We had a very useful debate yesterday on the working practices of the House. The debate was wide-ranging and enabled us to press the case for strengthening procedures for legislative and non-legislative scrutiny. There were some good proposals advanced and broad support for enhancing pre and post-legislative scrutiny, as well as enabling Bills introduced in the Lords to be sent to an evidence-taking committee and for a permanent committee to be created to ensure our own procedures are kept under review.
There was some disagreement over the management of Question Time. Problems arise because some peers tend to dominate the proceedings by jumping to their feet and pushing ahead with their questions regardless of who else is on their feet. This tends to deter others from taking part. Lord Rooker pointed out that in a session, about half of the supplementary questions – about 1,500 – are asked by 8 per cent of the members, that is, 57 members.
There was one amusing interlude when Baroness Kennedy intervened in Lord Rooker’s speech:
“Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I would be interested to ask how many of them are women. I think that women are particularly intimidated by the way in which Question Time is conducted.
Lord Rooker: To be honest, there are quite a few women among the 57 Peers, but I do not want to go down that road, and I have reached the end of my time. I just think it puts people off.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: Can I ask my noble friend where the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, comes in?
A noble Lord: Gardner’s Question Time.”
Suffice to say that Baroness Gardner is known as one of the more active peers in Question Time.
I am strongly of the view that peers should catch the Lords Speaker’s eye at question time. At the moment time is wasted with peers shouting “this side” instead of asking questions. If the Lords Speaker were to call peers from the Woolsack more peers would get in, therefore a wider audience would be involved in question time, which would get more information out of the government.
Therefore the house would be improving its role in holding the government to account. The current system of question time is organised chaos.
tory boy: This was very much the heart of the dispute in the House. Some members jealously protect the self-regulation that is a feature of the House and think this will be undermined if the Lord Speaker has a role in indicating who is to speak (or which side should be next) and others take the view that Question Time is becoming increasingly competitive and giving a bad impression as peers compete to be heard. As the figures cited by Lord Rooker demonstrate, Question Time tends to be dominated by relatively few peers. Many are deterred from taking part by the present practice.
I would be interested to know if other readers share your view. Is Question Time as it presently exists ‘organised chaos’?
“as enabling Bills introduced in the Lords to be sent to an evidence-taking committee.”
[There is no silly season for Gard/ning though.
Just the time after a spot of rain.]
Why should there be any difference in method between the HofC evidence taking and then Bill, rather than conversely, HofL Bill introduction and then evidence taking?
Is Bill introduction by this means in the HofL not outdated, and should it NOT be the same as the HofC?
Gareth Howell: That was the point I was arguing. We tend to stress the quality of our legislative scrutiny, but I pointed out that we were in danger of being left behind by the Commons. In the Commons, a Government Bill that has not been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny is, following second reading, sent to an evidence-taking Public Bill Committee. I think we should adopt a similar practice.
Thanx to LN for his courteous reply.
Are the questions attempts at gaining information or merely a chance to embarrass ? If they are real attempts at information I would presume the asker had already written to the relevent department/ministry or will be doing.
I have always thought of question time as a period of light entertainment rather than serious politics.
Carl.H: It often seems a good way of getting on to ‘Today in Parliament’.
Both ‘debating’ and Question times are too ragged and ‘hairy’.
That is simply (but therein very difficultly) because British Politics has never allowed sufficient pre-debate discussion-time for (a) The Non-parliamentary Experts (b) The People (c) the House of Commons and (d) the Upper House.
A true democracy would have done its Scrutiny in the reverse order to that given by the noble lord’s post above; namely there should be non-legislative scrutiny first, exhaustively including therein The Peoples’ submissions upon their Need, Hows, and Affordable-Costs.
A Governance that neglects preparatory non-legislative scrutiny until after the legislation has begun its entrenching ping-pong progress within and between the two (still significantly incapable) Houses, is not win-win-win-effectively democratic.
A responsibly participatory and winwinwin Cooperative Problem Solving Nation would have done its preparatory Needs, Hows and Affordable-Costs gathering, discussion, and problem-solving before Parliament receives all facts, factors, figures and other Evidence necessarily assembled for constructive legislating to take place between the two Houses.
All matters should be fully understood beforehand, not some competitively hidden behind backs. Then there would be far less need for the obviously demeaning ‘all-in-wrestling’ spectacles the House of Commons appears to rely on for most of its electoral popularity; and which the Upper House peers know they have to waste much time and energy upon, also.
Democratic-Preparation: what might that be, perhaps ?
How many of the ordinary citizenry’s submissions, such as through this Lords of the Blog website, will ever be both comprehensively read and impartially processed upwards to an Evidence Gathering Body, such that all questions, submissions and evidence will be in, sorted and sifted, and ready to be pencilled into the (presumably plentiful) blank spaces in the Bill, blank-spaces that (we trust) have to be left by the Non-legislative Civil Servants who draft the Bill in the first place, so that the empty spaces can be pencilled-in by parliamentary legislative committees, including by the House of Lords, and eventually be inked-in, by the House of Commons only ?
[The citizenship schooling I have had doesn’t appear to show essential –knowledge about such British-Democracy processes.
Perhaps I’ve been losing-out somewhere in my 64 years of voting-life ?].
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Were not only all the noble Peers but the whole House of Commons and a critical-mass of British citizens (say 51% ?) to do their democratically-dutiful preparatory fact-gathering, of Needs, Hows and Affordable-Costs, and institute and attend win-win-win Discussion Meetings and recorded Public Forums;
And would thereafter listen to, take note of, rewind and make notes to, Parliamentary speeches:
such as the mere 8 minutes but very telling one on ‘Lords reform’ by Lord Low of Dalston (1645 -1653pm 29 Jun) proposing a revival and strengthening of Parliamentary Expertise by means of Expertise-Constituencies, 19 of which sorts of vital knowledge are already in some availability in the Parliament library, for the serious and essentially win-win-win hard-fact and difficult-formula content of legislation; which must always be in direct contrast to legislation’s generally political and private-profiteering popularity biases.
And would scrutinisingly reject such over-simplification Referendum speeches as Lord Richard’s (1617pm for seventeen minutes) to require The People to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a purportedly simple but closed question:
“If you are a legislator you should be elected by the people who are going to be affected by your legislation. It is a simple proposition”.
Not so, however:
(1) Arguably only the House of Commons finalises Legislation between the two Houses;
the House of Lords can only recommend amendments or signify its approval;
so the Upper House needs to be a seriously-selected Expertise and Life-Experience House, not a toss-of-a-few-coins popularity-elected gloves-off party-political spectacular like the House of Commons is likely to remain for the foreseeable future.
(2) More people may in fact lose under legislation than will win, yet the legislation can still be pushed through by a popularity-political lightning majority in the House of Commons.
To usurpingly, very expensively, and in effect ‘mindlessly’ do away with Britain’s Expertise-Constituencies by turning the Upper House into a second Lower House would be neither a wise nor ‘simple’ action. neither on the part of the British People nor by the House of Commons.
Consider Albert Einstein’s shared practical-wisdom:
(“) Things should be made simple; but not too simple(“).
Lord Waddington (Cons. just after 1700pm) spoke to the effect that People are saying we have too much Other and Bigger trouble than an Upper House that is relatively very low cost and has already been sufficiently reformed to do its appointed Wisdom and Expertise Task with very good positive effect if allowed so to do, It would be best to leave the Upper House well alone for a few years.
Other Lords and Noble Ladies emphasised the Need to become crystal clear about the Purposes of the Houses; equally importantly with their respective better Compositions.
None of them are even mentioning the basic democratic essential of progressively-skilling every level of The People in working out Life-Itself’s Needs, Hows, and Affordable-Costs, and win-win-win Problem-solving that directly with British Governance levels including with parliamentarians themselves.
I suggest that more time be given to the latter Peoples’-Democratisation and less to insufficiently informed ‘debating’ and Question-time party-political entertainment in-fighting.
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JSDM 0020W1407)
I’m not that keen on the Speaker deciding. There have been long-standing complaints from the commons that speakers have used and abused that power when they have fallen out with members.
What’s the evidence, rather than heresay, that a meaningful number of members don’t participate for the reason given?
Croft: There has been no systematic study, though after this exchange a number of peers did say to me that they did not participate in Question Time for this reason.
I only go in to Question Time when there is a question relevant to my areas of knowledge. It is a useful occasion for keeping ministers on their toes, metaphorically as well as literally, but I don’t find it particularly productive as a means of influencing policy.
But I’m not clear how much more “productive as a means of influencing policy” it would be if the speaker choose the members speaking. Isn’t the problem more the time limited nature of Q&As and/or ministerial evasion in responding?
Croft: Who makes the selection may not affect it much, though nonetheless it may make a difference by virtue of the fact that there may be more contributions from those who know the most rather than those who shout the loudest (or are deaf).
If Croft is appealing to Logic in “Isn’t the problem more the time limited nature of Q&As and/or ministerial evasion in responding?” then working through it as a statement would yield the following:
(“) The problem is the time limited nature of Questions & (ampersand) Answers [the latter Q & A meaning ‘Q and A are both True’ = the Questions have a time limited nature and the Answers have (an equal) time limited nature] and/or (enthymemously due to the now dangling sub-predicate “and/or ministerial evasion in responding?” which appears to translate as “and/or (of the time limited nature ) of ministerial evasion…” (“).
I therefore try reading Croft’s message as follows:
“Isn’t the problem more the time limited nature of Qs and As and/or of the time limiting nature of ministerial evasion in responding?”.
But there is still a clarity problem.
Could the remaining meaning and sense problem between “time limited nature” and “time limiting nature” be solved by more clearly indicating “the time limiting regulation (of Qs and As)” as distinct from “the time limiting imposition (‘time-piracy’) of ministerial evasion in responding” ?
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JSDM0149St1707)
Some people are just naturally better at pushing to the front than others. It may be that they have the art of pitching their voice at the best pitch or volume, keep talking so that others back off due to ingrained politeness or some other reason, you will invariably find that some will dominate if it is left to natural interactions.
Throw some technology at it – give all peers a little radio device with green light, a red light and a button on it. When a peer wishes to speak, press the button and a request is sent to the box in the corner which can either pick one at random or perform some weighted algorithm if the devices are identifiable as to party/bench/whatever, to allow some degree of back-and-forth across the chamber. The selected peer gets a green light, the rest get a red one, thus confirming their request was noted but rejected.
Dave H, for a moment there I thought I must know you, the first paragraph seemed to fit my wife so well.
😉
Giving peers technology maybe a little like giving a medieval knight a mobile phone and possibly result in accusations of witchcraft !
There are a few peers I can imagine giving unprintable replies if told they had to ask questions by pressing a traffic light handset 🙂