Business of the House

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

As a final point, we have two duties in conducting the business of the House in this crisis. The first and overriding duty of course is to perform to the best of our ability our parliamentary functions in the framework of the crisis that we face. Therefore, the social distancing and other changes that we have made are clearly important. But within that we have a second duty, which is to continue to maximise the role that we play on behalf of the public. My concern is that these arrangements, like the previous ones, have not gone to the fullest extent of allowing us to perform our role within the physical and technological constraints that we have. While that might have been acceptable as an emergency for a matter of weeks, if these arrangements will be in place for some months there will be pushback from noble Lords if they will be restricted from participating in debates, particularly on legislation.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, as a representative of the usual channels, I also join in congratulating the staff on all the work they have done to get us to where we will be next week. It has been an amazing effort and has exceeded most of our expectations about what could be achievable in the time. I thank them.

It is very important not only that the House moves forward to normality as soon as it can, but that we have the possibility of retreat if the virus strikes again in London. The role of the Lords in the next few months will be very important: not only do we have scrutiny of all the legislation coming through as a result of the crisis, we then have an important period when all the legislation associated with the end of the transition period—when our final retreat from the EU will take place—comes to the House. It could not be a worse time for this country to be standing alone, without accountability of the Government on the arrangements for which they will be responsible.

The Lords has moved in the past month from sitting from three days to four days and we are now sitting from 11 am until 7 pm pretty much normally, so terrific progress has been made in returning this House to normality so that we are now almost fully engaged in the proper legislative process. The usual channels accept that the Government are under extreme pressure to get legislation through, not only in time for the end of the year, but on their whole general election programme. I therefore join in the remarks that my noble friend Lord Newby made on allowances, because the House is not yet operating fully effectively. One reason for that is the distortions of the interim allowance system. Too many people are speaking because that is the only way that they can earn their allowance. We have a ridiculous situation today when there is an important debate on the implications of the coronavirus and we are limited to two minutes. There is another debate that is almost as important on Hong Kong and noble Lords are limited to one minute. That is ridiculous and a denial of the scrutiny role that we should have in this House. This is not the first time; it has been going on for a number of weeks. As a result, with such extreme time limits, far too many good people are not bothering to speak, so we are not hearing their contributions. We must address this.

There is also a PR problem. Each time we make minor changes to the interim system, we get even more criticism, which undermines the House’s reputation. It will get worse unless we resolve it. We have had nearly three months of an interim system and we need to address it. It is important to do that so that we value the work that we are doing in this House and it is recognised. We must deal with the financial problems that we are creating for a small number of people and with the implication that the House is brought into disrepute every time we make a minor adjustment.

Although we obviously support the hybrid Parliament and all the moves that have been taken today, we fear that unless the allowance system is dealt with, some of this good work will be undermined. We need to have that top of the agenda for the commission in the next couple of weeks so that we can reform the interim system before the end of this month.

[Lord Kilclooney (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for her statement and I associate myself with colleagues from all the other parties’ praise for the staff and the way they have reorganised the facilities in the building. However, I find it rather difficult walking around the Corridors getting lost and being told to keep to the left all the time. Politically, that sends a funny message to me, coming from Northern Ireland.

I have one brief question about the voting system. I can understand that those who are participating in Virtual Proceedings and will vote remotely, what about those colleagues who are here in the House, personally, in hybrid sessions? Will they vote in the normal, traditional manner?