Liaison Committee: Third Report

Lord Brabazon of Tara Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[The Chairman of Committees]

That the 3rd Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 279) be agreed to.

Relevant document: 3rd Report from the House Committee.

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara)]

My Lords, the Liaison Committee’s terms of reference require it to advise the House on the resources required for Select Committee work, to review the Select Committee work of the House and to consider requests for ad hoc committees. Its terms of reference also include a requirement to consider the availability of noble Lords to serve on committees, which I think we would all agree is not an issue at present. Indeed, one of the objectives of our recent deliberations has been to find new opportunities for a wider group of Members to participate in committee work.

The report of the Leader’s Group on Working Practices has given us a further opportunity to re-examine the committee work of the House. The recommendations in our present report are intended to refresh and rebalance the range of subjects that are scrutinised and, in so doing, to engage a wider range of Members in the work of the House.

Select Committee activity is—rightly—highly regarded both within the House of Lords and outside, and contributes greatly to the reputation of the House as a second Chamber. In our first report of this Session, we concluded that there were a number of general principles that we should apply in considering proposals for committee activity. We concluded that new committees should be appointed for a limited time only and that there was a case for ad hoc committees with narrower and more topical remits conducting shorter inquiries. The report was agreed by the House in June 2010 and we sought to apply those principles in our recent review.

Regular turnover of committee members gives a wider range of Members the opportunity to serve. Short, sharp inquiries should also make it easier for Members with significant commitments outside the House to participate. Therefore, we concluded and recommended to the House that new investigative Select Committees should be appointed for a fixed term of up to one Session to conduct a specific inquiry. It would remain open to committees appointed on this basis to bid for reappointment at the end of their term.

Fixed terms would allow the Liaison Committee to play a more active role in reviewing and adapting Select Committee activity in the future. The resources to support new Select Committee activity would be released at the end of each session, allowing the committee more room to accommodate bids for new Select Committees. I remind Members that they may submit proposals for new ad hoc committees at any time, and I encourage them to do so.

The report recommends the appointment of two new ad hoc committees. One, on small and medium-sized enterprises exporting goods and services, is based on a proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Popat, and others. The other, on public services, stems in part from the proposal that was initially canvassed in the report of the Leader’s Group and subsequently elaborated in a note by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and others. The potential range for a committee on public services is wide, and the Liaison Committee recommends the subject of public service provision in the light of demographic change. We also consider that, once appointed, the committee should consider carefully its call for evidence in order to focus its work in a practical way.

In recent Sessions the House typically appointed one ad hoc committee. Our recommendation that the House should appoint two ad hoc committees next Session means that we are recommending an additional unit of committee activity. We have sought and obtained the approval of the House Committee for the additional expenditure necessary, which is estimated at around £225,000. We also reviewed the existing committee structure, and benefited from oral as well as written submissions from the chairmen of four of the major investigative Select Committees of the House: the European Union Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, the Economic Affairs Committee, and the Communications Committee.

In respect of the European Union Committee, which currently appoints seven sub-committees to complement the work of the main committee, we concluded that it should remain the focus of House of Lords committee scrutiny. We consider, however, that it would now be appropriate to divert some of the resources allocated to it to support new committee activity in other areas. We therefore recommend that from the start of the next Session the number of EU sub-committees should be reduced from seven to six, and that the European Union Committee should reapportion responsibilities between its remaining sub-committees as it sees fit.

In respect of the Science and Technology Committee, we concluded that from the start of the next Session it should be allocated the resources of a single Select Committee. We recommend that it should, however, retain the power to appoint sub-committees, and the power to co-opt additional members for particular inquiries, but that those powers should not be exercised in such a way as to increase the workload of the committee beyond that of a single committee unit.

The chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, tabled an amendment to leave out the paragraph of the report that recommends a reduction in the committee’s resources. I remind the House, however, that in the Liaison Committee’s first report of this Session, we said that,

“in the event of further demands for committee work requiring redeployment of committee resources we would in the first instance look towards retrenchment of the Science and Technology Committee”.

We received representations from the chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee that that committee should be able to appoint its Finance Bill Sub-Committee at an earlier point in the year than at present, following the new approach to tax policy-making adopted by the Government. The chairman, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, assured us that both the committee and the sub-committee would continue to respect Commons financial privilege, and that no additional resource would be required. No change in the terms of reference will be needed to enable this to happen, and we recommend that it should.

Finally, we reviewed the work of the Communications Committee, which is not a sessional committee. We recommend that it should be reappointed on the same basis as at present at the start of next Session. We will review the question of its further reappointment towards the end of that Session.

Our proposed reduction in sub-committee activity by two units—one European Union sub-committee and one Science and Technology sub-committee—would free up resources for new committee activity. Consistent with the strong support of the Leader’s Group for pre-legislative scrutiny, we have reconfirmed our support for pre-legislative scrutiny and believe that some of the resources that would be released by the reduction in sub-committee activity should be reallocated to supporting an additional pre-legislative scrutiny committee.

We also recommend an important new area of Select Committee activity: post-legislative scrutiny. The Leader’s Group recommends a single post-legislative scrutiny committee to manage the process of reviewing up to four selected Acts of Parliament each year. The Leader of the House proposed instead—and we agreed—that it would make better use of the expertise of Members to establish an ad hoc committee on a particular Act or Acts.

In our report we recommended the appointment of an ad hoc post-legislative scrutiny committee to examine the Children and Adoption Act 2006 and the Adoption and Children Act 2002, and to report in a timely manner so as to allow for evaluation of the committee’s work before the end of the 2012-13 Session. If time allows, the resources allocated to the first post-legislative scrutiny committee could then be made available for a post-legislative scrutiny committee on another topic to be established within the 2012-13 Session.

Finally, we considered two further procedural changes to enable a wider group of Members to participate in committee work. The first, to which I have already alluded, was that the maximum size of sub-committees to the European Union Committee should be increased from 12 to 14 Members. The effect of this would be to provide 84 places for Members on the six remaining sub-committees. Secondly, we invited the Procedure Committee to consider the reduction from four to three years of the rotation rule relating to length of service on investigative sessional committees, in order more frequently to refresh the membership of these committees.

I pay tribute to the valuable work done by all House of Lords committees. The Liaison Committee’s recommendations are intended to revitalise existing committee activity and provide an overall expansion of this activity, thereby enabling a greater number of Members to participate in a wider range of inquiries. I beg to move.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

It is very difficult to provide a cost-benefit analysis until we have seen the work and the success of the new committees that have been proposed. We are proposing four new committees—they do not exist at the moment—which will be paid for in part by a small reduction—I still say that it is a small reduction—in the amount of money available to the Science and Technology Committee. The best time for a cost-benefit analysis will be at the end of the first or second Session when we have seen how these new committees have worked out.

[The Chairman of Committees]

I will be brief because I know that certain Members of the House want to get on to the next business with rather a great deal of impatience. I shall not take long. I will not be able to name everyone in the impressive list of noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the massed ranks of fellow scientists that he has managed to assemble today.

In what I thought was a very impressive speech, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, was right to say how difficult it was to review the committee structure because no one wanted change. Everyone wants to keep exactly the same thing going on—people are always resistant to change—but at the same time they want new committees. That is what we are trying to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and the noble Lord the Leader of the House said—

[Lord Winston]

I wonder if the noble Lord might be prepared to withdraw that remark about the “massed ranks”. It seems contemptuous of the serious point that we as scientists are trying to put to the House of Lords.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Would the noble Lord also refer to the massed ranks of europhiles who came to the defence of those committees?

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I certainly was not trying to be contemptuous of the noble Lord, Lord Winston—rather the opposite; I was impressed by the number of scientists who had spoken. I am sorry that the noble Lord misunderstood me, or maybe I did not express myself well.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, said, it is a question of resources. We cannot continue to spend more and more money. In this report we have recommended one additional unit of committee activity—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, does not like that phrase but it describes rather well what we do—and the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, mentioned how we had followed the recommendations of the Goodlad committee. We are going to have two pre-legislative scrutiny committees, one more than we have at the moment; one post-legislative scrutiny committee—I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, about adoption, and obviously if something develops on that we can review the subject later on—and two brand new ad hoc committees on topical subjects. I think that that is what the House wanted. It would be even better if we could just go on with the old committees as well, but it would be irresponsible of our committee to continually recommend more and more.

On the point about the European Union Committee, we will still have six sub-committees and a main committee so there will be seven committees in action in that area. They will still be better resourced than most, if not all, such sub-committees in other EU national parliaments.

We were grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for coming to see us and explaining things. We had intended to be helpful in telling him roughly what we thought, and we had intended that he would therefore know what to expect and what to argue. We also did not want committees to plan work beyond the end of the Session that they would then have to alter. Indeed, the noble Lord persuaded us not to reduce the size of the EU Committee to five but to keep it at six. I had thought that it was the European Union Committee’s desire that the membership of the sub-committees should go up from 12 to 14; that is the impression that we on the committee were given. If that is not the case, though, it is only—

[Lord Roper]

My Lords, there was some sort of misunderstanding. When I came before the Liaison Committee, I suggested the increase in size as an alternative way to involve more Peers, rather than reducing the number of committees.

[The Chairman of Committees]

I would say only that membership can be up to 14. There is no need for the European Union Committee to appoint 14 on each of its sub-committees; it can continue at 12, as it wants to at the moment.

Noble Lords have made a number of other points but I do not think I can add much more. On the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about the Science and Technology Committee, there is nothing to stop that committee conducting follow-up inquiries in future. Paragraph 47 of the report makes clear that the committee should retain the power to appoint a sub-committee and to co-opt additional Members for particular inquiries. Both those points are already made in the report.

I hope that the House will agree to the report. It will breathe fresh air into the committee structure and I commend it to the House.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve]

Will the noble Lord confirm that the Government remain committed to policies and structures in the House; and that the Liaison Committee, above all, remains so committed and will support evidence-based policy rather than a slide towards the new, the “breath of fresh air” and the policy-based evidence?

[The Chairman of Committees]

I am sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness but I do not speak for the Government.

[Lord Krebs]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Chairman of the Liaison Committee for his summing up, and the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. A number of telling points have been made during today’s debate. I am a little disappointed that in the replies from the noble Lord the Leader of the House and the Chairman of the Liaison Committee those points were not all fully addressed. However, I take heart from the noble Lord the Leader reiterating the point that he made in a letter that he sent to the Cross-Bench Convenor, and perhaps to others, that the reduction that he envisages in the support for the Science and Technology Committee is a small one, which is very different from my understanding when I read the report that essentially support for the committee was going to be halved. I see a glimmer of hope there and I hope that in further discussion I can understand how small “small” is. I assume that “small” is smaller than what I see as large. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.