Procedure and Privileges — House of Lords, 2021-07-13
Topic: Mixed Topics
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I first thank the noble Baroness for her introduction. She quite rightly paid tribute to the staff of the House, and we all pay tribute to them too, but it is fitting that we also pay tribute to the Leader of the House herself for the way she has guided us through these very turbulent times over the last 15 months. She has proved very sensitive to the feelings of the House, and we are very grateful to her. Thanks should also be extended to my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, who has done an excellent job as leader of my party, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in respect of the Cross-Benchers. The House has shown itself in a very commendable light in the way it has adapted to this great public health emergency we have had to deal with The Leader said that we are seeking to keep some of the changes we have adopted over the last year that we generally agree are worthwhile. I suggest to your Lordships that one of the changes we should consider keeping is meeting earlier. My proposition this afternoon is that, just as we have been meeting earlier on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout the pandemic, we should continue to meet earlier on the basis that we also adjourn earlier and have a new equilibrium of meeting earlier and adjourning earlier There are two reasons why this is particularly important, which are partly to do with when we do our business but also how we do it. In terms of when we do our business, it is only because of custom and practice from time immemorial that the House started its business mid-afternoon—and indeed, going back 50 years or so, in the late afternoon. Almost every other parliamentary assembly in the world has started meeting earlier in the day as it has adapted to modern conditions. The House of Commons now meets earlier than us on every day of the week The arguments for meeting later are now superseded. It used to be said that we had to juggle the demands of holding other full-time jobs with membership of the House. I am very sympathetic to noble Lords who work in banks, in the City, as lawyers and in other professions that carry on until the late afternoon, but the biggest second job that almost all of us have is as members of families—as parents and carers who need to be available in the evenings, which, by definition, you cannot be if the House is sitting in the evenings Of course, no set of arrangements suits everybody. I am fully aware that meeting earlier and adjourning earlier would inconvenience some Members. But from the many conversations I have had on this issue over the last few days, and over many months while we have been meeting in this way, I think the generality of your Lordships think that meeting at 1 pm—which, after all, is the middle of the day, so we are not exactly taking over the whole working day—and adjourning at 7 pm or 8 pm, as a normal practice, is a great improvement on the conditions in which we have worked, which have simply been inherited from time immemorial I am aware this poses a particular issue in respect of Monday for noble Lords who come from the north of Scotland, which has been put to me. If this amendment is passed today, I would recommend that the Procedure Committee look at whether the precise arrangements for Monday should be further reviewed. Maybe 2 pm on a Monday, rather than 1 pm, would be better for noble Lords coming substantial distances As for how we do our business, though, which is as important as when we do it, it seems absolutely imperative that we look at meeting earlier. The practical effect of beginning our proceedings in the middle of the afternoon, as all noble Lords who have conducted the business of the House know, is that we essentially have two House of Lords sittings. We have a Sitting where there is a full House, which is roughly from 2 pm or 3 pm to about 7 pm, then we have a residual House from 7 pm, made up of only those die-hard Members actually conducting the business in the Chamber, and it goes through to the end at 10 pm I once conducted the Committee stage of a Bill from where the noble Baroness sits with four Members of the House for three hours while we got to the end of a Bill. This is perfectly common after your Lordships come into the House after dinner. This suits the Government very well indeed. I see a Chief Whip on one side and a former Chief Whip on the other. There is nothing that suits the Government better than that the business of the House should be conducted with nobody present. This limits the opportunities for debate and intervention and, in particular, it removes the potential for votes. Everyone knows that in the normal course of events, with normal voting, you cannot have votes after 7.30 pm because you simply cannot conduct a House. You have only a narrow window, which will become narrower, because we have just agreed to extend Question Time, and we now have Private Notice Questions almost as a matter of course. There will be only a very narrow window, of about two and a half hours in most sittings, when it is practically possible to conduct votes in the House Walter Bagehot, in his famous book on the English constitution from 150 years ago, said: "An assembly—a revising assembly especially—which does not assemble … is defective in a main political ingredient." A fundamental problem with the House of Lords, if we revert to our previous arrangements, is that for about half our sittings, we essentially do not assemble. Only a tiny subset of your Lordships assembles. It is not possible for most Members, because of their other responsibilities, to take part in these sittings in the late evening—or it is not their desire to do so, and it is not possible to have votes. Whereas, if we conduct our business like every other institution in the country does, in prime time, then from 1 pm until 7 pm or 8 pm, almost all Members will be available. We will be far more inclusive in our conduct of the business, and it will be possible to conduct votes throughout that period. For those Members of the House who are not in the Government, which includes the generality of Members on both sides, our conduct of business would be improved Just one final remark: we are a self-regulating assembly. When we set up the office of the Lord Speaker, which was very controversial at the time, I remember the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, who I am delighted to see is speaking later, told us frequently through many hours of debates that the Government’s proposal should not be accepted, in respect of the abolition of the office of Lord Chancellor and the creation of the Lord Speaker, because we are self-regulating and should make these decisions ourselves. We are a self-regulating House, but that does mean that we should regulate ourselves. We should not shy away from making these decisions about the conduct of our own business. Meeting earlier and adjourning earlier is an idea whose time has come. I beg to move.