Procedure and Privileges Committee — House of Lords, 2020-12-14
Topic: Government Operations
Angela Smith (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I totally agree with the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Newby. This is quite extraordinary. I do not know that it has ever happened before in your Lordships’ House—that a member of a committee does not like the decision of that committee and then tables an amendment. In fact, the decision of the committee was a compromise. I could equally have tabled an amendment in the same terms as the noble Lord’s, because I did not think it was the best decision to wait until the end of January. The noble Lord, Lord Ashton, will recall that I proposed that we wait until we are not operating in a hybrid way. I will come back to something that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, said on that. When we are operating normally and can function properly as a House, as he put it, that would be the time to have by-elections of hereditary Peers. I have been clear throughout, whatever my views on the by-elections—I take the same line as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes: I do not think they are appropriate in this House; this is the next stage of reform, and I support the Grocott Bill—that is not what we are discussing today. I cannot speak for other noble Lords and I speak entirely for myself, but that did not play a part in my decision to support the suspension first proposed and that it should continue now This has been an extraordinary debate, but it would be wrong if we set a precedent that, when an individual does not agree with a committee’s decision, anyone can bring forward a Motion to disagree or to change it. I have no intention of doing that on this matter, which I did not fully support, but it was a compromise I will pick up some of the comments. First, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, because she addressed other parts of the report. I am not suggesting that we have a further debate on those points, but I think resetting Questions is a sensible move when parliamentary sittings are becoming uncertain. To go from January to December and have an annual allowance for Questions makes more sense. She will recall that I raised Written Questions and had discussions with the Government Chief Whip at the end of the previous Session, when we had a huge number of outstanding Questions that were not being answered Part of the problem is that many more Questions are being asked, partly because so many of the Answers are inadequate, so noble Lords go back two or three times to get to the bottom of what they are seeking. I propose that there should be a day’s debate when those who have Questions outstanding can hear Ministers’ Answers. The Department of Health has the greatest number of Questions and wrote to every Member to address their outstanding Questions. Unfortunately, as helpful as the letter was, it did not answer the Questions. We need to look at some way to address this, because there is a huge backlog of Written Questions and the Answers are not as adequate as they should be To come back to the matter at hand, the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, raised several points that were just incorrect. First, he talked about the Conduct Committee debate on the report into the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, who has now been suspended from your Lordships’ House. There was no debate on that report. This House decided that reports could be received and voted on, but no debate took place. It was not that scores of Members were trying to speak who were unable to, because it would not have been allowed Secondly, there was a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and others, such as the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Strathclyde, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, about breaking the law. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is absolutely right: the committee took legal advice and it was as one would assume—that it would be wrong to use the Covid emergency. It is worth noting that it is becoming more of an emergency, with the proposal that London, Essex and Kent will probably go into tier 3 even today, rather than the decision being taken later this week, as expected. That was reported as I was driving to your Lordships’ House earlier, so this is a serious situation, but it would be wrong to use that situation to take a political view on hereditary by-elections The legal advice said that you could continue to suspend them but that you would have to fix a date, or have a route map or a plan to say when they were coming back; it could not be indefinite. As long as a decision is taken to show they are going to be reinstated, that is within the law. I hope that allays noble Lords who feel that the law is being broken—the law is not being broken. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, saw the same legal advice as I did. The law has not been broken and is not being broken; it is acting within the law to say that a further period of suspension to deal with Covid is satisfactory The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, also said that there were no arguments. As the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said, there were no arguments that he liked—he disagreed with the arguments. It would not be right for me to divulge who voted how, and the vote took place—