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Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, from these Benches we share the degree of importance that both the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and the noble Baroness attach to the work of the Law Commission. In the early 1990s your Lordships’ House fashioned a system called the Jellicoe committee, which we all thought would solve the problem. Indeed, three or four pieces of legislation went through comfortably before we came up against a proposal on domestic violence—a proposal that proved so controversial in another place that it had to be withdrawn. Thereafter, the Jellicoe committee procedure was abandoned. The noble Baroness is right to try and find some new way of expediting good Law Commission proposals, without undermining their credibility by preventing them being properly analysed in Parliament. The building blocks she suggested seem to form a potential foundation for whatever edifice is ultimately constructed. Like the noble Baroness, I believe there should be three fundamental mechanisms. The first should be a way of excluding any proposal that is controversial. Taking into account the observations of my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, we should bear in mind that ““controversial”” refers not only to party political controversy but to other sorts as well. The suggestion that we have a process of consultation built into the procedure is a good one. Secondly, regarding the parliamentary stage, my view—which may well not prove to be the ultimate solution—is that a joint committee of both Houses should be set up, in which no political party has a majority, and given the power to amend. Thirdly, I believe the noble Baroness’s political instincts to be extremely sound in her suggestion that whatever emerges amended from the joint committee should then go to both Houses for final consideration, probably giving both Houses the power to amend further but at one stage only—perhaps Third Reading. If we can all agree on those principles, then given a fair wind—and that is perhaps the most unpredictable element of all in trying to do something novel—we may well end up with a procedure that will re-accelerate that marvellous idea of a former highly distinguished Labour Lord High Chancellor, so long ago in the 1960s.