House of Lords: Remote Participation and Hybrid Sittings

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is good to see the House fuller than it has been for some months; that is a substantial improvement. I too thank the staff and everybody who has made the last 15 months possible. It has been an incredible achievement and, as has been said, something many of us would have predicted could not possibly have happened. There are a lot of lessons to be learned.

Like my noble friend Lord Bourne, I am going to follow the lead set by my noble friend Lord Howe and divide my speech into three parts. There is the remote participation. I have found it harder participating remotely than 15 months ago, when one was in the House and able to access papers quickly and easily, with the Printed Paper Office open and the Library working full-time. It has required a great deal more work at the weekends and during the week.

One advantage of remote working has been that the acoustics are better than in the committee rooms. For those of us who sometimes find it difficult to hear, it has been a joy to hear every word, rather than one in four. But there are downsides. One is the lack of spontaneity, as has been mentioned, and I believe that we have not held the Government to account in the way that we should have done and used to be able to do. I note that it was highly frustrating when the Agriculture Bill was going through that one was not able to intervene and hold the Minister to account. I am deeply concerned that, with the Environment Bill ahead of us, we are going to have Committee stage under these strict rules. That is a Bill we need to get right, and we are not going to be able to properly do the job that we should do.

One other thing on remote participation is that I smiled ruefully when the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said he wanted an opening time of 2.30 pm on Monday for those who lived far away. When I lived in Caithness, I had to leave on Sunday to get to the House at 2.30 pm on a Monday.

Some Peers have said remote voting has been abused. I think that is down to the expenses system. Whatever expenses system you have, it will be abused. I throw in the idea that, if we are going to continue with remote voting, those who vote remotely should not be paid. I also think that physical voting has an advantage, in that it gives one the chance to collar a Minister. Ministers can be highly elusive; they like sticking to their departments and their civil servants keep them there. But if they have to vote physically, there is at least an opportunity to collar him or her for an urgent word at that time.

Moving on to procedural changes, I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said about Oral Questions, and that was picked up by my noble friends Lord Balfe and Lord Bourne. I thoroughly approve of 10 minutes for Oral Questions, and I approve of the list system. I did not like Oral Questions before the pandemic hit us: the House was thoroughly overcrowded and it was impossible to get up to ask a question. I shunned Question Time completely; I read it in Hansard, but it was easier and nicer to come into the Chamber when Question Time was over.

I talked about holding the Government to account. One of the things we have learned in the last 15 months is how important it is to hold the Lord Speaker, the Commission, the Senior Deputy Speaker and the Conduct Committee to account. They have got away with an awful lot of things, such as debates being scheduled at very short notice, and noble Lords having to be physically in the Chamber to comment on those issues. We ought to have a debate, and I hope my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal will give us time for one, on what we think the role of the Lord Speaker should be. The last Lord Speaker, my noble friend Lord Fowler, seemed to attract additional work with Velcro hands. That has left us with a difficulty. My noble friend the Lord Privy Seal is the Leader of the House, but in fact she does not have control over the House; the control is by the Commission, which has got things through that we have not been able to investigate. So at the moment, our Leader is rather like an empress with very few clothes, having to account for a House over which she has no control. I hope that there will be time to discuss many of the procedural issues that have been thrown up as a result of this pandemic.