Procedure of the House

Debate between Lord Alderdice and Baroness Hayman

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I appreciate the good advice from my noble friend Lord Elton, but there are two issues to which I wish to refer. The first is the difficulty I have with the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. There are some controversial, even exceptionally controversial, pieces of legislation which are very well dealt with in Grand Committee. The Welfare Reform Bill was a very clearly controversial—indeed, I think the noble Baroness will agree exceptionally controversial—piece of legislation, but it benefited from being dealt with in Grand Committee. There are therefore assumptions that are too wide-ranging.

Secondly, when it comes to the timing of Grand Committee, there is a case that Grand Committee might be able to go on until 10 o’clock on occasion, but it would be a mistake to make that a regular procedure because it would mean that we would be running two Chambers at the same time, and there are some difficulties with that. Therefore, I make a plea that we ensure that in what is remitted to Grand Committee, and on the timings of Grand Committee, there is a deal of flexibility perhaps on that basis of presumption, and certainly not on the basis of more rules.

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords, I had not intended to contribute to today’s debate, but three things make me want to contribute briefly. One was the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for whom I have the utmost affection and respect, and with whom I share a commitment to change, reform and improvement in the way in which we deal with legislation in this House. We deal with legislation very well, but we can deal with it better, and the report of the Leader’s Group gave us some very clear ways in which we can take that forward. However, the pick-and-mix approach of taking one highly controversial issue which can have all sorts of unintended consequences, at a time when you do not have to be paranoid to think that someone is after you in terms of the next Session of Parliament, puts back the cause of those of us who are reformers. Certainly, the five years I had the honour to occupy the Woolsack taught me that to move things forward in this House you have to do a great deal of groundwork and create a great deal of consensus—and that has not happened on this occasion.

The second contribution was from the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. Although I believe that we have to take some action on Written Questions, like the noble Lord, I cannot understand how two Members of this House, from different perspectives, put down a Question about a government policy that was delineated in the coalition agreement as government policy and are told that we cannot have an answer to it because appointments to the House of Lords have, in the past, been a matter for the Prime Minister. I think that those were the words used. I do not understand how one cannot get a comment on government policy in that area.