That this House takes note of the Report from the Select Committee Sitting times of the House: information relevant to the House’s decision (1st Report, HL Paper 12).
My Lords, this first Motion invites the House merely to take note of the report of your Lordships’ committee on the sitting times of the House. Normally, the House would be invited to agree a report from the committee, but on this occasion our report makes no recommendation to the House. Instead, this report seeks only to provide information relating to the second Motion standing in my name, which has been tabled to enable the House to come to a decision on sitting times.
Your Lordships’ committee has not taken a formal position on the second Motion, or on the amendments to it; nor have I. Should they choose to, individual members of the committee will vote as they see fit. I shall not vote in any Divisions. I hope it will assist the House if I begin by explaining the procedure to deal with these Motions.
Today’s debate will take place on the first take-note Motion and, once that is complete, I shall respond. This is a neutral Motion to take note of the report and it does not invite the House to come to a decision. Following that debate, I shall then move the second Motion—the substantive Motion for resolution—formally, without making a further speech. Amendments will be taken in the order they have been tabled, although if the first amendment, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is agreed to, it will pre-empt the others. Similarly, if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, is agreed to, with or without the further amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that will pre-empt the last amendment, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. Finally, once the House has decided on all the amendments, the question that the substantive Motion, amended or not, be agreed to will be put to the House.
I turn to the background of today’s debate. Noble Lords will recall that on 13 July last year the House debated the first report of the Procedure and Privileges Committee of the previous Session, which proposed various adaptations to our procedures as we returned from a hybrid House to in-person sittings. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, tabled an amendment, proposing that the House should sit at 1 pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The amendment was defeated by 296 votes to 234. As I said in response to that debate, the task of your Lordships’ committee is to keep our procedures under review, and in this case we saw benefit in considering sitting times in more detail, gathering evidence and taking soundings to enable the House to have a more reflective, informed debate.
My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in my name. I shall want to divide the House and my understanding is that that will come at a later stage.
The Senior Deputy Speaker has explained why we are faced with this very unusual precedent and these amendments. Having listened carefully to what he said, I have to say to him that I still do not really understand why we are having this debate at all. We decided this question less than a year ago and the House rejected the idea of changing our sitting times. Is the Privileges Committee going to do an annual test? Are we going to discuss this every year? Why are we ignoring the result we saw before?
My noble friend said that he has carried out a consultation. Some 49 people responded to that consultation out of 767 Peers. One of those 49 was me, writing on behalf of the unanimous view of 12 members of the executive of the Association of Conservative Peers. It is somewhat misleading to say that there has been a consultation. It is true that various groups discussed this. We discussed this in the Association of Conservative Peers and there was pretty strong and robust support for things staying as they are, partly because it would be pretty well impossible for us to hold our meetings at the time we held them in the past—
—without taking people away from the business of the House, which I would have thought all Members would think very important.
The very helpful paper my noble friend has produced helps us with
“information relevant to the House’s decision”.
The very last point before the conclusion in paragraph 22 is headed “Educational visits”. One effect of these changes would be to absolutely trash the number of children able to come and visit this House. That is really important, especially at a time—the noble Lord opposite does not think it is important—when Parliament is perhaps not fully understood in the outside world and is facing a degree of, shall we say, contempt.
For those Members suggesting that it will not have a profound effect, I talked to people in the education centre. One of the effects on Wednesdays will be that many of the children will not be able to go into either Chamber because it is Prime Minister’s Questions at the other end of the building and, for security reasons, the Chamber would have to be closed at 11 am if we were starting at 1 pm. By my calculations, some 60% of up to 21 schools with 36 students will find that they are not able come at all. Others will find when they come that they are not able to come into this Chamber. That would be a great tragedy especially if, as I was told this morning, most schools might cancel if they could not get into either Chamber. We understand that. These schools book up to a year in advance, but we are deciding on this now. If we decide to support the Motion, they will all be written to and told that they will not be able to come. That would be an absolute disgrace and a very odd thing to do for a House that spends 6% of its budget—some £9 million—on outreach to schools. It would be extraordinary for us to change our sitting hours at the expense of those children. This is very important.
3:45 pm
Secondly, one-third of our Ministers are unpaid; they act out of public duty. They are expected to stand at the Dispatch Box and answer for the whole Government, unlike in the other place, where they answer for their departments. Your Lordships ask some pretty penetrating and well-informed questions and, if Ministers are expected to do their jobs well and give proper answers to our questions—this perhaps does not always happen—their being briefed to do so would take time out of the mornings when they are supposed to be running their departments. Is that fair or sensible? I think not.
I know that this is motivated by some people’s belief that they might finish business here at 8.30 pm and be able to get home, but that does apply to me or the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who come down from Scotland for four days. I am happy to give way to him now.
I am grateful. Earlier, the noble Lord mentioned the Motion that was previously defeated. It was defeated because it included Monday, and those of us who live outwith London cannot get here for 1 pm on a Monday. This Motion does not include Monday, which is why it should be supported.
I am grateful to the noble Lord but, if we defeat this Motion now, he will no doubt say, “Actually, the Motion was defeated because it didn’t deal with Thursday and the need to get back early”—that is not an argument. The fact is that the House decided something less than a year ago and it is being brought back for no apparent reason.
My point was that some people think that they will be able to finish at 8.30 pm because there will be an 8.30 pm rule. We already have a 10 pm rule, but I have recently sat here until 2 am; what makes people think that an 8.30 pm rule would make any difference? How long will it be before those who wish to vote for this measure because they would like an 8.30 pm rule succumb to the Whips—whoever is in power—and the idea that we should have a guillotine, like at the other end? That is why we get vast amounts of legislation that has not been properly discussed, debated and considered. The notion that we should try to organise our affairs on the basis of a fixed finishing time is deeply damaging to the very basis of this House.
With the greatest respect, I suggest that it is very naive to think that we will be finishing at 8.30 pm when, in recent months, individual Members have tabled more than 100 amendments to one Bill. In this House, we have the right to speak to all these amendments, so how long will it be before the desire to finish at a particular hour results in the distortion of our procedures?
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, might accuse me of being nostalgic, but I remember the other place in the days when we had a 10 pm vote. You knew that, if you were getting the runaround from the Minister’s private office, you could say, “I’ll see your Minister at 10 o’clock and I’ll tell him how unhelpful you’ve been”. I remember that we all had to be in the Lobbies together because we voted at 10 pm, which meant that you were able to talk to colleagues about constituency and other issues.
My Lords, I hoped that I would not have to move an amendment to the Senior Deputy Speaker’s second Motion, but I am very unhappy, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth has clearly enunciated, with the way in which procedure is being used in this matter. The collegiate nature of this House means that the procedures are being abused by a consultation which was long in preparation—the consultation paper was available in January—but which did not come to us until just before the Easter Recess.
We do not achieve change in this House when there is no consensus. The formula of a take-note Motion and a binding decision being grouped together, as they are today, is not only unusual but, it has been said, unprecedented. I see it as an abuse of the House’s procedures. It could have been handled so differently. We could have had a proper debate and then a consultation, but that was not to be. I am sure the whole House, whichever way it feels about the Procedure and Privileges Committee report of which we are taking note, is grateful that we have this chance today, and we thank the Chief Whip and the usual channels for the extended debate we have this afternoon.
My amendment to the Senior Deputy Speaker’s second Motion is one of four. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Forsyth and we will hear two others; they are all anxious about the consequences of the changes proposed. As has been said, less than a year ago, on 13 July, we discussed these matters: 530 Peers voted on the issue and we had if not a huge majority then a substantial majority of 62. The item was given considerable debate—I looked at it and at the notions that were exchanged. Compare that with 49 individual responses to the consultation. It is the fact that the consultation was, in my view, so poorly handled that has led to us feeling so disquieted this time; it seemed to make no difference whatever to the way that the Procedure and Privileges Committee handled the suggestion in the text of the consultation. None the less, it was a fairly evenly divided consultation.
My Lords, I do not think anyone in this House would accuse the noble Lord of paranoia, because he is held in very high respect. However, frankly, whatever the consultation process—maybe only 49 people replied, although in aggregate there were many more—surely we have the information here today. We have a report and we are obviously going to have a very long debate. What is wrong with deciding on this matter today? I do not understand why the consultation is deemed to be so at fault that it negates the whole operation.
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Your Lordships’ committee therefore considered a range of options, seeking advice on their impact on Members, on Select Committees, on public access and on other services. On the basis of that advice, we identified the option set out in today’s second Motion: that the House should sit at 1 pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, normally rising on those days by 8.30 pm. We identified this as manageable.
Our next step, on 6 April, was to send a parliamentary notice to all noble Lords, seeking your Lordships’ views on the proposal. We set up a dedicated email account, to which noble Lords were encouraged to send their thoughts, and those members of the usual channels who sit on the committee were encouraged to initiate discussions in party and group meetings. The results of this consultation are summarised in the report from paragraph 10 onwards. As far as we can tell, on the basis of a small sample, views are balanced between those favouring earlier sitting times and those opposing them. While some noble Lords suggested variations on the committee’s proposal, there was no clear consensus on such changes and for that reason the committee, when considering the responses to the consultation, decided to put the original option, unamended, to the House.
That is a very brief outline of the work your Lordships’ committee has undertaken, but I hope it demonstrates that a lot of time and effort has gone into the report that is on today’s Order Paper. We have received input from across the administration and from bicameral services; we have discussed options at a series of meetings over almost the last six months; and we have conducted an open consultation, providing all noble Lords with an opportunity to comment.
This consultation, in my view, was in no sense rushed. It began before the Easter Recess, when my open letter inviting views on the proposal was first circulated to noble Lords, and continued until the responses, along with feedback from discussions in party and group meetings, were considered by your Lordships’ committee on 7 June. A consultation of this kind by the Procedure and Privileges Committee is, I am advised, unprecedented, as is today’s debate, at the end of which I hope the House will come to a clear decision.
In all this work we have been motivated by a desire to assist the House in coming to an informed decision. We have sought to gather information and evidence and to produce a workable option for the House to debate and decide on. That option is a compromise and, like all compromises, there is a risk that it will satisfy neither those who want more radical change nor those who oppose change. However, we felt it was better to put a considered option on the Order Paper so that Members could have an informed debate and table amendments.
I repeat, as I said at the outset, that neither I nor your Lordships’ committee has taken a formal position. I shall not vote in any Divisions, and my role today is purely to assist the House. It is for your Lordships, as a self-regulating House in matters of our procedures, to debate and then decide. I look forward to listening to the debate. The decision is now in the hands of the House. I beg to move.
I also remember the way in which the dining rooms worked: Labour sat at one end and Tories sat at the other, and you had to sit wherever there was a vacancy. You would get hilarious occurrences where Ted Heath had to sit next to Mrs Thatcher, or something else of that kind. That camaraderie and involvement are absolutely essential to the political process.
If we finish at 8.30 pm—assuming the optimists are right—it is too late to go anywhere else for dinner, and noble Lords will either be stuck here or will go home. I suspect that what will happen here will be exactly the same as has happened in the House of Commons: the catering services will lose a huge amount of revenue, because people will disappear, and then close. The effect in the House of Commons has been absolutely disastrous. What will happen then to the staff in the catering departments?
By the way, on the issue of staff, it is extraordinary that not a single member of staff was consulted on these proposals—they are affected by this, including our doorkeepers and the catering staff. Not only that, if noble Lords agree to this Motion today, we will find that in less than three weeks of sitting time it will all have changed. The proposal is that all of this will change as of September, so everyone’s hours will change. I am very surprised, having listened to questions about the importance of consulting staff and everything else, that this Motion should be in front of us.
If this all sounds a bit negative, I have a proposal. There clearly is a problem in our House with the conduct of business, but it should not be addressed by piecemeal changes of this kind. We all know that this is ridiculous; our speaking time can be reduced to a couple of minutes on really important issues of national importance—of which this is not one. Our ability to deal with legislation sensibly involves sending amendments down to the other place that it might conceivably accept, as opposed to amendments which are part of a political platform or campaign, and our ability to ensure the proper consideration of committee reports. On that, committees often sit beyond 1 pm; what are Members meant to do if they are to be here in the Chamber for Questions? All these things need to be considered. I respectfully suggest to the Procedure and Privileges Committee that it might try to convene cross-party agreement as to how we could change our operations in a way which will enable this House to do its best and to draw on the talents within it.
This is the final point I will make. We often tell people that this is a House of great expertise—and so it is—and a polite House which considers things carefully. A move in this direction is a move to a full-time House and away from noble Lords having interests outside the House. I know some people think that it is bad that some noble Lords have interests outside the House, but how are you going to have up-to-date expertise if noble Lords do not have these outside interests? If this is the reason that we tell people that we have an unelected House of expertise, what on earth are we doing moving a Motion such as this, which takes us in the direction of being a nine-to-five, full-time House, paid, and not populated by people who give it their best out of duty to their country and to our parliamentary system of government?
I do not know whether noble Lords will remember, but we got an email—a parliamentary notice—immediately before we rose for the Easter Recess, when most of us go home and have no contact with our parliamentary email; it is actually difficult to interact with your parliamentary email if you are outside London, and a lot of people were not able to respond to the consultation. I ended up writing a letter to my noble friend the Senior Deputy Speaker—noble Lords will know that we are old colleagues and friends—so I suppose I count as one of the people who was against these proposals.
We were given options. The options were extremely complex and it was quite difficult to choose as to who would start and when and what they would do with them. I am not surprised that the consultation did not attract a lot of individual respondents; just look at the number of Peers here this afternoon, even those who applied in aggregate. I understand that the Lib Dems submitted a large number of supporters for the proposals in aggregate, and we know that the Association of Conservative Peers did so, but how many individuals in this Chamber today actually voted in this consultation? Had we done so, we might have saved the embarrassment of having to reject a proposal that was made in all good faith—we decided on 13 July last year.
When the committee met on 18 November, I think, in any other business a member of the committee proposed that it should consider changing to two days —exactly the proposal that has now appeared. The Procedure and Privileges Committee agreed to work up this proposal. That was made available at a meeting on 21 January. As far as I can see, that is the proposal, more or less, that we are dealing with today.
But Members of the House were not involved—no one asked us. It chose to do so just as we rose for the Easter Recess, and the conclusions of the committee were published the Tuesday immediately after we returned from the Jubilee Recess. Perhaps I am paranoid about this, but I feel there was momentum for pursuing an objective which appealed to individuals in this House without any real input from its membership.