Business of the House: Finance Bill (Hansard, 24 April 1995)

The Lord Privy Seal (Viscount Cranborne)
My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

§ Lord Boyd-Carpenter
My Lords, may I ask my noble friend why this streamlined procedure is to be applied to the Finance Bill? Is it because the Government regard it as unimportant?

Viscount Cranborne
My Lords, I am aware, as the House will be, that my noble friend has a long-standing interest in these matters. Perhaps I should point out that the last occasion on which consideration of a Finance Bill was taken over two days was as long ago as the 1977–78 Session. Therefore, I suggest to my noble friend that taking the Finance Bill on one day in your Lordships' House is a long established practice.

§ Lord Simon of Glaisdale
My Lords, it is really too bad that your Lordships should be faced with this situation for the second year running. Once again, the most important Bill of the year—this year running to 377 pages—is to be dealt with on a Friday at a time when your Lordships are not normally sitting.
Your Lordships' membership includes five former Chancellors of the Exchequer, four former Chief Secretaries, a great many past senior officials of the Treasury and three former Governors of the Bank of England. One could go on almost indefinitely. No other deliberative assembly in the world can match your Lordships' House in judgment, experience and knowledge of such matters. Therefore, your Lordships are in a full position to respond to the summons which is issued by our Sovereign to advise and consent and to give counsel, not merely to nod through a measure of this sort on a Friday at a time when the House is not normally sitting.
There are convenient occasions on which all that expertise can be made available; for example, as regards the Consolidated Fund Bills and the Finance Bill, above all. But your Lordships are consistently refused the opportunity to use the Consolidated Fund Bills for their proper purpose on the grounds that at any rate the No. 2 Bill coincides approximately with the Finance Bill. That excuse goes utterly by the board when the Finance Bill is taken on a Friday, as it was last year and will be again this year.
Last year it was debated on the Friday before an English Bank Holiday; this year it will be debated on a Friday before a Scottish Bank Holiday. Obviously, most Members of your Lordships' House will have made arrangements in advance which preclude their intervention next Friday. I believe that your Lordships will want at least two assurances: first, that this will not become an annual event; and, secondly, that the Procedure Committee will, once again, look seriously at the question of debating the Consolidated Fund Bill in the light of the fact that the Finance Bill treated in this way is no sort of alternative.

Viscount Cranborne
My Lords, I always regard the moment when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, rises to his feet with a mixture of intense pleasure and nervousness. I have to tell your Lordships that today is no exception. It is with the greatest of diffidence that I venture to disagree with the suggestion made by the noble and learned Lord.
Your Lordships will be well aware of the debates that we have been holding—I am sure they will continue—on whether this House should sit more frequently on Fridays. It has been suggested, notably by my noble friend Lord Rippon of Hexham, in his report to my predecessor on the Sittings of the House, which we 705 debated fairly recently, that we should make greater use of Fridays. I believe that a number of your Lordships have expressed sympathy with that view. In particular—and I hope that I do not misunderstand him—the noble Lord, Lord Richard, has done so. The noble Lord underlined, I think, the point just made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon; namely, that he would support the greater use of Fridays, especially if adequate notice were given of the intention to use them.
I should point out to the noble and learned Lord that there have been a number of occasions of late when economic matters were able to be discussed; for example, in a recent debate introduced by Conservative Peers on one of their days for debate. In addition, the Finance Bill is, by definition, a money Bill to which Royal Assent may be given, even without the agreement of your Lordships, after one month. Moreover, the statutory deadline for enactment of the Finance Bill is 5th May which, as the legislation was brought from another place on 18th April, gives us little time in which to consider it.
I suggest to your Lordships that it is perfectly sensible for us to take seriously the strictures of my noble friend Lord Rippon and his committee and to use Fridays when the pressure of business makes it expedient for us to do so. Like the noble and learned Lord, I am well aware of the extraordinary concentration of expertise in your Lordships' House on financial matters—an expertise which is not entirely confined to former Chancellors of the Exchequer. I hope that Friday's full-day debate on the Finance Bill will provide the House with an opportunity to demonstrate its full range of expertise on the matter, even though we are following precedent and, indeed, only using one day for the purpose rather than more.
I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, will at least consider that the Government have done their very best to provide adequate time for discussion of a Bill, the importance of which I would certainly not deny in any way, but which, nevertheless, I believe, by precedent, has been discussed by your Lordships at rather less length than has been the case in another place.