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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, the general tone of this debate suggests that in what we must hope is the aftermath of the traumatic events which have affected Parliament recently, the time is ripe not only for specific reforms but also for a general review of the way in which our procedures may be improved. I support enthusiastically the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, that we should look at how we in this House might follow the lead set by the Select Committee on Public Administration in another place to improve how we operate. I have had the privilege of serving on two committees, one on the Speakership and the other a Joint Committee on the conventions between the two Houses, the first chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, and the second by the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham. I would like to say that the duties which the first committee on the Speakership laid on the holder of that office have been admirably and imaginatively fulfilled by the present Lord Speaker, but it was also the case that the committee was strongly against the idea that we should have a House of Commons-type Speaker. I believe that that is still so, but I detect some feeling that perhaps it would not be stretching matters too far if the Lord Speaker were to fulfil the functions which at present are carried out by the Whips at Question Time. It is important that the Questions should continue to rotate around the House, but it should be possible for the Lord Speaker to intervene without making any fundamental change in how we operate. What is absolutely crucial is that we should not follow the House of Commons in how it organises Question Time. It is much better to have half an hour with only four Questions because it is far easier to pin down a Minister than it is in the other place where the moment someone gets the Minister on the run, the Question changes to the next one. That our system is better was revealed very clearly the other day when the Minister was determined not to say yes or no, but eventually was forced to say one or the other and in fact got it wrong. Be that as it may, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, among a number of good suggestions, seemed to indicate that we might go along this route. I think that it would be at the very least worth considering. The second committee I served on looked at the conventions between the two Houses. We need to reappraise the position, not only in the sense of the conventions but more widely. The reality of the situation is that many Members of this House have great experience of the other place, but the level of ignorance over there about what goes on here is quite appalling. It is rare to see a Member of the other place at the Bar of the House; indeed, the only occasion when one normally sees them is at the State Opening. In the light of their experience, it would not be surprising if they believed that we are in robes all the time surrounded by ladies in tiaras. Alas, I am afraid that it is also the view of the public. Despite the efforts of the Lord Speaker’s department to provide members of the press with photographs, they continue to publish pictures of the State Opening, describing it as the "House of Lords". It is very misleading in terms of how we operate. There are other, more important issues to consider in the relationship between the two Houses, in particular the whole question of programming. Before 1997, if the Government felt that the Opposition was filibustering or if something was really urgent, they would put down a guillotine motion. It would be debated for half a day and a vote was taken at the end. Only four or five times a year at the most did they go through this procedure, which was a considerable sanction. But since 1997, everything has been programmed and the time available has not been sufficient for the House of Commons to debate matters properly. MPs have been prevented by the Government from doing their legislative job. Bills arrive in this place completely unscrutinised, with large parts ignored. The result is that we are not really a revising Chamber; on many Bills we are the primary legislative Chamber. We pass a huge mass of amendments; they go back to the other place and all but a handful are immediately accepted. It is clear that scrutiny ought to have been done by the House of Commons in the first place. I hope that the committee to which I referred earlier, under Dr Tony Wright, will say simply that programming must stop. It is particularly appropriate that it should do so at this moment because programming is very popular with the Government—it makes life a great deal easier—and it will be a temptation for whichever party is in power after the next election to continue programming. A strong recommendation from the committee in the other place would be helpful in avoiding that happening. At the moment, it has totally distorted the workload balance between the two Houses. A proposal has been put forward to publish yet another draft on House of Lords reform. It is very sad that we did not manage to get through in the previous Session the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, which dealt with what needed to be done. However, the Government are still determined to press ahead with proposals for an elected or partly elected Chamber on the basis of a vote which they said at the time would be an indicative vote. They have now taken it as a definitive vote, overlooking the fact that the official policy of the Labour Party was not supported by a majority of Labour Members in either House, and that the official policy of the Conservative Party was not supported by a majority of Conservative Members in another place and was overwhelmingly opposed by a majority in this place. The Government are acting as though that situation justifies entirely pressing ahead with the proposals they would like to see. I hope that does not come to pass. Finally, the Joint Committee on Conventions spent an enormous amount of time discussing the Salisbury/Addison convention in regard to manifestos. On reflection, I think we reached the wrong conclusion on that, although I supported it at the time. The doctrine of the manifesto is now absurd. I tried to table a Question today on how many manifestos were printed and how many were sold. It took me in the last election five days even to get hold of a Labour Party manifesto. The idea that they are all read avidly and everyone signs up clause by clause, not as it used to be for a page and a half but for a volume of proposals, is absurd. The Government say, "It is the will of the people; we must go ahead". It is high time we treated the doctrine of the manifesto with the contempt it probably deserves.