Lord Bruce was not a regular attender of debates in the Commons. He frequently disappointed the government's attempts to whip his vote. On 19 February 1801, he supported an opposition motion calling for an inquiry into the failed Ferrol Expedition. He joined only twenty other MPs in rejecting the Peace of Amiens on 14 May 1802. Pitt's Irish Secretary imagined that Bruce was a Tory supporter of the navy, but on every vote he opposed the Orders of the Day in the Commons. From 3 June 1803 to March 1804 there were numerous votes in which Bruce did not line up with Pitt's ministry, and he continued this record into the brief Addington ministry.