Procedure of the House

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I will speak on the same theme. As a previous member of a Leader’s Group, I want first to make a plea to the Chairman of Committees, who made an excellent presentation in the circumstances. I plead with him to reflect on his decision not to call an earlier meeting of the Procedure Committee and leave it as presently scheduled. We should have an earlier meeting, and he should reflect on that.

Secondly, through the noble Lord, I would like to make an appeal to the new Leader of the House, too, to take into account what has been said today and to have the guts to take it away, to have a look at it, and see if we cannot come back and get the whole House moving together as one. Thirdly, I appeal to those Peers who are perhaps inclined just to vote with the report to see that there have been a number of points made today that really need further examination.

It also reflects to a degree some of the frustrations in the House about the slow progress in implementation of a fair number of the recommendations in the previous Leader’s report. I was one of those who argued for a Leader’s report and for changes in the way that we run Questions. Under the previous Government, we experimented with Questions on particular subjects. That has now gone; it has just been ditched. Previously, we had recommendations that the Leader of the House should present himself, maybe once a week, to answer Questions. That, again, was in the evidence that went to the previous Leader’s Group and nothing has happened on it.

As the noble Lord, Lord Laming, has said, while the committee has given a good deal of attention to the subject already, there are two or three other topics related to it, both directly and indirectly, that need to be brought together and examined in one go. We can then come up with something that will be acceptable to the House overall. I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, for a reference back to the committee and for a fairly early response to the House in the spring.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

My Lords, having listened to and participated in Questions in the other House for almost a quarter of a century, please allow me to inform your Lordships that Question Time in this House is more interesting, more varied, usually more relevant, certainly much more of a discourse, and provides more information than what so often turns into a tennis match in the other House, with most Members cheering either one side or the other. The most disconcerting thing that I found on coming to this Chamber was that people actually listen to what one says. If they miss it, they read it in Hansard. This diminishes the rhetoric and contributes much more to the discussion.

My only advice is to be very careful before proceeding to a ballot. Inevitably, it would enhance the partisan nature, and the Whips, being Whips—like the scorpion, it is what they do—would circulate Questions. There would therefore not be the fairness expected, because there would be pro forma circulated Questions that 40 people, rather than one, would be asking. It would be less informative and a backward step for this House. The discourse here is one of the advantages that we have over the other House.

I have one other comment on one of the points made. The idea that queueing is somehow undignified is an intriguing and novel suggestion. I wonder if there is a committee that will consider our voting in light of this new animosity towards queueing.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, I have a very brief question. I have sat through the whole of this debate and must say that, except for one contribution, there has been no support at all for the committee. Given the absence of support, I would like to know exactly how many people made representations to the committee and how many of them did it in writing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees]

I said in my opening comments that I give an assurance that the trial would not be extended beyond the end of this Session, unless this House voted in a deliberate way to continue with it. There would have been no sleight of hand or just allowing continuing practice to develop; it would have required a definite decision by this House.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I am grateful to the Minister. On this question of a ballot, you do not need a crystal ball when you can read the history book. All you need do is look at the House of Commons. Whether you regard it as a misuse or abuse or as greater openness for democracy, the reality is that if you introduce a ballot every Member of this House will be inundated with pro forma Questions not just from the Whips but from every lobby group, think tank and organisation wishing to push a particular point of view. That will not necessarily mean that they will have more than one Question on the Order Paper, but there will be an almost inevitable process of noble Lords tabling that Question because it is to hand and has been formulated for them. The fairness supposedly attributed to the ballot procedure will therefore be completely undermined. You do not need a trial to see that. It is not just a common-sense matter of anticipating the future; it is the reality of what happens, which could be easily discovered by looking at the Order Paper in the other House and, further, looking at the top 100 Questions that are tabled there. On occasion you will find that, by a remarkable coincidence, a large number of them have exactly the same wording as 20 or 30 others.

[The Chairman of Committees]

First, I thank the noble Lord for referring to me as “the Minister”. That was some long time ago, when I was a very junior Minister in the department of which he was Secretary of State. My own little story of Question Time refers back to that period. On one occasion I was asked a supplementary question that was rather arcane. As I got up, I made a rather sotto voce comment, as I am tempted to do from time to time. When I sat down, the then Leader, the late Lord Williams of Mostyn, turned to me and said, “John, remember there’s a nation of lip-readers out there”. Some lip-reading could have gone on this afternoon.

Let us cut to the chase. I recognise that there is concern but there is a willingness to change. We have to do a more deliberate piece of consulting, but that places a responsibility on individuals and groups to come forward with suggestions so that they can be assessed by the committee. I am afraid that it is no good thinking that this is a means of kicking the issue into the long grass, where it will die a death and not see the light of day again. I suspect that there is a two-stage process involved in the future of Question Time. One deals with how Questions are put down and the other with the whole conduct of Question Time, which needs serious examination. That will require a difficult piece of voting. On that basis, the usual wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, has shone through yet again and guides us in a way that I think commands the general acceptance of the House. What is important in the noble Lord’s amendment is the deadline of Easter. That is a very important discipline that we have to accept in order to get things moving.