From Monday to Thursday, both Houses start business with Question Time. However, there are five ways in which Question Time in the Lords differs from that in the House of Commons.
First, Question Time in the Lords lasts for no more than thirty minutes, compared with nearly one hour in the Commons.
Second, only a maximum of four Questions appear on the Order Paper, compared with 20-30 in the case of the Commons.
Third, there is no departmental rota, as in the Commons, where ministers from a particular Department attend on a specified day (thus, one has Foreign Office questions on one day and Defence questions on another). In the Lords, the four questions on any one day may deal with issues that are the responsibilities of different Departments. A Treasury question may be followed by a DEFRA question, so the whip who responds for the Treasury will answer the first and a DEFRA minister the second.
Fourth, there is no gladiatorial contest. There is no equivalent to Prime Minister’s Question Time. Point-scoring is generally frowned upon, though rigorous questioning is not.
The other obvious difference is that there is no one whose eye you have to catch to put a supplementary question. You just get your feet; if another peer does likewise, one of you gives way. If both persist, the Leader of the House or a whip normally suggests in which order the peers should be heard. This could be overridden by the House but I have never known it happen.
The difference between the two Houses is, to my mind, beneficial. The Commons goes for breadth, trying to get through as many questions as possible. Prime Minister’s Question Time allows a clash of ideas or at least expressions of opinion. The Lords goes for depth, the time available for each question (7-8 minutes) enabling several supplementary questions to be asked, and the minister thus probed in some detail.
Question Time tends to maximise attendance. The picture shows a full House, but it is not exceptional to see it packed for questions. The daily attendance has grown decade by decade and the Lords chamber is much smaller than that of the Commons. Getting a seat for Question Time may, on occasion, entail a bit of polite pushing and shoving.
Lord Norton,
Do you think it’s a weakness that the Government Peers answering on behalf of a particular department do not necessarily hold ministerial office within that department?
Whips answering for a particular Department usually sit in on ministerial team meetings and are fully briefed in preparation for answering a question. There are advatanges in having departmental ministers answer – they are more fully engaged with the Department – but the differences are probably not as great as you might imagine. Most ministers in the Lords are junior ministers, so cannot make any commitments, unless authorised by the Secretary of State.
The Lords Speaker should have more power to preside over Question Time. Due to simply she has a better view of the house and is impartial. Instead of the mess which come out of question time with peers shouting “speaker” and reluctantly Baroness Ashton intervenes to suggest who should speak.