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Legislation and Public Policy

My Lords, in common with other noble Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for making what I thought to be an unarguable case. I very much hope that, in their responses, all three Front Benches will accept that this is a debate about governance and not government, between which there is far more than a semantic difference. To me, the essence of good governance is public trust. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is seeking a balloted debate on this subject and I very much hope that he achieves it. As I see it, our job—and certainly my job as a Back-Bencher—is consistently to seek means by which public trust can be enhanced and justified. Current and, I think, fair criticisms are that there is too much legislation—the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, made exactly that point earlier—unused or inappropriate legislation, and well meant but outdated legislation. Like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, I am an enthusiast for both pre and post-legislative scrutiny, and I do not think that there is a lot to add to the case so marvellously set out earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. However, I am very fortunate: I am probably the only person in this Chamber who has had the privilege of chairing two pre-legislative scrutiny processes, and I do not think that I fully appreciated how valuable they were until I recently went through the agonies of the Digital Economy Bill. If ever a Bill required pre-legislative scrutiny, that was it. Many hours have been spent in this Chamber—I would say many of them wasted hours—going through things which a good and effective pre-legislative process could have dealt with very easily. A lot of bouncing around between the various sides of the House on very small issues could have been avoided because many of the arguments were based on an extraordinary amount of misinformation and even disinformation. I shall return to that in a moment. So it is the absence of pre-legislative scrutiny that has led me fully to understand its value. The passage of the Digital Economy Bill is a perfect example of what can go wrong. All of us engaged in that Bill have been subjected to a deluge of lobbying, some of it informed and intelligent and some of it pretty daft. However, we have had no ability to sort the wheat from the chaff; no ability properly to interrogate the lobbyists; and no ability seriously to look at which of their arguments stand up and which of them collapses under interrogation. That was an error, because that was the only time when this Bill could have received proper scrutiny, given the present parliamentary timetable. No doubt, whatever leaves this House will be swept down to the other end of the building and I am afraid that we shall end up with a limp and lame Bill on what is in reality a very important subject. Another point is that we live in an era of ever-more professional politics and politicians. The outside world has to be given a voice and has to come into this building to make its voice heard, be scrutinised and feel that it has had a say. I repeat that not being able to sort out and identify the legitimate and factual lobbying has been a major problem in trying to get this piece of legislation through. The most important point about pre-legislative scrutiny is that the members of the committee form a hard core of informed cross-party expertise when the Bill comes before the House. You have an informed group of people who have been through the arguments and can cut through an enormous amount of waffle and nonsense. Not having that is a great mistake. We also have an obligation to look at what is happening elsewhere, good and bad. In the time left to me, I would like to draw the attention of the House to a very good article of 8 February in the New York Times by a Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, in which he said: ""We've always known that America's reign as the world's greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic. What we're getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure … Much of the Senate's business relies on unanimous consent: it's difficult to get anything done unless everyone agrees on procedure. And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not gumming up everything, get the right to block [what] they don't like"." He continued: ""The truth is that … the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government … America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it"." I would be very distressed if at any point anyone was able to say that our parliamentary system and our procedures were effectively making good legislation and good governance impossible. I shall finish with two short points. On 14 January, we had an excellent debate in this Chamber on climate change post Copenhagen. Thirty speakers made contributions and it was led by the noble Lord, Lord Stone. He and I made a point of ensuring that as many schools as possible knew that the debate was happening. We followed that up afterwards. The ability of this House to shoot itself in the foot is sometimes quite remarkable. When we talked to the young people who had shown an interest in the debate, the same question arose time and time again: "Why on earth were you moving for papers and why, at the end of a really excellent debate, did you withdraw the motion? Did you not believe in what you had said or was what you said an irrelevance?". I think it is foolish to use these absurd, antiquated phrases which no one other than someone who has been in this Chamber for probably more than a year has any way of understanding, when in fact we are trying to engage the outside world, particularly young people, in what we do. We must address that quickly. Finally, to paraphrase Nikolaus Pevsner, the British have a genius for spending large sums of money, seeking candle-end savings. The most distressing thing I have watched in the past few months, particularly as a result of the expenses drama which has engulfed both Houses, has been the argument advanced that somehow or other a cheaper democracy might possibly be a better democracy. Everyone in the Chamber knows that to be ridiculous. Somehow or other we have been dragged into a debate which has given credibility to the idea that saving money will result in better governance. I have said before in this House that cut-price democracy is not a bargain that any sane person should contemplate. We have to make that case over and over again and stop pretending that somehow, by saving money here and there, we are offering the public something better when we all know that we shall be offering the public something potentially far worse.