Procedure and Privileges Committee
Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord Moylan
Lord Grocott (Lab)
I am sorry to be accused of being cheap for discussing this with members of staff. I do not pretend that it was a representative sample or represents the majority—I cannot know that; consult the trade unions, perhaps—but I do know as a matter of fact and common sense that, if you are in a job where you start work at a set time in the morning and do not know from day to day what time at night you will finish, it is generally not a popular working practice. I think we should bear that in mind.
My final point is the same as the one the noble Lord, Lord Young, made—
Lord Moylan (Con)
I am genuinely puzzled by the noble Lord focusing on the end of the day and on this point about staff. Members of staff will still start out at a certain point in the morning and still will not know when they are going home at night, unless the 8.30 pm rule is going to be enforced by some means that has not been proposed. They could still be here at 10 pm. So I am genuinely puzzled as to how the noble Lord thinks this will resolve the issue, as opposed to shifting the time.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
If the noble Lord wants to put down an amendment saying that the 8.30 pm rule or the 10 pm rule should be compulsory and there must be a guillotine at that point, that would be worth considering, but I do not want to be too revolutionary.
I will try to conclude now, and I want simply to say this: all changes in this House of any procedural kind have nearly always been ferociously opposed. The one that I still bear the scars of is one we dealt with some years ago: changing Wednesdays and Thursdays. I know that most noble Lords will look blank when I mentioned this, especially if they have come here reasonably recently. Until this change took place, Wednesdays were the day on which general debates took place, along with Private Members’ Bills and non-divisible Motions. On Thursdays, we reverted to government business and— I will say this slowly—we started at 3 pm, finishing at 10 pm. It was not very friendly for people who do not live in London. That change of swapping those two days, which I suggested, was ferociously opposed. I do not think—although I will happily be intervened on if necessary—that there is a soul here now who would say, “Let’s go back to that. Let’s go back to starting at 3 pm on Thursdays and finishing at 10 pm”.