Role of the Lord Speaker

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, and I very much agree with him about the representational role of the Lord Speaker. I bet that the Lord Speaker is extremely glad he does not have the power to intervene today, but it would benefit us to reflect on how the office of Speaker in another place began. It began as the Members choosing somebody who would be their spokesman, originally to the sovereign. Some of them suffered for their pains, and indeed at least two parted company with their heads.

In the present Lord Speaker, this House has a figurehead. He had two admirable predecessors but he has taken the post a stage further. His recent comments on the BBC series and so on have been extraordinarily helpful, and he has shown himself to be a true servant of the House, which is the prime role of the Speaker.

I believe it was said when the office was first established that there should be quinquennial reviews. I am delighted that the Leader of the House is here to reply and that the shadow Leader is also here to help wind up the debate The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his spirited speech, recommended that the Leader of the House should set up a Leader’s Group to look at the role of the Speaker. That would be an extremely sensible move.

To those who have gone a little far I say: beware of what you wish for. I had the great good fortune of being 40 years in the other place, and sat under seven Speakers. One of the most outstanding is a Member of your Lordships’ House today: the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd. All seven Speakers gave of their best, and we had some interesting times. Of course, when you give the power to the Speaker to select who will take part, not only in Question Time but in debate, you give an enormous amount of power to an individual. I know Members of the other place who were wary of saying or doing certain things for fear of falling foul of the Speaker of the day. We are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, for instituting this debate, but I am sure that he will have similar memories.

The best thing we can do is, first of all, to ask for the quinquennial review. Secondly, if we are to consider giving the Lord Speaker a real role in Question Time, we should go back to the resolution that was defeated and give him the role that is at the moment exercised by the Leader and the Chief Whip, both of whom do it with grace, dignity and scrupulous fairness. My view is that the Lord Speaker should do it in the same way, saying, for example, “It is now the turn of the Liberal Benches” or “It is now the turn of the Conservative Benches”. I think we want to be a little bit careful before we give to the Lord Speaker the absolute power of selecting who will take part.

One thing leads to another. I was very attracted before I came to this place by the knowledge that if you want to speak in a debate in this place and you put your name down, you know you will take part. There is no question of arbitrary selection. There is a little on the part of my noble friend the Chief Whip when he is deciding where you will be in the batting order; I accept that. Once or twice I have been quite high up; much more I have been rather low down, but that does not matter. The knowledge that you will be able to make a contribution is of enormous importance and I would be wary of giving the Lord Speaker the power to decide who will speak and who will not speak in a debate. So we have to take this thing gently and we have to take it sensibly forward.

On points of order, I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, that they are an absolute abuse in the other place, but there ought to be in this place an opportunity for Members to raise matters of real concern. I believe that we perhaps ought to allow the Lord Speaker to decide not only on Private Notice Questions but on business questions, so that if there is a matter that is going to come before the House which is not for voting, at least the chairman of the appropriate committee can be called to the Box to explain what it is all about. I have in mind a proposal which I read recently. It says that the Services Committee is going to make some changes to our stationery. We are not necessarily going to have an opportunity to debate that but we ought to have the opportunity to ask questions.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has given us a lot to think about. We have an excellent Lord Speaker but we should not place too many new responsibilities upon him. We should, however, look at those that I have mentioned.