House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I very warmly thank not only the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, but the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, without whom we would not be having this well-informed debate, and indeed the Leader of the House, who set up the group in the first place.

I will make two very quick, simple points. First, as has just been said, we pride ourselves on being self-regulating. We say it very often, but it is only,

“Up to a point, Lord Copper”.

I will quickly give two recent examples. Today we are allowed only four minutes to make our speeches whereas speakers in the previous debate had eight minutes. Who made that decision? That was not self-regulation. It was presumably made by the usual channels, which I will come back to. Secondly, yesterday a major Bill was suddenly withdrawn from the House. That was not self-regulation. Who made that decision? The word “self-regulation” is so often repeated that it is rather like the 18th century concept of a “conceit”—a well-used, very popular and convenient way of disguising a fiction.

When we elected a Lord Speaker a few years ago many of us felt that self-regulation was going to be adjusted to meet a new circumstance. Frankly, however, the forces of political gravity have moved back into that space very rapidly and the usual channels are as effective as they ever were. I used to be a member of the usual channels down the corridor and have to tell you that the system is much more effective in your Lordships’ House because it is more elusive and incestuous and not so visible as it is down there. This brings me to a specific recommendation, number 52, of the Goodlad team:

“We urge the Leader of the House to consider ways in which the work of the usual channels could be made more accessible to the House as a whole. There should be a more clearly defined role for the Convenor of the Crossbench Peers, and also a role for the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee”.

I very much hope that we are going to see some action on that point.

That brings me to my second and perhaps even more substantial point. There are still 18 major recommendations of the Goodlad team that have not been discussed or considered by a committee, let alone by the whole House. It has been piecemeal, or worse than piecemeal, as we have not even started on that process. As has been said all through today’s debate, we appointed very talented and skilled people to this group. I think that that is what the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, referred to when he talked about making use of talent and skills. They came forward with unanimous and comprehensive recommendations for improving our work, but we seem to lack what I think the lawyers call “due process”. In my life outside politics, in the real world, I cannot imagine circumstances where you would send away a group of people to do work like that and not have a process for properly considering, in a holistic way, all their recommendations.

As yet, we have collectively failed to examine systematically the package of proposals. Indeed, that complete package has yet to be presented to a committee, let alone to the whole House, and we should all be ashamed of that lack of due process. If I was a cynic, I would say that this is an example of divide and rule. I think it is more accidental than that but we should all be ashamed of how we have treated those in that group who gave us such good advice.