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Parliament and the Legislative Process

My Lords, I begin by quoting paragraph 221 of the report which states that,"““quantity should not be confused with quality””." I should have thought that the greatest restraint shown this evening was the fact that no noble Lord mentioned that the most recent Queen’s Speech constituted the   largest and most prolonged raspberry to that recommendation that we have had in recent years. The Queen’s Speech contained 40 or so Bills and 15 draft Bills and constituted a massive overload of the system long after the report was put forward for consideration by government. The Government’s actions with regard to introducing that amount of legislation show the direction in which they are going. The debate has recognised to a certain extent only the real conflict in this matter, to which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred in the closing part of his speech; that is, that a large number of the people involved in improving the parliamentary process have a completely different vested interest, which is the rapid progress of government business. I was talking to a very senior civil servant recently who said to me very frankly, ““What the Prime Minister really wants is a five-lane highway down which he can drive his legislation as speedily as possible””. I said, ““If you do not mind, I want the House of Lords to remain as a few speed bumps on that highway””. We need to understand that conflict; that the noble Baroness has a double duty, and that there are those on the Government Benches who see facilitating government business as a major objective. We are going to have to deal with that as discussions unfold. We all know the language of our political system: ““The Government must govern””; ““The main duty of the Opposition is to oppose””; ““The lady’s not for turning””; ““I have no reverse gear””. That is hardly the language of the committee or of the bringing together of ideas that is behind a lot of the report. We have a confrontational and adversarial system, which over the years has believed that the clash of battle and a little inflexibility and unreasonableness test the quality of both Ministers and legislation. Many of us think that there might be a better way. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, that in this House the better use of committees and the expertise available to them could be a good way forward. I sat on a pre-legislative committee, the Puttnam committee on broadcasting, and on the freedom of information committee. The Puttnam committee was by far the better and most effective because it was a Joint Committee. The two freedom of information committees sat in parallel at either end of the Corridor, wasting a great deal of time and not having as much of an impact on the outcome of the legislation as did the Joint Committee. I make this point about pre-legislative scrutiny to the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf. For many years I made my living in public affairs, advising companies on how to affect Parliament; lobbying. I have never had any great difficulty with that. A Parliament without lobbyists is a Parliament without power. Pre-legislative scrutiny opened up the system so that it was not the man in Whitehall who knew best, and so we were able to get information and ideas at a pre-legislative stage. That is a far healthier way of doing it, rather than trying to nobble civil servants at what used to be called the ““soft pencil”” stage of legislation. Opening up influence like that and having ideas tested makes for better legislation. We are always going to be up against the macho politics; the hard men in government who are not going to have any of this nonsense. The fact is—as has been pointed out by a number of noble Lords—that it has produced ill-considered, poor legislation. I am sorry to disagree again with the noble Lord, Lord   Dahrendorf—it is not because he has moved his place in the House—but he has been over-generous in saying that it somehow makes this place more powerful. We do not catch all the bad legislation that comes forward, given the sheer volume of ill-considered legislation. Then there is that other great wheeze of government, the several hundred amendments tabled late in a Bill’s progress—all of those need to be checked in the process. Like my noble friend Lord Smith, I see this as a type of Rubik’s cube that includes the reform of the voting system, how we behave, the system in this House and how we communicate. What depresses me is learning that this Government will solve that Rubik’s cube by a combination of Mr Hoon and Mr Prescott—two names that, separately or together, do not generate excitement in radical breasts. I am attracted to the idea of post-legislative scrutiny, not least due to a department that has been mentioned a number of times as a chief cause of over-legislation—the Home Office. There is a need for a check on the ratchet effect of Home Office legislation as it affects civil liberties and human rights. Sunset clauses and post-legislative scrutiny could be of great benefit. Even during my decade in this House, I have seen whole chunks of Home Office Bills resisted, while the next emergency powers Bill, rushed through in 48 hours, miraculously contained the same clauses that this House threw out a few months or years before. There is a real need for Parliament to take another look at the way that government takes some of their powers over time. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, challenged me regarding my views on the Salisbury convention, while he extolled the views of the Labour Back-Bench committee on reform and the contents of the Labour manifesto. I am very open-minded about reforms of conventions and procedures in this House. There can be genuine discussions relating to that. But I shall not go along with cherry-picking a procedure that would give the Prime Minister his five-lane highway. Regarding the Salisbury convention, it is extraordinary that this House was given a range of powers less than six years ago by a Labour government, by a democratically-elected other place. Now to resurrect a 60 year-old convention that was offered by a Conservative-dominated hereditary House to a Labour government with 48 per cent of the vote, and then to say that that should still apply to a Labour Party that is now the largest party in this House, but is a government with 36 per cent of the vote, is stretching the limits of the convention. I shall spell this matter out to the noble Lord, Lord   Carter, and to others. If the Government wish to clip the wings of the House of Lords—and there are many hints to that effect—without making such actions part of a wider reform that would place other checks and balances on the power of the Executive, I shall use every power at my disposal, irrespective of the Salisbury convention, to preserve those checks and balances. That is a proper approach and the continual plea to the Salisbury convention is the last refuge of legislative scoundrels.