House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I must start by apologising profusely to the House for being a few minutes late in arriving for this debate. I hope that it will still be permissible for me to make a few quick comments. Like so many noble Lords before me, I found this report to be absolutely excellent. It was so clear. It was well written and well argued, and it drew on the evidence. For me, as a newcomer to the House, it fulfilled a very helpful function. Frankly, so many things which I had found so baffling about this House finally fell into place. It was such a key part of my induction that, for me, reading this report was—I think this is the term—a light-bulb moment. I should like to focus on a few aspects of it.

I found the proposals on the scrutiny of legislation compelling. Taken in the round, the three key recommendations on pre-legislative scrutiny, the establishment of a legislative standards committee and the proposed focus on post-legislative scrutiny would very much strengthen the House’s role in undertaking that function. I was particularly taken with the recommendation for a post-legislative scrutiny committee—I think it is recommendation 26—to see whether legislation is having the effect for which it was originally designed and whether sufficient thought was given to its implementation when the Bill was being drawn up.

Over and above that, lessons could be drawn up and shared as to the essential characteristics of successful legislation. Given the vast experience and expertise this House possesses in its function of scrutiny, it seems almost bordering on the criminal for that expertise not to be used for wider educative purposes for policy makers in both Westminster and Whitehall. I recognise, of course, that everything that has been proposed has cost implications. I was pleased to see that those cost implications are set out in Appendix 1 to the report but my overall stance would be to say that less but better drafted and scrutinised legislation would be very much in the wider public interest and, in the longer term, a more cost-effective way of implementing public policy.

Like so many others, I very much support the proposal for a Back-Bench business committee, the proposals for the use of simple language and, indeed, that for simplifying the titles by which we refer to each other. I think we could still do that while observing the normal courtesies. For me, my first experience of Question Time in the Lords was, frankly, quite a revelation. I would simply say that it was not at all what I was expecting. We have heard a lot in the debate today about the reasons for that and about some of the underlying tensions and frustrations. I strongly support the recommendation of a trial period for the Lord Speaker to take on the role currently performed by the Leader of the House. I feel that that would be enhanced if the existing conventions about the allocation of supplementary questions to the various political parties and other groupings were clarified. A number of speakers today have explained the need for that, and I think that it would help.

I would like to say something that I know will be slightly controversial. I have listened carefully to previous contributions that have put other points of view, but I would like to see a corollary added to the effect that should matters not improve during the trial period, however long it might be, the Lord Speaker should be given the power to call supplementary speakers, as happens in most other legislatures around the world. As others have said, I think that that would speed things up and we would get through more business, which I think everyone would find more satisfactory.

I turn to the House’s other key role in public debate and inquiry. The report makes a strong and very welcome case for the establishment of two additional sessional Select Committees. As others have said—I particularly welcome the eloquent words of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, on this point—there remain large areas of public policy that are neither scrutinised nor debated. I would greatly welcome more opportunities to scrutinise government policy that is not connected to legislation. I shall finish by giving my two reasons for that.

First, if my almost 20 years in Whitehall taught me anything, it was that the big challenges facing this country are generally of a cross-cutting nature and do not fit neatly into departmental silos. The really difficult, often deeply intransigent issues that bedevil Governments of all colours—sometimes called the “wicked issues”—require, frankly, a long-term cross-cutting response. Be they about meeting the needs of an ageing population, tackling poverty and social disadvantage, climate change or perhaps resilience and emergency planning for major disasters, these things all need a multifaceted response.

This House, possessing a vast amount of expertise that is not primarily departmentally based, is very well placed to scrutinise government policy at a strategic level and look across the piece. This would help to ensure complementarity with the work performed in Select Committees in the other place, to which I also hope we can soon refer as the House of Commons, that generally are departmentally based. It should also help to provide continuity. The less partisan nature of the scrutiny would also fit better with the longer-term perspective that is much needed to tackle some of those issues.

Secondly, I suspect that many Peers in this Chamber—we have already heard this today—often feel frustrated at the lack of opportunity to use their knowledge and experience, and as a newcomer I count myself among their number. I was very surprised to read in the report that one of the reasons why additional Select Committees were not set up a few years ago was that it was thought there would not be enough Peers to fill the places. I think that the reverse would be the case now, and the difficulty would be in selecting whose expertise would be the most relevant. The work of the House and the value that it provides to the country would be greatly enhanced if we could have the two additional Select Committees that the report proposes.