Arrangement of Business

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I want to raise my concern—and I think there is concern across the House—regarding the preparedness of the Procurement Bill, which is an extremely important Bill that should have considerable support across the whole House. We have had 300 government amendments, many of which are not technical. I invite all noble Lords to look at today’s Marshalled List for the Grand Committee. Amendments have been tabled late, and groups of government amendments were still be sorted out over the weekend. Yesterday, the Government sent out another list, apologising for the ongoing issues, thanking Members for their patience, inserting the missing amendments and removing the duplicate ones. I fail to see the benefit of publishing a Bill in such a poor state.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

This is a Lords starter Bill, yet on the first day in Committee so many government amendments are needed. Surely it would have been better for the Bill to be published when it was in a fit state to be published and then only at that point would the Second Reading and other stages take place.

I have discussed my frustration with the usual channels and we have found a way forward today. I am grateful to the Government Chief Whip for that, but this is no way to proceed generally. I ask the Government Chief Whip to go back, speak to his colleagues in government and government departments and suggest to them that, irrespective of whether a Bill would be generally supported by the whole House or is a more controversial aspect of the Government’s programme, it is unacceptable for it to be brought forward in this state. Every Bill brought forward in this state will have major problems here. The House deserves to be treated with respect, and the handling of the Procurement Bill fails to do that. It is just not what we expect. I ask the Government to look at this again because this Bill will quite rightly have a very difficult time in this House because of the way the House has been treated. I will leave it there. I shall not talk about the Schools Bill, which is in an equally parlous state. I await the Government’s response.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, in many respects I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. I apologise to the House, and particularly to some of the government Front-Benchers who were working all weekend, as was my office, who have received the list of amendments. I agree with the noble Lord that this is not the way things should be done. I accept that. It is not totally without precedent, but the fact that it was done before is not a good excuse.

As I said to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, last week, I have taken more than 200 government amendments through and the way we had to do it then and the way we are doing it now is by talking to the usual channels. I am grateful to the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham. We have decided to stop at the point where there is a particular problem for the Opposition Front Bench so that they have more time to prepare for the group, so we are going to do only the first three groups. It might help the whole House to get the Marshalled List a day earlier so that the majority of the amendments with their numbers would be made available to Members earlier so we would know the order in which they are coming. That would still allow manuscript amendments and other additional amendments later. That can be taken forward in the Procedure Committee.

We will do only three groups today. The usual channels have agreed that that is the way to go forward. I agree with the noble Lord that this is not an ideal way to proceed. I will certainly take the message back to other parts of government. I can only apologise again to him and to the House.