House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, at a rough count, I think that we spend 15% to 20% of our time on debates. The specific question I want to address is this: are our debates as effective as they could be and are we getting as much out of the time we spend on them as we should? My feeling over the past 10-odd years that I have been here is that we are not. I shall make four or five suggestions for improving the way we organise our debates.

The question to ask is: what are these debates for? Sometimes a debate is intended to allow your Lordships to express their opinions, as in the case of assisted dying. Speakers were given barely a minute or two, which did not allow anyone to develop an argument. Such debates do not allow the development of argumentative propositions; they are largely expressions of sentiment. Alternatively, debates are intended to raise major issues which are being debated in the country at large, or because they will be appearing on the horizon in five or 10 years’ time and we would like to see them being discussed. If that is so, the question then is what happens at the end of such debates. A fascinating bunch of ideas will have been circulated and one hopes that the Minister will have made a note of them, but what next? Occasionally, and nowadays more frequently, some of us will receive a letter from the Minister setting out a response to what a Peer said in a debate, but has any action been taken? If the ideas are worth while, they should be acted upon, and if they are not worth while, Peers should be told why they are not.

The first point I want to make is that we need to debate the debate itself. We must ask how to make sure that our debates and the ideas they generate are effective. A way to do that would be to look at how we select the topics for debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, pointed out in a very powerful speech, it is important to note that Back Benchers do have ideas about issues that they would like to see being debated. I am not particularly happy about the term “Back Bencher” because many of us do a lot of active things as well. Nevertheless, as I say, a large number of Back Benchers have ideas about issues that they would like to debate. It is quite important to find a way of introducing a systematic and regularised method of allowing Back Benchers to have a say in the choice of topics for debate.

Another point to bear in mind is that when topics are selected for debate, they are largely presented in the form of a general proposition. On many occasions when I have looked at whether I want to put my name down to speak in a debate, I have not been entirely clear about what the proposer of the debate wants to discuss. The result is that the topic is a kind of peg upon which we can hang our different ideas, so the debate tends to lack focus. It would be helpful if every suggestion of a topic for debate were to be followed by two or three lines indicating what it is that is supposed to be discussed—or at least two or three specific questions. As a professor, I am used to seeing questions being asked; then I know which one I am answering. It would be useful to have a topic for debate followed by two or three specific questions that the initiator of the debate would like to see discussed.

My third point relating to our debates concerns the fact that sometimes Peers have only one, two or three minutes in which to speak. It happens because the number of speakers in the list is very large, and rightly so in the case of some important topics. It is also because sometimes a debate cannot be given any more time than what has already been allocated. How do we deal with that kind of situation? We cannot cap the number of speakers by saying, “First come, first served”. That would be rather silly because many people who sign up late might have something profound and interesting to say—although it is likely that they would not be able to make their points in only one or two minutes. As I said earlier, in debates on subjects like assisted dying, Peers put their names down to speak because they want to make a point. They want people outside this place and other noble Lords to know where they stand. Would it not be possible, as I gather happens in some jurisdictions, to have a system where everyone is allowed to put their names down but in some cases the speeches are “taken as delivered”? They could be printed in Hansard even though they might not have been delivered on the Floor of the House. That would profoundly change the meaning of Hansard and what it is for, but it should be possible to find a way in which everyone can put their name down to speak while making sure that the speaking time is not so short as to make the whole thing ridiculous.

My last point has to do with the composition of the House. Over the years we have grown so large that it has become extremely difficult to organise debates or indeed any kind of sensible discussion about important issues. More and more Peers continue to be appointed in an effort to reflect in this place the results of elections to the House of Commons. I want to make two points very quickly. First, it is absolutely right that the results of the election in the House of Commons should be reflected here in some way, but they could be reflected not only positively, as we do, by increasing the number of Peers but negatively by reducing the number of Peers. If a party is defeated in the election, it ought to be possible for us to say, “As a result of the election, party A has lost a certain proportion of seats and therefore will lose a certain proportion of Members here, and we should leave it to the party concerned to nominate who it would like to see leave the House of Lords”.

Many of us who are past 75 or about to be 75 would be more than happy to leave the House of Lords if we were convinced that we would be replaced by people from within our own party or by people sharing our professional expertise. If there was an imaginative alternative—not in terms of money; hardly any of us would be tempted or induced by the offer of one or two years’ allowance—such as people being able to keep their title, come into the building, have a cup of tea and entertain their guests, I should think that many people would be more than happy to accept the invitation to leave. We should think of this as well as other imaginative ways in which people could be persuaded to recognise that 75 years of age or being in the House for 10 or 15 years is just about the limit of their contribution.

Procedure of the House: Select Committee Report

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I welcome the report. It is absolutely right to say that there is an anomaly in our membership of your Lordships' House. I cannot think of any institution to which one can belong without having the right to resign. Therefore, it is absolutely proper that the anomaly should be set right and that one should be allowed to resign after a certain period.

My worry is about the way in which people can be persuaded to take voluntary retirement. I may be being puritanical here, but to talk of payment does not accord with the public mood or with the spirit in which your Lordships' House is run. It has been a privilege for many of us to belong to this place. It has been a privilege over the years to propose amendments, to participate in debates and, we hope, to contribute something to the well-being of this great country. Then to be told that in order to leave you must be paid a certain amount of money is like asking: “What is your price to get out of this place?” I, for one, have no price, because I am not for sale.

I should have thought that if, on leaving, Members of your Lordships’ House were to be given access to dining facilities, the Library and research—a great privilege for which people would pay hundreds of thousands of pounds—that privilege would be enough to persuade a person to say, “I am happy to take voluntary retirement”. One can also put it in a more public spirited manner. We are 700 plus. It is necessary to reduce the number. There is no other way of reducing the number than either persuading people to take voluntary retirement or bringing in retrospective primary legislation which says that anyone over 75 or anyone who had been here for 10 years should go.

If people were told it is a matter of public service—the same spirit of public service which brought us here and kept us going—that one should take voluntary retirement after having served in your Lordships’ House for 10 or 15 years, that should be enough to persuade people. I would rather appeal to moral and public spirit than financial incentives. However, if we decide at some point to bring in financial incentives, I very much hope that we will not call it either a pension or a resettlement payment. Neither of these terms applies to the role that we have played. We have not been paid. We have only been given allowances—and only those who wanted to take allowances did so. To be told that when we leave we will get a pension is not only incoherent with the spirit in which we have been here but would also look very bad indeed outside this great House.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I briefly point out to the Chairman of Committees and the Leader of the House that the root of this problem lies in the coalition agreement, which says that members will be appointed to this place in order to reflect the balance of votes obtained at the general election. If that policy is continued the membership of this House will increase to well over 1,000 and if, at a subsequent election, there is another change of government and they apply the same policy, it would grow exponentially.

I make this point because of something I read in the Times today. My noble friend Lord Ashdown, writing about reform of this place repeated something which he has said in our debates—that the political parties have appointed Members to the House in order to obtain a majority to get their legislation through. That is simply not true. This House has always operated on the basis that there should be no party with an overall majority. For that reason, it operates in the distinctive way in which it does.

To those who argue for some kind of financial incentive to leave this House, I respectfully point out that it is a funny way of trying to get and restore trust in Parliament: to inflate the size of Parliament and then ask the taxpayers to find the money to deal with the consequences.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I greatly welcome the report. It is extremely insightful and makes a whole set of useful recommendations about pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny as well as about Question Time. Therefore, I shall concentrate not on what I agree with but on five or six areas where the report is either silent or does not go far enough.

I start with something which is extremely simple. It has to do with the quaint and sometimes arcane language in which we speak about ourselves. If I had the choice, I would propose to your Lordships' House that that the expression “your Lordships' House” could easily, and should, be got rid of. It is a mouthful and it is time-consuming. I am told that if we were to drop it we would save about nine and a half minutes a day. It is also incorrect, because it is not simply your Lordships' House; the speaker is part of it.

I would also propose to the House that we dispense with such expressions as “the noble and learned Lord” and “the noble and gallant Lord”. Everyone is gallant in his or her own way and everyone is learned. At one level, ever since I came to this House, I have thought that we academics who write huge tomes are no less learned than lawyers, QCs and judges, but we are not included in the expression “noble and learned”. My simple suggestion is that it might not be a bad idea to simplify our language and to make it more relevant to our times.

My second suggestion has to do with debates. The topics of debate are by and large a matter of party choice, chance or first come, first served. Sometimes, some extremely important issues, either because they are topical or because they are reflective and deal with the long-term trends of our country, get neglected. If I had the time, I would list half a dozen topics on which I would like to see major debates in this wonderful House.

I therefore greatly welcome the idea of a Back-Bench business committee. However, such a committee could easily monopolise the job of selecting topics. Therefore, if it is going to be set up, as I think it should, it should be bound by clearly laid down rules. The report mentions one of them: that those who have not asked a Question for Short Debate in the current Session or ever before should be given preference. The committee should also be required to choose topics of debate from those that are proposed by Members, rather than suo moto.

Many of us spend a lot of time trying to think through subjects for debate and make constructive suggestions. It is therefore very disappointing not to get well considered responses. Even when a response is made in the winding-up speech by the Minister, it is made in passing, it is fleeting, and is disposed of in about 10 or 15 seconds. It is very important that the Minister should be required to make a considered written response to all the substantial points made, and that these should either be published in Hansard, or made available in the Library.

I sometimes find it very disappointing that the debate is limited to either two minutes, or sometimes even to one minute. I ask myself what on earth one is doing speaking for about a minute, composing no more than 10 sentences. There must be some way in which we can have proper debates in which a minimum of at least three minutes is given to the speaker. That could be achieved in several ways: the number of speakers could be limited, or those who have written out their speeches and are going to read them out might simply submit copies which would be published in Hansard, but need not be orally delivered in your Lordships’ House. If they are easily available they can easily be included in Hansard.

My third suggestion is to do with Select Committees. It is very important—and I can say this from some experience on the Select Committee on Human Rights—that no one should be able to serve on a Select Committee for more than three or a maximum of four years. I have seen Select Committees where people have been there for five, six or seven years, and the result is that they tend to get dominated by one or two members, and there is no circulation of fresh blood and fresh ideas.

My fourth suggestion has to do with the State Opening of Parliament. We have been talking a great deal about the primacy of the House of Commons. That primacy is not reflected in the State Opening of Parliament. I and many people outside your Lordships’ House find it very strange that someone as dignified as the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, at the time of the State Opening of Parliament, has to stand without the Bar and listen to the speech being delivered. There must be a better way of doing things. For example, the State Opening of Parliament, at which wearing robes should not be required, could take place in Westminster Hall.

My final suggestion, which, although it might appear rather trivial, is emotionally quite important, because it bonds our House. I would have said “your Lordships’ House” but having criticised the expression I will say “our House”. When a member of your Lordships’ House dies, it is simply mentioned as a news item. I think that this is unfortunate. We must find ways of observing at least a minute’s silence. I am told—by no less an authority than the Leader of the House—that there is one death every fourteen days. That would mean that a maximum of 22 or 23 deaths a year would be announced, and 23 minutes of standing for your Lordships’ House is not too difficult an exercise to undertake. I should also suggest that before a minute’s silence, it should not be too difficult for the Leader of the House to pay tribute on behalf of the House. There is always a memorial service, but that memorial service is organised either by the family or the party to which the deceased belonged. No collective tribute is paid by your Lordships’ House, and it is sad that when someone who has served this House with distinction for umpteen number of years, disappears simply unmourned, unnoticed and unrespected.