Procedure and Privileges Committee

Lord Gardiner of Kimble Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

That the Report from the Select Committee Leave of Absence, Sifting of proposed negative instruments under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 and amendments to the SLSC Terms of Reference (6th Report, HL Paper 228) be agreed to.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)]

My Lords, the report recommends two sets of changes to the House. The first relates to the leave of absence scheme and the second to the sifting of proposed negative instruments by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee.

I turn first to the proposed small change to the leave of absence scheme. In applying to the Clerk of the Parliaments for leave of absence, Members are currently required to state that they have a “reasonable expectation” of return, to specify a reason for requesting the leave of absence, and to give a

“date by which they expect to return”.

This last requirement has caused some difficulty for Members who genuinely do not know when they will be in a position to return. Cases may include a Member seeking leave of absence for medical treatment or to take on caring responsibilities for a family member.

The change proposed by the committee would allow a Member who is not able to specify a date instead to explain the

“circumstances which will allow their return”.

The committee intends to look further at the leave of absence scheme in the autumn, and I would be happy to talk to any Member who had thoughts on how it could be improved. For now, I hope that the House will support this adjustment.

The report also contains proposals relating to the sifting of proposed negative instruments laid under the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 and their scrutiny by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. These proposals mirror the arrangements that operated under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020.

The report speaks for itself and I will not detain the House unnecessarily. However, I want to place on record my considerable thanks to the members of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, who are content to take on this extra scrutiny and to the excellent officials who serve the committee.

I would like to be very clear that the laying of negative instruments during Recess would not reduce the House’s ability to scrutinise them as the scrutiny clock would not start until the two Houses were sitting again. The advantage of allowing proposed negative instruments to be laid during recesses is that it would enable staff working for the committee to continue their work in recesses in order to provide papers immediately after the return of the House. I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak so I shall be brief. I endorse many of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.

As the House knows well, we are entering a period when there is going to be a great deal more debate about the future and the nature of the composition of the membership of this House, and that will extend beyond the next general election. When I read, as all Members have done, in the recent report by the Speaker’s committee on the composition of the House that the House of Commons Select Committee is currently investigating this House then I think there is all the more reason why we ourselves should have a full and proper discussion and not wait until the next election, so I fully endorse the Senior Deputy Speaker’s suggestion that we return to this in the autumn.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. On what he said about “uncharted territory”, my view is that the noble Lord’s committee has acquired expertise on these matters of sifting extremely quickly, and I place on record my gratitude to previous members and current members and staff for their considerable work in this regard.

On the question of leave of absence, we have had three very helpful contributions. The work that will be getting under way, which I mentioned in prefacing this debate, is precisely for the reasons that have been articulated. We need to get this right and it needs to be appropriate. The reference regarding leave of absence is to “temporary circumstances”. One can interpret “temporary” in different ways, and we have heard various examples of rather longer periods of temporary circumstance when a Member takes leave of absence.

To answer some questions, I knew the answer to the first one, which is that 38 Members are currently on leave of absence, but then a helpful note was passed to me with a figure that I did not know, which is that 18 Members are on leave of absence for more than two years. So those are the two figures.

On future dialogue, as I have said, I very much welcome contributions, submissions or one-to-one meetings with any Members who have particular thoughts on this matter. There is an opportunity for your Lordships’ Select Committee to look at this in the autumn, because we want to make sure that it is contemporary and correct. We are of course mindful that there is the ability for some of our Members to be away for the reasons that we all know and, I hope, to come back and make a strong contribution—sometimes because of the experience they have had in other disciplines and tasks.

We have heard very helpful comments from Members of the House today. In the meantime, I commend the report to the House.

Motion agreed.