Procedure and Privileges Committee — House of Lords, 2021-12-01
Topic: Other
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I normally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. I can see the point that he makes about the role of the chair, but I am completely confused by the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker The noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Grocott, seem to be arguing about who will take the voices of the House—that is, whether it should be the Leader or the Lord Speaker. I can see that that is a perfectly reasonable argument, but I am not sure how what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said—that someone would say, "We are just being like the House of Commons"—is consistent with supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, which would turn this House into the House of Commons. We would all have to stand up at Question Time and the Lord Speaker would have to choose a person. As he will well recall, there would then be arguments, as they have in the other place, about whether people were being treated fairlyThe noble Lord presented it as running like clockwork but, under the previous Speaker—I must be careful not to criticise the conduct in the other place—there was a feeling, in certain parts of the House, that things were not always fair. In order to make things fair, a clerk has to stand by the chair and advise the Speaker, who perhaps is not always entirely sure of who people are—I must say, when I go down to the other place, I look at many of the faces and I am not entirely sure—because he needs to know and to keep a running total to make sure that people are treated equally In introducing her amendment, which acknowledges some of the practical problems, such as the fact that one cannot necessarily see the whole of the Chamber from the Woolsack, the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said that this was not beyond our wit. What are we going to do? Are we to have a ladder for the Lord Speaker to climb up? Are we to raise the Woolsack to accommodate this issue? Are we to have a clerk sitting on the Woolsack and indicating names? Are we to have a whole new bureaucracy created to work out who has spoken so many times I realise that I may be on thin ice here because I am probably thought to be part of the shouty brigade. I may be part of that 10%—I confess that—but, if we look at how our proceedings have occurred since we came back, we can see that we have the shouty brigade, as the noble Lord put it, operating when we have Statements or PNQs. I must say, I think that Ministers have been given a much harder time on those occasions. As part of the shouty brigade, under the old scheme, when I came into Questions and listened to a Minister giving a hopeless Answer, I would get up and say, "Could the Minister now answer this Question?" I would listen to someone making an unfair or inaccurate point, then get up and say, "Could the Minister confirm what has just been said?" It makes for a much more dynamic process Some of us are more shouty than others, and some of us have more knowledge than others. The difference between these proceedings, where we have to work out two days in advance to be on the list and all that, and the proceedings where we have what we had before, is quite marked. The difference in attendance is also quite marked; the number of people participating is down, and we get a series of questions—"hobbyhorses" would be too strong a word—which are particular to certain Members and prevent wider consideration. One of the differences between this House and the other place is that we are a bit more flexible about rules of order. Ministers can get a question on a general subject and find that suddenly the noble Lord, Lord West, has turned it into a question about the size of the Navy —and I think that is a very great strength If we want to change and be radical, along the lines of what the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, suggests, that needs careful consideration. It needs to be thought through carefully. The House authorities, the clerks and our leaders have done a brilliant job in enabling us to operate in these extraordinary circumstances caused by Covid, but we should not forget that the right thing to do is to return to the status quo ante. Then, if there are bright ideas about how we could make changes to the system, they should be considered carefully. But we should not get into a position where we no longer have the Bishops’ Bar, a Question Time that works or the Long Table, because these things were changed as a result of Covid. We should go back to where we were, in my opinion—I suppose that makes me a bit of a conservative. If we want to make changes, we should consider them very carefully The two amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Grocott, are not wrecking amendments, whereas that of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, is. It would mean that we could not go back to the old Question Time, which would be a matter of great regret If I could defend the Leader from the attacks against her, we should not forget—I notice that Ministers sometimes do—that when Ministers answer from that Dispatch Box they are not answering for their department; they are answering for the Government as a whole. If we had the old system, I would be intervening and saying, "You can’t say this is not your department; you are answering for the Government as a whole". The Leader of the House is the Leader of the whole House. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who said how ridiculous it was that a Minister decides who gets called; a Minister does not decide that—the Leader of the House decides what the will of the House is and, as the Leader, she has a duty to represent the whole House and not just the Government. That is not something we should cast aside lightly.