble Lords have views on where the Library paper has got it wrong.

I have three specific points to make. First, I am still puzzled by the role and functions of the Chief Operating Officer. I wonder whether there is any news on the appointment. It is notoriously difficult to insert a new post into an established structure because the existing postholders all have their interests and power relationships. Someone coming in, potentially from outside, will always be difficult. It is perhaps literally our own version of “Game of Thrones”, since we have thrones—that is a little joke.

What I have never really understood—perhaps it has never been spelled out sufficiently—is why having this role is a clear criticism of how things were before. I am not aware of anywhere where those criticisms are clearly set out. It would be useful to know what they are. It is also worth noting that the Chief Operating Officer will have the title of “deputy”. To me, that means a role that is equivalent to that of the chief. If someone is a deputy, they are not an assistant or another executive; they are someone who stands in for the chief. When you give someone that title, that is what you mean.

Secondly—and this point is missing from the Library briefing, so perhaps people could expand on it—there is hardly any reference to the usual channels. In truth, one suspects that much of the governance is undertaken through the usual channels, but those of us who are new or somewhat distant do not really get a look in. Decisions are taken but it is never entirely clear where they were taken and who took them.

Thirdly—I have plenty of time—we are told in the Library briefing that there are approximately 670 staff. They provide us with a significant reservoir of knowledge and experience but, judging from the Library briefing, they hardly exist. There is very little reference to the contribution that staff can make to the governance of the House, let alone any reference to the potential role that the trade unions that represent them could play. Perhaps the Senior Deputy Speaker could tell us a bit more about whether their absence from these discussions is an accurate reflection of their absence from any involvement in governance, or whether there is some hidden involvement.

There are two levels to the involvement of staff. In any organisation, managers and senior managers will be reluctant to distribute power to other levels within the organisation. But in a representative organisation where there are members being served, there is immense pressure on senior executives to be the sole channel of communication with the members; they will always want to be the sole means by which the staff express views to the members. I have experienced it in local government and in the trade union movement. I think that it is inevitable but, as Members here, does that serve us well? That is no criticism of the senior staff, but maybe there are ways of opening up channels of communication greater than just with the senior officials.

To conclude, I think that, generally, what we fail to achieve in the information that has been given to us is a distinction between the formal structure of administration and the shadow structure—how things are really run. The first remains a bit of a mystery but has become a bit clearer with these discussions; the second is still totally opaque.