Business of the House

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am happy to give way to my noble friend if he wishes to finish his point, but I think he made it pretty clearly. The noble Baroness suggests that this has all got to be done today. Why? We could sit tomorrow or we could continue on Monday. There is no reason at all why it should all be done today.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I really want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.

[Lord True (Con)]

Will the noble Lord give way?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

No, I am making an intervention. It is not for me to give way to the noble Lord, much though I am sure we will be happy to hear from him in due course. The point I want to make to the noble Lord is that this House has dealt with emergency legislation in one day. I refer him to the Human Reproductive Cloning Bill, which I took through this House on 26 November 2001, with a Second Reading and Committee in one day. It was to stop a scientist from another country who was coming to the UK to carry out human cloning, and legislation was needed urgently. We took it in one day. This legislation is needed urgently because we do not have a functioning Executive, we have the most critical situation this country has faced in decades and the Commons has had to do what it did. That is why it is urgent. Surely the noble Lord can see that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am surprised that the noble Countess did not intervene, given the length of that intervention from the noble Lord. He will recall that the Bill that he referred to was agreed by the usual channels, which is the normal way in which we proceed. I realise that because I was in the House of Commons I may have got used to its procedures, but I have been used to Bills being presented with the name of the sponsor. There is no sponsor on this Bill. The noble Baroness said that it was being presented for its First Reading, but the Bill appears to be an orphan. Who is the sponsor for this Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Noakes]

I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, would be looking forward to hearing from me. The amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper gives reasons for not supporting the Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, which are as follows:

“that the Prime Minister has already indicated her intention to ask for a delay”;

and that this House “considers it unnecessary”—as well as “undesirable and unprecedented”—“to apply exceptional procedures”. I shall speak to those elements in a moment.

I wish that the House had committed this Motion to be debated in Committee because we could have had a more natural, free-flowing discussion about some of the issues raised so far—all of which have been brought to an end by the closure Motion, which I believe is undesirable. However, the House chose not to go that way; that leaves a number of unanswered questions, which we still need to explore, about exactly how the procedures will work today. I am quite unclear about how we proceed between Second Reading and Committee, given that there has to be an interval to allow for amendments to be processed and made available to noble Lords, and for noble Lords to consider them.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, going back to the Bill that I took through in a day, clearly, gaps were put in. There was a gap of an hour or so between Second Reading and Committee to allow people to draft amendments and have them printed. The same could happen between that stage and Report. It is perfectly proper and easy to make this work in one day.

[Baroness Noakes]

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, makes a very good point but the Bill he refers to was undertaken with the full co-operation of the usual channels; because they co-operate, they set out how those things will work. That has not happened in this case, as I understand it, and therefore this House is quite unaware of what will happen when we get to the end of Second Reading.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, the temptation to live past glories is ever-present in your Lordships’ House but the point is that the Bill I am talking about had its contentious points: I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who is not here in his place, and Baroness Blatch, who I think noble Lords opposite will recall with a great deal of respect, were very much opposed to it. Perhaps the noble Baroness was there when we did it; the point I am making is that we were not unanimous on that Bill.

[Baroness Noakes]

The point remains that the Bill was processed with the full agreement of the usual channels. The fact that it was not supported by all Members of the House is irrelevant. The usual channels arrange for the orderly business in this place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Robathan]

Thank you; I accept that. First, we are here to revise legislation. Although we do not get it perfectly right, we do it quite well—much better than the other place, in which I sat for 23 years. That is to the credit of the House of Lords. The second reason we are here is to act as a check—it can only be a minor one—on the tyranny of the elected House. We should be very concerned about this being pushed through the way it is. We legislate in haste; we will repent at leisure.

Other noble Lords—I am looking at two or three on the Benches opposite—were here for the Dangerous Dogs Act. After it was passed, in haste, everybody said that it was a terrible mistake because it was not properly thought through, or examined by Parliament, Select Committees or the clerks. It was not properly examined at all, and what we are doing here is the same. I am not even talking specifically about the Bill that will come up later. I am talking about the whole process by which we pass legislation. The way this procedure has been brought forward is an abuse of Parliament.

The debate has been closed down by one Liberal Democrat, one Labour Peer and at least two Cross-Benchers. Be careful what you wish for because, guess what, if this is to be accepted practice, it will be used against every party, every person on their feet, and every person who wants to raise an issue, by the Government, by the Opposition and by whomsoever. I appeal to noble Lords: of course we all have strong feelings about this but let us remember that the procedures of this House are here for a purpose. They are not perfect, and here I take issue with my noble friend Lord Ridley who said that he did not accept that they were arcane. Actually, some of them are, but, without a dictionary, I do not know if “arcane” is necessarily that appalling.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, the noble Lord has talked a lot about the procedures of this House. However, going back over many years, the House does know when a filibuster is going on and takes action to stop it. The noble Lord talks about the tyranny of the other place. It is usually tyranny of Governments that we talk about. The reason the Commons has had to do this is that, as he said, we have a shambolic Government who have completely lost control of the most important issue that this nation has faced for many decades. The Commons has had to take control. We should surely at least respect that by giving the Bill an opportunity to have a Second Reading. The noble Lord talks about the role of this House. The role of this House is not to filibuster.

[Lord Robathan]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I agree: it should not be about filibustering. However, I and a great many other people believe we are acting as a check on the wrong procedure down the other end. The noble Lord was here in January 2011. I wonder whether he took part in the filibuster I looked up, which tried to stop the referendum on parliamentary voting. Did he not? Perhaps he was on the Government Benches at the time? No, he would not have been. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, formerly Deputy Prime Minister, who is not in his place, was apparently very active in it. So I am afraid that filibusters—as the noble Lord suggests this might be—are not unique to any particular party. We should go by constitutional precedent, proper convention—