House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hughes of Woodside]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Filkin. Perhaps I may pick up on one simple point made by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. I share his view about the timetabling of Bills. Of course, I have to remind him that that did not start in the Blair years. As far as I know, the timetabling of government Bills was available in the 1970s, although it was called the guillotine Motion at that time. The guillotine Motion was massaged to become a timetabling Motion, which was a much more respectable way to put it. But that is neither here nor there.

I should like to refer to a few matters as regards what we should do in this House. First, although the House of Lords voted down, by 233 votes to 169 votes the proposition that the Lord Speaker should take over the role of the Leader of House in terms of arbitrating at Question Time, I believe that that is worth looking at again. At the time, some people said that that would mean the end of self-regulation. I do not think that that is the case. If the Lord Speaker were to take over those responsibilities, it would require even more discipline from Members to make sure that her decision was accepted swiftly, promptly and with grace.

Secondly, the experiment carried out by the previous Government to have a dedicated, say monthly, Question Time for three Questions to be put to a particular Minister of a department was a valuable exercise. In terms of accountability and keeping the House and the public informed, it is something which we should pursue. I hope that the Leader of the House will regard that as a modest but nevertheless important part of things that we might do.

The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, referred to the way in which legislation is rushed and comes to this House—in effect, to Parliament—without proper scrutiny. In the old days, most legislation was preceded by a White Paper. People said that that was not enough and that there should be more consultation; so we had the Green Paper, which was fine. I do not know what has happened to that process because it seems to have disappeared entirely.

One of the most serious problems that we face in Parliament is that problems require instant solutions. All Governments are concerned about the little items at the end of the news, which may say, “Problem solved; problem solved”. But if it says, “Problem not solved”, they worry that that will bring disgrace on the Government. That will not do. The media have a lot of responsibility for this.

Finally, inevitably, the question has arisen about the size of the House. Those who think that there will be an incremental change are like the ostriches with their heads in the sand. There is no possibility of agreement on major reform and I do not think that any political group in this House will give up its share of the House. My noble friend Lord Haskel suggested that legislation would be necessary. That may be so but if we start off on the basis of trying to get a regional balance, a national balance, an ethnic balance and so on, it will be an unending process. A lot of ideas have come forward in this short debate. I end on perhaps a novel note regarding the size of the House. Several Members have said that the House is too large. It struck me that maybe the House is not too large: perhaps we simply have too many active Members.