House of Lords: Behaviour in the Chamber

Lord Richard Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I have every sympathy with what my noble friend says. The Companion allows Members to interrupt each other with,

“a brief question for clarification”.

But it also makes it clear that Members are entitled to,

“refuse to give way … in time-limited proceedings when time is short. Lengthy or frequent interventions should not be made, even with the consent of the member speaking”.

That is good practice for the House of Lords and we should not emulate aspects of behaviour in another place that do not suit the flavour of this Chamber.

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, it is certainly true that the House is now a bit more assertive than it was. I am bound to say I think this is a good thing rather than a bad thing. It is also true that people get intervened on in the course of their speeches. It seems to me that that is part of normal debate. I hope the Leader of the House agrees that this is meant to be a House of debate, not one in which people just get up and read set speeches from a script. In that sense it is much healthier than it used to be. Will the noble Lord consider another issue, which is Question Time? Behaviour at Question Time seems to be getting increasingly disorderly. I hope the noble Lord will agree that one of the main reasons for the disorder is that there is confusion as to whether the other side of the House is entitled to two slots or to one. On this side of the House we are perfectly clear that the coalition is entitled to one slot in the normal ladder and not to two. I ask the Leader of the House to confirm that again.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I very much welcome the assertiveness of the House. However, there have been instances in the past of Peers intervening in an opening speech and then leaving the Chamber, not intending to speak themselves. This is something which I think we should all deprecate and is not part of the normal traditions of this House. I wish to make two comments about Question Time. I think that the behaviour in the House over recent months has been very good and I have had to intervene on very few occasions. I comprehensively disagree with what the noble Lord, Lord Richard, says: we have a very good system of understanding which side should speak next. The statistics demonstrate that at Question Time Labour Peers probably speak more than is their fair share.