Trusts (Capital and Income) Bill [HL]

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I cannot think what that would be. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, went back to the BBC report. Let me say this for the record: the Government have not seen the report. No member of the Government has seen it, and no civil servant has seen it. The Government have no view as to the recommendations on the bishops or anybody else, other than those that were listed in the draft Bill or the White Paper. There is no collusion between the Joint Committee of both Houses and the Government in any shape or form. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, can nod in agreement, and I am sure he will. When the report is published, it will be as much of a surprise to me as to my colleagues in government. Apart from anything else, I am very much looking forward to it.

I assure the House that over the next few months there will be plenty of opportunities to debate and discuss the future of this House at considerable length in many different fora. All those matters will be taken seriously. I did not hear my noble friend Lord Forsyth, but I am sure it was a quip that I would not necessarily have been able to respond to very quickly. I can assure noble Lords that there will be a debate before the Bill is published. I will, of course, work with the usual channels on when that will be.

I shall finish with this point. I do not wish to pre-empt the Queen’s Speech, but it has been known for some time that the Government intend to legislate in this area. The Joint Committee may well say, “Under no circumstances should you do this”. It may say, “You should do this, but here are some things you may wish to consider”. I have no idea. The Government will wish to take that into account, and will do so after the publication of the report.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, is not the question of how many sitting days we have before Prorogation rather relevant to this? Presumably the noble Lord knows on how many days the House will sit in the week beginning 30 April. Am I right that we do not know, or does everybody know?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, it really does depend on the progress of business on the date of Prorogation. We will be taking a view on that shortly. On the question of when the House will sit, by not sitting in the week of 16 April we are saving the taxpayer £500,000. That is quite a considerable amount of money. As I have said, there will be plenty of opportunities to debate the committee report and the whole subject of Lords reform on many occasions in the months ahead.