Business of the House

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to do the same, because this Bill contains clauses that put an independent body, namely the Electoral Commission, under the control of a Secretary of State. That is an almost unprecedented step and one fraught with danger. I would never wish to see a Secretary of State from a different party having those powers. It is quite wrong to steamroller a Bill of this destructive nature through the House on the eve of Prorogation.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government Chief Whip gave the House no explanation as to why this exceptional action should be taken. I do not know why he did not feel it was necessary to inform Members of the reason for this. Is it because there is not time? I put to him that we are due to prorogue on 28 April—he makes an expression, but he has a lot of days to play with to allow legislation to continue to be debated. I do not think it is acceptable to allow this Bill to go through its stages on one day. The noble Lord has many days to play with between 28 April and the Queen’s Speech on 10 May.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for allowing me to explain why. One of the reasons I did not do so before was because I wanted to hear these questions—of which I was given advanced warning. I take note of what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, as he was a distinguished Chief Whip himself. I have no doubt that things went smoother in his day than they do now. However, we are where we are, and I will do my best.

I should say to the House that, although my noble friend the Leader of the House could not be here—because she is going to a meeting which involves the usual channels and business for the whole House—I also count myself as having responsibilities for the whole House, as well as for my party. So I understand the issue at stake here. In this particular case, this was an agreement with the leaders of the noble Lord’s party and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. In return for having more time than we had allowed for Committee, so that more discussion could be had, it was decided that we would have two days on Report, and that we would also have Third Reading on the same day. This was an agreement between us, and not a question of the Government steamrolling business through the House, as my noble friend Lord Cormack said. In fact, in some ways, I would love to be able to steamroll any business through this House, but, when I start every vote 250 votes behind, I think it is pretty unlikely that I could steamroll much through this House.

The noble Lord made the perfectly valid point that one of the provisions was on the Electoral Commission and its relationship with the Secretary of State. Of course, this is what will come out at Report. There has been plenty of discussion in Committee—in fact, six days of discussion, including some evenings that were quite late—so there has been plenty of talk about that. On Report, noble Lords will be able to vote on exactly that provision, and we will be able to send it back, if necessary, to the other place for Members there to consider it. Not only that, we will then have the opportunity for ping-pong.

In many cases, when we come to the end of a Session, deals are done with the Opposition. They concentrate on the things they think are important, and we schedule the business accordingly. All the business is scheduled in discussion with the usual channels. So I take the noble Lord’s point and agree that this should not be done often. However, in fact, most Third Readings recently have been formal and short, and I hope that we can prove that after this is over. Therefore, in this case, I ask that the Motion be agreed to.