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Parliament: Legislative Proposals

I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for bringing this matter to the attention of your Lordships. Like him, I have had the privilege to take part in the Better Government Initiative, where this issue, which affects the relationship between the Executive and Parliament, was extensively discussed. It is important because that relationship in turn affects the attitude of the public to their institutions and the extent to which they think that representative democracy serves their needs. There have been a number of reviews and reports on this subject produced by both governmental and non-governmental bodies over the years. It is a reflection of the intrinsic importance of the issue being discussed, even if it does not immediately grab widespread attention. It is regarded as something with which the experts are inclined to deal, but we are not necessarily wrong in being interested. The quantity of law is going up, which I do not regard as particularly beneficial, but the quality of law is not keeping pace. As my noble and learned friend Lord Howe—this bird of plumage next door to me—said, the underlying policy can be affected by that and a situation could arise in which the Executive can pay the price of poor law being passed, because poor law is harder to implement in good policy. Let me give some practical illustrations of the kind of difficulties we can get into. The number of Bills published in draft form has fallen since 2004. Only seven out of the 30 Bills in this Session were so presented. I hope that this debate will revitalise the Government’s commitment to enforcing their own proposals, for which I commend them. It is important to live up to your standards and not just rest on fine words. There has been a thorough exploration of how pre-legislative scrutiny can be expanded and clear proposals have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, rightly, has again put forward guidelines of a kind which the Government should take seriously. But the 2003 standard text on parliamentary procedure, Griffith and Ryle on Parliament, states that the development of pre-legislative scrutiny, "““depends more on Government than on Parliament””." We can say what we like, but it crucially depends upon the Government taking seriously their role in relation to Parliament. The Government’s enthusiasm, or lack of it, for implementing these proposals will be key to them becoming standard. You can see the price paid when this does not happen. Look, for instance, at the Government’s legislative timetable for this Session and you realise how badly prepared Bills can damage the Government’s programme. In 2004, the Pensions Bill took nine months to proceed through both Houses. In the process it had 78 new clauses inserted and 450 government amendments were made to it. As the shadow pensions Minister of the time commented in another place, "““if ever there were a piece of legislation that cried out to start its life as a draft Bill and be subject to the pre-legislative scrutiny procedures of both Houses, this is it””.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/11/04; col. 1192.]" I am sure one could say the same thing about other legislation. Another example with which we are living now is the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which has limped through eight days in Committee and has just started Report. It has had countless clauses and whole parts added and removed at all stages. The Government have admitted that many of their amendments are to correct flaws resulting from lack of consultation. It is time that we learnt some of the lessons. It is a remarkable fact, for example, that the provisions inserted to place the Commissioner for Prison Complaints on to a statutory footing were so ill-thought-through that even the commissioner publicly opposed them while supporting the intention that lay behind them. That must be a waste of time. The properly managed resources and expertise of the private and charity sectors form an important part of the consultation process. We all recognise that these days the charity sector, the voluntary sector—the Government call it the third sector but I prefer to call it the voluntary sector—plays an increasingly important part in our public life. How is it brought in? How are its views heard? One of the important ways in which that can be done is through the process of pre-legislative consultation. If the Government are able to develop and implement rather more thoroughly their own guidelines in future, that would be a very good thing. I contrast with that the benefits of pre-legislative consultation. I take as an example the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, which deals with enormously controversial issues, as we now see in another place. However, the quality of the debate in this House has been widely commented on and was very great. One reason why it was so good was that the Bill had been through a process of pre-legislative consultation, so the issues had been identified and clarified to a greater extent. The quality of the debate here and the service that this House was able to give to the legislative process was accordingly greatly enhanced. It is interesting that the Bill came to public notice and got picked up by the media only when it reached the Commons, but I have no doubt that the other place will benefit greatly from the work that we were able to do in this House on the basis of pre-legislative consultation. The case is made for greater effort and attention being given to that stage of the process. A previous speaker rightly said that, even if it is very careful and diligent in its scrutiny of Bills, this House or a future House cannot compensate for defects that could be remedied in other ways. Bad-quality legislation causes enormous difficulties for those trying to implement and enforce it. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, set out some steps that could be taken to improve all this and they seem to me to be good guidelines for this Government and future Governments. It would be helpful if the Minister could say why the Government have not published more Bills in draft and whether she feels that they will be able to remedy the situation in future. It would be good to hear that the Government’s intentions in this area will be reflected in their future conduct.