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Parliament and the Legislative Process

My Lords, although I am now a member of the Select Committee on the constitution, I was not during its deliberations that led to this report. On the principle of heirs and assigns bearing a continuing responsibility for the work of their predecessors, I am happy to offer support for the proposals that have been made. I, too, should like to add my thanks for the contributions made by the previous members. I should also like to remark on the outstanding role of the committee’s first chairman—the scholarly and noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. This is the last of a long line of reports which have emanated under his chairmanship. That the committee is now a well established feature of your Lordships’ House owes much to him. It is not always a good idea to have an expert on a committee’s subject in the chairman’s role—indeed, it is generally unwise—but the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has proved to be the exception to the rule. In this report, the noble Lord possessed not just the necessary expertise but he has also had the luck: he has caught the right tide. The report is being debated in a newly emerging context in which, it seems reasonable to predict, parliaments might just be regaining their place in the political sun after, in the UK at least, nearly a century in the shade. Contemporary politics is now in a very dynamic mode, and not just in the UK. That manifests itself in a number of ways. Most recently it is to be seen in the rejection of the proposed EU constitution in France and Holland. The fact that the opposition to the constitution was an unnatural alliance of political enemies and disparate pressure groups is not the point, which is the extent of popular disaffection with the stance and style of the political elites that the referenda results demonstrated. Similar manifestations can be deduced in this country. I referred to some of the new trends and tendencies in the British electorate in the debate on the outcome of the general election that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, introduced on 26 May, just before the Whitsun Recess. I shall not repeat what I said then. That debate highlighted the general and growing concern, resulting from widespread and increasing public alienation from the political process, which is deeply worrying. The problem has been further examined by the recent Hansard Society’s report, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, on the communication of the work of Parliament to the outside world, which has made some useful, technical suggestions. Even the new Leader of the other place felt moved to address the problem in his first public utterance in that post. Last week, he wrote in the Guardian that he believed that the best way to reconnect the governors with the governed was for the media to show greater respect for MPs and that those who advocate a fairer voting system and other reforms were missing the point. In Mr Hoon’s view, respect for Parliament is what really matters. Of course, it is precisely that sort of ministerial attitude that nurtures popular disdain for politics and politicians, as was very evident in the French referendum. Mr Hoon got the riposte that I think he merited in the Independent editorial last Saturday, which pointed to his record with regard to parliamentary questioning when he was Defence Secretary. Be that as it may, the significant point is that he felt obliged to comment on current public attitudes towards politics and politicians, even if his analysis was, to some extent, self-serving and slight in the extreme. The report makes a number of reasonable proposals for improving the work of this House. Rather like the Puttnam report, it deals with practical matters and comes up with recommendations for the better ordering of business. None of them is particularly contentious. They are sensible and should not provoke objections. Of the 28   recommendations contained in the report, according to my calculations, the Government in their response accepted eight, disagreed with seven and were either half-hearted or non-committal in the case of 13. The language of the response, as invariably employed by the Civil Service drafters, does not make for ease of analysis. Indeed, it is meant to prevent it. But what is clear is that the Government and their officials regard the modernisation of the procedures of this House as being of low priority and not something to be encouraged. Such an attitude, however lamentable, might be expected in the traditional departments of state—and we should not be fooled by the rapidity of changes of title in the fashion of renaming leaking nuclear power stations—but it is deplorable in a new Ministry in the form of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The DCA is second only to Mr   Geoff Hoon in its lack of comprehension of the present parlous state of affairs regarding the unravelled constitution of the UK and the related public disaffection with politics. On a specific point, the prolonged duration of direct rule in Northern Ireland needs to be addressed. A business committee of the kind suggested in the report may well have helped in this regard. As noble Lords know, Northern Ireland legislation invariably comes in the form of orders and statutory instruments. These are virtually impossible to amend. This, along with the shortage of time, makes parliamentary scrutiny of Northern Ireland affairs very perfunctory. I ask the Lord President of the Council, as I have before, how Her Majesty’s Government intend to remedy this very unsatisfactory state of affairs. However, despite the foot-dragging on the part of the Government in many respects, as I said in my opening remarks, things may be looking up. I noted the first utterance of the newly elected MP, Mr Ed Balls. As a poacher turned gamekeeper, as it were, he has expressed the view that values and their assertion should be reintroduced into political discourse. I heartily agree. It would be the best way to re-engage the governors with the governed. I hope, probably in vain, that he sticks to his views when—and this may well be likely quite soon—he returns to poaching in the form of a Minister. In the mean time, waiting for an injection of ideas and values in place of the turgid, technocratic managerialism that has fuelled public alienation for far too long, the recommendations of this report and others such as that of the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, together with an authentic debate about a fairer voting system and other related reforms, are all constituents of a broad spectrum of remedies that will help aid the resuscitation of British parliamentary democracy.