Procedure and Privileges Committee

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

It probably is, but I do not want to upset the rest of the balance of the House, and I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has said. I often stay fairly late, but on occasions we have family matters and other things which mean that we need to leave a bit earlier. At the moment, my wife is none too well, and I need to get home by 10 pm at the latest—so there is a bit of special pleading here, I agree.

If we are going to have a committee to look at things, this is one of the things it should look at—although if we do not have a committee, there is nothing to look at—because inevitably, coming down the track, there is going to be a demand for fixed voting times. It is fairly common in most legislatures in Europe—indeed, it is not unknown for the House of Commons to have fixed voting times. So, there might be something to be said for this.

If my noble friend Lord Taylor moves his amendment, I hope that this small amendment can be carried to extend the extent of the options that are looked at. If it is carried, I also hope that whoever carries out this consultation will do it on a much wider basis than the last one. We need to have a full consultation where all Members can have an input and make their point. I am not against reform, but I am not sure that this reform, at this time and in this form, is exactly what we want.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, my amendment will not take a moment to explain and is very simple. It is relevant only if the House decides to change the sitting hours by rejecting the amendments moved by my noble friends Lord Forsyth and Lord Taylor. My proposition is that, before committing itself to the change as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, the House should simply do what it has done on previous occasions when considering far less radical changes to its procedures. In those cases, the House has piloted the changes first and then decided whether they should be made permanent in the light of experience, rather than taking a leap in the dark.

The House trialled adding explanatory statements to amendments in 2018, and that was made permanent in 2019. In 2015 it piloted a new process for allocating Questions by ballot in the recess, and that was made permanent with minor changes a year later. Earlier, we trialled a new procedure for repeating Urgent Questions, and that was made permanent after a year. Those changes are all trivial compared with the proposition before us today, with all the implications that have been set out so clearly in the speeches we have heard and are going to hear.

When I was in the other place and voted on similar changes to the sitting hours in 2005, the changes were agreed to on an experimental basis. I do not need to tell your Lordships that changes to the sitting times have a far more dramatic effect on your Lordships’ House than on the other place, because although we are a full-time House, we have part-time Members. One of the strengths of your Lordships’ House is that expertise, and the changes could have an impact on the availability of that expertise.

Therefore, before taking the plunge—the Motion does not even call for a review—we should simply do what we have done before. I believe this to be best practice: we should pilot the changes for up to four months. We should then decide whether to make it permanent, and with a measure that is potentially as divisive as this one is, I believe that a pilot is the best way to resolve the conflicting views on the impact of change. We will then have evidence which we do not have at the moment. I am cautious about the binary approach we are presented with; I prefer a dress rehearsal before the curtain goes up.

Finally, I hope that my amendment will be supported not just by those who are fearful of change but by those in favour. If they believe the change to be beneficial, they have nothing to fear. Therefore, if the earlier amendments are defeated at the appropriate time, I will move my amendment.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, just to try for a moment to inject a sense of proportion into this debate, we are discussing in essence whether on two days of the week instead of finishing at 10 pm we should finish at 8.30 pm, with corresponding earlier starts on those two days. It is not the red revolution; it is a minor procedural change.

I would like to inject something that is rarely injected into these kinds of debates and offer to the House one or two facts—not opinions; these are facts. When I was Chief Whip, in the long reaches of the night—you never leave the building when you are Chief Whip, as I know people who have filled the post will confirm— I would occasionally get bored waiting for the place to finish. You walked round the Palace of Westminster—this was after the Commons had changed their hours—and the place was like the “Mary Celeste”. The only place where there was a sign of life between 9 pm and 10 pm was in this Chamber—I have no reason to believe that it has changed.

I took the step of carrying out an independent piece of research to record the number of people in the Chamber between 9 pm and 10 pm, not including of course the people who had to be here: that is, the staff; the person in the chair, who is a Member; usually two on the Government Front Bench; two on the Opposition Front Bench; two on the Liberal Front Bench and maybe one on the Cross Benches. Therefore, six or seven people have to be there—if you like, it is their job. However, the numbers I was interested in were of the people who were there by choice, who as Back-Benchers chose to come in. I had to give a wry smile at the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that the current arrangement enables us to “draw on the talents” across the House. All I can say is that it draws on a very small number of talents across the House between nine o’clock and 10 o’clock at night. These are the figures—I do not mind putting them in the record. I have all the facts here: it is one of those things that you very nearly throw out of your filing cabinet time and again.

This was from 2003, but it has not really changed much. Attendance of Back-Benchers between 9 pm and 10 pm: 10 February, Courts Bill, six; 17 February, Community Care (Delayed Discharges etc.) Bill, six; 24 February, Licensing Bill, six; 25 February, Crime (International Co-operation) Bill, three; 24 March, five; 31 March, 12; 7 April, seven; 10 April, two; 18 May, three. Those are the people participating in the procedures of the House between nine and 10 o’clock at night who have the choice whether to participate or not.