After the House has been sitting for several hours discussing legislation, it is the usual practice to break at a convenient point around 7.30 p.m. for what is known as dinner-break business. This gives those peers who have been heavily engaged in discussing the legislation, especially front-benchers, an opportunity to have a break and get something to eat.
The dinner break is usually occupied by a Question for Short Debate (QSD). Questions for Short Debate used to be known as Unstarred Questions, but the name was changed to make it clearer what was actually entailed. QSDs last for up to one hour, though on occasion they may be taken as the very last business of the day (for instance if the main business is not expected to go on for too long into the evening), in which case they can continue for up to ninety minutes.
Where the QSD is taken as dinner-break business, the peer asking the question has ten minutes and the minister replying has twelve minutes. The rest of the time is divided among the remaining speakers, including the opposition front-benchers. Last night, for example, there was an interesting question, asked by Lord Tomlinson, about credit unions in the UK. The other speakers, apart from the minister, had five minutes each.
These are generally useful mini-debates. They enable peers to raise and develop a particular question and to get a considered response from the minister. On occasion, the number of peers who sign up to speak is so high that they have only two or three minutes each. On one occasion, on a question asked by Baroness Deech, each speaker other than Baroness Deech and the minister had one-minute! Remarkably, it was an extremely interesting debate. Each speaker had a particular point, got up and made it, and sat down. There was little repetition.
The topics pursued in QSDs tend to be non-partisan and of concern to one or more groups in society. Forthcoming topics include older workers, autism, migrant workers, and water management and river conservation. Some QSDs are also taken in Grand Committee in the Moses Room, again with each lasting a maximum of sixty minutes. Topics being discussed in Grand Committee on 4 November, for example, are Sudan, celebral palsy, the Vision 2020 initiative, and humanism and the BBC.
Not all dinner breaks are occupied by QSDs. They are also employed to deal with motions relating to secondary legislation. This evening, for instance, there is a motion to annul regulations relating to the statutory storage period for embryos and gametes.
On the whole, dinner break business serves a useful purpose, or rather several purposes, of value to those engaged in the business during the rest of the day and those members who have important issues to raise and to which they want a Government response.
What happens if the peers involved in the main debate are also interested in the dinner-break business? Do they simply not get to eat?
I’m afraid so. The same problem can arise on Thursdays, when general debates are held: a peer may be speaking in one two-and-half-hour debate and also down to speak in the following two-and-a-half hour debate. I speak from experience. On occasion, I have been in the chamber for several hours without a break.
I know it’s considered bad form to arrive at a debate then speak but surely no one would begrudge peers nipping out for the 10 minutes needed for a sandwich as long as they return for the majority of the debate. The order papers for some debates do give the speakers relative position in the question queue after all.
If that many people want to speak that they each only get one minute surely that’s crying out for the usual channels to bang heads and arrange more time there and then or a full debate as soon as practical.
Croft: It is possible to nip out. You are expected to be present for the speech before and following yours, as well as for the opening and closing speeches, but otherwise it is permissible to nip out: it depends on the peer as to whether it is for a meal or a quick chocolate bar. I fall in the latter category. I prefer to hear what other speakers have to say.
No snacks allowed in the chamber then?
Alex Bennee: Oh no, eating and drinking in the chamber are forbidden and I’ve never seen anyone trying to bring anything in. You are also not meant to bring in any paperwork other than that required for the debate: however, some peers have been known to bring mail in and open it. One academic peer – who shall remain nameless – did tell me that Hansard was just the right size to hide an essay, so he was able to mark the occasional script while in the chamber.
Lord Norton,
I will be interested to see if this is too bizarre to gain a serious response amid your other duties. Aside from the ethical reasons to consider preserving embryos indefinitely there is another that I take seriously. Embryos have a talent as humans as far out of the norm of those of us blogging and commenting as if one of us was fluent in every known language. They are extremely light — that is they do not weigh much.
If one believes humans really should colonize the Moon and Mars and eventually other places then I think there will be small colonies using local resources with machines and crews brought in to develop them. These trips will have to be as much one way as possible and minerals and such will be coming this way with only the super-rich and key officials making roundtrips. Populations will be limited and dangerous inbreeding would doom the enterprose that overcame many other factors. However, the genetic inbreeding could be eliminated if couples would agree to adopt an unrelated embryo for every one or two of their own children. One could send thousand of these rather slim astonauts and maintain them a long time. Collecting them over time would increase the diverse selection of bloodlines.
I am quite serious about it and for those wishing to see one of my many posts about why I am serious see the following:
http://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/a-personal-and-objective-take-on-outer-space/
Whilst this blog is achieving outreach other legislatures around the world are not in a hurry to get onboard with their own; as for Martian craters and by way of castigation we could drop off Parliament and Capitol Hill into their own adjacent craters where they would enjoy a special relationship. It would give a whole new meaning to the West Minster and Washington bubbles. What are they going to eat I wonder?
As for your comments on space exploration, check this out:
http://www.planetary.org/about/press/releases/2008/0522_First_Interplanetary_Library_Will_Land.html
They are over 250,000 members names on a DVD attached to a surface on NASA’s Phoenix lander. On an earlier mission these same names were etched into a lithographic layer on one of the silicon chips.
You will also see Old Glory there too just to remind the Martians that the 13 red stripes represented the original thirteen colonies that rebelled against the British Monarchy to become the first states in the Union.
Never fear though the names are international so when the land grab eventually takes place most will have a stake to claim for their country.
Senex,
The concept of crater cap colonies is complicated and controversial. I appreciate you reading some of my stuff. There is more in the facebook group. On Mars there is abundant water for a population much larger than other constraints will allow.
On the Moon there is abundant sunlight but maybe not much water. To eat and live one needs an energy source, water, a safe space, an assortment of species in careful balance and food to get started. Then everything eats and defecates its way into fullness of life.
That approach which values ecoscience first is the only sane way to colonize and it is not conceptualy difficult. Like many very difficult things the concepts are fairly simple. Crater cap colonies are intrinsicaly accessible for mining, gradual in implementation and efficient and secure and offer the best set of protections from cosmic rays and accelerated matter from space. They are expensive as investments not as entertainments for the mind. Whether a true senex can hope to them made real I don’t know but perhaps a puer could.