Procedure and Privileges

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of the Leader of the House and others about the way in which the staff rose to the challenge of introducing a century and a half of change into your Lordships’ House in about three weeks. That was most impressive, and they deserve all our thanks.

I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who I am rather distressed to see is not in his place, who said that we should return as if there had been no pandemic and then think about whether we want to make any changes. No organisation does that. That seems to be the worst of all worlds, whatever changes you then decide to make. I am very pleased we have not adopted that approach.

Of the changes that are being proposed, which take account of a changed ability to do things, the two most significant are: first, the continuing support we are going to give to disabled people; and, secondly, electronic voting. As far as allowing disabled people to participate in your Lordships’ House virtually in future goes, this is a tremendous improvement to the way we do things. Over a long period, we have said that we are very keen that your Lordships’ House should have disabled Members, but then made it impossible, in effect, for them to participate in many cases. Allowing them to participate in all cases where they are physically able to do so from their own homes is clearly an advantage.

The only wrinkle I put on what has already been agreed is that I hope that when the group that looks at these things does so, it will adopt a pretty wide definition of what is allowable for people who are disabled to continue to participate. In today’s debate two particular categories of people have been mentioned, beyond those who are already covered by the disability scheme.

The first is those who are clinically extremely vulnerable as we come out of the worst effects of Covid but have not left it. It would seem perverse if people who are clinically extremely vulnerable now, but do not have a long-term disability and have been able to participate for the last 18 months, should be denied that ability for a few months until they are allowed to come back.

I also think we should look further at the suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about short-term disability. She gave an example of her own case. Another case might be if a noble Lord on the Government Front Bench broke their leg in the middle of a Bill. Why should that Minister not be able to participate from home when they are still perfectly capable intellectually but have a short-term disability? We need to look at that as part of what is, in general terms, a very welcome change.

Secondly, on electronic voting, it is a huge improvement to be contemplating not voting through the Lobbies. Many of us have spent many of the happiest hours of our lives chatting to chums shuffling through the Lobbies, but the alleged benefits of being able to nobble Ministers and others going through the Lobbies is, frankly, greatly overdone. Having the continuing use of modern technology to vote, thus saving time, is a great boon.

I hope, though, that we will allow voting to take place in Millbank House, for the reasons my noble friend Lady Brinton and others gave. I hope we will allow people to use their passes and pass readers in the Committee Corridor so that we do not have a whole corridor of people traipsing down from a committee, sometimes several times during the committee, then traipsing back up again. It will save a lot of time.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, made a suggestion I had not heard before but has a lot to recommend it: that we should be able to vote in Portcullis House. It is quite difficult getting back from Portcullis House anyway, but many Members of your Lordships’ House go there for meetings of all-party groups and party groups, and other meetings. It would make our lives easier without undermining any principle of being on the estate at the point at which votes are taken.

I note the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, about the problems we might have in defining working areas in September and sanctions relating to that. I would just point out to him that we are talking about a couple of weeks, we hope, during which this system will operate. I would not have thought it would cause too many problems.

I had a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, when he said we might have missed one or two tricks in what we are planning to do. Personally, I think there is a lot to recommend the proposals made during our debate on 20 May to allow people who live several hours away to participate in non-legislative business. Again, it would broaden the number of people that could speak and I do not think it would undermine any principle of democracy that your Lordships’ House rightly holds dear. We have had that debate, however, in the commission and elsewhere. I think the case simply has not been won, but that is a pity.

On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, my interest is to return to spontaneity because, as a leader, if I get up I can certainly trump people behind me, as I have found out to their fury in the past. Therefore, I have no personal benefit in having a speakers’ list. I should also say, without going too far into the substance of this, that the idea that Ministers have been obfuscating in their answers just over the last 18 months is, to put it mildly, stretching the point.

The important thing about what we do next is that we have asked people what they think. The noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Grocott, described this as an opinion poll. It is as though you had a general election and, instead of having a vote, you had an opinion poll in which 40 million people voted, because over 500 people voted in this opinion poll. As to whether they knew what they were doing or whether we debated or thought about it, I remind your Lordships that we had had a full day’s debate on 20 May in which this issue was discussed at some length, among many others. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, probably remembers it.

We have also had 15 months of actually operating the system. It is not a new system. People are not wondering how it might work; we know how it has worked up until now. People have formed a view about whether they think it was beneficial. In my view, this is a perfectly valid ballot of Members. I agree that it is contentious, but that is why the Procedure Committee decided to have the ballot in the first place—because opinion was sharply divided in that committee and probably more evenly balanced than in your Lordships’ House as a whole. It is slightly odd that Members of your Lordships’ House object to being asked their views on something, rather than allowing a committee to push something forward on its evenly balanced view.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, also talked about the report from the Procedure Committee. We will debate that at some length next week, and there is certainly no question of issues not being debated in your Lordships’ House. But the one thing I really took issue with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about was the suggestion that, in some way, the operation of that committee is a denial of natural justice. I just do not believe that is the case. If anybody who sat through the debate on the case of Lord Lester of Herne Hill believes that was natural justice and what we have now is not, then I am afraid their definition of natural justice is very different from mine.

There are questions about what exactly we do with Question Time. The proposal from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, for example, was really interesting and one we should consider.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, falls if you accept that the ballot we had stands, so I do not intend to discuss that.

The final amendment was from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I have considerable sympathy with the view that we start somewhat earlier, for the reasons he gave. However, his amendment does only part of the job. I would support it to a greater extend if it were coupled with a firm proposal that the House finish earlier as a matter of course if we start earlier. At present, we sit early but, as last night’s midnight finish demonstrated, we are sitting longer and still at ridiculously late hours. However, this is a live and important issue, and I hope, given the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others expressed, that this is something that the Procedure Committee will return to after the summer, whatever the outcome of the vote we have this afternoon.

That principle of returning to things applies to everything else. Nothing is set in stone. We must continue to evolve, as we have done in recent months, by experience. By accepting the proposals before us, we are taking the best of what we have done differently over recent months without closing the door to further improvements. I commend the report to the House.