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Pre-legislative Scrutiny

My Lords, I am glad to contribute to the debate, not least because I entirely endorse the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Goodlad and Lord Norton of Louth, and my noble friend Lord Maclennan. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has already said, three of us are involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, to which I shall come back in a moment; this has been an important exercise and it has conditioned my thinking on this. I note in passing how important it is to have a few poachers turned gamekeepers in this House. There are two former Chief Whips, members of the old boys’ club, here this afternoon. In the notable case of the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, we have a former government Chief Whip. As such, he comes with all the experience of the business managers of the other place, which will stand us in good stead in his committee and in his service to your Lordships’ House. Useful work is clearly being undertaken. So many of the recommendations of the Norton report, to which we go back at regular intervals, are still relevant to what we are doing here today. It is important to step back for a moment to remind ourselves why we undertake pre-legislative scrutiny: to improve the eventual product of Parliament. The quality of what we produce in this building is often justifiably criticised, but pre-legislative scrutiny is one way in which we can make dramatic and useful improvements. It is therefore important that we are concerned not only with the number of Bills that go through this process, but their importance and significance—indeed, somebody mentioned their length. Although I take seriously the point of the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, about the reduction from a total of 15 in the year to which he referred to one in three, the significance of that legislation is also important. It is not just quantity but quality. I have a long commitment, as do my noble friends, to improving pre-legislative scrutiny and making it more applicable and work better. Indeed, in the other place, I worked closely with the late Robin Cook on these issues. I see that the Minister indicates that Robin Cook applied considerable energy and effort, and attempted to bring Members of all parties along with him to make a success of this exercise. It is significant, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, has pointed out, that a great many more Bills went into pre-legislative scrutiny when Mr Cook was Leader of the House of Commons, not least those undertaken by Joint Committees. In passing, I point out, as I am a member of the Joint Committee looking at the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, that a special role can be played in Parliament by Joint Committees. They bring together the ethos of this House with some of the expertise available in the other place. We accelerate the process because we bring together the analysis of both Houses in one exercise, rather than having to do it sequentially and thereby lose some time. Reference has been made to the Joint Committee on which we are serving having been given an extraordinarily short time to deal with incredibly complicated matters, diverse to the point of disruption. Some of the issues that we have been addressing are so peculiar in their own way that they do not happily fit into a coherent draft Bill. Without betraying any of the likely consequences of our examination, we may well make that comment. To do it in just 10 weeks! We are meeting twice a week, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with our amazing Clerks from both Houses updating us between the meetings. It is extraordinary, and I pay tribute to the Clerks for that exercise, but it cannot be said to be a well organised process if we are putting them under that pressure. In addition, we should recognise that one of the huge values of pre-legislative scrutiny is that we take evidence. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, said, it is extremely important that we take evidence from outwith the parliamentary estate on important issues that we address. I note, for example, that when the Joint Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, looked at the Communications Bill, evidence was taken from experts that could possibly not have been brought together by the normal process of examination. In that context, my noble friend Lord Maclennan is right to say that, when taking evidence in a Joint Committee, you get well away from the normal adversarial process so often seen at the other end of the building—and occasionally in your Lordships’ House. In this process, you would not know what party or group those taking the evidence of those giving it were from. That effective, impartial assessment of complicated issues was especially apparent in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Communications Bill. Briefly, on parallel consideration of these issues between the two Houses, it would be inappropriate to comment in detail on what happens in the other place. However, I note—because I was involved in it—that this House was looking at these issues from 2002 to 2004 when the modernisation Select Committee, on which I served for a number of years, was doing so in the other place. I take seriously the work done in this House by an interesting group of party leaders while this was being discussed by the modernisation committee. It was referred to as the Leaders’ Group on working practices in the House of Lords, and produced a report on 29 April 2002 that went into a great deal of detail about the working practices of the House. We all know what happens with the London bus syndrome: Bills all appear immediately after the Queen’s Speech in December or November, and they all need a Second Reading. A number come to this House; perhaps too few, but that is a separate issue. A great number go the House of Commons, and then they all go into Committee. As a result, there is a blockage; we have a number of Bills coming at the same time. Sometimes there are 10 or a dozen Bills for Second Reading in just a few weeks, and then they all go into Committee. Those pressures can be alleviated, partly by better spreading of the draft legislation for pre-legislative scrutiny, partly by allocating in which House they should start, but also by ensuring that carryover is used in appropriate cases. In 2002, this House made the sensible decision of linking the issues of pre-legislative scrutiny with carryover. Clearly, if you are to have appropriate time set aside for pre-legislative scrutiny, you may find that the resulting Bill needs to be carried over into the following Session. Unfortunately, against the pressures that I and others—particularly Robin Cook—tried to steer through in the other place, the same deal was not struck, nor was the same link made. I therefore fear that the other place is far less clever in organising pre-legislative scrutiny and the resulting link with carryover. That is an important link, for better digestion of the legislative programme through the year and—where necessary, by agreement between the parties—carryover into the following Session. I hope that the Minister will allude to that issue. Even if he cannot give a definitive view, I hope that we can go back to it. We owe a great debt, not only to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, for what he has done with this committee in more recent months on behalf of your Lordships’ House, but also to previous chairs: the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and our much lamented former colleague, the late Lord Holme of Cheltenham, who made a signal contribution to the improved working of this House. This is a useful report. I hope that we will have a positive response from the Minister this evening. More than that, however, I hope that we will see some of the improvements that have been alluded to by all noble Lords who have spoken this evening.