Improving secondary education and integrating care

Good morning.

I'm Lord Gardner of Kimball.

I'm Senior Deputy Speaker.

Lord Gardner, thank you for joining us on the podcast.

First of all, could you tell us a little bit about what your role as Senior Deputy Speaker involves?

Yes, of course.

I'm a non-political officeholder and...

A previous time the post was called Chairman of Committees, in fact goes back to 1734.

So it's been a post that's been in existence in the House for quite a long time and it's really working with the internal administration, making sure the House runs smoothly.

I chair a number of committees, the Liaison Committee, the Procedure and Privileges Committee, and the Committee of Selection.

I sit on the Commission, the House of Lords Commission, and then the Client Board to do with restoration and renewal.

I'm responsible for private bills here.

I am on the wool sack.

I deputise for the Lord Speaker and generally have a series of meetings most weeks with the principal office holders in the House, so the party leaders, the Lord Speaker of course, the Chief Whips, the Convener of the Crossbench and the Convener of the Bishops on a regular basis so that we're all ensuring that the House is running as smoothly as possible.

As some may know, the House of Lords is what's known as a self-regulating house.

So set up is slightly different to the Commons.

How does a self-regulating house decide how it's going to run itself?

Well, obviously, self-regulation uh is a long-standing tradition of this house differently from the house of commons so for instance those of us who sit on the wool sack do not call order we we have a role to fulfill on the wool sack but we are not there to exercise any force as it were that would come from the government front bench if there was a need for assistance in terms of practice or procedure.

But one of the backdrops to that, of course, in self-regulation is the standing orders that we have and the Procedure and Privileges Committee, which is a committee I chair, as I said before, is where if there were consideration as to what would be the best way forward for the House that would come before the Procedure and Privileges Committee they would then consider it if they wish to report and suggest any changes it would have to come to the House and the House would make that decision so for instance in terms of self-regulation clearly the House went through major changes with the arrival of Covid and going from virtual proceedings hybrid proceedings and then indeed the restoration back to where we were before and all of those were important features of where the procedure and privileges committee was given authority by the house specifically by the house to change procedures according to the that the health conditions of the time, which meant we were able to be fleet of foot, adroit in making sure the really important work of the House of Lords continued.

So you didn't have to go back to the House with each and every change during that period of time?

During that period, because of the urgency, the House agreed that it was much more sensible if changes needed to be made in the interests of everyone's health and well-being, that that would be for the Procedure and Privileges Committee to decide.

Clearly we've now gone back to where we were before with the House self-regulating and of course what I'd say with self-regulation is is an understanding of the Convention's courtesies because self-regulation does require abiding to the principles of how we proceed in a self-regulating House.