House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, I congratulate the usual channels on arranging for a debate on the practices of the House so early in this Parliament and my noble friend’s intention to set up a Leader’s Group to study them. I hope that this will not preclude a discussion of procedures, which is what I am principally interested in.

Earlier in this debate, my noble friend Lord Cope used a phrase akin to “be careful what you wish for”. Some years ago, I had the opportunity to visit New Zealand, representing both the Merits Committee and the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. While there, I picked up a guide to its Parliament, which started with the sentence:

“Few tears were shed when the legislative assembly was abolished”.

The legislative assembly was of course its upper House of Parliament.

I am not an abolitionist but, like other noble Lords, I believe that we can do things better and make better use of our facilities, such as the Moses Room, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said. That would take pressure off the Chamber and reserve it for what are arguably more important things. For example, why are Committee stages of Private Members’ Bills invariably held in the Chamber?

Also with regard to the Chamber, I do not think that we should be considering what the Lord Speaker does now, or how she performs her role. For example, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, I would not like the Lord Speaker to become involved in keeping order in the House, although I note that she has on occasion widened the powers that I thought had been given her to advise the House on procedure. I have no objection to that; it is fine if the occupant of the Woolsack, which is not necessarily the Lord Speaker, is 100 per cent certain of their facts. But—and it is a big but—with the experience and honour of having spent a decade earlier in my time here as first a Deputy Chairman and then a Deputy Speaker, I am well aware of the distance between the Woolsack and the Clerks, who are the fount of all knowledge in this area. In my book, that is why such guidance became, in descending order, the province of the Leader or deputy, the Chief Whip or, indeed, their deputy—and finally, the junior Whips, depending only on seniority as a Front-Bencher who happened to be in the Chamber at the time of need.

Some Chief Whips have been better than others at having extraordinary antennae for identifying trouble in the Chamber. My noble friend Lord Denham was one such, even when he was some distance away from where we are now. It is only failing an intervention of one of these that a Back-Bencher would be brave enough to dip their toe in that particular water, but it is not out of order, as the Companion to the Standing Orders makes clear. When, on rare occasions, I have done it as a Back-Bencher, it was only after taking advice. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde will remember a whispered conversation that we shared before I brought a Question for Short Debate to a grinding halt by moving that a noble Lord be no longer heard. That situation and many others are covered by Standing Orders and the Companion thereto, an edition of which I was, with others, appointed to revise some years ago.

The problem as I see it is that the Companion is now too bulky and heavy to carry in one’s pocket or handbag. With new Members appearing every day, not every noble Lord has read it, although every noble Lord receives a copy. What would be useful is a very basic synopsis, especially for those noble Lords who have not been with us very long. In this connection, I welcome the unofficial mentoring that is undertaken by some experienced noble Lords, although in the heat and thunder of debate it is seldom appropriate to give pertinent advice at a time when it is so sorely needed. Perhaps one transgression is understandable, but a second is generally not.

That said, this debate is about practices, and there are two things that are high on my list of priorities, both of which come under the heading of interruptions. In opening the debate on our future, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde was interrupted no fewer than 11 times when he was trying to set out the Government’s stall on the subject of reform. It was far from conducive to good and sensible debate to break up the logic of what he sought to explain. I accept that his words were miles away from what many of your Lordships wanted to hear. None the less, far from improving the quality of debate, for which we are normally renowned, it actually destroyed it. In my book, the only time when Ministers should be interrupted is during the wind-up. After all, noble Lords can be as disrespectful as they like in their own speeches. If you feel strongly about a subject, you should put your name on the list to speak, but only if you can be in the House for the whole debate. We are not and never should be a version of another place, where such interruptions are the norm. Let us leave the sound and fury to them and major on the logic of the situation. Therefore, I should like to see a veto on intervening on opening speeches, backed up, if necessary, by a technique that we already have—that of the “Before the noble Lord sits down” procedure, used by my noble friend Lord Elton only today.

The other thing that we should do something about is Question Time. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, in this, although the “bear pit”, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, described it, I find a bit strong. It is very rare these days when only one noble Lord rises to ask a supplementary question. Is it only good manners—the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, used the word courtesy just now—to give the floor to someone who knows more about the subject or more senior than oneself. Within this, we should sort out the pecking order as regards the parties and the Cross Benches. Given the coalition Government, some noble Lords, especially in the Official Opposition, regard those of us who sit on the spiritual side of the House as comprising one party—the party of Government. We are not a single party—or perhaps not yet, as I have heard rather premature talk of a single party being formed. I doubt that very much. Politics makes strange bedfellows and my temporary noble friends are just that—temporary. As such, we should return to the status quo ante, with the routine of supplementaries from the three parties and the Cross Benches on a one-one-one-one basis, with the norm of a right reverend Prelate intervening should he wish. Otherwise, we would have to have the Lord Speaker call Members, a procedure that would inevitably lead to a rearrangement of the Chamber. Do those promoting this course really want the Clerks sitting between the throne and the Woolsack or even beside it?

Lastly, we had an occasion on Wednesday last when we sat to what these days is regarded as a very late hour. Not being privy to the discussions between the usual channels, I do not know how it came to be agreed that we should have a late sitting on the day before we were to sit at 11 o’clock. This may not have inconvenienced many noble Lords, but I beg the usual channels to consider our staff and treat them a little more generously. I am well aware that after 10.30 pm they are allowed taxis home, but some who have to be here as long as the House sits or even for a period after it rises have a two-hour journey home. If they leave the House at, say, 12.30 in the morning and then have to be back in the House half an hour before we sit the following morning at 11 o’clock, they can hardly be expected to give of their best. In parenthesis, the same reasoning applies to morning Sittings, especially regarding the Doorkeepers—although I suppose that it would be possible for others to perform the duties that they currently undertake in the Moses Room.

There are two ways out of this problem. The first is to return Thursday to its 2.30 pm sitting time, but I am afraid that 11 am sittings suit the majority of noble Lords so I suppose that we are too far down the track to change our hours back to what they were in the 1980s. However, I wonder how many of us work in or outside the House in the mornings as trustees of charities, directors of firms and so on. A fair number, I suspect. Perhaps it would be sensible to poll all noble Lords on this. The other is to make it a rule never to sit late on a Wednesday, which it should not be beyond the wit of the usual channels to achieve.

I started with “be careful what you wish for”. I do not particularly want to see extra jobs for the boys and girls in your Lordships’ House.