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Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, before the noble Lord concludes, I wonder whether he could assist me. I remember well the occasion that he mentioned regarding the Finance Bill in the 1960s. I believe that it followed a very lengthy and contentious Finance Bill, which caused a good deal of alarm and dissension. I agree with the noble Lord as regards splitting the process. However, when the Finance Bill and other measures in the other place are remitted to a Committee upstairs, I seem to recall that votes are still taken. If that is so, I cannot see why votes should not be taken in our committees in the Moses Room, or wherever. Can the noble Lord say whether I am right in that generalised recollection?
Lord Jenkin of Roding: Yes, of course, my Lords. I do not want to weary the House, but in the other place Standing Committees consist of limited numbers. That is the difference. If any Member of this House is entitled to attend and speak at a meeting of a Grand Committee, I can well understand why votes cannot be taken at that stage. My suggestion of splitting the Bill would allow votes to be taken on the Floor of the House.
4.58 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, it is very good to follow the very thoughtful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, which I believe highlighted a number of useful points that some of us may want to take further. I well remember the excellent report on Science and Society. Two or three months after its publication I happened to be attending a seminar on that theme at Harvard. I suggested to the professor in
charge that she might like a copy of the report. She replied, "Oh, I have already read it". Even if it was not debated properly in our House, the report was widely read by experts across the world.I welcome the package before the House. I believe that we should accept it as such, even though some aspects of it may not be ideal. I am conscious that there is a divide within my own group between those who mainly work and live in London and those who work and live outside the capital. As I work in London but like to spend my weekends mainly outside the capital, I am torn on the Thursday issue because the attraction of taking the 19.25 evening plane to Florence, where my wife works, pushes me very strongly in favour of the experiment for the early Sitting. However, that is a personal view on the matter.
The point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham is one about which we all need to think most carefully. It implies heavier time commitments for a greater number of Members of this House. We are a part-time House; many of us who were nominated to your Lordships' House still earn our salaries elsewhere. We hope that the expertise that we gain from our occupations elsewhere brings something to the House. However, the added strain that more Committee work will place on Members of the House raises questions about the future balance between part-timers and full-timers.
I would like to see an extension of the role of committees in the House. I am happy to hear that we have now got over the old argument that we could not have more committees because we could not possibly have more staff—we used to hear that even four or five years ago. I should like to see not just pre-legislative scrutiny committees but also good, solid committees of inquiry—sometimes Joint Committees, sometimes Committees of your Lordships' House—which would fulfil the functions that were met, many years ago, by Royal Commissions. They would occasionally meet and take evidence outside London to promote a wider and more informed public debate.
My main point is about the Committee stage of Bills. It is high time that we took the Committee stage of more Bills off the Floor of the House. During the past nine months I have examined how many Members were in the Chamber during Committee stages. The noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House said that the average was 12; that matches my observations. There have been five-hour debates in Committee at which no more than seven Members have spoken. I say to those on the Conservative Benches that attendance has most often been thinnest on those Benches. To resist the idea that a Bill's Committee stage, when there is proper inquiry into the Bill's details, should take place in a Committee Room does not fit with Conservative Members' attendance at Committee.
I have worked in Grand Committees. I do not find the Moses Room as difficult as some other Members. I well remember the first time that I was involved with a Bill in Committee, along with Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish. It was, I believe, considering the
adoption into British law of a chemical convention protocol. We learnt a great deal in Committee and we tested the government, who could not answer all of our questions. It was a useful non-voting experience and it meant that when we reached the Report stage, we could get on with the business rather more effectively. Consideration in Committee has a different purpose from consideration on Report, at which votes should properly take place whenever the government have failed satisfactorily to provide answers to questions that were raised in Committee.Resistance to the proposal comes from the old idea that Parliament involves a zero-sum game between two parties: the government struggle to get everything through unamended and the opposition attempt to block everything. That is a sort of Westminster wall game, for those who are familiar with that form of public school entertainment.
However, politics is not a game and the House of Lords is not the Oxford Union or the Eton College debating society; nor is it a club. It is a revising Chamber of a legislature. We should all take to heart the words of the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House—that we have to be concerned with the reputation and proper role of Parliament and that we should demonstrate, as a revising Chamber, that we are fulfilling that proper role.
This Chamber benefits from the fact that no party now has a majority. It means that Ministers have to persuade and that compromise and dialogue are the preferred style. Incidentally, that is one of the arguments for multi-party politics as such—it promotes a greater degree of accountability and responsibility. I therefore very much welcome the overall package. It will enable the House to fulfil a proper legislative function and a proper scrutiny function much more efficiently. I hope that we shall go ahead with the proposal.
5.4 p.m.
Lord Sheldon: My Lords, the committee did well to produce a unanimous report. However, knowing the standing of the people concerned, that does not surprise me unduly. It appears that implicitly it took account of the fact that the reputation of the House is actually increasing. It is up to us to maintain that improvement in our reputation through the work that we are yet to do.
I am all in favour of the experimental period. However, the decisions that we take today may not last for such a long time. Other things are happening. Any introduction of elected Peers will change the character of this House much more than any decisions that we take today, dividing the House not just between those who have an electorate and those who do not but between those who will be trying to satisfy their electorate and those who will not need to. Those elected Members will need office accommodation with secretaries and other facilities and they will have something of a payroll. At Question Time and in debate they will demand a greater presence because
their needs may be perceived as being more pressing. They have to satisfy their voters and obtain their support at any subsequent election. In reality, then, if elected Members join this House, all our efforts to improve the working of the House of Lords will not involve long-term measures. So my approach to the report is based on the assumption that the working practices that we are discussing do not take account of any such changes in our membership.There are particular matters that concern me. The first is that major government Bills should, as a matter of course, be subject to draft pre-legislative scrutiny by Parliament. That is obviously desirable. However, I believe that the report is rather over-optimistic in assuming that so much extra examination of legislation can be slotted into the same timetable that we have at present. It is a worthy ambition but, in addition, Members would need to give much more time to that extra examination—and such time would be extra. To have better prepared legislation will save some time in its later examination but not much. So the total time spent in examining legislation—draft legislation as well as legislation at later stages—will be increased. That is right and proper but such scrutiny can be applied only to a limited number of Bills.
I turn to the proposal to carry over legislation to the following Session. It is true that failure to carry over leads to distortion of the parliamentary year. It leads to the rush at the end of the year when all sorts of Bills are passed that should not be. There is no question about that. The proposal could involve two years of gestation. If a Bill is introduced in October and it carried through to September, nearly two years could be involved from Second Reading. That is far too long. I suggest that the carry over should be no more than 12 months after Second Reading. That is mainly because legislation needs to deal with changes that take place and ensuing further amendments. The process has to reach the end of the line at some stage.
I turn to the questions raised by Finance Bills. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, made a useful point about the way in which Finance Bills are divided. I remember very well, as will my noble friend Lord Barnett, those days back in 1968 when Iain Macleod led for the opposition. He complained for one and a half days that the temperature of the room was too hot. He thereby got the great concession of dividing the Bill, which has been of value to that House and which would be of value to this place as well. It is not the whole Bill that has to have such an examination. I agree with the greater use of committees, as the noble Lord suggested.
We should be careful with Finance Bills because they are rather special. They have technical aspects, which will obviously go to the Grand Committee. However, we should take account of the fact that such technical aspects are not easily distinguishable from the political aspects. I know full well the enormous volume of correspondence that one receives from lobbyists. If we go along that route, the House will have to endure—and, possibly, accept—sophisticated and expensive lobbying.
We must also consider the proposal to examine the merits of statutory instruments. The House of Commons has many problems with statutory instruments. There are thousands of them; over 3,000, I believe. My noble friend mentioned the filtering that will be required. There is no question about that. It already happens in the House of Commons. The amount of filtering required may be so great that one has to place great trust in the people who carry it out. Therefore, statutory instruments will never be brought under the kind of control that I would dearly like to see. In a parliamentary democracy, I can see no way in which the elected Members or the Members of this House could obtain such a degree of control over all statutory instruments.
I am delighted with the proposal to have five oral Questions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I believe that one enormous advantage that this House has is that it is able to deal straightaway with topical matters that suddenly crop up. The House of Commons does not deal with topical questions in the way that we do here. However, there will be a consequence to the proposal. The gentlemanly behaviour whereby we concede the Floor to each other is becoming unworkable now. If we had elected Peers, it would become completely unworkable. It would not be possible to shut them up. They would have elections to fight and would be determined to put their questions. We should need to have a form of Speaker to decide objectively which person was to speak.
The proposal for Ministers to have one day off is right. Great pressure is placed on Ministers. They must frequently answer questions outside their main area of responsibility. The fact that Ministers know the details of each department and that they answer hostile questions on a range of subjects is a tribute to their ability and their work. Of course, that warrants this minor concession.
I turn to the question of additional Back-Bench debates on Wednesdays. The Wednesday debates are among the finest of almost any legislature in the world. Noble Lords do not fight cases from political viewpoints; they fight them because they want this House to take account of matters in which they believe. I consider that additional Back-Bench debates would be wholly valuable.
With regard to Thursday sittings, speaking personally, I do not believe that we should ape the House of Commons and create ever-extended weekends. After all, Friday used to be a full day. It then became a half-day and was then abolished. Now Thursday is coming near to being abolished. As we know, that is also happening in much of industry. When I was young, we used to work on Saturday mornings and finish at one o'clock. That was one's weekend. Of course, the generation before me worked all day on Saturday.
There is a limit to what we can do here. The ability to carry over legislation is valuable, and the next Session should not be so hectic an experience. September sittings could also be worthwhile so long as the dates
and debates were announced well in advance. The working group has worked hard on its report and it deserves the support of the House.5.13 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, this is an important debate in so far as it may have far-reaching effects on the way in which your Lordships' House conducts itself and on the effect that this House has in scrutinising legislation. I can well understand the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House wishing to alter the methods by which the House operates. I believe that we all want to do that from time to time. But the noble and learned Lord seems to take the view that, if anything has stood the test of time tolerably well, it should be changed. That is called "modernising", which gives it a halo of respectability. The noble and learned Lord sometimes reminds me of Boadicea standing upright in her chariot, careering around the arena and ensuring that, if anything stands, it is felled by the knives on the end of the wheels.
I can understand why the noble and learned Lord wants these changes but I cannot understand why he has set up a special committee. The members of it are, of course, all good men and true. But one becomes suspicious when the noble and learned Lord has co-opted the Leader of the Opposition, the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip and the Convenor of the Cross Benches. It would be difficult for them not to take part. That would be unco-operative on their part and they would not know what was going on. On the other hand, if they all become involved and produce—
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