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Pre-legislative Scrutiny

My Lords, I may be able to help the noble Lord. He is saying that there are reasons why Bills are not published in draft. Part of the problem is that we are not told what those reasons are. One way to completely change the emphasis and address that very point is embodied in a recommendation of the Constitution Committee in 2004. Paragraph 34 states: "““Acknowledging that this entails an important shift of emphasis, we recommend that the Government should move from deciding which bills should be published in draft each session to deciding which bills should not be published in draft. Where the decision is taken not to publish a bill in draft, then the reasons should appear in the Explanatory Notes to the bill””." That would get at the point, we would know the reason, and it would provide a much clearer emphasis on what the Government are seeking to achieve.