House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, as a member of the leader’s group, I join the tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, who was brisk enough to lead us through a mountain of ideas—many contributed by your Lordships and others—but liberal enough to allow sufficient discussion to enable us to feel that we had done these ideas justice and also to guide us away from some of the zanier ones.

I also pay tribute to our Clerks, led by Christopher Johnson, who are always efficient, always expert in advice and skilful in drafting. I will not say more about the purposes of safeguarding the self-governing traditions of the House, or of using our time and resources better in contributing to the work of Parliament as a whole because that has been very well said by others.

The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, was very kind in attributing to me credit for the proposal for the better legislative standards committee. He was too generous. The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, has been a champion of it, the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, championed it, as did the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, and, indeed, all Members of the Committee. It is not surprising. With great respect, I disagreed with the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, in only one respect—when he said there was a danger of the quality of legislation declining. It is widely regarded that the quality of legislation has declined. One only has to quote in aid the 70 or so Home Office Acts passed under the last Government—many of them amending deficient previous Acts and many containing provisions which have never been brought into force. Even worse, all too often, the Government do not explain why legislation is necessary, what its objectives are, what it will cost and what consultation the Government have had in preparing it. It is common ground among observers—not just the Better Government Initiative, but also the Hansard Society and the Institute for Government—that action is needed to deal with this problem.

Parliament cannot itself make good these deficiencies in the preparation of legislation but it can, through a committee, put pressure on the Executive to go through those processes. That is the purpose of a legislative standards committee. I emphasise that the role of such a committee would be not to deal with the policy in individual Bills but to be a gateway for all legislation introduced, I would hope, in Parliament but certainly in this House, to test whether the Government have gone through the necessary steps to prepare legislation properly and have provided the necessary information to show that they have done so.

Such a better legislation committee would report to the House before Second Reading debates, just as the Merits Committee reports on statutory instruments now before they are considered by the House. I believe that the knowledge in the Executive that such questions would be asked would improve the rigour with which legislation is prepared and presented to Parliament.

Secondly, there has been considerable reference in the debate to the proposals relating to the House's consideration of statutory instruments. As has already been said, the House can pass a fatal Motion against a statutory instrument but it does not do so because it would sink that statutory instrument completely. I commend the proposals in the leader's group report that would enable the House to fulfil its role of causing the Government to think again, while stopping short of destroying a statutory instrument.

Next is the Back-Bench business committee. Here the House would be following a recommendation of the Wright Committee in another place, which has been implemented and has been successful. I believe that it would increase the topicality and profile of our debates here. I particularly hope that here, as in the Commons, some debates would be on a specific Motion that would enable the House to express an opinion on a topical matter. Also on government business, to which not much reference has so far been made in the debate, I hope that the House can make the scheduling of business more transparent by including the Convenor of the Cross-Benchers, the chair of a Back-Bench Committee, and, if I may say to the Leader of the House, providing an opportunity for the House to let off steam from time to time by the Leader periodically submitting himself or herself to a period of questions. Such changes would help to avoid the rupture in relations which occurred on the Voting System and Constituencies Bill.

I join others in hoping that the committees to which these recommendations will be referred will consider them positively and report back to the House in time for those which find favour to be implemented in the near future.