House Of Lords Tightens Chamber Conduct And Speaking Rules

Key Points

• The Procedure and Privileges Committee has published its First Report of the 2026–27 session, HL Paper 43, on 22 July 2026.
• The report proposes tighter guidance on courtesy and behaviour in the Chamber, covering attendance at debates, reading of speeches, question and answer length at Oral Questions, interventions, how members address one another, talking in the Chamber, and a new dress code.
• Advisory speaking time for backbench speeches at Report and later stages of Bills is recommended to fall from ten minutes to eight minutes.
• Guidance is strengthened on withdrawing or pressing amendments and on speeches when a Bill “do now pass.”
• The Committee has approved a new printed edition of the Standing Orders, the first since 2021, alongside several substantive amendments.
• A proposed change to Standing Order 56 would apply the thirty-member quorum for divisions consistently across Bills and all motions relating to subordinate legislation.
• Standing Order 21(4), covering an exemption for the Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain, is recommended for deletion following the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026.
• Standing Order 83, which references “noblewomen” and obsolete concepts of peerage privilege, is recommended for repeal.
• The Committee has reappointed its Leave of Absence Sub-Committee, chaired by Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede.
• All recommendations require the agreement of the House before taking effect.

Westminster (Britain Today News) July 22, 2026 – The Procedure and Privileges Committee of the House of Lords has published its First Report of the current session, setting out a series of proposed changes designed to uphold high standards of courtesy and behaviour in the Chamber, alongside revised speaking times for Bills and a package of amendments to the Standing Orders. The report, published as HL Paper 43 on 22 July 2026, states that the Committee

“has considered various changes proposed by the Usual Channels with a view to upholding high standards of courtesy and behaviour in the Chamber,”

and confirms that it has also approved the printing of a new edition of the Standing Orders, the first since 2021. The Committee recommends that the House agree to the changes set out in the report, which touch on subjects ranging from how members dress to how many members must vote in a division for the result to stand.

What Has The Procedure And Privileges Committee Recommended In Its First Report?

The First Report is divided into three broad sections: behaviour and courtesy in the Chamber, changes to speaking times at amending stages of Bills, and a new edition of the Standing Orders relating to public business. The Committee frames the behavioural changes as a response to concerns that longstanding conventions, while clear, are not always being observed. The report notes that where its recommended changes require amendment to existing text in the Standing Orders or the Companion to the Standing Orders, new wording is shown in bold and deleted wording in strikethrough, allowing members to see precisely what is changing.

The report is formally addressed to the House, and none of its recommendations take effect automatically. Each proposed change to the Companion or the Standing Orders must still secure the agreement of the House before it becomes binding on members’ conduct.

Why Is The House Of Lords Tightening Rules On Attendance At Debates?

The Committee has focused first on attendance at debate, an area governed by paragraphs 4.32 to 4.35 of the Companion. The report acknowledges that the existing conventions are “clear and well-established” but records the Committee’s concern that they are not always followed in practice. To address this, the Committee recommends firmer language requiring that a member taking part in a debate must attend its start and end, and should attend the greater part of it.

The revised guidance also sets out what a member should do if they cannot commit to attending most of a debate. According to the report, a member unable to be present for the greater part of a debate owing to other commitments should communicate this to the Government Whips’ Office ahead of time, who may in turn advise them to remove their name from the speakers’ list. The Committee does, however, recognise that some members face conflicting demands from the House’s committee work that may limit how much of a debate they can attend.

What Changes Have Been Proposed To The Reading Of Speeches?

The report also revisits paragraph 4.46 of the Companion, which currently describes the reading of speeches as something the House has resolved to be, in the Companion’s own historic wording,

“alien to the custom of this House, and injurious to the traditional conduct of its debates.”

The Committee says it endorses the underlying principle behind that language, namely that speakers should listen and respond to one another rather than simply deliver prepared remarks, but concludes that the principle could be expressed more clearly.

As a result, the Committee recommends replacing the existing paragraph with new wording describing the House as a debating chamber in which members are encouraged to engage actively with other speakers, while still acknowledging that some circumstances, such as ministerial statements, may require a text to be read and that members may wish to refer to extended notes.

How Will Oral Questions Change Under The New Guidance?

A further section of the report addresses the length of questions and answers during Oral Questions. The Committee’s reasoning is straightforward: long supplementary questions and long ministerial answers leave less time for other members to put questions, reducing overall scrutiny of ministers. To counter this, the report recommends that ministers’ initial answers should not generally exceed 75 words, and that answers to supplementary questions should also be brief, with the first supplementary question limited to 45 seconds and subsequent supplementary questions to 30 seconds.

The report further proposes that supplementary questions themselves should be short and confined to no more than two points, and that where a supplementary question exceeds this guidance, a minister should answer only the two main points raised rather than the whole question.

What Does The Report Say About Interventions During Debates?

The Committee has also used the report to remind members of existing guidance on interventions, set out in paragraph 4.29 of the Companion. That guidance allows a member who is speaking to be interrupted with a brief question for clarification, describing this as consistent with the courtesy of the House, while also recognising that a member may reasonably decline to give way, for instance while moving an amendment or in time-limited proceedings. The Companion already states that lengthy or frequent interventions should not be made even with the consent of the member speaking, and the Committee reiterates that interventions on interventions are rarely desirable.

Rather than proposing new text in this area, the Committee has chosen to draw attention to guidance it considers members should already be following, describing interventions as something that can support good debate but which should not be overused.

Why Does The Report Address How Peers Refer To Each Other?

One notable behavioural change concerns how members address one another in the Chamber. The Committee notes that there have been instances of members addressing each other as “you,” rather than following the House’s convention of referring to colleagues in the third person, using forms such as “the noble Lord.” The report describes this convention as straightforward and important, and notes that similar approaches have been adopted in many other parliaments specifically to help depersonalise debate.

The Committee recommends strengthening the relevant guidance in paragraph 4.18 of the Companion to make explicit that the practice of not addressing other members directly is designed to depersonalise debate, rather than leaving the rationale unstated as the current text does.

What Has Been Said About Talking In The Chamber?

The report also revives one of the oldest rules in the Companion, Standing Order 20, which dates from 1620. The Standing Order requires that any Lord wishing to speak with another Lord while the House is sitting should withdraw to the Prince’s Chamber rather than converse in the space behind the Woolsack, or else be called to order by the Lord Speaker. The Committee describes the age of this Standing Order as evidence that it embodies a basic principle of courtesy, noting that conversations in the Chamber while the House is sitting are distracting and intrusive, particularly for members taking part in a debate and for whoever is presiding from the Woolsack.

The Committee has used the report simply to remind members of this existing rule, stating plainly that members wishing to talk to one another while the House is sitting should leave the Chamber to do so.

What Does The New Dress Code Require Of Members?

Among the most eye-catching proposals is a new, explicit dress code. The report states that there has “always been an understanding” that members should dress in a way that shows respect for Parliament and for parliamentary proceedings, but until now this understanding has not been set down in the Companion in specific terms. The Committee recommends inserting a new paragraph, numbered 4.14A, which would formally require that members wear business attire in the Chamber and Grand Committee, in select committees and in the division lobbies.

By codifying an expectation that has previously existed only as convention, the Committee is seeking to remove ambiguity about what counts as appropriate dress across the range of settings in which the House conducts its business.

How Will Speaking Times Change At Report Stage And Beyond?

The report’s second major section deals with speaking times during the amending stages of Bills. It recalls that the Committee’s Third Report of the 2023–24 session, agreed by the House on 19 March 2024, introduced advisory time limits for all amending stages in the Chamber and in Grand Committee. Having reviewed how those limits have worked in practice, the Committee concludes that a decrease in average speech length has been achieved at Committee stage, but with less impact at other amending stages.

Citing the well-established practice that debate at Report and subsequent stages should become increasingly focused and avoid repeating arguments already made, the Committee recommends reducing the advisory speaking time for backbench speeches at Report and all subsequent stages from ten minutes to eight minutes. The report also strengthens guidance in paragraph 8.82 of the Companion on withdrawing or pressing amendments, recommending that members other than the minister moving or withdrawing an amendment must be brief and should summarise rather than revisit the debate in full.

A further recommendation concerns the motion that a Bill “do now pass,” a stage the Companion already describes as normally moved formally with no substantive debate and any remarks kept brief. The Committee proposes adding a footnote making clear that members, including frontbenchers, should not use this moment to read out lists of named people who supported them during scrutiny of the Bill, or to thank the staff of the House, describing this practice as not a good use of the House’s time however well intentioned it may be.

Why Is The Quorum For Divisions Being Clarified?

The report’s third section sets out proposals tied to the preparation of a new printed edition of the Standing Orders, the first since 2021, undertaken in part to account for changes agreed by the House over the past five years and to renumber the Standing Orders accordingly. Among the substantive changes bundled into this exercise is a proposed amendment to Standing Order 56, which currently provides that if fewer than thirty Lords vote in a division upon any stage of a Bill, or upon a question approving or disapproving subordinate legislation, the Lord Speaker must declare the question not decided.

The report explains that the words extending the quorum to subordinate legislation were added in 1958 to ensure the rule would, in the words of the Procedure Committee at the time,

“apply to subordinate legislation as well as Bills.”

Since then, however, new types of motion relating to secondary legislation, such as non-fatal regret motions and motions to delay consideration, have emerged, and the Committee says the current wording creates uncertainty over whether the thirty-member quorum applies to them. To resolve this, the Committee recommends amending Standing Order 56, and consequential passages of the Companion, so that the same quorum rule applies to all motions relating to both primary and secondary legislation. It also recommends a further simplifying amendment to paragraph 7.24 of the Companion, removing wording added in 2015 that the Committee considers unhelpfully blurs the distinction between divisions on legislation, for which the quorum is thirty, and divisions on procedural motions, for which there is no quorum.

What Other Changes Are Included In The New Standing Orders?

The new edition of the Standing Orders also incorporates several other amendments. Following the coming into force of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026, the Committee recommends deleting Standing Order 21(4), which currently exempts the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain from having to give a reason when taking leave of absence. Separately, the Committee recommends standardising language across the Standing Orders so that all references to “virtual” contributions become references to “remote” contributions, with corresponding changes to follow in the Companion if the House agrees.

The Committee has also recommended repealing Standing Order 83 in its entirety. That Standing Order currently states that parliamentary privilege does not extend to peers who are minors, to “noblewomen,” a term the report notes is undefined, or to widows of peers, and separately withholds “privilege of Peerage” from the widow of any peer who marries a commoner. The report states that it is now universally accepted that the application of parliamentary privilege in specific cases is a matter for the courts rather than the House, and recalls that as far back as 1999 the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege concluded that the concept of privilege of peerage was obsolete and should be abolished. On this basis, the Committee has concluded that Standing Order 83 no longer serves any purpose and should be repealed.
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Who Sits On The Reappointed Leave Of Absence Sub-Committee?

The report closes with a short administrative update. At a meeting on 8 July, the Procedure and Privileges Committee reappointed its Leave of Absence Sub-Committee, reporting the decision to the House for information rather than seeking its agreement. The Sub-Committee’s membership is confirmed as Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede as chair, alongside Lord Goddard of Stockport, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, the Earl of Kinnoull, and Baroness Williams of Trafford.

What Happens Next For The Committee’s Recommendations?

None of the changes set out in the First Report take effect until the House itself agrees to them. The Committee’s role is to recommend amendments to the Companion and the Standing Orders; it is for the House, in the ordinary course of its business, to decide whether to adopt each proposal. Given the range of subjects covered, from dress and debating etiquette to the technical wording of the quorum rules governing divisions, members are likely to consider the report’s recommendations across several sittings before any are formally incorporated into the new printed edition of the Standing Orders that the Committee has already approved for preparation.

The full text of the First Report, HL Paper 43, together with the accompanying Standing Orders amendments, has been made available by the House of Lords for members and the public to consult ahead of any debate on its adoption.