Procedure and Privileges Committee

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

My Lords, as has been said, your Lordships have covered a lot of ground. Unless there are any strong objections, and I am looking at the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip—

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

I have been waiting all afternoon to speak.

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

I suggest that after the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip has spoken—I am not sure if the Opposition Chief Whip wishes to speak—the House should come to some resolution.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

I thank the House. I accept that a lot of the arguments have been made, but I want to say a few words given my experience acting as a Chief Whip for my group in this House and working with the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Kennedy, and others during my term of office.

The essential issue is how we can do our job of scrutinising government business and legislation better. I sat through every single one of those late sittings in January and March, and I thought that they were unworkable for the future. We very nearly accepted a proposal last year to change the working hours. The reason we did not, as others have said, was that those who came from the north and Scotland were not prepared to vote for an early start on Monday. That is why the Procedure Committee decided to look at this issue again, to see whether there was wider support for having different working hours on other days of the week. Monday is not included today, and that is why I think there will be wider support than there was then.

I will make a number of points from my own experience. The fact is that it is only a minority of the House who actually do the detailed work on legislation; they are the people who stay late at night. There is not exactly a huge demand in this House for working late. I spend all my time as a Whip trying to get my people to stay, and the only time I have success with the Government Chief Whip is when the Benches behind him have had enough themselves because they have stayed late. I do not think this helps scrutiny, because we are doing it late at night, there are limited numbers of us, and there is no point having a vote after dinner. With all respect to the Cross Benches, whose expertise I value, the parties assume that they are going to be here in very limited numbers after dinner. That is the reality. The House is missing out on that expertise; in my experience, the people of expertise do not want to stay late. Those who have jobs outside the House also do not want to stay late. I have had several jobs outside the House during my 10 years here, and I welcome that expertise, knowledge and experience coming into the House, but the people who are trying to do other jobs do not want to be here at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock at night.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord, and I am listening carefully to what he says, but does he not think that when some of his colleagues put down 103 amendments on one Bill, that is part of the reason why we are sitting into the late hours? Does he not think that the constant calling of Divisions and sending stuff down to the House of Commons which has no chance of being considered there may also add to the length of time that we sit?

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

No side of the House is innocent on this; everybody does it, frankly. If I might say so, the Government quite like the House staying late, because they get through the business quicker late at night. That is one of the reasons they quite like the late sittings, but it does not help scrutiny; it does not help the effectiveness of the House.

Insisting on the 8.30 pm finish is another issue that has been raised. If the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I know that the House is committed to 8.30 pm, just as we go along the corridor to the Government Chief Whip at five to 10 to insist that we finish at 10 pm, we will do the same at 8.30 pm. We will want a very good reason why the House should continue after then. If we do not have that commitment, we have no negotiating. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, can smile; I have been along to his door and to the current Government Chief Whip a number of times trying to get us to finish at 10 pm, and we normally have to because they know that it is the common practice of the House. If 8.30 pm is agreed by this House, we must follow it. It will be in our negotiating satchel.

On school visits, yes, I really believe in school visits here. However, we can look at this; logistically, it should be possible to get more people through the House. They can have a slightly different type of visit—they can use the Education Centre. I have asked for a number of years why we have to have such a long time for the security search when the House is closed, before it opens again—it takes about two hours, I think. That is something we can look at.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

This is a strategic issue. We are trying to take a strategic view on how the House should operate and whether we should have more acceptable working hours. It is not simply about issues of convenience—meals, flexible working outside the House, school visits. All these things need to be kept in context. We have to think about what we are here for, which is to scrutinise legislation and the Government. All these other issues are important, but if we want to have a more acceptable, more effective way of working in this House, we should accept and try this modest change. We certainly will also support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young, so we can give it a go.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, very briefly, the position of the Labour Peers here was that this is a decision for individual Members to make, and we will have a free vote. My only message to the group has been, “Please attend today and have your say, and when the House divides, vote. Make your mind up and then we can put this decision behind us.”

My own position is that I support a change to the sitting times. However, the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was absolutely excellent; I did not agree with it but if you want to support the status quo, he set out very clearly the reasons why you should. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, gave a fantastic speech on why you should support the change. I will certainly be with the noble Baroness, voting for that change.

I have been in this House 12 years. I did not know a lot of Tories before I came here—and I did not know any bishops, that is for sure. I have great respect for many Members opposite, and I have worked with many colleagues on the other side of the House on all sorts of issues. I have got to know them, like them and work with them, and we have made many changes. However, we did not do that over dinner. We did that in the corridors, meeting Ministers outside, talking to people, having meetings in offices and so on. You can do many good things here by doing that—but it was not over dinner, I can assure colleagues of that.

I will leave it there. I will certainly support the Motion to change the sitting times, and I will also support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young. To have a trial would be a very good thing: if it is wrong, we can very quickly change it back.