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Constitutional Reform

My Lords, your Lordships’ interest in this subject is shown by the number of speakers today, so we have every reason to be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for initiating this debate. In his notably, but not unexpectedly, wise maiden speech, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Carswell, reminded us that we have a flexible constitution and reminded us of the words of Lord Hailsham: if you are considering constitutional change, be careful. I agree, but I want to make the point that in some ways our constitution can be too flexible for its own good, so that changes can take place in it that we scarcely notice. I shall illustrate that: over a long period, the Executive have taken means of getting control of the elected Chamber of our Parliament to the extent that it cannot properly fulfil the role that it ought to. When we last debated this issue in the debate on the gracious Speech in November, the Wright committee in another place was about to report, and the report came out the following day. Like other speakers, such as the noble Lords, Lord Maclennan and Lord Howarth, I was impressed by that report. It made valuable proposals for reinforcing the influence of Back-Benchers over the House’s business while maintaining the ability of the Executive to get their business through. It is also encouraging that the Prime Minister has said that the Government will support the committee’s main recommendations. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us an assurance that the Government will also provide the procedural means of implementing the Prime Minister’s statement. As I said in the debate on the gracious Speech, while the procedures of this House are not subject to the stranglehold of the Executive apparent in another place, we would be complacent if we thought them incapable of improvement. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, who is not in his place today, has proposed that a working group should be set up in your Lordships’ House to consider this matter, and I support his proposal. The Leader of the House did not react adversely to that, and if there is anything further that the Minister can say about it, that would be very good. The role of Parliament is important—I would say vital—in keeping the Government up to the mark. The fact that the Executive have had things too easy for their own good for too long in getting legislation through Parliament has meant that there has been too much legislation, not just recently but over many years, and it has been inadequately prepared and justified. I shall illustrate that by mentioning just two Bills that are about to come to your Lordships’ House. One is the Personal Care at Home Bill, on a subject that is of great interest to many of your Lordships: how the state should provide for citizens in their old age. It has long been a matter of debate how that cost should be divided between the individuals themselves and the state. There was a royal commission on it, there was a committee under Sir Derek Wanless and there has been a Green Paper, which is still out for consultation. The Green Paper ruled out free care entirely paid for by the taxpayer, but even during the period of consultation, out of the blue, the Prime Minister announced at the Labour Party conference that all individuals with the highest needs for free personal care in their own home would have it provided by the taxpayer—that announcement, as I say, made while the consultation procedure on a Green Paper that ruled it out is still continuing. The cost of that proposal will be £570 million a year, and that is the Government’s estimate. The Bill was rushed through all its stages—First Reading, Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading—in the House of Commons in a single day, and it comes to your Lordships next week. That is no way to propose policy and to give Parliament the chance to comment on it. The second example is the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill, which contains legislation on the Civil Service, in which I take an interest. We have waited 150 years for that legislation. The Committee stage took four to five hours in another place, under the guillotine, and there was simply not time for important amendments, some of which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, referred to, about whistleblowing, special advisers and other matters. That, again, is no way to cause the Government to be careful in preparing legislation about important constitutional issues. Last night, with other noble Lords from all political parties, I took part in the launch of a report by the Better Government Initiative, on whose executive committee I have served. One of that group’s central recommendations is that the Government should commit themselves to better procedures of preparation and consultation of legislation—standards of preparation against which government proposals can be judged. Parliament should also be the proper and effective judge of whether those procedures have been observed. In the short term, I recognise that this might be more troublesome for the Executive, but I firmly believe that it is in their long-term interests as well as those of Parliament. It is to nobody’s benefit to conduct government poorly, least of all the interests of the Government who want to be re-elected. The tools are there to support good government in the Executive, the Civil Service and Parliament, if they are all used properly. Yet if they are all to be used properly we need, to quote an old political slogan, "Action, not just words".