Procedure and Privileges Committee
Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Stoneham of Droxford
The Senior Deputy Speaker
My Lords, as has been said, your Lordships have covered a lot of ground. Unless there are any strong objections, and I am looking at the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip—
The Senior Deputy Speaker
I suggest that after the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip has spoken—I am not sure if the Opposition Chief Whip wishes to speak—the House should come to some resolution.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
I thank the House. I accept that a lot of the arguments have been made, but I want to say a few words given my experience acting as a Chief Whip for my group in this House and working with the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Kennedy, and others during my term of office.
The essential issue is how we can do our job of scrutinising government business and legislation better. I sat through every single one of those late sittings in January and March, and I thought that they were unworkable for the future. We very nearly accepted a proposal last year to change the working hours. The reason we did not, as others have said, was that those who came from the north and Scotland were not prepared to vote for an early start on Monday. That is why the Procedure Committee decided to look at this issue again, to see whether there was wider support for having different working hours on other days of the week. Monday is not included today, and that is why I think there will be wider support than there was then.
I will make a number of points from my own experience. The fact is that it is only a minority of the House who actually do the detailed work on legislation; they are the people who stay late at night. There is not exactly a huge demand in this House for working late. I spend all my time as a Whip trying to get my people to stay, and the only time I have success with the Government Chief Whip is when the Benches behind him have had enough themselves because they have stayed late. I do not think this helps scrutiny, because we are doing it late at night, there are limited numbers of us, and there is no point having a vote after dinner. With all respect to the Cross Benches, whose expertise I value, the parties assume that they are going to be here in very limited numbers after dinner. That is the reality. The House is missing out on that expertise; in my experience, the people of expertise do not want to stay late. Those who have jobs outside the House also do not want to stay late. I have had several jobs outside the House during my 10 years here, and I welcome that expertise, knowledge and experience coming into the House, but the people who are trying to do other jobs do not want to be here at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock at night.
Procedure and Privileges Committee
Debate between Lord Gardiner of Kimble and Lord Stoneham of Droxford
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
Well, I accept that there is an argument there, because introducing the virtual speaker is done by the Lord Speaker in other proceedings. But this is a particular difficulty in Questions, with the pace of Question Time. You have a decision being made on the Front Bench—I do not agree with that; I think it should be made by the Lord Speaker—and then another decision being made by the Lord Speaker on the Woolsack. There is a distance between them, so there is a practical problem.
I think we should look at it and I certainly support the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that we should look at this in the round and look at the powers of the Lord Speaker. We actually had a vote on it; that is the only difficulty we have had. Maybe we should look at it again and have another vote—but I think there are difficulties with this particular proposal. Apart from that, having made my point in favour of the virtual voting system, I am supportive of the report as to where we are.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord Gardiner of Kimble)
My Lords, this has certainly been an intriguing debate, and I am not surprised. One of the things that I consider is that it is impossible to satisfy all your Lordships. I could go from A to Z with the perfectly respectable arguments that have been deployed, but I think the best I can seek to do is try to answer some of the conundrums raised, as I am indeed in the House’s hands.
First, I want to be very clear that I stand here on behalf of your Lordships. There was a question about the administration. The undoubtedly important and essential work it does on our behalf is absolutely clear to me, but it is this House, this Chamber and the work of your Lordships that is the raison d’être for us all. I am very clear that these proposals are all designed to help your Lordships flourish; that is their purpose.
I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that we want a fair system. One of the points raised relates to the intricacies of this. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, can of course—as do all exemplary Deputy Speakers—get up when the virtual eligible speaker is the very first Member to contribute and always the very first; it is a very easy option to get up at the very beginning and call whoever it may be. What this part of the report before your Lordships seeks to do is precisely to bring Statements and Urgent Questions in line with other aspects where the eligible Member is not automatically the first Peer to have the opportunity to contribute. I have to say that some eligible Peers have expressed to me that they feel uncomfortable being asked to be the first noble Lord to speak. In the intricacy of the proposal before your Lordships, that is precisely the point.
I want also to say something about permanent change. I understand there has been a good knockabout in terms of the speed with which your Lordships and this House propose change. I do not see that what is proposed here is always about permanent change. I said in my opening remarks, particularly in the case of the pass readers, that the committee has a responsibility, as with everything, to keep these matters under review. If this does not work and if there are problems, I will be the very first to want to come back to your Lordships and say, with the deepest of regret, that I do not think this is working for the House. I put that on record, as I did at the beginning, and say it now. I can give the absolute assurance that the committee will be looking to see how this prospers if your Lordships wish it to proceed. I should also say, just to correct the record, that proxy voting in the other place has not operated since pass readers were introduced there.
I very much hope that noble Lords who have arrived here will see the House pre pandemic in so many respects in terms of that dynamic and that discourse. We are proposing changing an iPad to a pass reader. We were giving our names to a clerk with an iPad, but one of the problems that the clerks have all mentioned to me privately is that, in their experience, there has been what I would call “rider error” with the iPads. Indeed, when I was a Whip I could not work out how one of my flock who I knew simply never came to the House suddenly appeared. It was because there had been rider error in terms of the Division. Lord Hayhoe and Baroness Heyhoe Flint both had a hey-ho about them, but they did not have anything else in common. All of these things relate to the accuracy and the speed that the noble Lord referred to.
I think we have all done remarkably in terms of using PeerHub and all of those matters. I am not a great machine man myself, but nearly 30 Peers will often appear in the Table Office having difficulty in using PeerHub. That is one of the reasons why many Divisions actually take longer and why the result does take and has taken longer. So all our proposals have been designed to create accuracy and speed; it has not been about cost. It has been about seeing whether there are ways in which we can assist the House. That is the background to it.
On the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and other noble Lords spoke about—indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, raised this—my recall is that on 13 July last year the House divided on the matter of the regulation by the Woolsack. The House voted 376 to 112. That is not 17 years. As I say, we have had this discourse on three occasions in this Session. I do not think that that suggests that these matters have not been aired and put to your Lordships.
The other point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, was that the same person would be on the Woolsack. Well, we all know that we have a roster. The Lord Speaker will not be on the Woolsack for all Statements—quite rightly when one has exemplary Deputy Speakers. There was a slight suggestion that I used a strange word in mentioning the “configuration” of the usual channels. However, compared with the other place we have a very isolated person on the Woolsack and part of the dynamic is ensuring going round the House in this self-regulation. It is the dynamic of, as we have all noticed, noble Lords and Baronesses in this part of the House. So when I use the word “configuration” I mean that none of these things are impossible, but they are some of the practical issues that I raised in my opening remarks but perhaps did not explain so carefully or fully.