House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, the report from the Constitution Committee is helpful but the important paper of 21 April, headed “The marginalisation of the House of Commons under Covid has been shocking”, by the Hansard Society and others, is more worrying. I shall refer to it as the Hansard report.

So far as the Constitution Committee report is concerned, paragraphs 42, 54, 81 and 89 are references to the fact that all was not well in the House of Lords before the pandemic with regard to accountability, scrutiny and adherence to the Ministerial Code. The hybrid working of the House benefits those in poor health, which prevents them attending in person, but it only works if those Members are sworn in after a general election. To be sworn in, one has to do it in person. That is a statutory requirement and it needs to be looked at if the system is to be retained.

My experience during Covid covers Oral Questions, Statements, Second Reading, Committee and Report. For years, I have not been at all certain why we bother with Second Reading debates. We do not vote on Second Readings and would never reject a Bill sent from the Commons for scrutiny. Second Reading debates here add nothing to a Bill. However, the Committee stage is crucial in more ways than Report. There is the ability to speak more than once and interact with Ministers and departments to receive the mood of the House. I know that, having been on both sides of the House. Departments get the mood of the House back. Those interactions should be restored as soon as possible. Assuming a that degree of hybridity continues, there is no reason to continue with equal treatment. Those in the Chamber should be able to intervene and, indeed, do so on behalf of remote Members, according to my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours, who I received a message from.

As for secondary legislation, paragraph 48 of the committee’s report highlights obvious defects that should be addressed because some of them are pre-pandemic. Two aspects are of concern. As the Hansard report states, the use of the made-affirmative procedure can be addictive for the Government. The other aspect is their casual scheduling of debates, meaning that SIs are in force for weeks before MPs and Peers get to scrutinise them.

I like having the lists for Oral Questions. It stops the bullies shouting for a place. What would really help, though, would be to dilute the Front-Bench control of that list. The Lord Speaker should be able to choose four out of the 10 supplementaries. The conclusion in paragraph 85 is worth further work. I could agree to a limit on numbers of speakers and minimum times for business, but only if the Front Benches are not controlling the list.

I cannot speak about committees. Given that I was not sworn in until June last year due to illness, I could not participate and am, disappointingly, not currently a member of any committee.

On voting, we need to get back to as near normal as possible. I always defended the system in the Commons and Lords as being useful for back-benchers. Perhaps that day has gone, but votes should be limited to those in Parliament—I repeat, in Parliament—either remotely or using pass readers.

We are part of Parliament and not a legal symposium, which is what we will get from some of the lawyers later on. We need to be able to challenge Ministers and other speakers. Efficiency should not necessarily be the watchword in procedure; it is Parliament’s ability to be the inquest of the nation, scrutinise the Government of the day and watch how the money is spent.

The Hansard report concentrates on the House of Commons but creates questions for this House. We are here to revise the Commons’ work; it always has the last word. The Hansard report identifies five areas that lead to the erosion of parliamentary control: emergency legislation, regulations, money, the denial of MPs’ equal participation rights and the wholesale and unnecessary use of proxy votes. Individually, each of those five is shocking. Collectively, they amount to a fundamental undermining and exclusion of Parliament and its elected Members from crucial decisions on policy, spending and the management of the Commons itself, so my question is this. If the Commons does not reassert itself and prioritise the full restoration of parliamentary democracy and MPs’ rights to participation, what is the role of this House in helping the Commons achieve those ends?