Procedure of the House

Lord Richard Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, is right in what he says. We are only asking for a very modest proposal to be accepted by the House. We are asking for an experimental period of one parliamentary Session. We are not suggesting that, during that period, the present system should be completely abandoned. So the House will have the opportunity, as a self-regulating House, to look at the two systems working side by side.

In answer to my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, of course there should be a form of election for this committee. I would favour the various groups— the Labour group, the Cross-Benchers, the Bishops—nominating members to sit on this committee. That would be a tidy and sensible way of doing it. The committee would then have the opportunity to listen to the proposals put to it.

It is nonsense that we have had grave international situations that have not been debated in this House. We had to wait ages for the Arab spring debate. My noble friend Lord Higgins talked about the euro crisis. If this House, to use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, is to be truly relevant to our nation and to its problems, it has to have the opportunity, in a timely and opportune manner, to debate the issues that are concerning people. Occasionally, these may be esoteric: I do not believe that a properly constituted Back-Bench committee would choose only grand international events to debate. Of course it should not, and I believe it would not. However, I do think we should give it a chance. We are a self-regulating House; let us regulate ourselves in this way in accordance with the recommendations of the Goodlad committee.

The greatest thing about this House, in my experience, is that it is collegiate in a way that the other place is not. We sit together on the Long Table and talk. We are not talking about debates that will end in votes. Let us discuss where we should focus our attention. Let us see how this group of colleagues works together. If at the end of the year the committee has not produced the goods, we will abandon the experiment. I do not believe that if you start an experiment you have to continue it in perpetuity; of course you do not. An experiment is an experiment, and I beg the House to give this one a chance.

[Lord Richard]

Perhaps I may detain your Lordships for just two minutes. I am in the very unusual position of agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. It is not something that happens daily in this House, and it certainly did not happen over reform of your Lordships’ House. However, I am bound to say that I came to this debate in a wholly neutral frame of mind. I was not sure whether I liked the idea or whether I did not. One argument seems to be absolutely critical, and for me conclusive. When I was Leader of the Opposition in this House, when I was Leader of the House and indeed since, it struck me—as I suspect it has struck every other Leader—that the one great gap in our procedures is that one cannot raise an urgent issue. It is almost impossible. If one wants to secure a debate in this House on an issue such as the Arab spring or North Korea’s nuclear policy, unless the Government are prepared to give it time, one cannot get it. That is wrong. A parliamentary assembly ought to have a procedure whereby issues that are clearly urgent and topical are capable of being discussed. That gap is partially—only partially—filled by the proposals for this experiment. For me that is the conclusive argument. It fills a gap in the procedures of our House that has existed for many years, and we would then be in a position, like other parliamentary assemblies, to deal with urgent, topical questions, which at the moment we are not.

[Lord Wakeham]

I will say a word or two because I was the Leader of the House when the noble Lord was the Leader of the Opposition. I listened to my noble friend putting forward a housemaid’s baby-type argument; we will have a little experiment and it will be all right. I also listened to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. I have no doubt that if he was in charge of all this, it would work very well whatever the rules because he is that sort of person and he would make sure that it did. However, I am still worried about the central proposition that a Back-Bench committee should be able to decide which Back-Bench topics should be debated. The committee will come under enormous pressure and a great deal of lobbying. Inevitably it will end up, in order to keep the peace, taking on the big issues and leaving some of the smaller issues to one side. That is what worries me. Of course I accept the argument that we have to have more topical debates, but I am not sure that a Members’ Back-Bench committee is the way to do it. I would prefer it if we found another way. Therefore, I will vote against the experiment.