Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, on her choice of debate and the brilliant way in which she introduced it. As a member of the DPRRC, it is a particular pleasure to follow our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra—the Braveheart who led us into this important report alongside his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. I am sure the Minister knows how formidable a duo he faces.

What is different about the two reports at the heart of this debate is not just the arresting language or, indeed, the fact that we have a pincer movement on Westminster and Whitehall; it is the nature of the analysis and the depth of the recommendations, which will go beyond this Chamber. This is about context.

Take the titles of the reports, for a start: Democracy Denied? and Government by Diktat. One might be forgiven for thinking that these were the product of some raving pamphleteer but no, they are not. They come from the two most senior scrutiny committees in the House, and the language is justified. They express with little reservation all the frustration that we in this House have felt for a long time at the growing contempt for Parliament, which has been accelerated by the expediency of Brexit, the concentration of ministerial powers, the interpretation of “emergency” in terms of Covid and the stranding of Parliament.

The reports confront this challenge holistically and head on. They take the long view: they look backwards over a century of accumulated frustration but they also look forward. If Parliament is to reassert its power, it will be for the long term. Over the years, the DPRRC has won many battles on the Floor of this House. What we have been less successful at is changing and challenging habits, which these reports do. What should be exceptional has become business as usual, whether it is skeleton Bills or delegated powers.

The prescription set out in these reports goes far beyond “Chaps should do better”. It challenges the Government in principle and in practice to assert and govern by the basic principle that legislation is the servant of parliamentary democracy. In that context, the state we are in is not an extension of a game of cat and mouse between Ministers and Parliament. The reports document a structural shift in both the culture and strategy of the Government and Whitehall—that is, a culture that says that anything goes, anything can be tried on and any excuse can be offered and a strategy through which Ministers can, without restraint, hide in delegated legislation aspects of policy that need to be open to scrutiny and challenge. Skeleton Bills, Henry VIII powers and guidance rather than regulation are defended on the grounds of urgency and flexibility, no matter how flimsy or, frankly, nonsensical the argument. It is a creative culture, as we have seen in the raft of inventive ways, language, protocols, directions and so on in the form of disguised legislation.

The point is that this transfers powers to people and institutions that are well out of Parliament’s sight, sometimes in contested areas when the police are asked to do something by guidance that should have been regulation. The impact of this secondary legislation is the sharp end of the law: the point at which perverse consequences that could have been cleared away become real and make a real difference to people.

Sometimes it is argued that the Government do not understand what they are doing—of course they understand. Why else would they have introduced attempts to prorogue Parliament, or indeed to strip out treaty obligations by law? It marches on: the Health and Care Bill has so much delegated legislation and, with 50% of it beyond parliamentary control, the committee had to weigh it rather than analyse it.

We can no longer rely on the good chaps reasserting control. A reset means putting the Cabinet Office on the line so that its own guidance insists that the making of all legislation and the behaviour of Ministers is subject to the explicit principle of parliamentary democracy. It means identifying skeleton Bills as the outlaw Bills that they are and treating them as such, and it means ensuring that every civil servant assumes that Henry VIII powers can expect to be constrained by regulation.

It is time that we reopened the whole debate over the nature of secondary legislation and the sole nuclear option open to us. We ought to revisit this because it disables us as a Parliament. If we intend to strengthen Parliament in future, we have an obligation now to revisit that.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

May I remind noble Lords that the limit for speaking is four minutes? We have a long list of speakers tonight.

Covid-19: Status Certification

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I have been open with Parliament and we have laid a Written Ministerial Statement. Given that Parliament is going into recess, it seemed appropriate to set out progress and the current state of affairs with the review. Any noble Lord who chooses to read it will see that that is fairly set out, but a final decision has not yet been made and, as we have repeatedly said, will be announced in due course.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, can the Minister tell me whether a vaccine passport is supposed to be a substitute for quarantine? What tests or conditions will continue to be applied on leaving the UK for, and entering the UK from, countries on the green list or any other list?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, again, the specific, final decisions that address those points have not yet been made and will be announced on the timescale I have indicated to the House.

Budget Statement

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to join other noble Lords in congratulating both my noble friend Lord Khan and the noble Lord, Lord Cruddas, on their maiden speeches. We look forward to their many contributions in this House. I am sure that they will both be a great asset.

This Budget was more significant for what it left out than for what it contained. It was an opportunity to prepare for a future that would avoid the mistakes of the past, and which would prioritise public infrastructure and public service—but it has not. Yes, of course we face enormous, perhaps unique, challenges, but surely they can be faced down better with investment in the public services that make us resilient. Instead, austerity will inevitably be back—the same austerity that enabled the pandemic to prey on the poorest and the weakest of our communities, in this deeply unequal country.

The Chancellor has already tried and failed to justify the silence around these services in his Budget. There is nothing here about meeting the added cost to the health service, as it works through the huge backlog of diagnosis and treatment; or the unseen costs of the pandemic on mental health and family breakdown; or the future costs of staffing the NHS or funding affordable social care. There is nothing about nurses’ pay or rewarding and retaining their commitment and skills, and yet the Minister has an obligation to say whether he agrees with the Health Minister, who said in this House earlier this week that a 1% rise was all we could afford. These are the same people who do and did not count the cost of continuing to work, day and night, throughout the pandemic, as they do normally. The whole Government need to answer the question of why so much was spent on the wrong people and the wrong contracts.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the OBR has said that the potential legacy of the pandemic for spending on public services is one of the most significant risks to the medium-term fiscal outlook. When we think about preparing for the future, given all the warning notes from the scientific community about the persistence of Covid, new virus strains, and the need for continuing track-and-trace and vaccination programmes, it is astonishing that there is no provision for virus-related spending in 2022-23 and beyond. I have a final question for the Minister, which I hope he can answer when he winds up. Can he explain why this is the case, when we have so many lessons to learn from the initial failure to prepare and plan for Covid? The Budget is a failed opportunity. I regret that very much.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, we finally have an agreement with Europe, which can only be recommended because it exists at all; it could not have been held up to the light of Parliament because it would have been ripped to shreds on all sides. It is an agreement made by a Government who stooped to the threat of breaking international treaties as a negotiating strategy and who have yet been comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Europe itself.

It is an agreement that overturns the basic claims that were made for leaving Europe. Will there be less red tape? No—an army of people are now required to police our future. Will the economy be stronger? No—the economic consensus is that value-added exports will fall by nearly 5.5% and GDP by 4.4%. Will there be independence from Europe? No—if we diverge on standards or subsidies, we have agreed that the rule-makers in the Commission and member states can punish us with rebalancing tariffs. Will there be a stronger union? No—we have a more divided country, provoked into further and perhaps final divisions by a Government who ignore the realities of devolution. Will we have a more sovereign place in the world? Hardly, not with our reputation for probity and pragmatism trashed as it has been.

Will we have freedom to do as we want? Yes, if it means reconstructing hundreds of agencies that we had ourselves been responsible for establishing and running. Will we have a stronger democracy? Sadly, no; in their short career, the Government have shown a unique contempt for Parliament. Will there be a brighter future? Not for young people excluded from Erasmus, not for our musicians shut out from Europe at the last minute, not for our universities or for building knowledge, not for our health and social care services—dependent on European medics—not for our farmers or fishermen and not for our financial services, for which passporting is now a distant dream and which still do not know whether they will be granted full equivalence. This is the brilliant agreement, described as such by those who have to believe that it is. We started in the tragedy of a national act of self-harm, and we end in farce.

Finance Bill

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

First, on the stamp duty issue and the problems facing young people, welcome though they are, the stamp duty proposals may have very perverse consequences for the most vulnerable people in the rented sector. Yesterday, I received the following message:

“Three days ago our landlord contacted us to say that he intends to put our flat on the market as a direct result of the proposed tax relief. The effect of this is increased anxiety, uncertainty and instability in a time when Covid-19 has heightened these feelings. While I understand the intention of the Bill is to stimulate the market and economy, the effect for those who rent is to precipitate an unplanned and unwanted search for a new home, affecting mental health, and at a time of financial uncertainty for many.”


This is one personal instance to illustrate what my noble friend Lord Livermore said so eloquently. This is the voice of Generation Rent, for whom the prospects of owning their own home have disappeared over the horizon, who face a lifetime in rented accommodation and who could now well lose their jobs in the next six months.

The Government are totally silent on the private rented sector, so my first question to the Minister is: how does he think people such as my correspondent should be protected? How would he answer that email?

Secondly, will he ask his right honourable friend the Chancellor to take a good look at the 12 recommendations in yesterday’s report from the Affordable Housing Commission, which argues strongly that the way to lift society, as well as parts of the economy, is by investing in a massive building programme for social and affordable housing? Housebuilding is already badly hit by Covid, especially small firms. We need a bold and real new deal for housing which is not about deconstructing the planning system or turning offices into the slum dwellings of tomorrow.

Thirdly, will the Minister ask the Chancellor to focus more resources on a long-term fund for young people and their future? The kick-starter fund is a good place to start, but there is no indication that it will meet the scale of need of those young people, who now face such a different future. They have already been landed with Brexit: 400,000 young people were out of work before the crisis; a further 800,000 are set to enter the labour market. They will be first in line if we have 12% unemployment or more by Christmas. Moreover, the Treasury’s independent forecaster has said that as much as a fifth of the 9 million people whose jobs were furloughed on the scheme will be made redundant.

I very much look forward to hearing how the Minister will answer the questions raised by my noble friend Lord Livermore. My questions to the Minister are, finally: will the money promised in kick-start create new jobs incentives, where new and green jobs can also be created—careers in tourism and environmental technologies, for example? Will it support people to remain in employment once their apprenticeship finishes? Who will get priority, and how will it improve on such a poor track record of apprenticeships so far?

The Prime Minister, in typically inflated language, says that this is all about a new deal. How I wish it were. How I wish it had the scope, salience and success of FDRs original New Deal.

UK-EU Negotiations

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, my noble friend is a powerful advocate on behalf of the good people of Gibraltar. I can assure her that the interests and position of Gibraltar are very much in the mind of the Government in the course of this negotiation.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Hayter has laid out the risks facing this country from no deal. Despite all the Prime Minister’s clichés, it is clear from the Statement’s tone and lack of substance that we are nowhere near resolving the fundamental issues necessary for a good deal, and it was clear in the Minister’s tone that he has suggested that he would accept that. The Prime Minister is still arguing that an extension is not in the national interest, so can the Minister explain how the national interest would be better served by a no-deal exit, because that is increasingly the most likely and the most dangerous outcome for the country?

[Lord True]

My Lords, I simply do not agree with the characterisation of no deal—in any case, we left the European Union with a deal on 31 January 2020; we are now in a transition period. I greatly respect the noble Baroness and understand the point that she is trying to make, but uncertainty is the worst enemy of business. I point to what was said last week by Dame Carolyn Fairbairn of the CBI, who was not exactly canvassing shoulder to shoulder with me in the Brexit campaign:

“Business does not have any interest in delaying that”—


that is, the transition—

“because that is uncertainty magnified … we have supported the Government’s timetable and most businesses—not all, but most—still recognise the value of getting to a conclusion.”

That is the voice of business, from someone who was very much on the other side of the argument before the referendum.

Covid-19: UK-wide Discussions

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, good communication should always be striven for. That is the Government’s objective. At the outset of the crisis, the United Kingdom Government established a Cabinet committee structure to deal with the health, economic, public sector and international impacts of Covid-19 on behalf of the whole of the UK. Ministers from the devolved Administrations have regularly been invited to participate in these discussions. We are certainly committed to ensuring that the Administrations are informed and involved at every stage.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, further to the Minister’s reply, can he now tell the House why the Secretary of State did not inform, let alone consult, the First Minister of Wales—as a matter of courtesy, let alone practicality—that he was planning to make face masks mandatory on public transport? The First Minister has put it this way:

“We’re going to have to … find out from them the extent to which they have got answers to these questions, in advance of making the decision, or whether it’s a matter of making the headline, and then worrying about the detail afterwards.”

[Lord True [V]]

My Lords, I note what the noble Baroness says, but Welsh government officials and Ministers have been involved in COBRA meetings, committees and dozens of other meetings with UK government Ministers and officials since the pandemic began. This will continue to be a key part of the planning and communication of the overall response. We strive to do the best at all times. If there are failures, they are to be regretted, but we should go forward together as a United Kingdom.

EU: Plans for No Deal

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord in the picture that he presents of either unpreparedness or impossibility. We will seek and are seeking a free trade agreement with the European Union and we are carrying on negotiations in a number of areas, including one that I know is important to him: we are committed to seeking reciprocal agreements with the EU, for example, for family reunion of unaccompanied children. This work goes on and it can be done.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Social Market Foundation has calculated this week that the regions that will suffer most from the double shock of a no deal plus the pandemic will be the north-west and the Midlands, as well as sectors crucial to the economy such as finance and insurance, what plans do the Government have to mitigate the damage that this will do to such vital areas of the country and the economy?

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 13th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to welcome this Bill, and it is a pleasure to give up a Friday in such a good cause. I cannot possibly match the rhetoric of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, but I will focus on the reference that he made to the model provided by the Welsh Bill and all its ambition for this very welcome Bill in this House. I have one question to put not least to the Minister. How can this Bill be more effective than the one that it is modelled on? How can we learn the lessons from Wales?

The noble Lord spoke brilliantly and graphically about the law of unintended consequences. One lesson that we must learn is to have the courage to abandon the way that we have done things for 200 years. We are still wedded in this country to the notion of the inevitability of progress yet, as the review of the Marmot report showed, 10 years on, when we learn that progress has stopped in reducing inequalities, for example, we tend to resort to the old, failed policies and live with the unintended consequences. That, as he more or less implied, is due in part to the fact that the Government are still in thrall to a Victorian Treasury whose only belief is in cost-benefit, and to manners of government that are basically geared to nothing but a tradition of ad hocery and time-limited behaviour.

The Welsh Act rejected that whole way of doing things—that was its courage—and brought the concept of well-being from the margins and from the implausible to be front and centre of policy-making. It has drawn on decades of thinking about sustainability as a way of working, not as an end in itself, to put forward a framework based on collaboration, integration and foresight as the only way to meet the challenges of the future, whether that is the climate emergency or ageing. Quite simply, it has taken the “too difficult” box and taken stuff out of it.

Essentially, in the words of the Welsh future generations commissioner, the Welsh Act gave public bodies permission to “unsettle the status quo”; it is disruptive, and it is meant to be. The question is: did it give equivalent power to do that? The answer is not really, and that has been a recommendation of the Welsh commissioner herself: she has shown in her many reports what has changed, for example, in the planning of transport and the environment but she does not have the powers to do many of the things that she wants. She agrees that setting broad national objectives, however challenging, such as resilience or prosperity, is the easy part. The difficult thing is to change ways of behaviour and to change culture. That is the only way of meeting the objectives that are set.

The Bill is at the start of a very long journey. It is worth noting—I am sure the noble Lord knows this already—that there is resistance to change. There will be the temptation to simply audit what is happening and say “We’re doing it”, or look for an improved impact assessment rather than driving innovation directly through this Act. That is what the Welsh Auditor-General is now asking for and it is what we must ask of the Bill. That is the great test.

Are there elements in the Bill that will really empower the public bodies and the commission more effectively to drive change through the system? I believe that there are, not simply through process and asking the public to set the goals but by holding the public bodies’ feet to the fire—taking away the test of reasonableness, for example, in the way that they approach their duty; putting a duty on government departments, holding them all up to the light; and involving the private sector because that is so fundamental to future change. The most radical change of all would be to give the commissioner teeth like Gnasher in the Beano to go to law, investigate and then follow that up with legal remedies, and give that right to the public as well.

I am expecting the Minister to say very elegantly, “I fully accept the Bill in principle but I am in a slightly difficult situation as to whether in fact it is necessary”. I say to him: listen to what Welsh Ministers are saying. It is giving them a framework to do things better and more effectively and coherently, and to have the courage to think ahead. I would have thought that any confident Government would simply embrace that.

Universal Credit

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and it is a privilege to take part in this debate. What a tour de force we have had. We would have expected nothing else from my noble friend.

In Wales since April this year, jobcentres in five local authorities have gone into full service. Swansea will follow in December. By 2022, 400,000 households will be on UC, including 13% of the population of Wales. All the problems that we have heard about around the House today have already surfaced in Wales—and quite acutely. Wales remains an exceptionally poor country, despite much effort. The design flaws of universal credit are making life utterly desolate for many people in the post-industrial belt of south-east Wales, the remote rural north and west and in the very poor coastal communities of the north. They are communities that want nothing more than decent work and decent prospects but they want to be sure that work really does pay. They are the communities worst hit by austerity and worst hit now by the failures of universal credit.

When a family in Tredegar or Wrexham finds itself waiting six or seven weeks for money there is nobody they can call on, but the doorstep sharks will be there within seconds. When a young woman in Pembrokeshire tells her Assembly Member how scared she is that she is about to lose 63 pence in every pound once UC is rolled out, it should be clear that this not an incentive to work but a real threat. The CABs in Wales have no doubt that the system is failing. It is driving up debt and despair, as we have heard. There is incorrect information, the sanctions—as we have just heard from the noble Lord—a steady increase in the number of people using food banks and a doubling of food vouchers. I am very grateful to the CABs in Torfaen and Flintshire for this sort of information.

What makes this so tragic and intolerable is that it was avoidable. The Government were warned time and again by their own experts, the Social Security Advisory Committee, and even by the Secondary Legislation Committee of this House, which does not use strong language lightly, that they did not have the evidence to determine full social impact, especially about waiting times, and that they might do great damage. Did they listen? They did not. I really hope that the Minister—for whom we have great respect—will not take refuge in the fact that a proportion of people in the greatest distress are now managing because they have received an advance payment. We are concerned with the many people who are not receiving, and are not likely to receive, advance payments. The consequences for them are cumulative and, indeed, catastrophic.

I hope we will not hear the Minister say that these are rare cases. They are not. They should not come as a surprise. They are the predictable result of a system that has been flawed from the beginning for all the reasons we have heard. The problems come when human error and a systems failure collide. For example, in Flintshire, one of the poorest coastal areas of Wales, the CAB has kept a diary: 76 people came in August—four people a day; 24% needed help with the calculation of benefit and 16% with the housing element. Half already had a long-term health condition or disability. For example, a young woman of 18 with a child, and therefore eligible for UC, tried several times to apply online but her claim was not accepted. When she answered no to the question, “Are you over 18?”, it would not let her continue with her application.

The CAB phoned the helpline and was kept on hold for 40 minutes. Staff were uncertain what to do—flummoxed, in fact—then recommended that she made a special circumstances case in person at the Jobcentre. In the meantime, she has been living on £20.70 a week child benefit to survive. I could not live on that for a day and I doubt that the Minister could.

There is another case of a lady who is disabled and uses a wheelchair. She moved from income support to UC in June. She was previously getting full housing benefit paid directly to her landlord, Flintshire County Council. She is now having real problems getting the housing element paid, has rent arrears and is at risk of eviction. We could multiply these cases all over the country.

We know the prescription, and the Minister has already been told. The CAB has a shortlist of three items: remove the seven waiting days at the start of a claim; allow people to adjust to universal credit by offering everyone a choice of how they would like the benefit to be paid; and ensure that the people who need it get a first payment within two weeks, which they do not pay back. That is straightforward. We know that we have a weak Government and we know they are a discredited Government, but they are not so weak that they cannot address social injustice.