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Parliament and the Legislative Process

My Lords, this is not the first time that I have followed the noble Lord, Lord Carter, in a debate of this sort, and I guess that it may well not be the last time, either here or in some other forum. As he spent the greater part of his ministerial career seeking to get government business through, and so have I, it is not surprising that we agree on quite a number of issues. However, we do not necessarily agree on all the issues. There were one or two things in his speech that worried me somewhat. One thing that I take from it which I think is very important is that, in whatever we do in this Chamber, to lose the flexibility that has been the hallmark of how we have managed to get over a whole range of difficulties in the past would be a serious mistake. I congratulate the Select Committee on its most excellent report. If we move in the direction it recommends, real progress will have been made. Reading the exchanges in the evidence, as well as the conclusions, it was clear that the committee had a considerable amount of experience and expertise. Indeed, from somewhere in the evidence I recall a response to one question where the Minister made the point that the questioner had more experience in these matters than did the Minister. All that was true. The answers that Ministers gave in many cases seemed to me the sort of answers that I might have given when I was in their position. Officials would be mortified if Ministers did not remind the committee of some of the very practical difficulties that any government would see in some of the committee’s proposals. In my view the committee will not get everything it wants, but in my judgement the committee was right in most of its recommendations. If, as a result, it gets some significant improvements in the way legislation is scrutinised, so much to the good. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter, said, effective scrutiny is not just about the form and shape of the methods of scrutiny. It is about a real desire and ability of Members of this House or of another place wanting to give up the time, not just in scrutinising the Bills, but in the considerable amount of work and study necessary to be able to make a real impact. I fear that the pressures and changes in the House of Commons have over recent years tended to mean that they look much more at the high-profile issues and less at the grinding detail that is necessary if we are going to get legislation right. Of course, the House of Lords has an enviable reputation in its work in the Select Committees and is in an ideal position to make a major contribution in any improvement in any pre and post legislative scrutiny. One of the great advantages of the House of Lords is that among its Members are a whole lot of noble Lords who are not primarily politicians, who often have great experience and expertise away from this House. They can bring a greater insight on issues than others who have spent a lifetime in politics. Perhaps I may refer for a sentence or two to a theme on which I touched in the debate on the gracious Speech. I am not sure that we in this House use that expertise in the most effective way. One only has to talk to some Members of this House—industrialists, professors, eminent people—who have made it clear that they find some of our procedures arcane and too formal to make the best use of their expertise. More pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny would use their talents much more effectively. All the helpful proposals depend on there not being great changes in the composition of this House, or at least not too quickly. It is important to form a view on what this House should be doing before we go down the road of changing its composition too drastically. Frankly, a bunch of second-rate politicians who cannot get into the House of Commons or the regional parliaments or assemblies are not going to make effective members of a revising Chamber. Thirdly, the House will not get at once all the blueprint or procedural changes that the committee recommends, but it has to seize the opportunity to make what progress it can. In my view, it might be a draft Bill, a White Paper or even a party manifesto, which should give the appropriate Select Committee a chance to throw some well-informed non-partisan light on a particular subject. In some ways the ideal would be for a report of a non-partisan House of Lords Select Committee before any detailed proceedings began in either House, but that may not be too practical, at least at the moment. Perhaps I may give an example of practical progress. I have the honour to be the chairman of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Select Committee. For the past two years, and, we hope, again this year, we have formed a sub-committee to look at aspects of the Finance Bill while it is still in the Commons. We have published our report before Report stage in the Commons and what we have had to say has frequently been the subject of discussions in the debates in the House of Commons. We are very careful: we take only a few clauses and we look at them in detail. We never express a view on the rates of tax or on the incidence of tax, but we take extensive evidence from tax practitioners, lawyers and officials from the Treasury, Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. We concern ourselves with the need for the changes, the levels of consultation, the practicalities and administrative details and their likely effectiveness. It has proved a very worthwhile exercise, giving all parties involved a chance to explain the issues and the problems as they affect them. Not least was the excellent way in which officials from the Inland Revenue and the Customs and Excise were able to tell us in detail why they thought the changes were necessary. In all cases—I think that that is right—the officials proved to   be effective and extremely well informed witnesses. They shone considerable light on the legislation that Parliament was passing. I again congratulate the committee on a most effective report. I expect that the committee will get some progress, and that we will progress. But, as the noble Lord said, quoting a journalist, it will be ““patchy”” and may happen in unexpected ways; none the less, I am sure that there will be progress.