My Lords, the report proposes a number of recommendations to the House for changes to the Standing Orders and the Companion to the Standing Orders. As we explain in the report, these were agreed at the committee’s meetings on 27 January and 9 March this year. At the time of those meetings, new editions of both the Standing Orders and the Companion were thought to be imminent, and the committee decided to present all the changes to the House when these new editions were ready. Work on the new editions was, however, paused when the coronavirus pandemic started, and the procedures underpinning the virtual and hybrid proceedings became the focus. More recently, on 6 October, the committee agreed changes to procedures regarding legislative consent Motions and we have decided to wrap up all the outstanding changes in this one report.
I shall briefly explain each of the changes outlined in the report. The changes to the process for taking a leave of absence from the House are to avoid any ambiguity in the use of the leave of absence procedure and to safeguard against Members using a leave of absence as an alternative to retirement from the House.
With regard to committee member rotations, we recommend that from January 2021, all Select Committee member rotations should take place at the start of each January. We recognise the unique situation of the European Union Committee and recommend that any “normal” rotation of EU Committee membership should be deferred until any changes to the structure of the EU Committee are implemented.
The Lord Speaker, Leaders, Chief Whips, Deputy Chief Whips, the Convener of the Cross Benches, the Senior Deputy Speaker and the chair of the EU Committee are already exempt from the rotation rule. We recommend that this exemption should be extended to any Member serving as a substitute for the Leaders, Chief Whips, Deputy Chief Whips or the Convener of the Cross Benches.
We recommend that Standing Order 64 should be updated to reflect the new committee names following the Liaison Committee report Review of House of Lords Investigative and Scrutiny Committees: Towards a New Thematic Committee Structure.
At our meeting on 27 January, we considered a paper proposing a number of modest changes to procedures relating to legislation. We agreed a number of those changes, and the details are set out in the committee’s report.
Noble Lords will recall that, on 24 September 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the Prorogation of Parliament was not itself a proceeding in Parliament but was a prerogative act of the Crown. The committee therefore recommends that Standing Order 76—
“Proroguing the Parliament at close of session”—
should be deleted to avoid the implication that prorogation is a proceeding of Parliament. We also recommend a number of changes to the Companion contingent upon this.