House of Lords: Questions

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to congratulate my noble friend on initiating this debate. Although I do not agree with everything that he said, I very much agree with his final words when he asked for a general review of Oral Questions. I think that there is a general view in your Lordships’ House that that would be a very good thing. I hope that the noble Earl, and indeed the Chairman of Committees, will be sympathetic. Certainly from the Opposition’s point of view, we would be very sympathetic to a more general discussion which allows Members of the House to give their views.

I think that this is the first opportunity I have had to welcome the noble Earl, Lord Howe, to his new role as Deputy Leader of the House. I very much look forward to our further debates.

My noble friend was absolutely right to talk about the importance of Oral Questions. We start the day with them and the House is full, unlike the other place. At their best, Oral Questions are excellent, with very sharp questions posed to Ministers on key issues of the day. We are not always at our best at Oral Questions, but when we are, we should be very proud of them. We should do everything we can to protect the best aspects of them and try to eradicate the worst.

I must confess to being a serial offender as regards the number of Oral Questions that I try to table. However, I say to the noble Earl that I think my role as an opposition spokesman on health is to try to put the Opposition’s point of view across, and Oral Questions are one of the best ways I can do it. Although I think we should come in on supplementaries, we should not come in on every supplementary. As I have discussed with my noble friend, in the main we try to wait, allow noble Lords to ask questions and come in later on. I think that is the best way of doing it. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, was a role model in that regard in that he did not come in on every Question when in opposition. It was all the more telling when he did come in because of that, so we have some good role models in this respect.

I know some noble Lords feel that queuing is not the best way to tackle this issue. But the fact is you know that if you want to table an Oral Question, you turn up early and that if three noble Lords are there, you go away. It seems to me that is a rough and ready system but at least it is fair, except in recesses. I will come back to that point. One can also have the most delightful conversations. On such an occasion, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and I talked about the merits of Birmingham Opera, which is having a reception here tonight at this very time. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, would also be at that reception if we were not debating this issue.

The problem with a ballot is essentially that it can be manipulated. Not only would it be a lottery but we would risk getting either Questions that are not very topical or such a system would be manipulated one way or another through slates or the usual channels. We need to avoid that at all costs.

However, other issues around this are very relevant. I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, about Private Notice Questions. The Companion is pretty ambiguous about the advice that the Lord Speaker is given on whether or not to accept a Private Notice Question. It is clear that the advice is very conservative, if I can use that word to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. Essentially, the Lord Speaker rarely allows Private Notice Questions. We are much more dependent on Mr Speaker in the other place, who is much more generous in allowing Urgent Questions, which are then repeated as 10-minute Questions here. I do not think that is right. Surely, if we really want to make Oral Statements here as effective as possible, we should be anxious to allow topical Questions to be tabled. I hope that any review will look at what the Companion says about issuing advice to the Lord Speaker.

As regards the clock running down, I think what has been proposed is a good idea but the risk is that Ministers will play to the clock and, if they simply look at the clock, will spin out their remarks so that another supplementary cannot be asked. That brings me to the big question of long-winded questions and answers. I was a Minister for 10 years and what I most enjoyed were long-winded supplementaries. First, it gave you time to think of an answer or to find it in your file. Secondly, you could choose which bit of that long-winded question to answer. However, I dreaded the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, getting up because she asked questions that lasted about 10 seconds. Usually, they were factual questions and there was no time to find out the answer. My noble friend Lady Farrington has developed her own capacity to do that and it is very telling. Why on earth do noble Lords feel the need to ask such long-winded questions? I just do not understand it. It is as if they have come here, seen what goes on, then almost ignore it as, willy-nilly, they are going to make a speech. I say to the noble Lords on the Government Front Bench that they are also somewhat guilty of this. Instead of giving a 70-word first Answer, why not make it 30 words? That would get the House in a better frame of mind. Of course, the reason why government Ministers do not do that is because they know that if they gave a short Answer, it would encourage a lot more questions. I am afraid I have to inform the House that Ministers do not like lots of questions. They love long-winded questions but if we were to sharpen up our practice we would sort this out.

As regards whether we should have more Oral Questions, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, very much supported the move to five Oral Questions, which I think lasted 40 minutes. However, that did not work and lots of noble Lords left after 30 minutes. There was a feeling that somehow we had lost the sharpness, so we went back to having four Oral Questions. I like the idea of having five Oral Questions in 30 minutes, but the deal has to be that we completely rule out long-winded questions and answers. It would be interesting to try that out for a few weeks to see whether we could make it work.

There is a problem as regards what happens during Oral Questions. Apart from the issue of Front Bench opposition interventions, I am concerned by some noble Lords’ behaviour during Oral Questions. When noble Lords who may not be very experienced attempt to get up and ask a supplementary question, they can be drowned out by more experienced and assertive noble Lords. When I first came to your Lordships’ House in 1997, noble Lords rather quaintly tended to give way to other noble Lords. I am afraid that that does not happen very often now. It also counts against female Members of this House. There are, of course, some feisty Members who do not have any problems at all but, frankly, some of the behaviour is tantamount to bullying. We have not been able to agree to give authority to the Lord Speaker to intervene. We rely on the Leader and the Deputy Leader to do so. I held that role for two years and know that is not always an easy one. If we will not give the Lord Speaker the authority to intervene, as a self-regulating House we are entitled to ask noble Lords to behave rather more appropriately. I encourage the Leader and the Deputy Leader to be somewhat more assertive in intervening on bad behaviour and long-winded questions and answers. I think they would find that the House would generally support them.

Overall, this has been an absolutely splendid debate. I hope the noble Earl will say that, like us, he is sympathetic to a more general review. I am sure that many noble Lords would be willing to take part in discussions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I welcome what the noble Earl has been saying. I have a suggestion to make. There is a problem in recess where clearly the queuing is always stacked in favour of people who live in London. If one wanted to pilot a different approach, why not pilot it during recess periods so that we could see how it worked and whether there were some more general lessons to be learned? It is just a suggestion.

[Earl Howe]

I think that is a very creative idea. Worries have been expressed this evening about what rules apply during recess and what counts as a topical Question, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, pointed out. However, I do not think that we are likely to find total unanimity on the idea of a ballot—as the contributions this evening have demonstrated—but if there is one message that has come through it is that we should think through this idea rather more carefully, as there might be some underlying balloting system that would work.

The benefit of the present system is that it gives the House four weeks’ notice of upcoming Questions. The one thing we do not want to do is add complexity to the system or reduce the notice period to, say, two weeks, as I think my noble friend Lord Sherbourne suggested. However, I am in favour of the principle of what my noble friend wants to achieve and I would not wish to discourage him from putting his ideas to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, as chairman of the Procedure Committee.

The pros and cons of the queuing system have been referred to. For clarity, I say that if there is a slot available, noble Lords do not have to queue; they can take that slot on the spot. But if no slot is available and one is to become available, as they do four weeks ahead of the period being considered, it is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, hence the queue that tends to form. I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, was lucky in the first instance that he referred to and slightly unlucky in the latter instance.