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Legislation and Public Policy

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, on securing this debate. I am so pleased that Lady Luck was with him in the ballot, because it has given us an opportunity to move the subject further forward. Also, like other noble Lords, I am very pleased to see that the leaders of each of the parties are present today, and we have the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, from the Cross Benches. In particular, I am heartened to see the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, with us, given that he has a long record of being associated with major changes in procedures and practices in the House. I recall first working with him way back in 2002 and 2003 on the committee on which the noble Lord, Lord Roper, also served, when we were working with the late and lamented noble and learned Lord Williams of Mostyn—Gareth. We had not only an intensive but an entertaining exercise that produced some major changes for the House, which in the main have been well placed. At that time, I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was very radical—but not radical enough, I regret, to embrace the then Leader's recommendation that we should have a Leader’s session periodically in the House so that the Leader could account to the House for his or her performance. It is interesting that we now have Secretaries of State with sessions devoted to their areas of activity—we had one this morning—but we still do not have a Leader’s session in this House. I hope that that item will be on the agenda as we move further forward. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, will reflect on his position and that we can introduce a Leader’s session. I have had some conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, about the slow progress we have been making in trying to establish a Leader's group. I know that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will give full support for it; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady D'Souza, is in favour of a Leader's review of our procedures; but I understand my from conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that there is hesitancy on his part. I await with interest his response to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, to see whether there are any remaining obstacles. When I talked to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, he felt that the agenda was not sufficiently strong for action to be taken. I hope that, in the light of our debate in the past few months—and, in particular, today, with some extraordinary and outstanding contributions, which are to be followed up by papers to be submitted to the next meeting of the Procedure Committee—all the leaders of parties in the House are now of the view that we can move forward. I hope that the papers will be before the Procedure Committee in the first week in March; I hope that there will be a unanimous view on them; and, like my noble friend Lord Rooker, I hope that we will not have to wait until the new Parliament is formed before we start to see some movement. If we do, I suspect that the Procedure Committee will not look at this until some time in June or even into July. Then, before we know where we are, we are into the Recess, we disappear for two months and the process will not be under way until the autumn of 2010 and, I suspect, we will not have a report completed by the end of the year. We will be into 2011. If we can huff and puff, as some people can in some committees, we might even run this through until the Olympics in 2012. Having teased the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, a bit, I now have some firm questions for my noble friend the Leader of the House, whom I know has been doing her utmost to move this forward. Will she be raising the issue at the forthcoming Procedure Committee? Will she give a firm recommendation that we should establish either a Leader’s group or a Leader’s conference? Although there may be problems in getting the formalities moving before we prorogue, does the committee agree in principle, at the beginning of March, to establish a conference or a Leader's group, of whichever party is in power, to continue that work? Will it open invitations for evidence to be submitted? Will she also extend an invitation to all the officials and staff of the House who, from my experience, have some very good ideas about changes that they would be willing to embrace and which we should consider? They should be included in such an event. We need to get that process well under way so that we can look forward to changes that will be about effectiveness and efficiency—not, as I hope that people will now be convinced having listened to so many contributions, about or against the interests of the Government, but about the interests of the House and the nature of our relationship with the public, which we are trying to rebuild. I take up two final points, while leaving those questions for my noble friend, whom I am sure will do the utmost to answer them today so that we have that firm commitment and know that, even if we cannot get all the details finalised, we have a date in the new Parliament by which the review will get under way. I served, 12 months or so ago, under the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, who is in his place, for six months on the hybrid committee, the Crossrail Select Committee. People said, "You must be crazy going on that". It was an extraordinary experience, quite different from anything else that I have done. I have been on pre-legislative scrutiny committees that have taken evidence, but in that instance we took petitions from the public; we worked our way through them all. To pick up on a point previously made in speeches by the Lord Speaker, I would like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, to think about our running an experiment whereby we could combine petitions with a post or pre-legislative draft scrutiny exercise. We found that many members of the public participated. Probably about 20 per cent of them went away having secured what they came to us to petition for, but I would guess that 80 per cent or 85 per cent of them went away satisfied that they had been heard by Parliament in a way that they had probably never believed would happen before they came. In the time that I have been in this Chamber, that is one of the most satisfying experiences that I have had. I also have views on European Union legislation, but I am conscious of the time and will come back to them later. We do great work on it, but it is important that we maintain standards. The Lisbon changes present us with some big challenges to ensure that we continue to do the work to the same level as we have done it in the past, but I hope we can find ways in which we, perhaps working on a joint basis with the Commons, might do it even better in future.