House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

That this House takes note of the Report from the Leader’s Group on working practices (HL Paper 136).

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, last July, I appointed a Leader’s Group to consider the working practices of the House and the operation of self-regulation, and to make recommendations.

Under the distinguished chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Goodlad, the group prepared the report that was delivered to me at the end of April and is the subject of this debate today. On behalf of the whole House, I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend Lord Goodlad and the other members of the group, as well as the staff who supported them, for their contribution to this review of the working practices of the House. My intention in leading this debate today is to provide an opportunity for noble Lords on all sides of the House to comment on the group’s recommendations.

I am conscious that 68 Members of the House took advantage of the opportunity to make a written submission to the group. But as was observed in the report, an average of 452 Members have attended the House each day since last year’s general election. By implication, fewer than one in five of those Members have made their views known so far. I am conscious that there are Members around the House, including many of those participating in today’s debate, who wish to make swift progress on the majority of the group’s recommendations. I assure them that I am fully seized of your Lordships’ appetite for urgent, incremental reforms—in this area as in others—and I believe that the report from the Leader’s Group offers ample scope for such progress. It contains many straightforward ideas that could be implemented immediately should they find favour with the House. I therefore intend to ensure that a large number of the group’s recommendations are considered promptly by the relevant committees of the House so that the House may take a view on them at the earliest opportunity.

However, it is my responsibility as Leader of the House to take account of the views of the whole House, including the large number of Members who do not take a close interest in our working practices but whose contributions are no less valuable for their lack of frequency. That is why today’s debate is an important milestone and why I should like to take this opportunity to encourage noble Lords who did not make a written submission and have not put down their names to speak today to consider making their views known to me.

The Leader’s Group has structured its recommendations around what it concluded were the House’s three core functions: holding the Executive to account, scrutinising legislation and providing a forum for public debate and inquiry. In respect of each of these functions, there are specific challenges and dilemmas that I hope that noble Lords will address in their contributions today.

Conduct in the Chamber, particularly at Question Time, has for some time now been a matter of concern to Members all around the House. The Leader’s Group confirmed that successive Leaders of the House had acted with complete impartiality in their role of advising the House on matters of procedure and order, including at Question Time. I am nonetheless conscious that some Members wish to see a greater role for the Chair at Question Time and that the Leader’s Group has made recommendations in this area which I hope will attract comment from noble Lords over the course of the afternoon.

There is also the wider question of whether we can make better use of time in the Chamber—for example, by making it a presumption that the Committee stages of Bills will take place in Grand Committee, or by taking second and subsequent Statements off the Floor of the House. A good example of the time spent on Statements could be seen this afternoon. Although there are trade-offs involved—for example, the ability to divide in Committee—these are recommendations that may commend themselves to your Lordships.

I am also interested in views from around the House on whether items of business, and particularly those items of business that are led by Back-Bench Members of the House, are sufficiently topical, varied and of general interest. The Leader’s Group has suggested that a sifting mechanism for Back-Bench business might serve the House better than the ballot and first-come, first-served systems through which topical Questions, balloted debates, and Questions for Short Debate are selected at present. A sifting mechanism might of course erode individual Members’ current ability to bring attention on the Floor to subjects that they alone have chosen, but your Lordships may take the view that that trade-off is warranted.

There has long been much hand wringing around the House over the volume of legislation that the House is asked to consider and the level of preparation and consultation that have preceded the introduction of specific Bills—in the past I have myself been known to indulge in that well-known lament. I regret that, when presenting figures on the number of Bills published in draft—which is paragraph 79 of the report—the Leader’s Group did not include the record of the current coalition Government since May 2010: five Bills have already been published in draft, and four Joint Committees have now either been set up or are in the process of being set up to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny on: the draft detention of terrorist suspects Bills, the draft defamation Bill, the draft House of Lords reform Bill and the draft financial services Bill. Our record thus far should demonstrate that this Government do take pre-legislative scrutiny seriously and are matching words with deeds.

As regards post-legislative scrutiny, I am well aware of concerns that once legislation is passed, insufficient attention is devoted to its implementation and effects. It is of course already open to committees in both Houses to examine and report on the post-legislative memoranda published by the Government, but the Leader’s Group has suggested that this House may wish to approach post-legislative scrutiny more systematically. Whether that should extend to a standing post-legislative scrutiny committee is a matter on which noble Lords will no doubt comment today. My own instinct is that our Liaison Committee is well placed to perform that strategic function and that we might make more targeted and flexible use of the expertise and experience of Members of the House by setting up ad-hoc committees whose membership is tailored to the Act under scrutiny.

The Leader’s Group has also considered whether there might be scope to take evidence on Bills introduced in this House and make recommendations in that respect. We already have procedures that allow the House to send Bills for evidence-taking—to Special Public Bill Committees or to Select Committees—but we have thus far used them sparingly, not least because wider use of these procedures would detract from the principle, which I value, that every Peer can contribute to scrutiny and amendment at every part of every stage of a Bill. Although I believe the Leader’s Group was right to explore ways in which the House might enhance the way it conducts scrutiny of legislation, I doubt it will come as a surprise to noble Lords if I suggest that government support for such measures is likely to hinge on whether they extend the overall length of time a Bill spends in this House.

It should be clear by now that there is a theme underpinning many of the recommendations in the Leader’s Group report; namely, the extent to which Members of the House are prepared to trade off certain aspects of self-regulation in pursuit of other objectives. I hope that as many noble Lords as possible will address that question in their contributions today.

Before opening the Floor to those contributions, there is one consideration that I should like to draw to the attention of the House. The Leader’s Group has quite rightly attempted to cost the implications of its recommendations. Noble Lords will be aware that, under instruction from the House Committee, we are attempting to keep our resource costs constant in real terms. It is my strong preference that overall the recommendations that we take forward should allow us to adhere to that principle. That does not mean that we cannot take forward recommendations that have resource implications, rather that where we do so, we should examine whether those additional resources can be freed up elsewhere.

As I made clear at the outset, I intend to arrange for the relevant committees of the House to consider specific recommendations in the report. I envisage that in due course the House will have the opportunity to approve or reject more detailed proposals for implementing individual recommendations based on reports from those committees. I thank again my noble friend Lord Goodlad and his group. I very much look forward to this debate and I shall give answers to as many contributions as possible at the end of it. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition for her speech. As I made clear at the outset, my intention in leading this debate was to provide an opportunity for noble Lords of all sides of the House to comment on the recommendations that the Leader’s Group has made. Forty-three speakers have taken that opportunity. It is now my job to try and respond to them. There have been a lot of speeches and a lot of points made in each speech, so this may not be as neat a wind-up as noble Lords might like. Because I do not mention a recommendation, it does not mean that I am either against it or for it. However, there needs to be a process for moving them on from here.

The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, said that there was a broad measure of support for these recommendations, and I agree with him. It is a testament to the committee that that is the case. My noble friend Lord Tyler said that the report was pragmatic and not doctrinal. He was right about that; it crosses party lines. Even in this debate, different Members have taken different views on some of the details, but the broad thrust has been basically supportive.

Even the Leader’s Group recognised at paragraph 9 of its report that only a subset of its recommendations could be implemented with immediate effect but, as I made clear, I believe that a good number of the group’s recommendations fall into that category. That is why I intend to ensure that the House has the chance to approve or reject proposals for implementing a range of the group’s recommendations on the basis of reports from the relevant committees of the House at the earliest available opportunity.

There are of course other recommendations from the Leader’s Group that could not be put into practice without further detailed consideration being given to their practical ramifications, including costs and possible unintended consequences. The noble Baroness herself just mentioned one or two of those. While I am on the question of costs, I was impressed by what my noble friend Lord Lucas and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, said about that issue. That is what I mean: around the House, the clerks, the House Committee and the other committees can look at our priorities. If we want two new Select Committees, we should look at how we can shave some costs elsewhere. It may be only 1 per cent off the total cost of the House but that does not mean that we should not search for efficiencies. I would not want cost to stand in the way of doing some of the very good things that have come out of the report and which the House clearly wants.

I was amused by my noble friend Lord Lucas’s suggestions on hereditary Peers. However, I am thrilled that as from today my noble friend will be able to write to the Clerk of the Parliaments, taking permanent retirement. That would save us some money, and he would be leading by example. Others may be following in his footsteps, although he would not know that when he wrote his letter.

It is only right that the House should not be invited to take a definitive view of all the recommendations in one go until they can each be presented in their full context. That is not about delay; it is about practicality.

What has changed in the House? There has been change over a long period of time. I do not think that anything immediate has happened, apart from some things that are obvious—the general election, for instance, and Labour going into opposition. I think that some 75 per cent of the Labour Party in the House of Lords had never known opposition in this House, so inevitably that is a bit strange. Coalition has thrust up a whole bunch of challenges, such as how we deal with Questions. In fact the greatest benefactors of that have been members of the Labour Party; they get between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of Questions at Question Time. I do not mind that because one of the features of good scrutiny is that the main party of opposition should be in the vanguard of that scrutiny.

There are many more former Members of Parliament who are now Members of this House. What I have found about former Members of Parliament is that they are so used to the firm smack of discipline from the Speaker that they find it quite odd coming here—but more of that in a moment.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of Peers, more than 100 in the past 12 months. There have been issues of assimilation. There is a great deal of expertise. A lot of people have high expectations when they come into this House and there are a lot of high expectations of them among outside groups, but of course when they get here it is all a lot more difficult. We have also had a more substantial and far more active Cross-Bench group. These are all good things, and of course Peers want to justify why they come here so they want more activity. One of the best things that has come out of the report is that we are going to give Peers more opportunities to get involved, to speak in committees and to take part in pre-legislative scrutiny and post-legislative scrutiny and a whole bunch of other things. That is one of the reasons why I think that we have to change.

The noble Baroness the Convenor of the Cross Benches said something good at the start of her speech: if only half the recommendations were implemented, that would transform the House. I am sure that we will do far better than half, but that is a sign of what can be achieved.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked about statistics. My understanding is that the really wonderful annual report of the House of Lords, which has clearly not been required reading by the noble Lord, has an enormous amount of statistics on all the kinds of questions that he asked.

I was surprised that the issue of the Leader’s Question Time did not come up more often. I think the House knows how much I enjoy being at the Dispatch Box. It is only because I do not want to hog it selfishly that I am not here far more often.

The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, raised a question about redundancy. I am glad to be able to tell him that no member of the House of Lords staff has been made redundant due to savings cuts. However, those are not really matters for the Leader. They are quite properly matters for the Chairman of Committees—

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

I was referring to the whole Palace of Westminster, and my understanding is that there is a 60:40 split. There are staff in this Palace who have been made redundant, but I am glad that, so far, no one in the House of Lords has been made redundant.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I hope they will not be, but it would be for the Chairman of Committees to answer those kinds of questions. I am not sure that I would answer in terms of my own responsibilities, as business management is done by the Chief Whips, but that is another idea that could be looked at.

Some noble Lords have welcomed the idea of getting rid of the second Statement and putting it into a Moses Room. There is some merit in that.

On the question of Grand Committees, morning sittings have not found a great deal of favour—they are quite controversial. The noble Lord, Lord Gordon of Strathblane, made the suggestion of having them at night. I think that is a rather good idea. If we are going to have Grand Committees, there is no reason why they should not sit until 9 or 10 pm. The Procedure Committee can look at that suggestion, which is something that is very good that has come out of the debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said that I had been opposed to Grand Committees when they were much extended by my very eminent predecessor, Lord Williams of Mostyn. He was right about that, but I conceded the point when we introduced the 10 pm cut-off because I realised that you could not have both: you could not have no Grand Committees and a 10 pm cut-off—the one forces the other. Prior to that change, we regularly sat in Committee at midnight or 1 am, and Lord Williams of Mostyn rightly made the point that we should not make legislation at that time, as 10 pm is late enough. I agree that, if we are going to have the 10 pm cut-off, then we have to have business off the Floor of the House. As more Peers wish to play a part in the business of the House, it means more Bills have to go off the Floor of the House. The House of Lords cannot pride itself on revision and then not actually get enough done to maintain its very excellent reputation.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, highlighted the issue—I wrote “Shameless!” on my piece of paper—of the 10 pm closing time. Having been a government Chief Whip, which is a very eminent post in this House, he knows as well as I do that the Opposition decide the times of Bills. There is a recommendation in the report that the government Chief Whip should stand up at the beginning of business to explain why we are going to sit beyond 10 pm, but it should, of course, be the opposition Chief Whip who should stand up at 10 pm to explain to the House why they have spent so much time on an amendment. However, we shall fight that one out on the Procedure Committee.

[Lord Grocott]

On the word “Shameless”, the reason why the House sits longer than it needs to is because of the size of the Government’s legislative programme. No one could sensibly suggest that in one short year you should, for example, have two major constitutional Bills and one huge constitutional proposal without having any effect on the capacity of the House to legislate. What the Leader needs to do—let us have a private conversation about this—is occasionally to suggest to his Cabinet colleagues that maybe one or two of them could possibly postpone one of their Bills until the next Session, and then we would not need to have all these late night sittings.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I very much look forward to that private conversation. I can assure the noble Lord that, as a Government, we are not moving any faster than previous Governments have done.

There are so many aspects to the issue of self-regulation, but I was very much impressed by what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham said. He observed that self-discipline is the corollary of self-regulation, which is at the heart of everything that we try to do. We have too many lengthy speeches, too many interventions, too many amendments at Third Reading and too many speeches on Bill do now pass. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, had it right that we break the rules far more than we stick to them. Part of that is lack of knowledge; part of it is that people think that they can get away with it—but that was mentioned by so many noble Lords.

My noble friends Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market and Lord Jenkin, the noble Baronesses, Lady Prashar, Lady Hamwee, Lady Murphy, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and so many others talked about pre and post-legislative scrutiny. We all want it. This Government’s record so far has been good, given that we are into only the second year of office—I mentioned that when I opened the debate. I am very keen on post-legislative scrutiny, partly because, after 13 years of Labour Government, there seem to be so many opportunities to go back and have a look at what was done in our name and whether it was right.

I was very interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said about an expert committee on post-legislative scrutiny as opposed to an ad hoc committee. I have leant towards an ad hoc committee because I want experts to be involved—for example, charities to look at the Charities Act or experts on gambling, I suppose, to look at the Gambling Act. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and others have taken a slightly different view, which needs further consideration.

Another big issue in the debate was the legislative standards committee. It was mentioned by, among others, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, my noble friend Lord Maclennan and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I think that I know what the fundamental problem is here. It was my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield who said that we should have less and better drafted legislation. I agree with her; I have thought that for a long time. I have not quite got to the bottom of why that does not happen, because people want it and it makes perfectly good sense. The previous Government wanted to do it and failed. We, too, want to do it and I accept that we have not got it quite as right as we would have liked. I have been ambitious in this and it has not quite worked.

A legislative standards committee needs further investigation. I do not give the idea full marks, although I give its underlying intention full marks. Why is that? Well, I listened with interest to what noble Lords said about it. There is a tension between the House’s role as a revising Chamber, which many noble Lords have stressed today, and the idea that one of its committees, composed of a small group of Members, should have the right to “block”—the term of my noble friend Lord Maclennan—the progress of a government Bill. The idea that the Government need to present a business case for their legislation calls into question the basic constitutional principle that a Government with a majority in the House of Commons can expect to have their programme considered by Parliament. It would be a bit odd to have a group in the House of Lords which said, “Well, actually, we don’t like the way this has been drafted”. Presumably, it is not about policy; it is about how it all hangs together and whether a Bill is a skeleton Bill.

[Lord Filkin]

All that the report says is that in principle we should apply to primary legislation what already happens to secondary legislation. In the case of secondary legislation, a set of standards for good legislation is defined by the Cabinet Office and a check is then made as to whether they have been complied with. The Butler report is clear; most people say that those are good standards. All the House would do is say whether they had been complied with. It would not look at policy; that would not be its job. Nor would it have the power to say no. It is a decision for the House—it is most unlikely that it would use it—to deny a Second Reading.

[Lord Strathclyde]

Denying a government Bill that had already passed the House of Commons a Second Reading would be an extraordinary thing. There would be another problem. For Bills that started in the House of Lords, if this were not a Joint Committee—I think that there is much more merit it being a Joint Committee than a House of Lords Committee, which I know was the recommendation of the committee—the business managers would seek to avoid starting Bills in the House of Lords. As Leader of the Lords, I think that would be a very bad thing. There are issues here that need to be explored further. There are downsides too, but the basic aim is a good one.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

Before my noble friend leaves that point, would he perhaps give us some indication of who is best placed to give consideration to this core recommendation of the report and the sort of timeframe that he would have in mind for that consideration?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, first, I think that we should invite the clerks to come forward with a proposal. The proposal should be put to the Procedure Committee and of course within this we need to decide whether it should be a Joint Committee or a House Committee. If it is a Joint Committee, there need to be discussions with another place and we would have to find out about how it felt about such things. I have no idea about a timescale, but we could get an initial view relatively quickly, and I think that that is what we should do.

The role of the usual channels got a bit of a battering; I think the usual channels and how it operates needs clarifying. Perhaps the most interesting part of the debate concerned the role of the Lord Speaker. The report has trod carefully between self-regulation, Leader’s powers and Speaker’s powers, and has come to the conclusion of an experimental period, simply to shift the Leader’s power to the chair. I am not entirely convinced that that is a solution to the problem. What has happened is that more and more people try to get in at Question Time. It is an immensely important part of the day. The House is full. The leaders, Chief Whips, Convenor—everybody is here. The Lord Speaker is in the chair. It is a focal point for the start of our day. It is Peers wanting to get in and ask their question that creates the problem.

I increasingly think that we do have to make a choice on this, and I think we ought to have an early vote and make a decision. Part of that is that you cannot have both a firm chair and self-regulation. We have to choose between one and the other. Noble Lords have said, “Well, you can have a little bit of direction from the chair and that doesn’t affect self regulation”, but I think that it does. I do not think that that is a bad thing. One noble Lord said that this House is the only legislative Chamber that does not have a firm chair. It may be that that era of self-regulation—of politeness and giving way—has moved on, for a whole variety of reasons. It is that the nature of the House and the nature of the way we do legislation have simply changed. That is the decision that I think will face us. If we move the Leader’s powers to the chair we will very quickly get into names being called. Some noble Lords are concerned about behaviour in this House. I always remind people to go a couple of hundred yards down the corridor and see a House where there is very firm authority from the chair and to really take a view. Is there better behaviour in another place? It is worth doing.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

The noble Lord is not offering an alternative solution.

[Lord Strathclyde]

That is why the House has to decide, and I am not sure that there is an alternative solution. You either push power to the chair or you do not. Perhaps more assertiveness from me and the government Dispatch Box may help and encourage. Noble Lords might like a firm smack of authority from the Dispatch Box. I accept that there is a difficulty and a problem. When I first came to the House, Members would regularly give way.

[Baroness O'Loan]

My Lords, I wonder whether it might be helpful to have clarification as to the way in which at Question Time the right to ask supplementary questions moves around the House. Is the order Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem and Cross-Bench, or Conservative, Labour, Cross-Bench et cetera? That would be helpful to the House.

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Baroness is right; it is an art and not a science. Since I have been doing it, it looks a lot easier from the other side of the House than it does from here. It slightly depends on who is speaking. When I first came here, Peers would give way to Peers who they believed were more senior to them or had more authority or more knowledge. There is much less of that now and a certain order is quite hard to impose.

With the coalition, there has been broad agreement that we do not have a Conservative Peer followed by a Liberal Democrat Peer. Whoever is next—the Cross-Benches or the Labour Party—rather depends on the question. It all goes wrong when a right reverend Prelate speaks but that is not what I meant. It really all goes wrong when another Peer, such as a UKIP Peer, speaks, which upsets the smooth flow. I am not offering any solutions. There is tougher authority either from the Dispatch Box or from the Woolsack. You cannot have both.

On the usual channels, I felt that there was again a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of this House. That might be borne of the fact that many Members come here from another place, where the Executive are powerful and have a majority. The Executive in this House have no majority. Therefore, the usual channels, in my long experience as being a part of them, work very much in the interests of the Back-Benchers. They try to put the Back-Benchers’ interests first because the usual channels know that at any stage something can be rolled over by the Back-Benchers. That is how it works.

I believe that there needs to be more clarity about how the usual channels operate. Huge advantages and privileges are given to Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, and I understand why that should be. I will discuss with the noble Baroness ways in which we should clarify how the usual channels work, what part the Convenor, the Liberal Democrats and the Back-Benchers and so on play, and what role the Private Secretary to the Leader and the government Chief Whip play in managing the business. It is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, but once you understand how it all interlocks it is much simpler than many people believe. I am going to ask the clerks for a list of new Peers who have not been on an induction course and who therefore do not understand how the House works, yet have very strong views on how the House should be reviewed. I shall write to them to encourage them to go to an induction course.

I have completely lost my place in my speech as a result of all that, so I will move on swiftly by saying that this has been a wide-ranging and timely debate. I have probably given the impression that I am less keen on some of these proposals than I gave at the beginning. I have picked out some of the more difficult ones. This has been an immensely useful exercise, in part because my noble friend Lord Goodlad has found the kitchen sink of procedure and process in the House of Lords. He has put it all out and there is something for everyone. I thank noble Lords for their different strands of opinion. There is now a great deal of work for the Procedure Committee, the Liaison Committee and the other committees to do, but it is right that we should do it. I hope that we will have an early opportunity to have a report back with a substantial number of these recommendations on which the House can take a view and therefore see that real progress has been made. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.