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Lord Denham: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down—do the figures that she quoted for attendance on Thursdays refer to Thursdays before the 11 o'clock sittings started? In the old days, when Thursdays started in the afternoons, we had very good attendances indeed.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, the figures to which I referred related to the present Session of Parliament.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Amos: My Lords, I would like to speak briefly on two of the items in the report. I will touch on the Wednesday/Thursday issue in a moment, but I would like to start by saying a little about the issue of exchanges between this House and the other place on Bills. The issue is complicated, but it is of course of the greatest importance. It affects the contents of the statute book and the capacity of Members of both Houses to foresee the consequences of their actions in what can be complex parliamentary situations in terms of procedure and difficult situations in terms of the politics.
The report offers a formula that gives to all sides reasonable certainty. I am grateful to the Chairman of Committees and to the Clerks for their hard work in helping us to resolve this. The report rightly says that the matter must be kept under review, but let us all hope that there will be no more problems of this kind. It is encouraging that there were no such problems in the recent ping-pong on the Prevention of Terrorism
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Bill and the Constitutional Reform Bill. Those were hard-fought battles, but in neither case was the status of the Bill ever in doubt.
Let me now turn to the issue of Wednesdays and Thursdays. It is of course a House matter, and I expect the debate to show that there are strongly held views on both sides of the argument in all parties and on the Cross Benches. But I have to say that I am in favour of an experiment with debates on Thursdays because the issue has been in the air for years. It was voted on in 1999 and again in 2001, when the proposal to change was defeated by just two votes. I do not believe that the issue will be resolved until we submit it to an experiment.
In this case, the experiment would run from the start of the next Session—whenever that may be—until the end of June 2006, when general debates will come to an end as usual. We will have from then until the end of the Session to review the experiment and to decide whether to make the change permanent. As the Lord Chairman has said, in the absence of a positive decision to make the change permanent, we will revert to the status quo.
I point to one consequence of change if the House were so to agree. If we can consider Bills only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, it will be necessary sometimes to ask the House to consider the same Bill two days running, which is something that at present we try to avoid. The days in question now finish by around 10 p.m. If change occurs, there may be a case for moving party and group meetings from Thursdays to Wednesdays. That of course is a matter for each party or group. If it would help for the Forthcoming Business notice to come out earlier in the week, the Chief Whip has assured me that he will do his best.
I said at the outset that it is a House matter. That is the case, but it is my firm view that, without an experiment, the House will continue to come back to the matter time and time again.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane: My Lords, I rise to support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Lockwood. As the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, mentioned, I unsuccessfully deployed the "proportionate inconvenience" argument in the debate back in 1999. I think that the noble Lord dealt with that issue very fairly, and I do not quarrel with him. However, I do want to take up one issue with him. I hope that, on reconsideration, he will agree that his description of a two-and-a-half day week is pretty wide of the mark. I understood that child labour and things such as that were abolished in the last century. I count coming to this place at 2.30 p.m. and working until 10 p.m. as a day's work, particularly if there is no meal break.
There is another point on which I quarrel with the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers. It is not a question of the inconvenience of travelling up and down twice in one week; it is the physical impossibility of it. If we are here until 10 o'clock on a Tuesday, one tries to travel home
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on a Wednesday and gulp a bit of fresh air but then has to come straight back again to be here for Thursday morning. That is nonsensical.
It is important to remember that we are not talking about any change to the apportionment of time; we are simply talking about the distribution of that time. If the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, is correct and effectively we have a three-day legislative week, then I am in favour of discharging that obligation in three days and not spreading it over four, which is inefficient. Let us also remember, as I think the noble Lord acknowledged, that for a large part of the year we are not talking about three days; we are talking about four days because legislation comes in on a Wednesday as well.
However, my principal argument concerns the good of this House. What do we value about the House of Lords? I think we are all united in valuing it very much. One thing we value is obviously the degree of experience and wisdom in the House. That experience comes with age as well as being current practical experience. Another is the independence of mind, which I imagine government Whips and all party Whips rue at times. Another is the fact that we are virtually immune from pressure by party managers. People exercise their own judgment. My own feeling is that the fact that we are non-elected plays a part in that, but I have no wish to open up that particular debate at the moment.
I am sure I am not alone in this House in marvelling at the degree of current expertise, no matter how recondite the subject or the question raised. I sit in admiration as one noble Lord after another modestly declares an interest, which simultaneously shows real current knowledge of the subject under discussion. I am sure we all agree that current knowledge is what we are talking about, because the shelf-life of knowledge nowadays is very short indeed.
If we are to have Peers—not everyone in the House but at least a sufficient spattering—with current knowledge to make sense in debates, how will that come about if the knowledge is acquired outside London and they are spending at least four days in London? I am not trying to make any kind of anti-London point. London has a rich treasury of resources and experience in the people who live and work here, but surely this House does not want to fish exclusively in that pond.
If some noble Lords, whom we are proud to quote in debates, were combining their work here with work in, for example, a teaching hospital in the north of England, then frankly they could not attend the House as often as, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, manages to do, coming from London. There will be a real loss to the House if we are not able to attract people who come from outside the M25 and who have practical current experience. I stress that I am not in any way underrating London.
It is also important for Peers in an unsalaried House to continue to earn a living. There is nothing ignoble about that. But let us leave the economics out of the debate and just talk about the experience angle. It is
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vitally important that we continue to have access to current experience, and the current programme of business in the House means that that experience can be acquired only within the M25. I think that that is bad for the House and bad for the country.
The general debate days are extremely important and I value them. Some years ago, I was fortunate enough to secure a debate on the Communications Bill, which I think played a part in bringing about some pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. I particularly enjoy, for example, the almost annual fixture of the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, making a speech about electricity generation and pointing out that it is the same speech as he made the previous year but that the Government have done nothing in the intervening year. I have no doubt that we shall hear exactly the same speech next time.
So Wednesday debate days are great and highly enjoyable. Sometimes, frankly, for Back-Benchers they are far more enjoyable than scrutinising legislation. But, to be honest, they are not as important as our legislative work. That, as I think we all recognise in this House, has become increasingly true over recent years when the burden of scrutiny has fallen increasingly on this House rather than the other place. Therefore, I commend the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood.
Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, although the main point of interest today is obviously the question of the Wednesday/Thursday debate, I want, first, to say a word about the inclusion in the report of phrases about the important step forward on exchanges between the Houses on public Bills. That really should not be underrated. The report clarified that packages from the Commons should be considered only if they are confined to single or closely related issues. It thus puts a block on a possible slippery slope to inappropriate packaging of issues, which would otherwise risk diminishing the powers of this House. That point should not be underrated; it is important and I very much commend it to the House.
Like the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, I want to congratulate the Clerk of the Parliaments and his colleagues, who discussed this rather difficult issue with their colleagues in the other place. We saw the advantage of that during debate on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, when we were able to go on for what I describe as "a good long time" expressing our view without ditching the Bill. I think that that was an important step forward and it is a real improvement in the protection of our powers in this House.
I now turn to the question of a possible exchange of business between Wednesdays and Thursdays, which has been raised by the committee and in the Motions today. It is clearly an issue for individual Members. There are differences of view within the party-political groups and, surprisingly enough, within the Cross-Bench group. This was shown by our earlier discussion and votes, including the last very narrow majority, and it is shown by the way in which the Procedure
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Committee did not attempt to reach an agreed view but passed the issue to the House. I speak as an individual and I want to comment briefly.
First, we have to consider the effect on the business of the House of a change, which would no doubt be experimental and subject to review after a period of time. I express the view that, if we make the change and return to the matter later, perhaps we should also consider an issue which is not on the Order Paper today—that is, the possibility of a debate day on a Monday. I do not want to press that point but, if we are to review the subject later, we might consider it.
Changing the business from one day to the other would not in itself reduce the time available for the House's principal functions of scrutiny of legislation and debate on issues of importance to Parliament and the public. It might even increase it if there were no longer a lunch break on a Thursday. But we should be realistic. We should foresee, as some already have done, that the attendance of Members in the House on a Thursday as a debate day would be likely to be lower than it presently is on a Wednesday as a debate day. I believe that that would be the case.
So far as Cross-Benchers are concerned, the difference would probably be slight as we are rather good attendees at debates—probably among the 18 or 20 referred to; I do not count them but often there are that many present. In the last Session, 23 per cent of those participating in debates were Cross-Benchers, and so we are fairly steady attendees. I do not think that that would change too much but overall there would be a change.
Secondly, we have to keep in mind that many Members of the House have no salary here—poor things—and they have to work for a living, or they hold a wide range of posts, often honorary but time-consuming, in many non-governmental organisations or charities. Some of us also attach a great deal of importance to our responsibilities in parts of the UK far from Westminster—in my case, in the "territorial extremity", as it has been referred to and which I love dearly. The territorial extremity should be given full attention, and those of us from those parts do not like to become too London-based. The change of day would be welcome to some of those Members.
Finally, we need to take account of practical consequences. The most evident would be timing of the meetings of the political party groups and of the Cross-Benchers. If there were a change, it would probably be necessary to change the political and Cross-Bench meetings to Wednesday and it would be necessary to have available a day earlier the Forthcoming Business. I do not know whether that is possible, but it would be difficult to organise those meetings without it.
Those seem to me to be the considerations on which we should individually vote today. Like other noble Lords, I shall vote as an individual on this matter.
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