Procedure and Privileges Committee
Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I do not think anyone in this House would accuse the noble Lord of paranoia, because he is held in very high respect. However, frankly, whatever the consultation process—maybe only 49 people replied, although in aggregate there were many more—surely we have the information here today. We have a report and we are obviously going to have a very long debate. What is wrong with deciding on this matter today? I do not understand why the consultation is deemed to be so at fault that it negates the whole operation.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
As the noble Lord will know, my amendment is based on the idea that we should have change in this House. The House can cope with change—of course it can—but it needs to be less precipitate than this process. The general view on the referendum in Scotland, for example, is that, having had one, we should not have another for 10 or 20 years —once in a generation. I am not suggesting for a moment that this House operates on that sort of principle, but I am suggesting that there has been an impatience to get to this point. Why did we not have a debate today on these proposals and then vote? Why did we not have options?
The report was sent to us after the decision had been made to mandate the chairman of the committee to propose a Motion for change here. That is the wrong way to go about these things. It is mainly because of this that I am on my feet today; I would like to think that we could do things better. We can get agreement in this House for change—we will need some, because it is not functioning particularly well at the moment, if I may say so. Therefore, we ought to have an acknowledgement that the membership of the House is here to contribute to this change and not to be ridden roughshod over.
I fear that this proposal—coming so soon after the House decided that it would like to go back to the hours it had before Covid—is a mistake. I think it will lead to bad feeling in the House and make it a less pleasant, congenial and sociable place to work. Of course it is a place of business and earnest intent, but we are earnest because we are a collegiate body in our thinking. I think of all the assets of this House; it has expertise and people of talent, but it does things together. That is why I propose a different way of going about change, in this case and in future.
In the meantime, I back my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment, because I believe it is the only way in which we can bring the Procedure and Privileges Committee to realise that there is a way of going about these processes.