That the Report from the Select Committee Speakers’ lists for oral questions and ‘Secretary of State’ questions; Divisions: passreaders (4th Report, HL Paper 104) be agreed to.
My Lords, the Procedure and Privileges Committee report proposes ending the use of speakers’ lists for Oral Questions and Secretary of State Questions. It may assist the House if I briefly recount the background. Prior to the pandemic, there were no speakers’ lists for Oral Questions. Members who wished to ask a supplementary question stood and began to ask their question. If more than one Member stood, they gave way to each other. If there was a dispute about who should give way, the sense of the House, interpreted by the Leader of the House if necessary, determined which Member should speak.
During the operation of the hybrid House model, speakers’ lists were necessary for all business to manage proceedings; self-regulation was not an option with most of us participating remotely. In July, the Procedure Committee reported proposals to the House about which practices should be retained from the hybrid House model and where we should revert to pre-pandemic ways of working.
It is fair to say that the committee was split when it looked at the matter of speakers’ lists for Oral Questions in July. We decided to consult the House using the voting system on PeerHub to determine the preference of Members. That consultation found a majority in favour of keeping speakers’ lists, so we recommended that to the House and it was agreed on 13 July.
However, we undertook to keep these changes under close review, and in recent weeks it has become clear to us that many Members of the House are increasingly concerned over the effectiveness of Oral Questions. There is a strong sense that removing the element of spontaneity has limited the ability of Members to hold Ministers to account. On some occasions recently, speakers’ lists have not been full by the time they closed, and Members who might have wished to ask a supplementary question in the light of the Minister’s response have been unable to participate. The committee therefore recommends the removal of speakers’ lists for Oral Questions. If the House agrees the Motion, the use of speakers’ lists for Oral Questions will cease with effect from Monday 6 December.
As part of this change, we have considered how the House can continue to benefit from the perspectives of Members who are eligible to participate remotely. We propose that they give notice the day before of their intention to ask a supplementary on a particular Question, as they do currently to join the speakers’ lists. On the day, the normal rotation of supplementary questions between the groups and parties would take place, and at an appropriate point the Leader, on the basis of prior consultation with the usual channels, would stand and indicate that the House might wish to hear from an eligible Member belonging to the party or group whose turn it was.
There would, of course, be no guarantee that eligible Members would be called to ask a question, just as there is no guarantee that a Member physically present will be able to ask a supplementary question in the time allowed. But—and I emphasise “but”—we trust that the sense of the House, assisted by the Leader of the House, will support their continuing full participation.
My Lords, I rise to speak to my amendment to the committee’s report, which asks that the Lord Speaker be empowered to call speakers at Question Time, following the example of the House of Commons, and for that to happen initially for a trial period of six months.
In introducing this amendment, I should say that that I am a Back-Bench member of the Procedure and Privileges Committee and very pleased to serve on that committee under the chairmanship of the Senior Deputy Speaker. As the Senior Deputy Speaker pointed out, there was a clear majority on the committee for reverting to the old system at Question Time, but it was not unanimous. By speaking to my amendment today, I hope I can indicate that the committee is not a monolith wanting to impose its views on the House but a place with lively debate and with different views reflecting, I hope, the diversity of the House.
I am conscious that the amendment is, as the Senior Deputy Speaker pointed out, similar in its overall objective to one moved in July by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, whom I see is in his place. It might therefore well be asked why I am travelling down the same route, but although I am a long-standing supporter of the Lord Speaker calling questioners, I know that I, and perhaps many others, voted against the noble Lord’s amendment in July simply because we felt it followed too soon on the electronic vote which had approved the continuation of the list system by a majority of nearly 100. It was a question of timing rather than the principle. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, is in his place and has indicated some sympathy with the amendment I am speaking to. I also welcome the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Grocott and Lord Rooker. They, too, highlight the role of the Lord Speaker in ways which I support.
During the pandemic, the House has had to adapt and change its procedures in various new and experimental ways. The adaptability it showed does great credit to our staff, to whom unstinting gratitude is due, and to Members of the House for responding to the challenges in the way that they did. I feel that this precedent of experimentation helps me, and my amendment, in calling for a six-month trial period and that it is feasible and well worth trying.
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The issue is largely a Back-Bench one but, of course, Question Time is very important for Back-Benchers. When I was on my own party’s Front Bench, I did not find coming in at Question Time a problem. It is the competition between Back-Benchers of the same group that causes shouting and confusion and gives a poor image of a House which otherwise regulates itself very well. Obviously, I welcome the points made in the report, and again in the House by the Senior Deputy Speaker today, about treating each other with respect. I also note the attempts made within the groupings of this House to get the system to work better—by Whips, for example. But similar exhortations in the past have not made much difference and would be less effective than what I am proposing.
Having served as a Member of Parliament in the other place for some 18 years, I felt throughout that time that the conduct of Question Time in terms of who got called worked well. I was never aware of any serious concern about it or desire to change it. Obviously not everyone can get called in on a particular Question, but the system worked fairly for Members in that if you did not get called on a particular occasion, that would be noted and rectified subsequently. I understand how strong the attachment to self-regulation is, but making the specific and narrow change that I am recommending does not open any floodgates leading to abandoning self-regulation, which works well; far from it.
Various objections to what I am proposing have been mentioned to me beside the self-regulation point, but they are unjustified. Some have said that it would put the Speaker in an invidious position in choosing. However, if the long-established approach of the House of Commons is adopted, I cannot see why our Speaker, who has shown that he has the confidence of the House and who serves the House as a whole, could not preside over a system easily as effective as that of the Commons—particularly given the less confrontational atmosphere which prevails in this House.
Some have pointed out that the Lords is more complicated in its membership because of the number of different groupings. However, the differences between the two Houses are much lesser than they were, as the old system in the other place of one governing party and one large opposition party has changed in recent years. The SNP, as we know, is the third largest party in the Commons after the Conservatives and Labour. There are also, of course, Liberal Democrat MPs and a Green MP. People have also mentioned to me the question of the size of our House and the Speaker therefore having to have quite a feat of memory to know who all the Members are. Yet the Commons has more than 600 Members and probably a higher average number of Members wanting to intervene at Question Time than we have, for various reasons. Incidentally, thinking of Members exempt from attending physically and able to participate remotely, my amendment would automatically give effect to the amendment on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend Lord Rooker, who is asking that the Speaker and not the Leader of the House should call those participating remotely.
I can see that some technical changes might be necessary to make the system I am proposing work to best advantage. For example, it has been pointed out to me that it is not as easy to see Members from the Woolsack as it is from the Speaker’s Chair in the Commons. In the Commons, the clerk can advise the Speaker of the names of Members seeking to intervene. We need to ensure that our Speaker has the support he needs, as well as ensuring that Members—wherever they are seated—can be seen and called. But I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of the authorities of this House or the members of the Procedure and Privileges Committee, in conjunction with the Speaker, to ensure that these secondary considerations can be satisfactorily resolved, particularly in light of all the changes we have had to make during the pandemic.
A point about timing has also been raised with me. The Procedure and Privileges Committee recommends going back to the old system from the start of next week. I thought this was too soon, although I was in a minority view on the committee. But the recent emergence of the omicron variant and the consequent new health concerns that it brings reinforce my view and make me uneasy about any immediate changes which would encourage more people, not fewer, to crowd into the Chamber. Given the imminence of the Christmas Recess, it would seem sensible to me that the trial experiment I am recommending should not begin until January at the earliest.
I hope that my amendment will command some support. I believe that what I propose will ensure spontaneity, which so many Members of this House value, while allowing participation in a much fairer and more orderly way in the future. I beg to move.
My Lords, I will be brief, but I want to go slightly beyond my amendment on the Order Paper. I agree with much of what my noble friend Lady Quin has just said. I want to go back to the old system, but I did not like it because of the defects that have been put forward. That is what I really want to share.
When my noble friend Lady Amos was Leader of the House, I was her deputy and Question Time was managed. There was self-regulation, but it was managed. I have here every single Order Paper for every day that I helped to manage Question Time, and I have my notes on the bottom of where the questions came from around the House. I have the list of the different parties and groups, so that the House could see we were being fair. But from the Government Bench, you cannot see who is standing up behind you on either side—on the Cross Benches or the government side—so there is a difficulty. As the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, said when we had a debate on this issue in November 2016, there is something wrong with a Minister deciding which Member questions another Minister. There is something fundamentally wrong about that.
I have looked at the issues and taken one example of what the situation was. Question Time was 30 minutes; I assume that we are going to keep it at 40 minutes, but that is not an issue. In the example I have, we had 34 supplementaries in 30 minutes. Yesterday, we had 32 supplementaries in 40 minutes. Unless it is managed, the questions and answers are too long.
I know that the Leader intervened on her brief visit today, but the fact is that while the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, is one of my favourite Ministers, there is supposed to be a limit on ministerial Answers of 75 words. Their Bench has to intervene to stop the long question and make sure that, within the government team, you get the short answer. If that is not done, it will become chaos and you end up with fewer questions. The idea is to get more questions to Ministers, not fewer. I can show that we were getting more questions with a partially managed system than we are getting even today.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friends Lady Quin and Lord Rooker, especially my noble friend Lord Rooker’s trip down memory lane, when he was the Deputy Leader and I was the Chief Whip—those were the days; it was a Rolls-Royce operation then.
My purpose in putting down an amendment was to try to put the role of the Speaker into some sort of context, because these issues are not new. It is 15 years since we had a Lord Speaker first elected. Initially—I know that quite a few Members have come quite recently—we had the bizarre situation whereby the Lord Speaker was not allowed to do anything. In fact, the Lord Speaker would process in in a very important way—the public, or some members of the public, would be able to see that—and then process in here in an important way and sit down in an important way. They would then sit there looking important but doing absolutely nothing. That was the choreography of it all. It was even more absurd than that, because, for a period of years, the Speaker of the House of Lords was the only Member of the House of Lords at Question Time who could not speak. That must be a first by anyone’s standards, but, slowly, things have improved.
I will not give the House all the signposts along the way, but they were tentative steps to begin with. One that came shortly after we introduced the post of Lord Speaker was that the Lord Speaker would announce when someone had retired from the House or if someone had died—there was a Statement. That had always been ignored in the past, but then that was announced by the Lord Speaker. That was a small step but then, a couple of years ago, we made quite a revolutionary step in the speed at which things progress in this House. We handed to the Lord Speaker the role of filling roles that were not done in the House at all previously.
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Many Members will remember well that when, for example, a Statement was to be made by a Minister, the Minister would simply turn up, whatever the business was at the time would be interrupted and they would make the Statement. There was no announcement as to what the Statement was about—no punctuation. It must have been completely baffling to anyone sitting in the Gallery as to what we were now talking about. So it was agreed that the Lord Speaker could safely do that without affront to the House.
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The committee’s report notes that the conduct of Oral Questions before the pandemic was not immune from criticism. While it ensured spontaneity, it was often voluble and at times fractious. There were also concerns that some Members were discouraged from participating in Question Time as a result. We emphasise —and I underline “emphasise”—that it will be incumbent on all Members to respect the House’s traditions of self-regulation, mutual respect, forbearance and courtesy.
I turn to the amendments to the Motion. At the outset, I outline that all three raise broad issues about the conduct of Oral Questions and the role of the Lord Speaker and Leader—issues that are not addressed in the report before your Lordships. I am, of course, in the hands of the House. I have no mandate from the committee to express a view on the amendments, but I do have a duty to advise on the consequences if any of them is agreed.
The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, is incompatible with the recommendations contained in the report. The report recommends the reinstatement of the pre-pandemic procedure for Oral Questions, while the noble Baroness’s amendment would confer upon the Lord Speaker the task of calling on Members. If her amendment were agreed, my Motion as amended would be self-contradictory. I would therefore propose to withdraw my original Motion and invite the Procedure and Privileges Committee to consider urgently the fundamental changes the House had decided to make to the role of the Lord Speaker, the practical implications of such a change and the implications for the House’s tradition of self-regulation.
The amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Grocott, express regret but do not conflict with the report, so if either of them were agreed I would then propose to move my Motion as amended. I would, of course, also revert to the committee to explore how the concerns expressed could be addressed.
The amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, proposes to give the Lord Speaker the power to call Members to speak during Oral Questions. The House has considered the role and powers of the Lord Speaker on a number of occasions, most recently on 13 July this year. On that occasion, the House debated an amendment along very similar lines tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and rejected it by 376 votes to 112, so the House has only recently voted by a considerable margin to retain self-regulation.
The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, expresses regret that the power to call Members participating remotely would be vested in the Leader of the House rather than the Lord Speaker. The view of most members of the committee is that this role sits best with the Leader as part of her task of assisting the House during Oral Questions, as stated in the Companion, and that prior consultation in the usual channels will help identify when to bring in remote participants.
The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, expresses a more general regret about a diminution of the role of the Lord Speaker. I assure your Lordships that the committee is absolutely not seeking any such diminution. The Lord Speaker will continue to preside at Oral Questions and to call the Members with Questions on the Order Paper and all items of business from the Woolsack.
Lastly, I should note that the report contains a short section reflecting on the debate in the House on 25 October—a debate I shall not forget—on moving to pass reader Divisions. I am very grateful to many noble Lords whom I have spoken to since that debate for the very constructive feedback received. The committee will bring revised proposals on pass reader voting to the House in due course. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
I have always been struck by the number of people who disliked our pre-Covid system of Question Time—the “shouty system” as I would call it. I remember, however, during our debate in July, that my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon said that she winced sometimes when dislike of the system was referred to simply as a women’s issue. I certainly know that many women, myself included, who are not tall in stature and do not have booming voices, find it difficult and off-putting trying to intervene at Question Time. But it is equally true that many male Members of the House also thoroughly disliked the old system, and that number included many senior and experienced parliamentarians. Across the House, many Members simply felt that trying to get in on supplementaries at Question Time was not something they would want to attempt. They particularly disliked having to try to out-shout their colleagues in the same group in the House.
I will make a couple of other points. I am talking about 2005 to 2007; those were the days when my noble friend Lady Amos was Leader, and I first came here in 2001. It was seen as the duty of the Leader and Deputy Leader to be at Question Time every day, because it is the only way to read the House. If you cannot read the House, you cannot really lead the House. It is pretty fundamental, to be honest, to get a sense of what is happening in the House. Then, because you are there every day, the House will accept it when you intervene to stop somebody speaking if they have gone on too long: they get their question cut in half. You may also have to cut the Minister’s reply or have to decide if it is one person or another. That is a pretty fundamental issue.
We have had some changes, of course, in the last two years. The non-aligned Members, some of whom are my noble friends, and the tiny parties can forget their participation on the scale they have had with listed Questions, because it will not happen, and they had better get used to it. From a proportional point of view, they have been having a much bigger share than what their membership has justified. The House will regulate and decide, but we might as well say this now and not wait till a row afterwards: they will get fewer opportunities in going back to the old system than they had before.
We did an analysis at one time: 50% of supplementary questions were asked by 10% of the Members. Think about it: that is the shouty lot. There were occasions when Members who could rise slowly—they were here but could not get up very quickly—would tip me off before Question Time, saying: “I’d like to get in on that Question, but I can’t stand quick enough.” I used to facilitate that, where it was possible—you could not always do it—because I knew that person could not stand as quickly as everybody else. So that is a factor.
We need someone to manage it, and it has got to be the Leader and Deputy Leader; I do not think it is fair to leave it to the Chief Whip. It really needs to be the same people, so they can read the House each day. It is no good coming in as strangers, because it will not be accepted then when you cut someone off in their prime.
It is not a perfect system. On one occasion, my noble friend Lady Amos said to me at the end of Question Time, “Jeff, you owe that Member an apology, and you’d better do it bloody quick.” I had cut someone off; the question was too long. I found out where that Member’s desk was and, at her blind side, I got on my knees and I said to Baroness Trumpington, “I’m ever so sorry.” She forgave me.
There are some serious issues here, because accountability of Ministers is the key. The more supplementary questions the better, because that is important and it is what we are here for, but the way we had it today was a good example. The questions were far too long, and the answers were twice as long as what they should have been. There has got to be discipline within the Government, and it is down to the Chief Whip, the Leader and the Deputy Leader—I am sad to say that they were both here earlier on, but not now; they ought to be here now to read what the House’s mood is on this. Anyway, I have said my piece.