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Parliament and the Legislative Process

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, on opening this important debate. I congratulate also the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on his work in chairing the committee during the inquiry. Both noble Lords bring considerable expertise to this subject. I also express my thanks to Members of the Constitution Committee, some of whom spoke in the debate this evening, for conducting this inquiry. I am pleased to have been asked to give evidence to the committee. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord   Wakeham, that in giving evidence I reflected my views on the basis of my experience in this House. I have a strong belief in the need to make Parliament more effective, more transparent and more accessible. I am particularly pleased that there have been a number of recent reports on Parliament and the need for greater public engagement. Noble Lords who spoke this evening often made reference to this wider context in their remarks. We need to continue to look seriously at these wider issues, particularly the relationship between the two Houses, the best ways of working and how we can retain the best features of this House—in particular its flexibility and the elements of its culture of debating practice; for example, in the Committee stage of a Bill. However, I think that this House needs to be much more confident about looking at its practices and ways of improving them. In the time that I have been Leader of this House, I have been struck by the great defensiveness on all sides of the House about looking at our working practices. The House will have an opportunity to make a decision, for example, about whether it wants to elect a presiding officer who can be independent of government and stand up and reflect the views of this House and in particular its Back-Bench Members now that the Constitutional Reform Act is in place. I look forward to that debate as it will be an opportunity for this House to make its views clear. There is much that the House itself can do, if it is so minded, and in that respect I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that Parliament has a role to play that is independent of the role of government. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde said that he found the list of Bills in the Queen’s Speech a dismal litany. I would take his comments much more seriously if he had ever expressed the same kind of enthusiasm about the Bills that were considered under a number of Conservative administrations. I am sure that the noble Lord did not take the same view then as he does now. I can only take his remarks as politically partisan. The Government are committed to strengthening parliamentary scrutiny and believe that good scrutiny leads to better legislation. But we also need to be realistic about the resources available both within Parliament and within government. It is important to recognise that governments are elected on the basis of manifesto commitments which they will want to carry out. Governments also have a responsibility to respond to new and sometimes urgent demands that arise. It is in that context that I recognise the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, about Government initiating legislation. I must say that I do not necessarily agree with the noble Lord in his conclusions on the effectiveness or usefulness—in that context—of pre-legislative scrutiny. We have to get the balance right. The noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham, in his opening remarks, my noble friend Lord Carter and the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, all talked about the importance of pre-legislative scrutiny, as did other noble Lords. The Government have significantly increased the number of Bills published in draft for PLS: 49 draft Bills have been published since 1997. I say to the noble Lords, Lord Holme and Lord Norton, with respect to the publication of Bills in draft, that we have to an extent become victims of our success. We have built up the number of Bills published in draft each Session so successfully that it would now be difficult to give any guarantees that we can continue the year-on-year increase. It is in that context that the response was drafted as it was. The number of Bills introduced in draft has risen from three in 1997-98 to 11 in 2003-04. That is an increase by a factor of four. I cannot promise to continue that rate of increase, but in no way does that take away from the commitment made to try and publish Bills in draft. It would also be important to touch on resources. It would present your Lordships’ House with an unprecedented burden on available resources, including Members with which to people committees. I note my noble friend Lord Carter’s point about the impact on resources, which is similar to the point that I made, while my noble friend Lady Gould made the comment that finding noble Lords to participate would not, in her view, be a problem. The response make clear that we will seek at least to maintain the proportion of Bills published in draft. We continue to be committed to pre-legislative scrutiny. On the criteria used to assess whether Bills should be published in draft, we look at the readiness of the Bill, the date by which it is required to be enacted, whether there is sufficient time for pre-legislative scrutiny before introduction and, of course, the overall needs of the legislative programme. The noble Lords, Lord Holme and Lord Strathclyde, and my noble friend Lady Gould were also disappointed that the Government had not accepted the recommendation that the reasons for not publishing a draft Bill should be outlined in the Explanatory Notes to a Bill. We carefully considered that but felt that it would inevitably become formulaic and thus serve no useful purpose. The reasons are usually time pressure, demands on parliamentary counsel and the priority of other Bills. However, we accept the committee’s recommendation that Explanatory Notes that give effect to EU obligations should provide detail of the scrutiny history of the measure. We are happy to do that, not least because the members of your Lordships’ European Union Committee and its sub-committees perform valuable work on behalf of this House in scrutinising legislative proposals from the European Union. It is right that their work will now contribute to the scrutiny of Bills that give effect to those proposals. The committee supports the principle of carry-over and endorses the view that there should be a rolling legislative programme. That is very welcome. We envisage using carry-over for a few Bills each Session, as appropriate. In this House carry-over is subject to the agreement of the usual channels. My noble friends Lord Carter and Lady Gould and the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, talked about the possibility of moving from a sessional approach towards a rolling programme of legislation. I can see the arguments for that but I think that there would be some resistance to doing away with Sessions altogether. Understandably, the Opposition see the sessional cut-off as a control of the Executive. However, I note that many other parliaments do not have Sessions, without ill effect. I should take this opportunity to make clear that we have no plans to alter current procedure for State Opening or the Queen’s Speech. My noble friend Lord Carter and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned the proposals in the Labour Party manifesto with respect to the 60-day cut-off for Lords consideration. The proposal reflects the longstanding parliamentary convention, endorsed by the Wakeham report, that Her Majesty’s Government are entitled to have their business considered by this House in reasonable time. It is not a new idea; something like it is part of the constitution of many countries with two-chamber parliaments, and it featured in the abortive attempt to reform this House in 1968. It would have the beneficial effect of making governments less wary of starting serious Bills in this House and making it harder for departments—I shall mention no names—to continue rewriting their Bills until Lords Third Reading. If the noble Lord, Lord Elton, would care to look at the manifesto, he will see that the proposal refers to the House of Lords but is actually about the conventions between the two Houses. That is why the proposal is for a Joint Committee.