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Pre-legislative Scrutiny

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, for instituting the debate and for chairing the committee which produces excellent reports. Although we have had a limited number of speakers, this has been a high-quality debate. I was disappointed to hear that the Government’s response was deemed negative. I assure noble Lords that we respond positively to pre-legislative scrutiny where it is appropriate. We will continue to look at these matters in the light of the committee’s report and our discussion tonight. The Government remain committed to the use of pre-legislative scrutiny and certainly understand the benefits it can have in terms of the quality of the legislation that is eventually passed, engagement with stakeholders and increased knowledge gained by Members of both Houses who take part in it. When the substantive Bill is produced, the debates on it in your Lordships' House and the other place are inevitably enhanced because of the experience that Members bring to them. Eighteen months ago, I well remember suddenly finding myself in the Department of Health. On almost my first day in the new job I had to deal with the first Committee day of the Mental Health Bill, which would have been a challenge in itself. However, it turned out to be even more of a challenge because many of the noble Lords who took part in the debates on that Bill had served on the pre-legislative scrutiny committee. Therefore, they came to those debates armed with huge knowledge and expertise, and sometimes with preformed judgments on some of the issues. Therefore, I experienced at first hand the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny and have no doubt at all that it can be very beneficial for some legislation. I very much enjoyed the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Norton, Lord Tyler and Lord Maclennan, and the way in which they placed this debate in a much wider context. Mention was made of the 2004 report, which took a holistic view of the legislative process; of the work of the Modernisation Committee of the House of Commons; and of the late Robin Cook, who was such an energising moderniser of Parliament. If one looks at the changes that have taken place in the past 10 years, one is in no doubt that there has been impressive progress in improving parliamentary scrutiny. It is easy to forget that detailed Explanatory Notes to Bills have been with us for only a few years. Prior to 1997, Members had to rely on notes on clauses, which were not widely disseminated. Impact assessments are also published with Bills. In the wider scrutiny sense, we have the Westminster Hall debates and Public Bill Committee hearings in the other place, to which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, rightly drew attention. Topical questions were introduced in the other place, no doubt following the experience of your Lordships’ House, which increased the number of such questions that can be asked. In addition, the draft legislative programme is published in advance of the Queen’s Speech. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, rightly referred to the statement by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister last summer, The Governance of Britain Green Paper and the draft constitutional reform Bill, to which my noble friend Lord Hunt also referred. That shows that considerable progress is being made. However, I accept that we ought not to be complacent. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was absolutely right to say that the opportunity that we have to debate House of Lords reform in the light of the White Paper issued on Monday also gives this House an opportunity to look at its own procedures and the way in which it deals with legislation. I modestly—or not modestly at all—refer to the Labour Peers Working Group on Lords reform. One of the sections in it suggested an alternative way of dealing with legislation. I cannot say that it has got very far, but we have an opportunity in the next year or so, particularly leading up to the election, and following on from the White Paper, to think rather more about whether there are ways in which this House could improve the way in which it scrutinises legislation. I would very much welcome that. We heard a lot about New Zealand yesterday. We were going to send the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, there to investigate the way in which it deals with witness anonymity. It would be interesting to look at the approach suggested by the noble Lord relating to pre-legislative scrutiny. I asked officials for a list of the Bills where pre-legislative scrutiny has taken place and the impact that it has had, and it is very positive. I shall mention three of them. On the Legal Services Bill, the Government accepted a large number of the Joint Committee’s recommendations; the reckoning is approximately three-quarters. We have already heard the tribute paid by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. The majority of recommendations in the committee’s report on the Climate Change Bill were accepted. There is no doubt at all that that strengthened the Bill in terms of policy and legislative handling. On the question of numbers, ratios and the Government’s current approach, the Government published 58 draft Bills between 1997 and the beginning of the current Session. We have published a further seven so far this Session: the Cultural Property (Armed Conflict) Bill; the Constitutional Renewal Bill; the Marine Bill; the Heritage Protection Bill; the Marine Navigation Bill; the Immigration Bill and the Apprenticeship Reform Bill. The draft legislative programme flagged an intention to publish two further Bills, on construction contracts and on communications data. If we take the seven Bills published so far this Session, in the current Session, the Government have introduced some 23 main programme Bills for Royal Assent. One-third of those were either emergency Bills—the Banking Reform Bill and the Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Bill—or Bills that were previously published in draft. One must be careful about the ratios. I know that noble Lords think that there should be more than seven, and I accept that every noble Lord who has spoken would like there to be more, but that is evidence that the Government have not backed away from the general principle of wishing to publish Bills in draft where it is appropriate and where there will be real benefit from it. However, there are sometimes good reasons why—