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Parliament: Legislative Proposals

Good things often come in small packages and the quality of the debate this afternoon has amply justified the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in calling it. As I reflect back on what has changed over the years, it seems to me that Parliament has, if anything, improved its act over legislation. Pre-legislative scrutiny is a vital and important breakthrough. In the Commons now, although not alas in your Lordships’ House, Public Bill Committees—what used to be the useless Standing Committees—take evidence before they go through a Bill, which is a tremendous step forward. In your Lordships’ House, we spend much more time on Bills and are far less willing to accept a ministerial ““no”” than used to be the case, with the result that Commons Ministers are finally waking up to the fact that they must take account of the views of this House if they are to get their legislation through. Therefore, it seems to me that Parliament is doing better than it did. The problem arises with the raw material with which Parliament is asked to work in the form of legislative proposals that come before us. I am not a great one for golden- ageism. The first piece of legislation that I came across in detail was the Housing Finance Bill, which was before Parliament when I started work for Tony Crosland. The Bill was the brainchild of the great Walter Ulrich, one of the finest civil servants of history. As your Lordships will of course recall, the Housing Finance Act was designed to achieve a faster rise in council rents than would otherwise have occurred, but, because of the inflation that then took place, it had the immediate effect of achieving a slower rise in council rents. Therefore, legislative proposals, even in those days, were not perfect. However, there are regards in which I think there has been a decline, and I want briefly to single out just one—White Papers. It would be wrong to claim that White Papers never contain unclarities—even in the 1970s, when I first came into Whitehall and government. However, you knew then that, if there was an unclarity in a White Paper, it was there for a reason. There may have been something that had to be disguised or papered over but which might later be resolved. However, when you read White Papers now, I am afraid you feel that a lot of the unclarities are there not for a reason but because someone could not be bothered or did not have the ability to write the right words to encapsulate what they were trying to say. Too often today, I pick up a new White Paper in a spirit of hope only to find that I have in my hands, once again, an exercise in vacuity, a triumph over reasoned argument of contentless guff. Parliament and the people deserve better.