Committee of Selection

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Lords Chamber

I again wish my noble friend Lord Gardiner success, but I hope that we can begin to have a House that is more transparent, where things are more easily justified, and where vast numbers of Motions are not taken through on the nod without any prior notice on a Thursday morning.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House by repeating the arguments that my noble friend Lord Cormack has made and with which I agree completely. I certainly do not want to make any difficulty for my noble friend Lord Gardiner on his first day out, but I repeat one thing, to pay tribute to his predecessor, now our Lord Speaker, for the way in which he has worked to help the committees—and I know that from being a member of the committee of chairs which, as Deputy Lord Speaker, the present Lord Speaker initiated and which has been very helpful. I know that making a change in this place, as my noble friend is about to find out, is quite a fight against quite a formidable bureaucracy—and I think that great progress has been made.

However, I have a question for my noble friend. I find it quite difficult to understand, given that we are being asked to appoint a Committee of Selection and that those members have not actually been appointed, how they were able to make these recommendations and how they were able to meet. Are we going to adjourn while they meet and then bring forward these recommendations? I know that my noble friend will no doubt say that it is because of the changeover being changed to the beginning of the year, and everyone knew they were going to be reappointed, but I do not really think that that is good enough.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Cormack about the Conduct Committee. I certainly worry about its composition, because any committee that decided that Valuing Everyone—which I have done, so I have no interest to declare—should be made compulsory, when it was not made compulsory in the House of Commons, is quite extraordinary. How, when it deliberated, did that committee come to a conclusion that it would make it compulsory without considering what it would do in the event that people were unable to comply with that? My noble friend Lord Gardiner may very well say that the House approved that. I shall not detain your Lordships by explaining how little time we were given to approve and debate it; in fact, we were given little opportunity, in part because of the circumstances that we find ourselves in.

It is very worrying to me that the institution of the hybrid House is being used to ram things through without proper discussion. It is perfectly clear that there is something wrong with the composition of the Conduct Committee when they can make such ill-judged recommendations to this House, which have brought us into complete ridicule—not least in respect of the pursuit, which I believe is still continuing, of the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. The commissioner was quoted in the newspapers—I assume misquoted—as saying that she would pursue this and that anyone who spoke to the newspapers would be in contempt of Parliament. That says to me that the stage is now laughing at the audience, and the country is laughing at us as a result. I regret the fact that we do not have an opportunity to consider the composition of that committee, because that committee has let the place down.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, would like to speak.