Procedure of the House (Proposal 3)

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Cormack

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I agree very much with my noble friend, but there is one thing that we could do—and I hesitate to mention this. There is one practice in the Commons that speeds it up: that the Member asking a Question gets up and says “Number One”, “Number Two” or “Number Three” or whatever. As the Question is printed on the Order Paper; as you can put texts on the television that viewers can read; and as every Member of your Lordships’ House can read and has an Order Paper, that is the way one could speed things up. However, in my view there is absolutely no justification for this particular suggestion.

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. Clearly, we want to make the House intelligible to as many people as possible. However, given that we have Questions one month in advance on our green sheet and, on the day, we get two sheets with the Questions on, nobody should be in any doubt as to what Question we are going to be asking. Given that the Questions are well known in advance, the solution is to have the text on the television. That would achieve the two things that we want to achieve: first, to better inform the public; and, secondly, not to do the very opposite of what we are trying to do in many of these Motions, which is to save time. This goes completely contrary to the thrust of them.

Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report

Debate between Lord Empey and Lord Cormack

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I was not going to say anything but I have been slightly provoked into doing so by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston. It is very dangerous to talk of membership of this House as being a job. It is not a job; it is a calling to public service. It is also very dangerous to talk in terms of attendance as measuring the effectiveness or otherwise of a Member of your Lordships’ House. There are so many Members in this place—it was a sub-theme of our debate last week that this was the case—who are here because of what they have achieved outside and because of the knowledge, experience and expertise that they can bring to our proceedings. That is the essence of your Lordships’ House.

Noble Lords will know that I do not wish to see significant change in the manner of composition of this House. I, of course, accept that the number of Members is an issue and I welcome the thoughtful and constructive comments of my noble friend Lord Hunt and his committee. Clearly these things have to be examined by all of us. It has to be recognised that at some time each one of us should seek leave of absence. It is not retirement, nor should it be provided with a consolation prize of dining rights and Library access, even though it might, as a courtesy, be good to have that. We have to face up to these issues. We certainly should not be dictated to by arbitrary retirement ages. There are those in the House, far, far, older than I, who make a magnificent contribution to our proceedings, sometimes regularly and sometimes less so, but when they speak the House listens. One has only to cite the example of the remarkable speech last week of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, to illustrate that fact. This is an issue that must be dealt with extremely carefully and sensitively. Please let none of us be seduced into talking of our presence here as holding a job.

[Lord Empey]

A few years ago, it was decided in Northern Ireland to reduce the number of councils and to reduce the number of councillors. At that stage, it was advanced that, in order to encourage older members to retire, a financial reward would be worked out on the basis of £1,000 per year of service, or something to that effect. Local government reform was very slow to come about and eventually, about a year ago, it stalled, and that coincided with the financial restraints that we are all facing. The effect of that was that the old councils were re-elected last month, and those councillors who were being encouraged to leave hung on like grim death in the hope that the financial rewards would be forthcoming. My concern is that while the idea that there may be a reward in respect of retirement is out there, who in their right mind, except the most public spirited, is going to come forward?

I have to say to the Chairman of Committees that that issue needs to be resolved immediately because as long as it is possible for people to believe that they will receive a financial reward, there is a high prospect that they will not put their names in the hat. That issue needs resolving immediately otherwise the effect of this discussion will be that nobody will come forward.