Procedure and Privileges Committee: Third Report

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

Your committee’s purpose in bringing this forward is to ensure that public Bills are scrutinised fully during amending stages and that the quality of debate is enhanced, and to emphasise that lengthy and repetitive speeches which do not address the amendment are not conducive to focused debate. I would welcome your Lordships’ endorsement of these proposals, which I believe will overwhelmingly assist the House in its important work. I beg to move.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the committee’s report and I hope it is successful in its implementation, but—there is always a “but” at this point—I do not know quite who is responsible for ensuring that the proposed recommendations are actually enforced. I have a suggestion, which is not a novel one, although it enables me to emit one of my favourite parliamentary phrases: I told you so.

At every stage of the enhancement of the responsibilities of the Lord Speaker, powerful objections have been presented. Fortunately, the House has accepted the recommendations to enhance the role of the Lord Speaker. Today, for example, it is the Lord Speaker’s responsibility to stick to 10 minutes for Questions, to cue in people who wish to contribute remotely, and to signpost our proceedings during the day. All these proposals were strongly opposed at the time, and often came into implementation as a result of quite a narrow vote. I submit that no one is suggesting that any of them should now be rescinded. All of them have improved the way the House operates; they have made our proceedings more intelligible to people watching in the Public Gallery or on television, and no one wants to see us going back on them.

Therefore, I have a suggestion for the committee, or a request, really; I could have put down an amendment, but I would rather that the committee just considered this. The proposed 10-minute and 15-minute limits should be policed—that is probably an offensive word to use in this context—or administered under the responsibility of the Lord Speaker. By all means, we can have flashing lights when the 10 minutes are up, but at the moment it tends to fall to some poor Whip occasionally to stand up to call time on someone’s speech. It would be immediately respected if it was the Lord Speaker. The Lord Speaker stands up and, one hopes, the speaker shuts up—whoever it is. I have not consulted the Lord Speaker, but I do not think he would request any increase in his allowance to take on this extra responsibility, which would be for the benefit of the House.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a more general point. I thank my noble friend for bringing forward the proposals. He said that this was guidance, and not hard and fast. In comparison to procedures in the Commons for Committee stages of a Bill, we save time at later stages, particularly on Report, by being able to almost fly a kite, if I can put it very loosely, in Committee to see whether there is any support for a particular theme on a particular Bill. If we restricted speeches as a matter of course to 10 minutes —albeit my noble friend said that he felt that was quite generous—we could store up problems for later stages if those arguments had not been properly debated in Committee. I ask my noble friend to reflect with the committee on that point—that having more flexibility in this House in Committee has saved time at later stages of a Bill.