House of Lords: Governance

Viscount Eccles Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I will first talk about two things which I think are works in progress. The first is the External Management Review, which the Senior Deputy Speaker referred to in his opening remarks. I believe that he has a certain responsibility for what is going to happen as a result of this document, which was published in January last year. It is also fully covered in the excellent Library review, with a big shopping list. Probably the most controversial suggestion in it is that the commission should be made statutory. Your Lordships will wonder whether the present Administration in Downing Street would have any interest in providing parliamentary time for such a thing to happen, but that is probably the most dramatic recommendation in this review. The review is problematic, and I will come back to that.

Secondly, there are a number of things in this House’s relationship with the Government and the House of Commons that are a work in progress and need attention. Indeed, those relationships should be a very high priority in any system for running this House.

Before I start on these two issues, we are still, whether we like it or not, a self-regulated House, and we depend upon self-discipline. We do not set our own agenda, except to a very limited extent. We do not select our Members. We get the business that comes from the Government of the day and the business that comes from events. Of course, with our committee structure, we can think about events and make suggestions about the best way in which things might go.

Reverting for a minute to the External Management Review, before going out to buy a 133-page report, it would have been of interest for the House to have known at the time what it was going to cost and the qualifications of the people who were going to do it. I have to report that when I got to about page 50, I thought, “Unfortunately, the two people writing this report do not understand the House of Lords.” Their minds were on the governance of limited liability companies.

I have had to face up to annual general meetings, and I knew the systems of governance that I had to be aware of. At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, we have legislation of our own, and you know very clearly where you are on the matter of governance. In a charity—and the review mentions Samaritans—you know very clearly what your system of governance is, but it is not nearly as easy to define and be certain about what sort of system of governance this House should have. My perception is that you cannot expect it to be legally enforceable and you have to rely, as we always did, on conventions and on peer group pressure: “This is the way that we do things, and this is the way that we don’t do things.” That culture in this House is extremely important.

I am not very optimistic about this external management review, despite the very long and well-composed shopping list in the Library report. I think, if I were to sum it up, it is an example of naval-gazing and of looking inwards when an institution should always be very careful to be looking outwards.

That takes to me to my second subject, briefly. We have two reports: Government by Diktat and Democracy Denied? For the 20 years that I have been here and on both what was then called the Merits Committee and the Delegated Powers Committee, we have always been concerned, and we have been advised by our legal advisers and our clerks, quite brilliantly, about the dangers of framework Bills and legislation that takes a lot of powers but does not really tell you how it is going to be used. These two reports have highlighted that. It seems to me that the way that the usual channels and the Leader respond to these two reports and advise the House on how to respond is an extremely important piece of work in progress.

I also think that, in a minor key, the way that the Government deal with Written Questions is pretty disgraceful. If anybody wants to look at a good example, I recommend the Answers about the Holocaust memorial that is planned for Victoria Tower Gardens. If ever there were, over a period of seven years next January, a list of non-Answers to Questions, they are an example. Again, I think that the authorities—if I may call them that—in this House should be taking up the issue of the standard of replies to Written Questions.

If I might suggest it, in concluding, it seems to me much more important that the commission and the usual channels concentrate on our relationship with the other House and what it is about it that is working well or not working so well, with us as a revising Chamber, fully appointed and, in the end, always giving way but, in the run-up to giving way, trying to make as much sense as we possibly can.