---

Legislation and Public Policy

My Lords, it is a rare pleasure, which is too often denied to me, to speak after the noble Lord, Lord McNally. I must tell him that whenever I see the Liberal Democrats I am reminded of another great black and white film called "Up the Creek". I join all others who have congratulated my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on securing a place in the ballot for this interesting and extremely useful debate. I can assure noble Lords that not only shall I have listened carefully to all who spoke, I will also read the many distinguished contributions with equal care. Perhaps I may start on a slightly sour note: it is better to get these things out of the way at the beginning. I was struck by the number of Peers who spoke about public involvement in the scrutiny of legislation. Yet when this House was asked, only four of those who spoke today supported the idea that the British people should have a say in agreeing the Lisbon treaty. That is a stain on this Parliament, which will not be removed, particularly because the three parties gave a promise in their manifestoes. The 2005 Labour Party manifesto—the most recent—said: ""We will legislate to place reasonable limits on the time bills spend in the second chamber—no longer than 60 sitting days for most bills"." I take it that the Government have changed their mind on that objective. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to tell us when and why they changed their mind, and that it will not reappear ever again in a Labour Party manifesto. When I read the terms of the Motion, to enhance, ""the means available to the House … to scrutinise legislation and public policy"," it struck me that this went to the heart of what this House and Parliament have been about since the earliest days. Issues of how to contain the Executive and to hold the King's Ministers to account were exercising Members of this place in the 13th and 14th centuries. Some of their statues are above us as we speak. It is thankfully a lot less bloody these days, but, sadly, it is also a lot less effective. We are all agreed on the need to expose those in power to more effective scrutiny, but as a small-part player in the events of recent years, I have to say that we should not be too downhearted. This House has had a significant impact in the past 13 years. It has protected the right to trial by jury; limited the most draconian emergency powers to terrorist-related crimes; prevented the imposition of compulsory ID cards; upheld the right of every election candidate to send a free election address; defended controls on night flights to airports; blocked super-casinos; and prevented 90-day detention without trial. That is just part of the record, which is not bad for a House regarded, whether we like it or not, as far less legitimate than the other place. But our weakness has meant that while we were right on 24-hour drinking, regional assemblies, home improvement packs, the risks of electoral fraud and, I would contend, the use of closed lists in elections, we had to give way on all those occasions. The issue was not one of deficiency of scrutiny—your Lordships filleted all those propositions—it was a deficiency of authority. However we react to the issues raised in this debate, that deficiency cannot be mended by changes in our practices or Standing Orders. Some confuse bad strategic decisions by government with less-good scrutiny. We exist very often to make bad Bills a little better. It should be the job of government to make sure that we get better Bills, which is why I very much commend the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, and his group in the Better Government Initiative. Parliamentary reform—by which I mean strengthening the authority of Parliament vis-à-vis the Executive—has to involve both places. We are part of a process that will change. The use of guillotines in another place has been monstrous as regards the number of Bills that arrive in this House not having been debated. I totally agree with what noble Lords have said on this and with the proposition that we should find a way of flagging up those areas that have not been debated. Since 1997, we have seen huge changes in procedure in this place. I have been a willing participant in that. After the reforms that followed the discussions initiated by the late Lord Williams of Mostyn, we agreed on a cross-party basis a range of changes. That was in about 2000-01. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, sat on that group as well. I must say that I had no idea of how growingly irritated he has become, so that in these dying days of the Labour Government, he at last erupts and says that everything that has gone before was quite wrong and that now we must go for change. The important changes we made included much greater use of Grand Committees. On the whole, these have worked well. However, I note that there is still some disagreement between the views of the noble Lords, Lord Filkin and Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lord Higgins about whether they should become the default mechanism. I note a lessening of the use of Grand Committees for legislation and a greater use of them for other business. This is ripe for review and could include, perhaps, the suggestion that Grand Committees should have the ability and power to sit in the mornings. Equally, another effect of the Williams reforms was to bring in tighter rules on procedure at Third Reading, which, too, should be revised. I very much welcomed what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said about that. There are advantages and disadvantages in all changes, but I refute the claim that we on this side have been resistant to it. We, for example, proposed and would maintain the Delegated Powers Committee, the Constitution Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee. But, given the limited resources of the House, we may wish to look again at the distribution of resources between the committees of the House, especially if we do more pre- and post-legislative scrutiny. No one could help but notice the enormous share of resources that is taken by the European Affairs Committee family overall. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Roper, is bidding the other way on that to make sure that there should be enhanced resources.