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A noble Lord: It is Lord Brightman.

Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am so sorry. I meant to say the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman. His eyes were boring into me for another reason. That was my fault.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, has frequently said that consolidation Bills would be useful. They are not a subject of pulsating interest to many people. If we could sit in Grand Committees on unwhipped business—there would be no votes in September—we would make the House work better.

I am approaching 20 minutes. The last point that I shall make relates to an observation made by many noble Lords. The increasing volume of Europe-derived legislation is not subject to sufficient scrutiny. That is why we suggest that the Select Committee on the European Union, which does excellent work, should review the House's scrutiny of European legislation and consider the appropriate balance between the scrutiny of general policy and that of specific legislative proposals.

I am sorry if the wording of the Motion caused distress. The original draft Motion that I considered was in a form that the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Roper, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, said was inappropriate. I accepted their suggestion, and we had correspondence about it. The date—8th July—was thought appropriate by the Clerk of the Parliaments. In correspondence, every member of the group agreed that this was an appropriate Motion. I hope that it is not regarded, in any way, as an arrogant attempt on my part to dictate to your Lordships: it is not. I know that the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Roper, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, can confirm that. We all agreed on it.

It is not a brief time. There are seven weeks for consideration of the matters, and not all the recommendations need any scrutiny by the Procedure Committee. I stress that the Motion says that the Procedure Committee should report back by 8th July with proposals—I underline the words—for the approval of your Lordships. The Committee will offer us a menu, and we must come to our conclusion.

I said that that was the last word; lawyers always say that when they have another paragraph. I shall end by thanking Brendan Keith and Chloe Mawson, who put up with us for a long time—16 meetings over many weeks. They smiled tactfully and Delphically, and their work was invaluable, underlining again the high quality of the officials who serve the House. I commend the Motion to the House.

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Moved, That this House takes note of the report by the working group appointed to consider how the working practices of the House can be improved, and to make recommendations (HL Paper 111); and that the report be remitted to the Procedure Committee, with an instruction that it makes by 8th July recommendations, for approval by the House, as to the implementation of the report.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

3.26 p.m.

Lord Denham rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out all the words after "Committee".

The noble Lord said: My Lords, procedures in both Houses of Parliament have evolved over the years, and it is right that they should do so, in order to take account of new circumstances as they arise. But it has always been an accepted rule, again in both Houses, that any change should be made by agreement.

The history of the body whose report we are considering this afternoon has been an unusual one. Its existence was announced by the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House in answer to a Question for Written Answer on 19th July last year, as,

"a Leader's Group to consider how the working practices of the House can be improved and to make recommendations".—[Official Report, 19/7/01; col. WA 144.]

Those recommendations were presumably to be made to the noble and learned Lord himself, although it was he who was to chair the group.

Of course, the noble and learned Lord had every right to appoint such a body to advise him and to select the membership himself. I would have liked to see the inclusion of the noble Lord, the Chairman of Committees, whose knowledge and experience would have had much to add, even among such an already illustrious group of Peers. Again, as the group was set up to advise him, I would have preferred the noble and learned Lord to send such of the suggestions as he personally supported to the Procedure Committee for it to consider and make recommendations to the House in the usual way. However, I shall not make too much of that.

On the morning of Thursday 2nd May, it was widely believed that today's debate would be on a straight "take note" Motion. By the time of the party meetings, however, it had been made known that the debate was to be on a Motion for approval of the whole report. By that time, a considerable number of noble Lords, myself included, had begun to have the gravest reservations on many of the recommendations in the report, but that was not the point. Even to ask the House to approve the report, referred directly to it, of a wholly unofficial group would have been conferring on both the group and the report an authority that neither of them possessed.

When, later that afternoon, I found that the draft Motion for approval had, indeed, been tabled, I added to it a "next business" Motion, which, as your Lordships will know, is the prescribed remedy for a Motion on which it is held to be improper for the

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House to record an opinion. Within a couple of hours, the Motion, together with my addition, had left the draft Order Paper as mysteriously as it had arrived. I had hoped that Her Majesty's Government would thereafter revert to their original intention of tabling a straight "take note" Motion. That would have been the procedurally correct thing to do. Not a bit of it, however.

On Wednesday, 8th May, a new Motion was tabled in the form in which it stands today, a "take note" Motion to which has been added referral to the Procedure Committee, which is unnecessary, and the setting of a time limit for the Procedure Committee to report, which is unheard of.

A Motion that "this House takes note" is described in the Companion to the Standing Orders as enabling,

"the House to debate a situation or a document without coming to any positive decision.

"Guidance about the wording of motions for papers",

continues the Companion,

"applies to take-note motions".

And of Motions for papers, it says that,

"such a motion should normally be withdrawn, since... there is neither advantage nor significance in pressing it".

I can find no precedent for "tacking"—and I use a word that, in parliamentary terms, has always been considered highly pejorative, deliberately—any form of instruction on to a "take note" Motion. Nor can I find one for setting the Procedure Committee a time limit over any matter referred to it. On these two grounds alone, I believe that I am justified in pressing my amendment to a vote.

I must also tell noble Lords opposite that I, together with a large number of Peers, have the gravest of reservations about, at the very least, the majority of the recommendations that this report contains. Some of them are all too seductive at first sight—the House normally rising not later than 10 p.m., for example. Who in his right mind could object to that? Yet, if we should reach that hour on the last of the days scheduled on a particular stage of a particular Bill and we still have not finished—we are a revising Chamber, remember—what happens then? Does the noble Lord the Captain of the Gentlemen-at-Arms produce an extra day or two out of somewhere? Or could it be that some gentle form of guillotine might contrive to creep surreptitiously in? I can tell your Lordships this. If, in my time as Chief Whip, I had tried to sell this package or anything approaching it, to the noble and learned Lord's predecessors as business managers of his party, I would have received a very rough answer indeed.

Your Lordships will be aware of the many ways in which, since the general election of 1997, procedures in another place have been changed—not by agreement between the parties which, as I say, has been the long established practice, but through the sheer voting power of the Government's vast majority. Those changes have included, first, the reduction of Prime Minister's Question Time from two afternoons to one, and, no, half an hour on a Wednesday is not an adequate substitute for two separate quarters of an hour on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon; secondly,

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the all too frequent practice of political advisers making statements direct to the press from Downing Street rather than Ministers making them on the Floor of the House; thirdly, no votes on business after 10 p.m., with all too rare exceptions; fourthly, deferred Divisions on business debated after 10 p.m., these to be taken at 3.30 p.m. the following Wednesday afternoon, by a happy coincidence (for the Government) immediately following the one Prime Minister's Question Time of the week; and fifthly, routine severe timetable motions—guillotines—of Committee and Report stages.

And still to come, first, Tuesday and Wednesday sittings from 11.30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; secondly, only 13 Friday sittings for Private Member's Bills; and, thirdly, carrying-over of Bills from one Session to another, this last being already familiar to your Lordships as one of the recommendations on the paper before the House today.

Her Majesty's Government have not got an overall majority in your Lordships' House, but it is against this backdrop that every one of the proposals in the group's report should be examined minutely to make absolutely certain that no hidden agenda attaches to any of them. And this is why it is so vitally important that the Procedure Committee should not feel pressurised by a time limit into taking what might, just might, be disastrous decisions for your Lordships' House. That is all I am asking by my amendment.

I beg your Lordships not to hand to this Government on a plate, just because they have asked you nicely, things they have taken for themselves by brute force of numbers in another place.

I understand that the Table has ruled that today's Motion is in order. Indeed, it has accepted the Motion, so I suppose it must be so. But it is certainly not in accordance with convention—and conventions in this House are always honoured.

The value of the "take note" Motion—I say this to the noble and learned Lord having had the benefit of some years' experience of the procedures of the House—is that it enables important, and sometimes highly controversial matters to be debated dispassionately, without risking a Division. It is infinitely more often used by the government of the day than it is by either opposition party or by Cross-Bench or Back-Bench Peers. If the noble and learned Lord allows this convention to be breached this afternoon, for the sake of some passing convenience, I can tell him that he and, perhaps more important, his noble friend the Chief Whip, will come to regret it, again and again and again. I beg to move.

Moved, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out all the words after "Committee".—(Lord Denham.)

3.36 p.m.

Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Denham. I have always believed that if he were not in this House we would have to invent him, because he is a true guardian of its procedures. If one looks at his record, one can see why.

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My noble friend was for 11 years government Chief Whip and spent 30 years on the Front Bench. What he does not know about procedure and the reasons for it is not worth knowing. We need that expertise in this House. It leads me to recognise how much I miss the contributions made by the late Lord Shepherd and Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos. Between them and with my noble friend they ran this House extremely effectively over many years.

Just after the last general election, not yet 12 months ago, the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House told me that he intended to set up a Leaders' group to examine the working practices of this House. I suggested that it should be chaired by a senior Back-Bencher, as was the case eight years ago in 1994 when the late Lord Rippon of Hexham chaired such a committee, or as the noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, did in the previous Parliament. But the noble and learned Lord felt that this issue was of such importance that he wished to chair the committee himself. I and other noble Lords who have been mentioned joined it.

I regard this as entirely a House matter. I represented myself, not the Conservative party. If any of these matters come to a vote, it will be a free vote. I thank my noble friend Lord Waddington for his work and I join the noble and learned Lord in thanking the Clerks, who worked extremely hard.

Over many meetings we covered almost every subject imaginable dealing with the working practices of this House. It has been said many times outside the Chamber—perhaps it will be said in this debate—that the report hides a secret hidden agenda of the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House. That is not true. The noble and learned Lord has been open about his ambitions. He has discussed them in this House and outside it. His comments have been reported in the press. He has never hidden his view that more business should be taken off the Floor of the House and that, for example, there should be no votes in Committees. He proposes also the selection of amendments; programming debates; the use of guillotines or "bringing down the knife" as it is referred to in another place; the possibility of a Speaker for the House; codifying the conventions; morning sittings and so on.

Those suggestions have been more than a gleam in the noble and learned Lord's eye.

Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that the original intention had been to report well before the Christmas Recess. The report is the result of our work and debates. As the noble and learned Lord said in his introduction, the report was brought about by consent and agreement. It will still affect every single Member of your Lordships' House. It is in part a fundamental change.

When I agreed to the changes, I had two principles uppermost in my mind. The first was to ask whether the proposals reduced the ability of the House to scrutinise legislation. The second was to ask whether they allowed the Government to cram even more, often unnecessary, legislation through Parliament. My

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view is that on balance the proposals do not offend those principles. On that basis, and after a great deal of discussion, I have agreed to them.

Perhaps I may briefly examine the proposals. There are seven broad issues, four of which are non-contentious. I welcome the new proposals for the Finance Bill. As regards the proposal for a committee on statutory instruments, I believe that we should see how that works. As regards more Starred Questions, I am not wholly convinced that we need more than half an hour, but if topical Questions are on offer let us see how they work in practice. If a ministerial off-day is the quid pro quo, fair enough, but when I asked the Library how many Questions had not been answered by Ministers since the turn of the year I was told just under 20 per cent. Therefore, we already have a system which allows Ministers to visit prisons, schools and hospitals. The fourth relatively non-contentious item is the review of the European committees and I hope that that will take place.

However, three other issues raise more serious concerns. The first is the sittings of the House and how they will fit in with Grand Committees. The second is pre-legislative scrutiny and carry-over. The third is September sittings. As regards our daily sittings, the proposed change to sittings on Thursday was the issue least debated in the group because it had been overwhelmingly popular in the questionnaire sent to every Member of this House. That is precisely the kind of issue on which the House will have a vote when the report comes back from the Procedure Committee in due course.

Likewise, closing at 10 p.m. was popular, but that will not work unless there is clear co-operation between Front and Back Benches and between the Front Benches through the usual channels. In exchange for the time lost after 10 p.m., there is a recommendation that there should be an increase in the number of Grand Committees. In my experience, Grand Committees are not hugely popular. They do not provide much better scrutiny than Committees on the Floor of the House and they do not save much time. But I have agreed with the proposal for an increase during the experimental period in order to see how the system works.

I note in passing that in the 1994 debate on Lord Rippon's report, the then Leader of the Opposition, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said that he was not convinced of the merit of Grand Committees.

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