Arrangement of Business

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, my noble friend says what I hear from all sides of the House. There is a real anxiety, not just from those who have been Members of another place but also from those who have seen what happens there, that proper scrutiny is curtailed by a Government having control of the knife, as others opposite did in a Labour Government, or a guillotine. That is not the best way to run business. It is not the way that we choose to run business here. We came close to having to seek assistance from the House earlier this year. The House took a decision of which we can be proud that we want to move ahead without having guillotines in the House. As I said at the beginning, the corollary to that is that the House has to be self-regulating in the way that it carries through business. I feel, as I am sure does every Member of the House here, that that is the right way to go ahead; to have proper scrutiny but within a timeframe that is reasonable to deliver government business.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, all noble Lords will know the difficulties that are caused every time that one has to absent oneself from this place to attend to other business. There is such a continuous current of affairs going on in the House that every time one absents oneself as a matter of necessity one is apt to miss something important that one would have wished to participate in. When this happens in the middle of a term it is obviously one’s own responsibility, but when time is taken out of a recess in the way that has just been announced, the Chief Whip should be in no doubt as to the great difficulty that it causes.

As far as one is able, one arranges one’s other business to take place in the Recess. I arranged a major international conference for which I am responsible in the week before we were scheduled to return on 10 October. There is no way that I can cancel this conference. I shall have to miss the business in that week. I do not know at this stage how far the business will be business in which I wanted to take a major interest. It causes great difficulty when one is forced to miss business in the House because of other arrangements that one has made in the reasonable expectation that the dates will be free from House business. I do not know what soundings the Chief Whip took but she did not take soundings from me. I want her to be in no doubt as to the difficulty that these changes of arrangement can cause.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I am perfectly in sympathy with the noble Lord Low. He is a hardworking Member of this House and certainly makes every best effort to be here for business. This is not like the stories that appeared in the press overnight—I do not know where they came from, as I certainly did not give any information to the press, and I state that very clearly for those who are tweeting this; I hope they will carry the rebuttal. This is not a matter of Peers being fed up—I shall not use the word that they used on the websites—with having to come back a week early because they were going to miss holidays or going skiing. That is the allegation being made.

Peers take their work here very seriously, and I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Low, said. That is why I was making every best effort to avoid doing this. It is why I sought to come to agreements with the Opposition to avoid coming back a week early, but the Opposition found it impossible to agree to put other business in Grand Committee, which would have meant that we did not have to take another week. In fact, on one Bill that was offered to us in February to go into Grand Committee, before Whitsun the Opposition said that they had to change their mind. I do not blame them for that—I appreciate that political imperatives from the Leader of the Opposition can change things—but that is now public and not a matter for the usual channels. Certainly, every best effort was made by the Government to avoid this step but, regrettably, it is necessary to come back early October.