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Queen’s Speech

We should not require reasons to be given—that would be revolutionary—but simply require a certificate with a list of the clauses and schedules not debated. Again, we could pilot that. My fifth point relates to the scrutiny and governance of departments. The Commons has departmental Select Committees, which in the main concentrate, rightly, on the big policy issues. There is no question but that that is what they should do. However, they do not systematically review the work of regulators, for example. There are a few dozen of these, and I declare my interest as the chair of one, the Food Standards Agency, which is a non-ministerial department whose prime role is regulation. There is a strong case for this House, via a Select Committee, taking on the role of systematically scrutinising the regulators. I am not suggesting that it should scrutinise every regulator every year but, having discussed it informally with some of them, I believe that they would welcome the opportunity to speak to Parliament. They are all governed by primary legislation. It is never a priority to make minor changes to improve the working of the system but I think that a Select Committee in this House with oversight would get the big picture, spot the gaps, and check the overlaps and shortcomings—perhaps some over-regulation. The policy issues, however, would remain with the Commons. I think that that would be an ideal role for this House. Such a committee would be akin to our Merits Committee, which gets praise from all quarters. It would be a new role and one that is currently not undertaken. I believe that without any major legislative change the House could adopt all these modest suggestions. I do not think that any of them require approval from the Commons or the Executive and they could all be piloted. They all fall within the conventions of how we work, which brings me to my final suggestion: conventions. In the light of what has been said recently by lots of different parties, I think that we should look again at the joint report on conventions of the UK Parliament from 2006. As the report said, we should revisit the issues when the composition of this House is again on the agenda. The report’s conclusions specifically applied to the present circumstances and not to future ones if the composition should change. All I seek is a debate before the general election. We will all be here afterwards, and I think it would be useful if we could send out reminders to new Members of the other place about the way that this place functions with regard to the conventions. There is nothing revolutionary in what I have said but I believe that a modest package of changes such as these, which could be implemented quite quickly, would strengthen Parliament. That was my starting point.