Lord Avebury
Main Page: Lord Avebury (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Lord Avebury's debates with the Leader of the House
(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
The noble Lord is right. Too often, noble Lords are moving away from the conventions and the guidance in the Companion by extending questions into statements and short speeches. I urge all noble Lords to refrain from doing so. It removes the opportunity for more people to get in.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, when the Procedure Committee recently looked at the method of allocating Oral Questions, it decided not to change to a ballot, as was considered two years ago by that Select Committee on Procedure and rejected then by the House. However, that was on the grounds that the Whips would be able to manipulate the Oral Questions. They do not do that with the Topical Questions here, which are selected by ballot, nor do they in the Commons, where the Questions are selected by ballot. Will the noble Baroness the Leader of the House find a way of consulting the majority of Members of the House who might be found to want a change to the ballot system? When we had a straw poll on it among the Liberal Democrats, an overwhelming majority were in favour and only four of us were against it.