One new peer recently asked if I had any advice for a new member. There are a few points I would offer. I thought I would share these with readers, especially those who are avid viewers of BBC Parliament, as one can observe debates to see to what extent they are followed.
1. Get to know the House before making your maiden speech. There are dangers of rushing in and giving a speech that jars with the culture of the House, such as being pompous (you are not the only person in the House to have achieved great things) or partisan.
2. Keep to time. If it is a time-limited debate and each speaker has only four minutes, then the moment the minute clock shows four, your time is up. This applies to your maiden speech. As a maiden speech is not interrupted, no one will rise to draw attention to you going over time, but it will be noticed. One recent maiden speaker took about eight minutes when she was limited to four.
3. Spend time in the chamber. If you are speaking, try to be in for most of the debate, not just the speeches preceding and following yours (as well as the opening and closing speeches). It looks bad if you are simply making points already made by earlier speakers and are unaware of the fact. You are more likely to be taken seriously by the House if you are seen to be taking the House seriously.
4. Do contribute to debates and Question Time, but do not abuse the opportunity to speak frequently. The House likes to hear from you, but not every day, on every subject and at length. There are other members who know as much if not more about the subject than you do and who can often make their points succinctly. Frequent long-winded speakers soon get a reputation in the House.
5. If you are taking part in a debate in which there have been maiden speeches, do not take time congratulating those who have made them. The peer who speaks after a maiden speaker congratulates them on behalf of the whole House. There is considerable irritation at the time taken up unnecessarily by speakers who appear unaware of this.
6. Do not refer to the ‘noble minister’. Even some long-serving members do this. Peers are addressed as noble but not ministers. The correct reference is ‘the noble lord, the minister’.
7. Saying ‘My Lords’ at different points in a speech can be a useful for indicating that you are moving to a new point, or for the purpose of emphasis, but do not say it too often. At least one member uses the phrase at the start of almost every sentence, possibly to mask the fact that not much of substance is being said.
8. Bear in mind the needs of the Hansard reporters. One peer recently quoted a Greek phrase. Gestures are not reported and there is no facility for adding that words were spoken ironically. One senior member of the House once said he found something incomprehensible and emphasised the point by shaking his head, making a strange noise with his lips, and ending the sentence with that gesture. I saw the two Hansard reporters look at one another in horror. They will, though, have rendered what the peer said in some appropriate manner. They always do.
This could almost be the weekly quiz. Identify the following peers…
Dave H: I had thought along similar lines, but I have opted for diplomacy! Regular viewers may wish to draw on their own observations…
Thank goodness gestures are not recorded! What a relief that is, we can now breathe easily.
Lord Norton, you are the Lord with the lightest touch and it really is that breath of fresh air which makes a journey so enjoyable.
maude elwes: I have always been struck by the fact that we attract perceptive readers.
Surely regular readers will know the identity of the peer mentioned in point 8!
Jonathan: Indeed, 8 is the easy one….
Oh, I thought this was a memo for here…
I thought some of those rules may just as well be aptly fitting to this place.
ladytizzy and Carl.H: Well, we would need first to generate some Standing Orders and then a Companion to the Standing Orders…
You could solve the problem regarding lack of seating with a standing order.
Dave H: Very good 🙂
Very useful, please circulate to all Members. Along with the reminders about courtesies in the House, of which the most important is ‘Sit down when someone else stands up’. I’ve almost given up question time because of the embarrassingly ill-mannered behaviour; it’s not bad all the time, but enough of the time for me to think the notion that we are ‘self-governing’ is quite meaningless.
baronessmurphy: I agree. I anticipate that the report of the Leader’s Group on the Working Practices of the House will address the issue of Question Time. I rarely go in for Questions – I find debates much more productive. At the moment, at Question Time we tend to hear from those who shout the loudest rather than from those who know the most.
From Lord Norton’s opening, we are perceived as
(i) readers
(ii) viewers
(iii) observers –
to which we should be able to add or be supplantive with
(iv) “participating citizens/public/people-upwards-submissors …”;
from his other words, that body-language can be intelligently-substantial or on the other hand be majorly-misleading; and on a third-hand be ‘unreportable’
to which latter a quick scrutineer-point needs to be made, beginning at the very Top i.e. far above our heads, far above the Peers and Sovereign Royalties’ heads, at the level of our whole Civilisation;
to strengthen the issue-nature of some parliamentarians’ gestures being or needing to be ruled ‘unreportable’,
I mean of course the “Big-Body-Language” of the entire Global-Economy and of Human-Civilisations’ History, notably for the 80 or so years since David Attenborough was born, into a world-population of only 2 billion, and at his eightieth birthday recently been seriously alarmed to see the world-population to have more than tripled to almost 7 billion, and to be still climbing, exponentially unstoppable, juggernaut or lemming- like, towards an inevitable 10 billion even within an octogenarian’s possibly remaining lifetime.
The point is that the Human Race’s “Body-Language” is not being reported, certainly not from the viewpoint of ‘God’, of an ‘UMA high in the sky’, or of a ‘fly-on-the-wall’;
and such points need it to be publicised*.
In an honest “self-critical” and “self-corrigibility” spirit, cardinal communication languages need to be mirrored i.e. ‘quoted’, and reported;
which in the UK national case of Hansard and the Parliament channel, should be very easy to enhance, simply by adding brief text and arrow to the pictures, to quickly capture gestures and other ‘body-language’;
I mean the gestures are easily captured and shown as-is, and could as easily be ‘arrowed’ and ‘text-boxed’ I would think;
and from the noble lord’s closing words, that the two Hansard reporters were defeated by a peer’s body-language –
and that we (People) are expected to ‘swallow’ that (a) those same reporters ‘always do’ “render” what the peer “said”, in some “appropriate manner”.
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The problem remains raw, about ‘reporting’ every Language used by the peer and, indeed, by the whole of the Parliament-assembled and responsive.
There is a huge ‘reportage’ potential and new-standards issue to be scrutinised here.
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* publicised =
such as that
“The daily over-destruction of Rainforests is a major piece of Human-Civilisation’s Body-Language”.
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