House of Lords: Governance

Lord Taylor of Holbeach Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased indeed to follow my noble friend Lord Shinkwin, who I am sure all noble Lords here presently admire greatly. His contribution to this House belies any notion of his disability whatever. I am also delighted to be able to thank my noble friend the Senior Deputy Speaker for his speedy response to our debate on 25 October. It was quite a passionate debate and, I think, a difficult one for the House, but the Senior Deputy Speaker responded speedily by withdrawing the recommendation, and the Prince’s Chamber was soon back to normal, with the Pugin tables in their place and the pass readers—placed there for the possibility of their being used for ballots—removed.

This debate itself was a commitment made as a result of that debate. I do not know about other noble Lords but I have found that the excellent briefing from the Library just confirms my understanding that I really do not understand how this House is governed, administered or, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, said, managed. Management is perhaps a missing ingredient of that document, because this is about management as much as anything, and management that affects the Members of this House.

We have, as a result of the debate and yet another report, moved to a change to Oral Questions, which I think has been generally welcomed by noble Lords as being much more real, lively and spontaneous than it was. I think that is a good decision made by the committee and approved by the House.

My noble friend referred to Member-led governance. I wish it were so, but I do not believe that this House does have Member-led governance. If one looks at the way in which we decide matters in this House, there is no sense that suggestions are presented to the House before decisions are made on them. Usually, committees are presented with suggestions, they make a decision and then the House has to approve it. It may be that any other system would be time-consuming and difficult, but I cannot believe that it is impossible for the structures of this House to consult Members more about changes that are being envisaged. Such changes affect us in our daily life in this place and they affect the happiness of this House. I believe that this House functions best when it is content with itself, when it is collegiate in its decision-making and when it is scrutinising legislation and feels it is doing something positive in its democratic role.

I was, for five years, a member of the usual channels, and a pretty active one. I tried to be—I hope I was—effective in that task, but I never really got to grips with what is in this briefing. In many cases it is so arcane, so complex and so difficult to understand exactly what each individual part does in contribution to each other. For example, the external members of the commission are appointed by the management board through “fair and open competition”. What is the application? How does one become an external member of this House? What is the fair and open competition? Who actually selects the individuals through that fair and open competition?

When one analyses it at depth, one sees that that is a feature that no doubt goes throughout a lot of other things. Take, for example, the Chief Operating Officer appointment. He is not even mentioned in this diagram—I am sorry to use a visual aid, but noble Lords can see the chart in the Library briefing for themselves. There is no mention of the Chief Operating Officer and where he fits into this structure. He is yet another cog in the machine. This motor—this device that is the governance, administration and management of this House—is so complex that I do not believe any of us fully understands it, even those of us who have participated, or do participate, in its processes.

I believe that this has weakened our ability as a House to cope with things such as R&R and the threat that the House of Commons perhaps wants to remain in the Palace of Westminster. This would mean it moving out of its Chamber into ours; we would have to stay elsewhere while its Chamber and ours are done up, so we could be out of this House for 15 years or so. That may be a rumour, but we are not very well qualified to deal with it.

In my view, this is an overdue debate. I believe that we should have plenty of opportunity to discuss these matters during the daily course of our lives in this place.