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House of Lords: Working Practices

My Lords, as a member of the committee, it is not my intention to express wide views about the recommendations, which I broadly agreed with, but I do want to express my appreciation of the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Goodlad, who was wise, patient, perceptive, and seemed to me to pull together quite a disparate group in reaching a consensus, which I hope will commend itself to this House. The two points which I wish to animadvert upon briefly are the proposed establishment of the legislation standards committee, and I hope that that will commend itself to this House. It would make sense to have a joint committee to consider legislation which is brought forward by the Government, some of which originates in another place and some of which originates here. That would depend upon agreement with another place, and it might be worth while considering establishing such a committee to deal with Bills which originate in this House, which would fortify both the ability of the Government to justify what they are doing, and of those who are scrutinising the legislation to judge whether or not it meets the required needs. As legislation increases in volume, and as it becomes apparent that some departments of state consider that legislation is the only way in which they can seriously draw the attention of the public to their urgent need to do something, there is a risk that the quality of legislation will decline. The purpose of the legislation standards committee is to put a block in that direction. It would look at the matters spelled out in paragraph 94 of the committee’s report, such as giving a clear justification for why legislation is the appropriate means of dealing with a problem, and also looking at the effect it has on other legislation, whether or not new criminal offences are created, and how it would fit into the wider system of justice. These are just some of the reasons why such a committee should be established. I believe that it would be an important part of the pre-legislative scrutiny process, and one which would encourage people to look rather more before they leapt. I very much hope that the Leader of the House will be able to give a favourable response to that proposal. I think it would bring together the Executive and the legislature in a most helpful way. The second matter that I wanted to consider was the recommendation regarding the consideration of the executive role in relation to this House. The matter has been considered over some time, but on which we have not yet reached a very satisfactory position. The royal commission, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Wakeham recommended in 2000 that there should be a sufficient number of Secretaries of State and Ministers of State in this House. That number has fallen off, and is particularly low in this Parliament. If the Executive are going to take full note of the spectrum of views, and the individual contributions that are made by this House, not only to legislation, but to policy generally, it would make great sense if the responsible Minister were required to give the Statement to the House himself, to answer the questions himself, and, I would say, although this goes beyond the report, conduct the legislative process. Too often, one has the impression that those who are answerable for the policy are not answering to those who are raising the questions. Some of the less well conceived legislation of this Session would have greatly benefited from having the responsible Minister here and hearing the arguments early in the debate. Time could have been saved and minds could have been moved; I very much hope that that will be given due consideration. The committee recommends that that issue should be considered by the two procedure committees of the two Houses. As the Commons Procedure Committee in the Session 2009-10 recommended in its third report, if Secretaries of State are in this House, ways should be found to enable them to make Statements and to answer Questions from another place. I very much hope that that will be given the attention that it deserves.