Defence Reform Bill

Debate between Lord Bach and Lord Craig of Radley

Monday 3rd February 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall not speak about the advantages or disadvantages of a GOCO; I remain fairly neutral on the issue. I have listened with great interest to the very good speeches that we have heard so far on this clause stand part debate started by my noble friend Lord Rosser. What concerns me is the point about an affirmative order being somehow a solution to this problem.

I will not speak with my ex-Minister for Defence Procurement hat on at this stage, although there is plenty that I could say and would like to say. I am concerned about statutory instruments being used in Parliament in both Houses as a way of holding Governments to account. My experience is that orders, whether negative or affirmative, are useful and the debates that follow from them are often vital when legislation is eventually brought into effect. My concern is that they are no way for Parliament to stop something happening that should not happen.

I speak from experience. This is not a boast but I am one of the few Members of this House who has successfully won a fatal Motion on an affirmative order. There are others on all sides of the House, but it is a very rare event. It happened a few years ago, on a completely different subject from this one, to legislation which required an affirmative order but was resisted. The House voted on that occasion by a very small majority not to pass the affirmative order. The consequences of that for the cause that I was espousing were probably worse than if I had not won that vote. The Government decided that they would do absolutely nothing about the fact that the affirmative order had been voted against and so the previous position then applied. It was a worse position than the one I was trying to get and on which the House had supported me. Since then, forgive me, I have been slightly sceptical—even cynical, sometimes—about how effective opposing affirmative orders can be. We know that we can oppose them, regret them or just have a debate on them, whichever either House decides to do, but the effect is nearly always the same: the Government get their way. The primary legislation is there and it is extremely hard—often impossible—even if the primary legislation needs to be amended by the affirmative order, for that to happen.

All I am saying in this debate is please do not choose an affirmative order as a way to get around this issue. Frankly, once you have passed legislation that includes a GOCO, if that is what the House decides to do, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for either House of Parliament to change the position.

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to the amendments. I look at the matter from the point of view of the user, the Armed Forces, and what is in it for them.

Nowadays, the Armed Forces will have much more say over the amount of money that may be spent on their equipment, and therefore they may take more of an interest in the detail of the procurement side than was true in my day. Nevertheless, it is important that they have confidence that whatever system is going to procure their equipment has general support throughout the country and throughout government. At the moment we have two propositions, neither of which seems to be making good headway. The GOCO has certainly made no headway and it remains to be seen how well the DE&S+ will go—I even have doubts about that—but, of the two, I prefer it the GOCO.

However, dealing with the amendments, I find a good deal of attraction in Amendment 25. It brings the super-affirmative approach to the issue and is the one that I would favour.