House of Lords — House of Lords, 2015-01-06
Topic: Government Operations
Stewart Sutherland (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Williams, for giving us the opportunity to debate this very important topic. I also congratulate him on securing a debate that does not have the usual constraints of time limits on the speeches. I will come back to that, as I may come to regret it as I look down the list of speakers, but that is my initial thought I have one regret, however, about the subject for the debate, which is that it focuses on what I regard as only one side of the problem: the size of the House. The difficulty we have is that changing it—we have rehearsed this well and I will not go into it again—is very difficult and, I have no doubt, will be very contentious. However, it seems to me that we have not debated sufficiently the way in which we might be able to adjust our procedures to deal with this fact and to begin to allow a better use of the talent that we have in this place, perhaps—I throw this in as a possibility—by extending the use of committees with real powers to carry out some of the work of this House If you are a Cross-Bencher, you find that to raise a supplementary in Question Time you have pretty well got to surprise God and the Bishops by coming in for Prayers in order to be seated in the right sort of place. That is not sensible. Equally, if you wish to speak in a debate in which you believe you have some expertise, you might well find that the list of speakers is so long that there is the crass example of the two-minute speech. That is not good enough. Yes, most of what I want to say can be said in a minute and a half—I shall not do that just now but it can be done—but often if there are real points of issue, and that has applied to some of the debates in which many of us have taken part, the constraint on time is a great difficulty Is there no way of beginning to deal with that? I can think of several ways, none of which I will put forward now because they will be shot down but they are worth detailed discussion, including the use of a more extensive committee system; for example, education is one of the areas in which my own background gives me some expertise but there is no committee on education allowed in this House. Equally, we can take some of the Bills in Committee next door but there could be a much greater pre-legislative scrutiny process, as applies in some areas of our business. I throw these in simply as suggestions. It is a two-part issue: size and adjusting procedures to the size because undoubtedly we will not reduce the numbers significantly within a short period of time Those who are looking to the next election should consider the worries of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, about conspiracies here. If one looks at the figures for the two years following the previous election, the net numbers in this House increased by 90. That tells us what is going to happen after the next election, especially with more parties in play. That inevitably will increase the number of those hoping and reasonably wanting to come into the House Many of your Lordships who have come through other routes will perhaps not know much about the scrutiny that some of us Cross-Benchers went through. When the Appointments Commission was set up in the previous big revolution here in the House of Lords, it was a complicated procedure and eventually 16 of us were nominated in 2001 and introduced to the House. As part of my involvement in this, I filled in a nine-page form on request from the committee, I nominated referees and I even went and had what was initially referred to as a conversation—although in fact it was more like an interview—and in that interview there were three things that the committee wanted to establish, as far as I could see The first was that I had a background of relevant experience—I could match the claims and the pro formas sent in and what my referees said. The second, and I think the most important for them, was that on no account should I be tainted by the virus of party politics. I was to be an independent Cross-Bencher. The third, which was probably just my own paranoia, was ensuring that I did not make social gaffes too often, so I avoided asking for three lumps of sugar in my cup of tea. I passed the test, apparently, and here a number of us are. I think there are about 50 of us now. But there was a procedure The important part of the procedure came next. The interview was a two-part process so I asked what was expected of me. I did not know and I wanted to be sure that the job was doable. Occasionally one is invited to take on posts—I am sure your Lordships all have been—but the job is not doable. I actually got very good advice from the sub-committee I met. The good advice was, first, make sure you identify areas of interest and expertise on which you could make contributions. Secondly, the hint was to stick to those, but that was up to me because freedom of thought was part of the deal. Thirdly, I should make sure that I was here on the right occasions—not chalking up a sufficient number of attendances to be allowed in next time there was a ballot but taking part in the debates on which I was thought to have something to contribute. I thought, "Yes, that is doable. I can do this". My training in philosophy immediately reminded me that Immanuel Kant, whom I believe to be the greatest European philosopher, formulated the premise that "ought" implies "can". If I ought to do that, then surely I should be able to do it. That is partly up to me, but it is partly up to the structures of this place What I want to say in this debate is very precise. My worry is that, with the way that things are moving in this House, where we have not adjusted procedure sufficiently to take account of its size, it may well be the case that we cannot make the contributions for which we were brought here. If one is to slim us down, there is a special issue for the Cross-Benchers; I was glad to hear that mentioned, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. However, the broader issue is: can we do this, and does the way in which the House operates allow us to do it? My plea is that, in any further discussion, we set our minds to the questions of procedures that relate to the size of this place.