---

House of Lords: Working Practices

My Lords, I have shared responsibility for the arrangement of business as a Whip in both Houses over more decades than I like to think about, both in government and in opposition. As the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said, this debate is part of a continuum. The procedures and practices of your Lordships’ House have been under almost continuous scrutiny and change for the past decade and more. That is well set out in the Library note issued before this debate, as the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition pointed out. I welcome the setting up of the committee by the Leaders to consider these matters, but I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Maclennan and Lord Kakkar, that there is a problem with how this fits together with the proposals for changes to the constitution of your Lordships’ House. The proposals that are before us—from the four reports and so on—are all for changes to the present House. A fully elected House would both need and want different procedures to reflect the fact that the elected Members would each have to take an interest in a far wider range of questions—those issues that concern their constituents—than your Lordships currently do. We each have our interests and, for the most part, we do not interfere with others. The time pressures on an elected House are much greater, as those of us who have been involved in the management of or been Members of the House of Commons know well. That is why the other place has, over the years, adopted guillotines, the selection of amendments, the grouping of amendments and all the other things for speeding up the business and trying to fit more into the time available. In considering procedure, we should recognise clearly that the provisions that are appropriate to a House such as your Lordships’ House, which contains a large number of Peers who are high in expertise on specific matters, are very different from those that are appropriate to a House in which everyone has to take at least some interest in practically everything. Of course, if this House were to become a hybrid House—partly elected and partly appointed—it would need hybrid procedures, as it were; it would need some parts from both. Even that would mean a significant change to the procedures and practices of the House. It is important to remember these differences, particularly when considering the adoption of some of the Commons practices. I was surprised to read in the report from the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that the usual channels are considered opaque. The usual channels are defined in the Companion with some care. I was a member of them as Opposition Chief Whip from 2001 to 2007. The results of their daily and more or less continuous negotiations are announced to the House in the form of agreed business, together with frequent Statements to the House by the government Chief Whip about particular modifications and what is happening. Speaking with personal experience only of my party, and with only hearsay from the other parties and the Cross Benches, no one is more accountable to the members of their party than a Chief Whip in the Lords. Every week the Chief Whip reports to the party group—the Association of Conservative Peers in our case—the results of the usual channels’ discussions on the business of the House, is openly questioned and pressed on various matters, and has to do his or her best to respond to what is said and wished for. Every week the Chief Whip also has a private meeting with the officers of the Association of Conservative Peers. What is more, every day the Chief Whip is about the House, open to informal questioning or lobbying. I can assure noble Lords that Members approach the Chief Whip every five minutes, it sometimes seems, about one matter or another. They do not always say the same thing; they press alternative views and different points, which is the central difficulty. It is impossible to please everybody all the time. All you can do is try to please as many people as possible within your group for as much of the time as you can. The report of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, acknowledged, as has been said, that some process of this kind is necessary to lubricate the business of the House. That is right. The Chief Whip, the Leader of the House and the leaders of the various other parties are under pressure from other directions—from the Government themselves, the other place and their colleagues. These are pressures to which the Chief Whip and so on are subject, in a sense, on behalf of the House. There are many other people who are interested in and affected by the progress of legislation, as well as the membership of your Lordships’ House. It is suggested that it would improve the transparency of the usual channels if the Leader of the House were to have a weekly question time. I think that is an error. Such a procedure would not have the intended consequence. The Leader would quickly be asked questions designed to score political points, not to elucidate information about the scheduling of business. Those who have listened to Leader’s Questions in another place know exactly what I mean. Every week the Chief Whips and the Convenor are formally questioned in the group meetings. That is the better way to proceed. By the way, this is a highly detailed point but the usual channels are nothing to do with the refreshment department’s hours, as is suggested in the report, except to suggest to the refreshment department when the House is likely to be at its fullest. That is obviously right. As I say, one cannot please all the people all the time. That applies in spades to appointments to committees. All appointments to official committees of your Lordships’ House are put to the vote on the Floor of the House. It is very rare that any amendments are made when the recommendations come forward. That is because of the very wide consultation which takes place between the parties about balance and the individuals who might serve. The difficulty is that Peers are reluctant to serve on some committees and have to be persuaded to do so. On the other hand, other committees are extremely popular and the difficulty is to select the right people to serve on them. There are a lot of other proposals in the various reports—far too many for me to respond seriatim. I record my support for the remarks of my noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon and for his proposals on tax simplification. However, as I sat on his working party, I suppose that I could be expected to support those. To my mind the most important recommendations are those concerning pre- and post-legislative scrutiny. There are some valuable proposals there. I should also like to see renewed consideration of how Bills are drafted. A very important report by our late lamented colleague Lord Renton was published a few decades ago. The recommendations of that excellent report have never been properly implemented by any Government between then and now. Like others, I am strongly in favour of a self-governing House but wish to make it clear that that obviously calls for self-discipline and self-restraint. However, that is not the whole thing—self-governing means that the House is governed by everybody in it and that we are all responsible for the rules being followed not only by ourselves but by other people as well. Peers can, and should, draw attention to possible breaches which they think may have occurred, either openly in the Chamber or in the committee—that is sometimes done—but also privately outside if somebody has said something which is not within our normal rules. Each of us is responsible for all of us in a sense. I remember very well—as I am sure some of your Lordships do—the occasion when the late lamented Lord Russell thought that a Minister had been rude to him and invoked the Standing Order on asperity of speech. We all voted on whether the Clerk should read that Standing Order. The vote was carried and he did. Lord Russell was a notable expert on your Lordships' customs, but that is not something which should be allowed to fade entirely into oblivion. Let us adapt our customs but do so in a thoughtful manner, conscious of the unintended consequences.