Procedure and Privileges

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will just make a short intervention. When I heard about this, I raised the exact point on which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, finished. I was a Whip for a long time and, if you do not have Tellers, two people must be prepared to second you or you could have one person calling repeated Divisions in the House. Monitoring that Division may be a Motion about which we could argue, but the idea that one person can divide the House again and again, without having at least two people to back them up, is one that somebody will eventually use. We have all seen that pressure. Of all the issues in front of us, that concerns me most. We must try to address this or at least get some guarantee of some control. We must think twice about this.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, something has clearly gone wrong here, despite all the excellent work of the Procedure and Privileges Committee and the staff in the last year or so during these dramatic and difficult circumstances. This is a time to think more carefully. The outward, visible sign of a rather sudden change is the sweeping away of the Pugin furniture in the Prince’s Chamber, which is, after all, an iconic space in the Palace of Westminster. It is not to be treated like a furniture store, where you can just push things aside, but that is of less importance.

Of more importance is what my noble friends Lord Taylor and Lord Forsyth, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, are rightly saying. Question Time has clearly been gutted, as was demonstrated vividly today by the wasted space and time. This is not the kind of scrutiny that your Lordships’ House or the other place should be applying—indeed, it is not scrutiny at all. The scrutiny of this House has really passed to the committees for the moment, because the Chamber cannot organise the right kind of questioning and pressing that people expect and we should be performing.

This is supposed to be a collegiate place. I have been here for longer than some—25 years—and its collegiate quality is precious, particularly now, in an age when everything is becoming extreme, with divisiveness, bitterness, casual cutting comments and no feeling of understanding and compromise. At this time, the collegiate spirit here is vital and anything we do to undermine it will cost us dearly and be greatly regretted. These are divisive times, so let us do our best to counter them and give an example to those outside the Chamber and to the nation that we can work together.

[Lord Goodlad (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that any reservations expressed about the report are not taken as an aspersion on the good faith of the committee—quite the reverse—and I hope the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, accepts them as such. I find myself very much on all fours with what my noble friend Lord Cormack said, not for the first time and probably not for the last. I hanker for the halcyon days, the many decades when we went through the Division Lobbies, squaring, taking people by the elbow, having our own elbows taken. Those days will return.

On a serious note, and here I echo what was briefly alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, a number of noble Lords will have received letters since the start of the pandemic from the Department of Health saying that they are thought to be clinically extremely vulnerable and at highest risk of becoming very unwell if they catch Covid-19. They are advised to avoid large numbers of people in enclosed spaces. That clearly rules out the Division Lobbies and queueing up in the Prince’s Chamber with some noble Lords who do not wear face masks, or even if they did. I therefore find myself in agreement with those who have said that we ought to postpone doing any of this until Covid is well behind us and stick to the well-tried PeerHub system.