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Viscount Bledisloe: I fear that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, will shortly be told that his amendment is not within the scope of this debate because it is not within the remit of the Procedure Committee to decide how members are chosen for committees. However, before he is rightly told that, perhaps I may say that I strongly agree with the general sentiments expressed in his Amendment No. 3, although not necessarily with the procedure for dealing with it expressed in the more detailed Amendment No. 4.
I believe that the time has come when we should look again at how people are chosen for the various committees. Too often one finds that it is a case of Buggins' turn or a case of, "Oh well, there should be so many members from this party, that party and the other". Incidentally, in relation to the latter, the Cross-Benchers are grossly under-counted, but I leave that small point to one side.
Many committees do not have much politics in them, and, as the noble Lord said, we should do much better if we looked for people who had real knowledge and a real interest in the topic rather than saying, "We must find two Tories, two Labour members, one Cross-Bencher and one Lib-Dem". I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House will say to us that he will take away that matter and consider how it should be dealt with.
The Procedure Committee is a very good example of a body that is badly composed and grossly insufficient in terms of Back-Bench members. First, it is far too big; and, secondly, it is grossly over-stuffed with party apparatchiks. Why the Procedure Committee needs to have the Leader of the House, the Lord Chancellor, the Chief Whip, the Deputy Leader—all from the government party—and, let us say, an almost equal number of Front-Benchers from the other parties beggars description. If it were slimmed down, first, it would be a better body and, secondly, Back-Benchers would receive better representation.
While I do not believe that the noble Lord's amendment can possibly be added to the Procedure Committee's report, I hope that we shall hear from the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House that he will take away the matter and see how it can be investigated.
Lord Peston: I rise to say a word in support of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I take it that he tabled these amendments not with a view to dividing the Committee but with a view to obtaining a statement on the matter. I believe that he is right to do so.
The interests of Back-Benchers in this House must be protected. Very simply, we require my noble and learned friend the Lord Privy Seal and the Leaders of the Opposition parties to rise in a few moments to say that, when it comes to membership of committees,
they are determined to see that the interests of Back-Benchers are protected. At least, I hope that that is what we are about to hear.I want to build on that point by making two or three other remarks. One partly follows the earlier intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, on the subject of human resources. I am glad that he included we Back-Benchers in the set of people called "humans". The problem is that the approach that we appear to be following will undoubtedly involve more work for us. He is right to draw that to our attention.
It is not often recognised—I say this in a slightly irritated way—that noble Lords sometimes sit on committees because they are prestigious. However, they do not seem to realise that a commitment is involved; namely, if one sits on a committee, one is supposed to attend. One is not doing the House a favour by agreeing to be on a committee. If a Peer is on a committee, he has a duty to be there. Noble Lords who know which committee I chair may guess what my sub-text is here.
However, in relation to all these matters, including pre-legislative scrutiny and so on, I believe that if a Peer says that he wants to sit on a committee and if he is added to the list proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that must mean that he wants to do it and that he will attend and take part as and when required and not when it suits him for the odd hour when he can find the time. Therefore, there are two sides to this matter.
Incidentally, I cannot see that the usual channels will keep we trouble-makers off the Committee stage of Bills. It they were to do so, we should simply spend far more time making trouble at Report stage. Therefore, I do not believe that my noble and learned friend the Leader of the House will be tempted to go down that route—in fact, quite the contrary. The correct strategy will be to get the trouble-makers on to a Committee as early as possible and see whether they talk themselves out.
I turn to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. Although it was raised earlier, I believe that we can debate it under this heading—that is, the fear of the guillotine. When we first come to this House, we are often asked what it is like. Certainly when I first came I said, "The amazing thing when compared with academic life is how courteous everyone is in debate. The other thing is that they self-regulate and it works. There is no Speaker. They have a set of rules in the Companion, to which they largely stick to. In particular, when it comes to legislation, any Back-Bencher can put down an amendment and no one can stop him or her from insisting that it is debated". I considered all that to be marvellous.
In terms of the Companion, I have noticed recently, not least with regard to the Education Bill over the past couple of weeks, that we are drifting away from our standards. I believe that at some stage someone will have to remind Peers what the Companion says about how often one may speak and what one is supposed to do. However, that is incidental.
My main point is that I cannot see that I would ever vote for a guillotine and I know of no friends—I do not mean only political friends but friends in this House—who would do so. Therefore, unless something very strange happened to the composition of this House—again, I cannot see that happening in my lifetime—there is not the slightest possibility that a guillotine would be carried. Therefore, I hope that we can scotch that idea during this afternoon's deliberations, if not now.
I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is right to raise the matter as it provides an opportunity for some of us to say what we think. But I do not believe that the danger of the guillotine looms before us in any way whatever. If it does—to make my usual joke—I hope that someone will then tell the Government Chief Whip what trick he has to pull off to obtain a guillotine because he at least might be tempted. But I cannot think of any way that one could carry off a guillotine. I do not believe that it would be possible to get a respectable vote for a guillotine and not embarrass those proposing it. Therefore, I believe that the one aspect that we can set aside—I am using the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, as my basis for intervening—is the danger of a guillotine.
Lord Denham: I spoke at length last time this matter was before your Lordships, and I can assure the Committee that I shall make only this one very brief intervention this afternoon. The noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House knows that I have severe reservations as to how his package, even as amended by the Procedure Committee, might reflect on the traditional freedoms of your Lordships' House. The imposing of the ten o'clock limit, for example, could conceivably lead to a guillotine of some sort unless more time were made available.
When the noble and learned Lord comes to reply, having heard what noble Lords have said, I wonder whether he will make certain, by giving an absolute undertaking to the Committee, that nothing in this whole package will ever be used by Her Majesty's Government to create even a semblance of a guillotine on the Floor of this House or in any of its Committees. If he did that, I, for one, would feel very much happier.
The Earl of Erroll: I return briefly to the subject of the amendment. I, speaking particularly as a Cross-Bencher, support the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I consider it to be a very good thing. I have noticed the possible danger of rotating expertise off a committee because the membership is due for rotation. I believe that we should be seeking expertise. With regard to the subject of guillotines, if we are all brief, we shall not need one.
Lord Biffen: I want to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, concerning the guillotine. In my time, I have guillotined a number of Bills. I have wiped my bloodied hands on my apron afterwards and have never felt much contrition. I suspect that when the proposals now before us are argued through and experienced, we should be very wise not to forswear
the possible use at some stage of a more orderly use of time—I use the bromide prescription. I shall tell Members of the Committee why.It is very modish to say that we are in favour of the pre-legislative consideration of Bills. That is not an entirely new prospect. It was tried in the 1980s in the other place. It was not a great success but nor was it a howling failure. However, what is now being proposed is the consideration of Bills—not only the odd Bill but all government Bills to all intents and purposes—not merely by the chosen Members of this House but by their acolytes, their research assistants and all those wishing to give evidence. Do noble Lords suppose that one can easily anticipate the amount of time that that will take? Do they suppose that the Members who are not privileged players in this drama will quietly accept the subsequent consideration of the Bill in its more conventional sense and will show a suitable reticence appropriate to their status? Not a bit of it. They will try to get in on the act by considering the Bill at its post-pre-legislative stage, and that will be a natural political process.
Those hard-nosed factors have persuaded the management down the road to be very reticent about the idea of pre-legislative scrutiny. I am delighted that that has been breached and that this matter is now to be tried seriously and pioneered in this Chamber. However, in addition to the consequential demand on financial and other resources mentioned by others in the debate, the exercise will, above all, create a great deal of demand in terms of time. That is why the noble and learned Lord the Lord Privy Seal, with his virginal innocence, would never dream of making heroic statements about guillotines. But it is all being done on a very generous expectation. I am reminded of the old adage about the menu with no prices—that after the feast, you may end up doing the reckoning by doing the washing in the kitchen.
6 p.m.
Lord Barnett: The noble Lord, Lord Biffen, had a majority, but my apparatchik noble friend the Chief Whip is not in such a happy situation. As I understand it, he has about 28 per cent of your Lordships' House. Getting a guillotine with that percentage seems a little unlikely. Even the Official Opposition certainly do not have a majority of your Lordships' House. So the idea of guillotines is not really a serious proposition.
I speak briefly to agree with this amendment. It is a very sensible amendment, but it is not necessary—I thought I saw my noble and learned friend nod—because one cannot impose it on your Lordships' House. I do not like the idea of the so-called usual channels deciding the membership of Select Committees. I believe that the membership of Select Committees, which in my experience do a first-class job, should be made up of those who are likely to do a good job on them, and not necessarily in the kind of proportion to which the noble Lord referred. I hope that we can get away from that.
I hope that this report and the previous report on your Lordships' House will ensure that the usual channels do not have the kind of power that they have
previously had and still have now. We are told that the Selection Committee decides on the membership of Select Committees. We all know that, in that sense, a Selection Committee is a joke. The selection committee does not decide; the apparatchiks, the usual channels, decide. It is time that we in your Lordships' House decided the membership of them, which will require us to appoint the members of the selection committee as well, and for that we do not need new resolutions or to amend the procedure. The usual channels should not make the decision.
It is a very complicated matter, about which the other place experienced even greater difficulties, and the usual channels were generally reluctant to relinquish those powers. I know that my noble and learned friend will not be reluctant to relinquish the powers, and I look forward to hearing him tell us that.
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