English Votes for English Laws

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to consider alternatives to their proposals for English votes for English laws.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful that so many Members of your Lordships’ House will speak in this short debate. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for being willing to answer it. The fact that so many Members have put down their names to speak in this debate indicates and strongly reinforces the case for this House taking an effective part in the debate on what is certainly a constitutional issue. This debate does not constitute such an opportunity: much more is needed, and I will return to that at the end of my remarks.

I want to put four points to the Leader. First, the Green Paper presented by Mr William Hague in December 2014 entitled The Implications of Devolution for England said unequivocally, on behalf of the Conservative Party:

“We therefore believe the arrangements for England or for England and Wales should also be put on a statutory footing, even if they are implemented in the first instance through changes to Standing Orders in the House of Commons”.

It appears that the Government are retreating from that approach, and that the reason is that they fear that the statutory route may be justiciable. Is it the Government’s view that the fact that the legislation might be justiciable is a satisfactory reason for not making these important constitutional changes in the proper way?

Secondly, in questions following the Statement that the noble Baroness repeated to the House on 2 July, she said:

“It is important to understand that English MPs cannot overrule the whole House, and the whole House cannot overrule English MPs”.—[Official Report, 2/7/15; col. 2218.]

In reply to a question I asked, she said:

“It is not about having a veto. It is about trying to find the right way forward”.—[Official Report, 2/7/15; col. 2220.]

Yet the Government’s Statement said:

“Our plans provide for an English veto at different stages of the process”.

Will the noble Baroness now acknowledge that the Government’s proposals do indeed provide for a veto for the first time by a restricted group of Members of Parliament?

Thirdly, Mr Hague’s Green Paper listed three options for approaching this issue. The second was the proposal of the 2008 democracy task force, chaired by the right honourable Kenneth Clarke, which recommended that stages at which English, or English and Welsh, Bills could be amended should be confined to English, or English and Welsh, MPs, but that the whole House would vote on Third Reading. The Mackay commission included a similar option. Yet the Government have rejected that. Why have these simpler proposals, which do not involve a veto, been rejected by the Government? So far they have given no explanation.

Finally, it must have become absolutely clear from the attention that these proposals have received, and the debates on them that have taken place, that this is an important constitutional issue. It is not just a simple matter of technical changes to Standing Orders in the House of Commons. Is it not the duty of the Leader to ensure that your Lordships’ House can make a proper contribution on these constitutional matters?

Yesterday, the opposition spokesman in another place suggested a Joint Committee of both Houses. That would be a good way in which this House could make its contribution on these issues. I do not expect that the Leader will be able to give the Government’s response to that proposal today—although it would be welcome if she could do so. If she cannot, I give notice that I propose to table a Motion for debate before the Recess that would give your Lordships’ House an opportunity to vote on whether this House would wish to take part in such a Joint Committee.

Palace of Westminster Committee

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, on a point of clarity with regard to the first issue of the Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons, my understanding, from all the conversations I have had with the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, is that there will be completely equal representation between both Houses. I think that she has heard the mood of the House—that is what this House expects. I think she said that that was likely, but she did not give the guarantee that the House is seeking. Can I therefore press her, because that is my understanding of the present situation anyway, to give a guarantee that there will be equal representation between both Houses?

On the noble Baroness’s second point, in which she responded to my noble friend Lord Grocott, as much as we welcome the QSD in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, next week on 16 July, that does not replace the need for a proper debate on the proposals for English votes for English laws, which impact on the work of your Lordships’ House. It is all very well for the noble Baroness to say, “We are not affected by it”, but we are. It affects how legislation is conducted in Parliament, and we are part of that process. I know that when she responded to the debate on the Statement the Government made last week she rejected the notion, but she will have heard that noble Lords across the House are very concerned at the lack of debate in this House on that issue, and I urge her to reconsider. It is the view of the Official Opposition and, I think, of other noble Lords around this House, that there should be a full debate, perhaps on a Motion that can be divided on as well. To deny this House the opportunity to debate this in government time is totally unacceptable.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

Further to the point made by the Leader of the Opposition, I understand that in another place the Government have decided not to go ahead with the changes to Standing Orders next week but to have a two-day debate on them. Does that not strengthen the case for there also being a full debate in this House, in addition to the Question for Short Debate?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

Coming back to the topic of this Motion, I make it clear to the noble Baroness and to the House that it has been my view that the membership of the restoration and renewal Joint Committee should be equal in numbers and in approach in terms of this House and the other place. I am just waiting for the House of Commons to confirm its approach before we finalise our own because I am trying to achieve exactly that aim—making sure that there is a proper balance in the way that the Joint Committee is formed. I hope that that gives the noble Baroness and the House the assurance that they are looking for. Therefore, we will be equally represented in number, and I might even suggest to your Lordships that the team of members from this House will be more powerful and more authoritative, because, quite frankly, that is what I think we are.

I note what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said about the decision in the House of Commons regarding English votes for English laws, but I say to him, as I say to the noble Baroness and to the House as a whole, that the House of Commons is debating changes to its Standing Orders.

English Votes on English Laws

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. He described exactly the issue that we are trying to address here. At the moment, a lot of people who live in England feel it is unfair that Scottish Members of Parliament are able to contribute to decisions on matters that affect only people in England. That is what we are trying to address with our pragmatic and proportionate approach to giving MPs in England a stronger voice.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Baker, welcome the fact that the Government are grasping the nettle of the West Lothian question. If the result of the election had been a Labour Government with a Conservative majority in England, this question would have become very urgent. As things are, with a Conservative overall majority in the House of Commons and a Conservative majority in England, there is not the same urgency about it, and there should at least be time to have a thorough debate about the Government’s proposals.

The noble Baroness said that the result of these proposals is that the majority in the House of Commons will not have a decisive say on only English and Welsh questions over English and Welsh Members, and vice versa, but surely that is not correct. As things stand in these proposals, the English and Welsh Members of the House of Commons will have a veto in the House as a whole on Bills that affect only England and Wales. The Conservative Democracy Task Force, which I advised in 2008, proposed an alternative way of dealing with this, which was that on England and Wales-only Bills, English and Welsh MPs should be able to vote on amendments but the House as a whole should have a vote on the Third Reading, thus preserving the supremacy of the House of Commons overall. Would that not be an equally effective but also simpler and less divisive way of dealing with this question than the proposal for an English and Welsh veto, which seems to be both provocative and possibly unconstitutional?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

I shall try to explain why I do not quite accept what the noble Lord has said. First, once an England-only Bill or a Bill with provisions for England and Wales gets through its Report stage, there will be a grand committee where the relevant MPs from England or England and Wales consider what was agreed on Report. If the English and Welsh MPs do not accept what the House wishes to do and the matters concerned affect only their constituencies, they will have the option of disagreeing. However, there will be a process whereby the whole House will then reconsider the legislation. The point is that these two groups of MPs will be seeking to reach agreement. If agreement cannot be reached between the relevant MPs and the House as a whole, the matter will fall. However, this is about agreement or consent. It is not about having a veto; it is about trying to find the right way forward.

I say to those who are concerned about whether Members from Scotland will have a proper role in this process that this is designed to ensure that they continue to be included, as they should be, in matters that are considered in the UK Parliament. Therefore, I do not accept the description that the noble Lord has given.

House of Lords

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I greatly welcome the opportunity to debate this important matter this afternoon. I found myself in a large measure of agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Elder, who has just spoken. In fact, it is a pity that this debate does not give the House an opportunity to express its opinion. If there were such an opportunity, I think that a majority of the House would agree with the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, in an earlier debate, that this House is too big, is growing bigger, and needs to be reduced. That is an urgent matter now, for a reason not referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde; it is inevitable that, after the next general election, there will be, and should be, a substantial number of further appointments to the House.

The House does risk coming into disrepute. Fun is poked at us by people pointing out that the House is the largest parliamentary body in the world, apart from China’s National People’s Congress. Of course, it does not act like that, and the whole membership does not attend, but it is an example of how fun can be poked at the House.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, despite what people might suspect from my background, but it is tempting to suspect that there is a conspiracy on the part of those thwarted in the reform of the House in the 2012 Bill to make so many appointments that the size of the House makes it unworkable and absurd, so reform then becomes inevitable. The flaw in that was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Elder—that there is no agreement among the parties about the nature of the necessary reform. If the 2012 Bill did one thing when it came before Parliament, it was to cause the penny to drop with Members of another place that an elected second Chamber would become, in one form or another, a direct challenge to the supremacy of the House of Commons, and that no way could be found of entrenching that supremacy.

I was a member of the royal commission under the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, which was the last body to take an unconstrained look at the nature of the reform of this House. That was 15 years ago. I do not include the Joint Committee under the noble Lord, Lord Richard, which did an excellent job, only because it was constrained by the 2012 Bill that the Government had introduced. That royal commission started, as all approaches to the question should—and as the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde, Lord Elder and Lord Williams, did—by asking what the purpose is of the House of Lords. Why should we have such a House at all? I think that on this matter, too, there would be a large measure of agreement in the House. It is to complement the other House, not to challenge or replace it, by bringing a measure of experience and expertise from people drawn from a wide range of positions in our national life to comment on and advise on legislation introduced by the Executive into Parliament. I do not think that there would be much challenge to the proposition that your Lordships’ House performs a necessary and useful role in doing that.

I will not go into the question of whether that is best achieved by an elected or appointed House, although the royal commission concluded that the range of expertise which is useful for that purpose could not necessarily be expected in an elected Chamber. That is why the royal commission proposed a mainly appointed House but with some elected Members. It also recommended that there should be a limit on the tenure of a position in this House of either 15 years or three electoral cycles. Again, I do not want to debate today whether that is the right thing to do or whether a scheme of the sort proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Williams, would be a better approach. As I looked round the House as he made his speech, I noted some scepticism about whether a scheme could be introduced in the very short time before the general election. However, given that we face the prospect of a number of further appointments, this is an urgent issue and I urge the Government to take it seriously.

For the reasons that I have given, some do not want to see any further reform of this House as they believe that that would cause the reform which did not happen previously to become inevitable. However, that is to argue the merits of a train crash. As the noble Lord, Lord Elder, said, the danger of adopting that approach is that an unwise reform is undertaken. That is what I fear. Therefore, I urge the Government to take this issue seriously.

I support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, to ask the clerks of the House to produce options that could be considered by the Procedure Committee. I do not think that there is much prospect of reaching agreement on a very complicated scheme. However, despite the political difficulties, I think that there is merit in a scheme offering a financial inducement limited by the amount of money noble Lords received in attendance allowance in the previous Session. Calculations show that that would be a good deal for the taxpayer which would quickly pay off. That cannot be done through legislation but it does need to be done. I say to those who wish to go on as we are that to allow the House to grow like Topsy until it becomes ineffective and almost a scandal is the height of constitutional irresponsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend Lord Sewel has said it is a pity that that happened. I have just been appointed a trustee of Age Scotland, the new body that replaced Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged in Scotland. The director, Brian Sloan, said to me when I was appointed, “Of course, George, you’ve got more of a direct interest in our work now”. He was absolutely right. This is the kind of thing that we should be doing. We are not in favour of arbitrary retirement ages; I should not advocate that. However, I do not think this is arbitrary. We have looked at it carefully and made a serious recommendation.

We then come to the longer term, which is the more important debate—no disrespect to what my noble friend Lord Williams and others have raised about the current matter. In the longer term, we need to start with the purpose of this House: not how many we are, but what we are here for. First of all, do we need a second Chamber? An argument has to be made against unicameralism in favour of a second Chamber. I used to be a unicameralist, but if you go to Scotland and see what has happened with the Scottish Parliament, where there are no checks and balances on a Parliament controlled by one party, with a First Minister, the Presiding Officer, and the majority of the Select Committees of the same party, you begin to see the advantages of a second Chamber.

If noble Lords agree with that, how should the second Chamber differ from and relate to the House of Commons? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who said that it should be complementary to it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Walton, raised the question of the council of experts that we have here. This is a really important dilemma about what we are here for. If we want to be a council of experts that is one thing, but it does not have the legitimacy of a body that has some form of election, whether direct or indirect. That is difficult. It is difficult to argue that a nominated body, however expert and brilliant it is, should be part of the legislature. That conflict needs reconciling.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I suggest to the noble Lord that it is the primacy of the House of Commons that is the answer to that. The primacy of the House of Commons is because they are elected. This body can contribute its expertise without being elected.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is an argument. I am posing a problem rather than coming down on one side or the other. It is difficult. If one looks around the world, there is nowhere else where the second Chamber does not have some form of legitimacy. We need to look at that where we are participating in the legislative process.

I do not know whether this is going to cause controversy in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said. He spoke about the culture of this place and some of us—I am sure he was not referring to me, but maybe to some others—not accepting it. With respect to the noble Lord, some people outside this place do not accept all aspects of its culture, particularly the privilege that is represented by the very nature of this building, this legislature and this part of the legislature. People have to recognise that. We do not all think that the comfort and the comradeship represented here is automatically the right thing. There are some good aspects, but there are also some legitimate differences between the parties. These ought to be represented and expressed in a legislature. There is nothing wrong with doing that in a forceful and eloquent way; that was done no better than by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I agreed with everything he said in his speech today. That will not do him or me any good; we will be attacked by the cybernats—the nationalists who go online and attack us regularly—for being in cahoots again. I think it is good that on an issue such as this, which is not a party-political issue but one about the functioning of the second Chamber, we come to some kind of agreement.

I have gone on much longer than I intended. I apologise. In conclusion, the Labour Lords’ group recommended a UK constitutional commission, as my noble friend Lady Taylor said. That has been supported by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which Graham Allen MP chairs, by the Electoral Reform Society, by the Constitution Society, by Unlock Democracy and many others. Along with my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed from the Liberal Democrats, I have been involved in setting up an all-party group to look at ways that this can be pushed forward.

The leader of my party, Mr Miliband, has already said that a Labour Government would legislate for a senate of the nations and regions. With no disrespect, I say to him and to the leaders of the other parties, why can we not set up that constitutional convention now? Why can there not be some agreement between the parties? Why can they not show that they can work together and say, “This is how we want to go forward”? We need that sensible, holistic approach, with respect, to protect us from further constitutional Cleggery: poorly thought out, short-term changes in that outrageous attack from Mr Clegg on the House of Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. By the way, that did not stop him stuffing lots more Liberal Democrat Peers into this place. There is a slight dichotomy there. Ah, a Liberal Democrat voice.

House of Lords: Procedures and Practices

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for giving us the opportunity to debate our procedures, but I really cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that this is a matter we should look at only once every 10 years when we have a Leader’s Group. It is precisely because I so strongly believe in the value of the work of the House of Lords that I want it to be seen to be done as effectively as possible.

It would be wrong to deny that improvements have been made since the Leader’s Group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, on which I had the honour to serve. We now make better use of Grand Committee, and have extra Select Committees on specific subjects, more time for QSDs and more pre-legislative scrutiny. All this is very welcome. However, the system does not work in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, suggested. I want to take just one case history to illustrate that, as I have only limited time.

The Goodlad group recommended that this House should give Back-Benchers the opportunity to propose subjects for debate, as happens in the House of Commons. That was considered by the Procedure Committee, which agreed that it should be put to the House in a neutral way because, as the noble Lord said, it is for the House to decide. The relevant Motion was tabled. There was no Whip on the government side but Members on the Government Front Bench made it absolutely clear to their Back-Benchers that they were opposed to the Motion going through. They did that by ensuring that the debate took place on a day when the government parties were heavily whipped. Noble Lords who were not in the Chamber received a message on their mobile phones, saying that their Lordships might like to know that the Government Front Bench did not wish to see the Motion go through. It was not a Whip but it was something pretty close to it. That was how the Motion was defeated in this House. I am afraid it is the case that improvements which are in the power of the House to make are often defeated by the Government Front Bench, often in cahoots with the Opposition Front Bench.

I know that an effective House of Lords is often regarded by the Executive as a thorough nuisance. Parliament is regarded by the Executive as a thorough nuisance. However, having spent my career in the Executive, I know very well that it would not be kept up to the mark unless Parliament did its job of holding it to account and making itself awkward to the Executive from time to time. Your Lordships’ House should always ask how we can do that job more effectively—not by obstructing the Government getting their measures through but ensuring that they work to high standards. One of the weaknesses of Governments in this country is that there is too much legislation of too low a standard.

Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords should be taking a stand on that. The House of Commons is often not in a position to do so but the House of Lords is, and it is for that reason that many of us have argued that there should be a committee to look at the standards of preparation of legislation and advise the House when legislation coming before it has not been properly prepared. Then we might be saved from legislation such as the absurd Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill—the SARAH Bill.

If there is one message that I would like to ask the Leader to take to her colleagues, it is that while they may regard the improvements in the effectiveness of Parliament, and in particular of your Lordships’ House, as a nuisance, they should take a longer-term view because we have a role in improving the Government’s performance; and those improvements are in their interests as well the country’s.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, concerning the noble Lord’s point about Back-Bench debates, I hope that he will recognise that today we have had three excellent debates, all led by Back-Benchers.

Leader of the House of Lords

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I shall not repeat the reasons that have been so eloquently put about why this decision was wrong; I want to make some practical suggestions about how it can be put right.

There are, in fact, three ways in which the Prime Minister could now put the situation right. I fear that it was simply not correct in his letter to say that it was impossible to make the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, a member of the Cabinet. There are still three ways in which it could be done, although perhaps some of them, with the passing of time, are less practicable than others. He could have chosen not to have made one of the other members of the Cabinet a member of the Cabinet. He chose not to do that. As suggested by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lang, it would be possible to amend the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act. If, 10 days ago, the Government could introduce as emergency legislation a Bill to amend the retention of data, they could have introduced an emergency Bill to do this. It may be difficult now that we are in the Recess, but perhaps the House of Commons could be recalled for that purpose.

There is another solution, which I hope that it is not invidious to draw attention to. The limitation on making the noble Baroness a member of the Cabinet is simply the number of Cabinet Ministers who can receive salaries as Cabinet Ministers. It would be possible—indeed, it has often happened in the past—for Ministers who are members of the Cabinet to choose not to take their salary. I do not think that it would be unreasonable to ask that one of the present members of the Cabinet for the next 10 months should forgo their salary, so that the Leader of our House can be a member of the Cabinet. I hope that it is not invidious to say that I think that there are members of the Cabinet who could afford to do that. Indeed, they might simply be anticipating the position that they will be in anyway in 10 months’ time.

The Prime Minister could have made one of those choices. The fact that he did not indicate indicates that he chose to humiliate this House and put the noble Baroness in a very difficult position in taking up her responsibilities. There is still time for the Prime Minister to do the right thing, and I hope that he will do so.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. Like many noble Lords, I share the dismay expressed so eloquently by the noble Baroness that, for the first time in history, there is no Member of your Lordships’ House in the Cabinet. That of course demeans the position of your Lordships’ House and lowers the standing of the Leader in the eyes of everybody, as we have already heard.

I suspect that this wholly unprecedented situation was arrived at by accident. Thus, I imagine that it cannot be corrected without disrupting existing appointments or, perhaps, coalition dispositions. What a price we pay to keep this coalition in place.

Who is the Prime Minister’s principal adviser on this matter? Presumably, as the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, explained, it is the Cabinet Secretary. Was the Cabinet Secretary’s advice taken on this occasion? What was that advice? That we shall never know, but it has caused this terrible situation and, I hope, can be corrected. If the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, chooses to divide the House a little later, I shall join her in the Division Lobby.

Procedure of the House

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

Would the noble Lord, Lord Butler, like to speak first? It might make more sense and, if he would like to do so, I should be delighted to give way.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I think that I should defer to the Leader of the House but if he would like me to speak first, I am very willing.

I support the Motion that the House should establish for the duration of the 2013-14 Session a Back-Bench debates committee but I should first make it clear that I have no particular status in doing so. I was just one of eight Members of the House—who will no doubt speak for themselves—who put this proposal to the Procedure Committee. I also speak as a member of the Leader’s Group on the procedures of the House, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, which originally made this recommendation. I say that because one Member suggested to me that I was taking a lead on this because I wished to be made chairman of the Back-Bench committee. I assure the House that I have no aspiration to do that at all and I hope that the fear that I might be chairman will not deter Members of the House from voting for it.

It is also important to remind your Lordships of what the terms of reference for the Back-Bench debates committee would be. The Chairman of Committees explained it to us but there has been some mis- understanding. The proposal is:

“That the Committee be appointed to schedule debates, to be moved by backbench and Crossbench members, or by Lords Spiritual—

During the time currently set aside for balloted debates;

On at least one day in Grand Committee for every six sitting weeks in the session;

That the Committee schedule a one-hour topical Question for Short Debate each week, from the start of the session until the end of January, to be taken on Thursday between the two time-limited debates”.

I emphasise these limited terms of reference because there has been some impression that existing arrangements for Back-Benchers to put down Questions for Short Debate would be transferred to a Back-Bench debates committee. As the terms of the proposal make clear, that is emphatically not the case.

Speaking as a Back-Bencher, I express my appreciation to the Leader of the House for his proposal to increase the time available for topical debates and Questions for Short Debate. I know that he wants to increase the opportunities for Members of the House to take part in debates, and that is very welcome. The only issue between us is that, as the Chairman of Committees has said, the Leader opposes the proposal by the Goodlad committee that subjects for Thursday two and a half hour debates in time allocated once a month to Back-Benchers and for a new topical short debate should be chosen by a committee of Back-Benchers instead of, as now, by ballot.

I remind the House of the current situation by which subjects are chosen for debate in the two and a half hour slots on Thursday. The choice of subjects for debate on government or opposition Motions on Thursdays is made by the Government or opposition parties, presumably after discussion and presumably for their own party-political reasons. As I know, the choice of subject for debate on Cross-Bench days is discussed in the meeting of the Cross-Benchers. In our group, we often take a vote on the subjects for which we should use that time. However, the choice of subjects on Back-Benchers’ days is made by the random process of a ballot—a lottery. There is no rational process for choosing subjects that may be of general or topical interest and may make best use of the expertise available in the House to debate matters of significant national interest. As a result, subjects that come out of the hat for the use of this precious Back-Bench time may be of only minority interest and may even attract insufficient speakers to make best use of the two and a half hours provided.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The Back-Bench committee in the other place is, of course, elected and not selected by the usual channels. Can the noble Lord tell us how he sees this committee being selected? My view of it is very dependent on it being elected if it is to be as effective as the noble Lord suggests.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

The method of appointment is not specified in the resolution but, for my part, I wholly agree with the noble Lord. It is right that such a committee should be elected and it should, of course, include representatives of all the groups in the House, as indeed happens in another place.

The establishment of the committee has been a success in another place. The Procedure Committee there says that it has been widely welcomed as a successful and effective innovation. The Government have said that they “agree with that conclusion” of the Procedure Committee. I suspect that agreement may be through gritted teeth, on the grounds that what has been done cannot be undone. I also suspect—and I hope that I am not doing the noble Lord the Leader an injustice—that the Government in this House suspect that the subjects chosen for debate by a Back-Bench debates committee might be more interesting and more topical than they would ideally wish. Of course, individual Back-Benchers should, and will, continue to be able to get unintermediated access to the Order Paper through Questions for Short Debate, and the Leader has said that opportunities for such debates will be increased.

Therefore, I urge the House to support the Motion for a trial run of a Back-Bench debates committee, as recommended by the cross-party Leader’s Group chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. If we are eager, as we should be, to promote the relevance of debates in this House and the better use of the time and expertise that are available here, we should do so. My message to the House is: Back-Benchers of the House unite—you have nothing to lose but your chains.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Lord Chairman for his introduction and to the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, for getting our debate under way. It is extremely good to see a former Cabinet Secretary, who operated at the highest levels within Whitehall for many years, not always in the glare of transparency, openness and accountability, arguing for it so forcefully this afternoon. Like him, and in response to the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I am very glad that we have this opportunity for the whole House to decide how it wants to move ahead in organising Back-Bench debates. It is good that we have a full House today to discuss it, and it will be good to reach a clear decision later this afternoon as to how we want to proceed.

I am aware that the question the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, and other noble Lords have raised about whether to have a Back-Bench debates committee or not has been hanging around for some time. As a new Leader, I am keen that we should answer it then plan accordingly. I do not want to speak for very long because this is above all a Back-Bench occasion, but I would quite like to do three simple things, if I may. First, I will explain the proposals for the new time for debates that I have made. Secondly, I should like to clear up any misunderstandings that there might be about how our current arrangements work. Thirdly, I will set out what I think is the issue of principle on which we all need to decide today.

When I started thinking about this for my first Procedure Committee meeting, I was struck by the arguments that have been made in favour of having more topical debates and, indeed, for creating more opportunities for Back-Bench Members to initiate debates more generally. I thought those arguments were absolutely right and, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, I am extremely keen to provide opportunities for as many Peers as possible, especially newer Members or those who are not able to attend the House as frequently as others, so that as a Chamber we are able to make the best possible use of the full range of contributions that we have at our disposal.

Therefore, as fast as I could, I came forward with two proposals. One was to create a new, regular weekly slot for a topical short debate on the Floor of the House, which I have suggested could also provide a route for getting a prompt debate on a Select Committee report. This would increase the number of short debates on the Floor of the House by about half. The second was to make more use of the Moses Room for short debates, thereby doubling the number of opportunities for Members to have debates there. So there would be more time for topical debates, guaranteed time on the Floor of the House and capacity for twice as many short debates in Grand Committee.

These proposals for additional time for Back-Bench debates were welcomed by the Procedure Committee and, to be clear, they are not at issue today; they apply equally to whatever the House decides. I think this was the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. The decision before us therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, is how we want this offer of additional time, plus the time that is already set aside for monthly balloted debates, to be used. Do we want it to be allocated in future by a Back-Bench debates committee or do we want it to be allocated broadly along current lines?

Let me say a few words about our current arrangements, as I am not sure that they are always well understood and I think there is a feeling that they are less transparent than perhaps they are. For short debates, Members are free to choose any subject that they want: they simply put their Question down on a waiting list, which is printed in House of Lords Business, and are taken in turn. For balloted debates, Members pick their topic and put the Motion into a ballot which is drawn by the clerks for a particular day. The key feature of these two processes is that neither the identity of the sponsoring Member nor the particular topic that they have chosen has any bearing on their prospects of securing a debate. All entries to the ballot have an equal chance of being drawn. All entries on the waiting list for short debates are offered time in the order in which they were tabled, subject only to a practical constraint that a Minister and shadow Minister must be available to participate and that Members waiting for their first short debate of the Session come before those waiting for their second.

To be crystal clear on this point, there is no selection by the government Chief Whip or the usual channels on merit, personality, party, group or personal profile, or on anything else. This principle—that the views of individual Peers matter and that they should all have an equal chance to pursue subjects they care about and get them debated in our House—is at the heart of how we think of ourselves as a House. It is particularly important for Members who are less well known or who are able to attend less often, who might find it harder to persuade a committee of the merits of the case. Our current approach means that we end up with debates on a wide range of subjects, from the treatment of homosexual men in developing countries to the future of English cathedrals. This allows for the independent-minded, for the quirky and for the whole range of outlooks and experience on which this House is able to draw and which, I believe, is its particular strength.

I agree with the point that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, made—I am sure that other noble Lords will make it later on—in that I do not take the view that everything in our current arrangements is perfect and cannot be improved. I take the point, for instance, that ballots can sometimes produce debates that are undersubscribed. I do not think that our processes are clear enough to the very Members they are intended to serve. However, there are practical steps we could take to mitigate those potential difficulties and which we could discuss in the Procedure Committee. I hope I have made it clear that I am keen to do that if that is what the House would like.

Iraq: Chilcot Inquiry

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

We all know that certain formulations have a certain elasticity, and I take his point. The most recent pronouncement from the Chilcot inquiry itself is that it hopes to finish the report by the middle of this year. Then the process—the formal word is “Maxwellisation”—of giving individuals the chance to comment would follow. That is what the inquiry has said is its current expectation of the timetable to which it is working.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, does the Leader of the House agree that the terms of reference of the Chilcot inquiry are so wide as to be almost infinite, and that the timing of the report’s publication depends not just on the handling of the representations but on the Government’s own clearance of what is to be included in the report? Will he undertake that that process will be done as quickly as the Government can manage?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I take both those points. On the Government’s co-operation with the declassification of documents as the process goes on, the Chilcot inquiry has said on the record that that process is working well. I know that the Government will co-operate as closely as they can to expedite that process of declassification as rapidly as possible.

Death of a Member: Baroness Thatcher

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I have listened to all the wonderful tributes paid this afternoon and this evening, and I have asked myself whether there is anything which I can add. There are just one or two aspects which I should like to add. I was not going to speak about the Brighton bomb because her resolution and courage on that occasion has been widely dealt with. However, since the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who I am glad to see in his place, referred to it and to the tragicomic aspect of it, I should supplement the picture that he gave of his crawling to the door, opening it and meeting Margaret Thatcher’s face on the other side. As he may remember, she was gorgeously attired in the blue evening dress that she had been wearing for the blue ball, which added to the absurdity of that tragic situation.

I am very pleased that reference has been made to the kindness shown to Lady Thatcher by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I believe that another person should be added. He is a colleague of mine on the Cross Benches and was a colleague at No 10; namely, my noble friend Lord Powell of Bayswater. He and his wife have been splendid to Lady Thatcher in her latter days. Indeed, I think that on Sunday evening, he was the last person, outside her family, to visit her. About a month ago, my noble friend said that he had been with her on a Sunday afternoon. I asked him what he talked to her about because, of course, in her latter months, she found conversation difficult. He said, “We didn’t talk. We turned on the television and we watched ‘Songs of Praise’ and we sung the hymns together”. I think that that is a lovely picture of those two doing that.

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, has spoken splendidly about the support which Margaret Thatcher gave him as Cabinet Secretary, and her support for the Civil Service and the esteem in which she held it. I do not want to add to that, except to endorse everything that he said as being the case during my experience in the post which he occupied before me.

I should like to take up what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said about her role as a lawyer. I am very glad he referred to that. I had a word with him outside the Chamber. Another aspect that needs to be emphasised was the way in which she upheld the rule of law, which was a very important principle in her life. I was travelling in a car with the Prime Minister when we saw on a newspaper hoarding that the High Court had found against the Government in the judicial review about the Government’s banning of unions at GCHQ. She was going to the House of Commons that afternoon and it was clear that, quite understandably, the Labour Party would make a lot of this and would be jubilant about it because it had supported the trade unions in opposing the Government’s action. She said, “Well, we must appeal but if the court rules against us, we must of course accept its judgment. We cannot ask the miners to accept the rule of law if we, the Government, are not prepared to accept it ourselves”. That is just one illustration of the principle that she held.

When judicial review was gaining force and I was head of the Civil Service, I suggested to Margaret Thatcher that we might arrange a seminar between senior civil servants and some of the judges so that the judges would know more about the way in which decisions were taken in government. “Absolutely not”, she said. “I am not going to have any appearance of the Executive appearing to interfere with the independence of the judges. We must keep them strictly separate”. That is an aspect of her principles and her Administration that I do not think has been much mentioned.

The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, spoke of his experience working with her as Cabinet Secretary. Although the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, was here earlier, nobody has spoken about the experience of working with her as a Private Secretary. Like the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, I was her Principal Private Secretary, in my case between 1982 and 1985. Inside No.10, having the privilege of seeing her in that intimate setting, we of course saw a very different person from the one that the public saw outside. The public saw the bravura performances and the confidence. She has been charged with being overconfident, even arrogant, but you saw a very different picture, before the great public appearances, inside No. 10—somebody whose motivation and force was not built on overconfidence but was in fact built on lack of self-confidence. I say that because I heard her say it herself publicly, after she left office. She said it was something that the media never really realised about her. I believe that that was the driving force behind her perfectionism in her appearance, in her dress, in her speeches and in her grip on her briefing. All those things had to be perfect before she would appear in public. There was a reference earlier to the conference speech after the Brighton bomb and her sitting in the green room, saying, “I am not sure I can go through with this”. Gordon Reece said, “Of course you can go through with it”. I am absolutely certain that she was always going to go through with it. Many times, I saw her say beforehand that she was not sure she could do something and then go out and give a bravura performance.

When I was Principal Private Secretary, in briefing her for Prime Minister’s Questions, I did not brief her on the facts—other people did that—but regarded my job as being to calm her down, usually by reassuring her that her case was good in answer to a Question and, just occasionally, if she was sleepy after lunch, to work her up a bit and say, “Prime Minister, I think you have to worry about this Question, this is quite difficult”. It was about getting the horse to the starting gate with exactly the right amount of perspiration on the flanks, and then she would perform superbly in the House of Commons.

I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said earlier that criticisms that she never listened were quite misplaced. She did listen, but talked at the same time—she could listen while she talked. It is true that she regarded attack as the best form of defence but she was also always willing to learn. Finally, I just offer an anecdote to the House which I think illustrates these three characteristics. It relates to a time after she had ceased to be Prime Minister and after I had ceased to be Cabinet Secretary. She very kindly came to my college at Oxford to talk. In the course of her remarks to the students, she said that one of the things that she worried about in modern life, and the life facing their generation, was the number of children born illegitimate. When it came round to questions, one of the students said to her, “Lady Thatcher, don’t you think it is a little unfair to use the word ‘illegitimate’ of a child throughout its life when it has had no influence over the circumstances of its own birth?”. Her eyes flashed and she said, “Well, what would you call them? I can think of another word but I think it would be even more unkind”. I thought, “Goodness, what’s going to happen?”, but the moment passed. She came to dinner and chapel, and in the lighter part of the evening we were having a drink in the Master’s Lodgings before she and Denis went back to London. We were talking about other things completely when she suddenly said, “You know, Robin, that young man who asked me this afternoon about the word ‘illegitimate’ had a point didn’t he?”. That was quite characteristic. I will wager that she never used the word illegitimate again. She was always prepared to learn, even from a student. She hit back immediately but then she thought about it and took the point.

Those are just three reminiscences I have out of a treasure house of memories. I never had any doubt while I was working with her as Private Secretary and Cabinet Secretary that I was a witness to greatness as well as to great events. Those are memories that I will treasure all my life.

House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, I welcome the Motion’s implication that those unexpectedly reprieved have a special duty to make good use of the extra lifespan allocated to them. I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on the superb way in which he introduced this debate.

In the short time available to me, I want to concentrate on the recommendations of the Leader’s Group on ways designed to improved the quality of legislation presented to Parliament. I am a member of the Better Government Initiative, which, before the last election produced a report entitled, Good Government. On 12 November, the BGI is to produce a report on how the Government have performed in relation to the recommendations in that earlier report. As might be expected, it is a mixed picture; but even the best friends of the Government would have to admit that many of their policies and too much of their legislation have been introduced in haste and are being repented of at leisure, and not only by the Government themselves.

As others have said, the instrument that the Leader’s Group recommended to put pressure on the Executive to improve the legislation presented to Parliament was a legislative standards committee. The role that it would perform would be to test each Bill introduced by the Government by whether they had explained the purpose of, and necessity for, the Bill presented, by whether the Government had consulted those who would be affected by the Bill and who would have to implement it, and by whether the Government had taken account of their advice. At the end of the previous debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, on this very issue, made a strong point about the police Bill, now an Act, recently passed by Parliament. Legislation would be judged by whether there had been pre-legislative scrutiny—and if not, why not?

As the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, said, the Liaison Committee, which is composed of Select Committee chairmen in the House of Commons, has thought sufficiently well of this proposal to ask the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to investigate and report on it. The Better Government Initiative has given evidence to that committee, as has the Hansard Society and other supporters of the proposal. We are hopeful that the committee will report favourably on it.

The Leader of the House is, understandably, waiting to see what the Commons makes of this proposal before putting it to your Lordships. My question to the Leader today is: if the House of Commons Committee supports the proposal of the Leader’s Group will he look favourably on its introduction in your Lordships’ House? I suggest that it would be quixotic not to do so. We devote as many as three Select Committees to scrutinising in one way or another the preparation of statutory instruments. It is odd that we do not put similar effort into pressing the Government to prepare legislation properly. From the contributions to this debate today, I am confident that this recommendation of the Leader’s Group would have the support of this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, I am bound to say that I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and to other Members on the Labour Back Benches, for giving us this platform for today’s debate, and to all noble Lords who have taken the time to contribute. I am rather a fan of these debates with four-minute speeches. They work extremely effectively; we get a lot of Peers in and it concentrates the mind. I have the luxury of having a little bit more time, which I shall use.

Perhaps the most consistent theme running through successive debates in this House on the Government’s proposals for reform has been our reputation as a revising Chamber, a reputation that Members on all sides take great pride in—and it is right that we should. Just over half of the Back-Benchers who have spoken today have had experience in the House of Commons as MPs. I make no particular point about that except to say that we should always remember that this House is very different from the House of Commons. Because the Executive have such an overwhelming and overpowering majority in the House of Commons, and can therefore do virtually what they like, they need the power of the Speaker to help to control that, and to give the voice of the Back Benches. The Executive in this House have no majority. We have a powerful Opposition, and the purpose of the usual channels—although everybody has poked fun at them—is to represent the interests of the whole House. In the end, the House can overturn decisions of the usual channels, although I hope that it will not do so.

I discovered to my horror, while sitting here musing away, that I have been a member of the Procedure Committee for 20 years. You get less for murder. It is an extraordinary thing. But like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I am greatly encouraged by the tone of the debate. I did not agree with everything that every Peer said, but I found something to agree with in bits of what every Peer said. We do our job very effectively in this House, through our committees, including the committees that sit off the Floor of the House, through the reports that we make, and by the standing and reputation of individual Members of this House.

Why were we not reformed by the elected House? In the end, I think that there are two reasons. First, there was a perception outside this House that we do the job that we do extremely well. Therefore, there was not that motivation for a great change. Secondly, I believe very strongly that the more the House of Commons looked at proposals for electing this House, the more it feared that we might end up doing our job rather better than it did. That was one reason why I was rather keen on it; I was ambitious for this House. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, warned us that political parties might find a populist measure, by which he meant further plans for reform of the House. All I can say to him is that I would not tempt them too much on that; they really do not need it.

What does this extraordinary Chamber do? It assists without threatening the primacy of the other place. It discharges its core duties in a manner that seeks to complement, not compete with, the House of Commons. Why does it not compete? Because we do not have the authority of the people as the other place does, and without the authority that direct election of Members might confer it remains the case that the influence that we exert on another place and on the Government of the day rests mainly on the force of the arguments that we deploy and on recognition outside these walls of the experience and expertise that Members of this House possess, individually and collectively. That is what I think the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was getting at when he talked about his matrix. I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said about strengthening Parliament. With both Houses together, we should seek to do that, and to some extent this Government have done that. That reputation is the currency on which we trade. It is therefore only right that we consider, as we have done this afternoon, how best to protect and enhance our reputation and to be able to do our jobs even better.

My noble friends Lord Higgins, Lord Kirkwood and Lord Cormack, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made important passing references to the way in which the House of Commons does business. I will not spend any time discussing the House of Commons. It works out the way it does its business best. It has programming and we do not. On the whole, that is an advantage for this House. The House of Commons has selection of amendments and we do not. Here, every Back-Bencher has the right to put down an amendment to any Bill and it must be heard and responded to by a government Minister. That is extraordinarily empowering for Members of this House.

As the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, set out in his Motion, part of the answer to all this must lie in harnessing the skills and experience of our Members and ensuring that they are deployed to best effect. Like the report of the Leader’s Group before it, the Motion identifies three core functions of the House: scrutinising legislation, holding the Government to account and providing a forum for public debate. There is also being topical, as my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft suggested. I slightly regret that the Motion does not make explicit mention of the revision of legislation, which is in my view the chief function of this House and the cornerstone of our reputation. If you ask anybody what the second Chamber does, almost all will say that it revises legislation. That is an important thing.

One of the most frequently rehearsed complaints in this House is that it is asked to consider too much legislation and that the level of preparation and consultation that precedes the introduction of specific Bills is inadequate. I suspect that that complaint has been made for several hundred years. Certainly, I can remember it being made in the 1980s, 1990s and the last decade. It was made again today. That does not mean that we should not take it seriously or find ways of making life easier.

Let me deal with some important issues to do with the Leader’s Group. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and my noble friends Lady Tyler of Enfield and Lord Tyler said that all the recommendations in the original report deserved to be debated by the House. They certainly do. That is why a debate on the report and the recommendations contained therein was arranged on 27 June 2011. That was in addition to the debate on working practices held at the very start of this Parliament, in July 2010, prior to the establishment of the Leader’s Group, and the debates of 9 November last year and 26 March this year that informed the decisions taken by the House in respect of specific recommendations. Again, there is this debate today.

The other complaint was that only a few of the Leader’s Group’s recommendations have been brought to the House for decision. I fundamentally disagree with that point. The implication is that only a few of the Leader’s Group’s recommendations have been taken forward. That is a myth. The 55 recommendations amount to 43 specific proposals, because some just affirm the status quo and others spread one idea over many paragraphs. Of those 43, 25 have been put to a domestic committee and another four have been partially put forward or have confirmed the status quo and been implemented. By setting up the Leader’s Group and inviting the domestic committees of the House to consider taking forward the majority of these recommendations, I have probably done more as Leader to bring about change to the working practices of this House than any of my recent predecessors.

There are some proposals that have not been put forward, partly because there seemed no inclination for them to be agreed and partly because there were disagreements within the Leader’s Group and within the Procedure Committee. No fewer than six members of the Procedure Committee went on to vote against the report on Grand Committees. Of those Members who voted against the report—the House will remember the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Cormack on the Procedure Committee report—some are exactly the same noble Lords who now say that we should debate and agree all the proposals, such as that on the Grand Committees, which was extremely controversial when we dealt with it on the Floor of the House a few months ago.

I am pleased to say that in one respect at least we may be turning the tide of decades because the Leader’s Group observed that, leaving aside a brief period around 2002, the number of Bills or clauses of Bills published in draft had remained low and the number scrutinised by Select Committees, whether Joint Committees or Commons-only Select Committees, had been lower still. All that has changed over the past two and a half years. In the previous Session, the Government published 11 Bills or clauses of Bills in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny and in this Session we are on course to publish at least nine in only one year. That is good news. At the Government’s instigation, moreover, we have seen a resurgence in the number of Joint Committees conducting pre-legislative scrutiny. There were four in the previous Session and we expect five to be set up in this one. Those trends are no accident: we have deliberately set aside the resources to support an additional pre-legislative scrutiny committee this week.

We have also made progress, as was noted by my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Cormack and by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in relation to post-legislative scrutiny in response to concerns that, once legislation is passed, insufficient attention is devoted to its implementation and effects. For the first time, we have appointed a dedicated Select Committee to conduct post-legislative scrutiny of the legislation relating to adoption in England and Wales. The committee is due to report before the end of the Session and the intention is that it should be the first of a series of post-legislative scrutiny committees, each looking at a different area of the law with a membership tailored to the Acts under scrutiny, so as to make flexible and targeted use of Members’ expertise.

Although we have made considerable progress on those fronts, enhancing the quality and reach of our scrutiny at the beginning and end of the legislative process, I know that there are still some in the House who are interested in a legislative standards committee. Many noble friends mentioned this: the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, my noble friend Lady Tyler and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, who I am glad to hear has been receiving so many comments by e-mail—he is no doubt enhancing his reputation by replying to each of them in detail. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons is currently considering the proposal for a legislative standards committee as part of a broader inquiry into ensuring standards in the quality of legislation. Two Members of this House—the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart—have given oral evidence to that inquiry and my right honourable friend the Leader of the House of Commons is due to follow suit. Without wishing to pre-empt either his evidence or the Government’s response to any recommendations resulting from the inquiry, I make the following observations.

There is in my view a tension between this House’s role as a revising Chamber and the idea that one of its committees, composed of a small group of Members, should recommend that a government Bill progresses no further. The analogy with secondary legislation and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee is not apt. Secondary legislation cannot be amended, whereas the very purpose of a Bill’s passage through Parliament is to provide an opportunity for improvement and revision. In that sense, the House is itself a legislative standards committee; that is our primary and principal function. Denying a government Bill that has already passed through the House of Commons a Second Reading on the recommendation of a legislative standards committee would be an extraordinary step. Were the committee’s remit to be restricted to Bills starting in the Lords, it could have the unintended consequence of reducing the number of Bills that start in this House. Even if there were to be agreement on a Joint Committee, as recommended by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, I would remain uneasy at the prospect that a Government in command of a majority in the House of Commons would henceforth need to present a business case for their legislation before Parliament would consider it.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

It would be extraordinary if, on the basis of a recommendation from a legislative standards committee, the House were to decide not to allow a Bill to proceed. That would be the nuclear weapon, and I should be very surprised if it ever happened. Of course, the case of the Bill to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor was a very rare occasion when the Government decided to refer the Bill to a Select Committee. I would expect the committee recommending that a Bill should not proceed to be an equally rare occasion. The point is that if there were criticism of the standards to which a Bill had been prepared, I believe, and I think that other contributions have supported this, that that would have a very beneficial effect inside the Government on the standards to which legislation was prepared, without ever reaching a point where Parliament decided to refuse to allow a Bill to proceed.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord in always wanting to find ways to improve the quality of legislation. Sometimes, though, we need to be able to decide what has gone wrong, not just in the past decade but probably in processes over the past 40 to 50 years, and find out why legislation has changed so much and why it has got so difficult and complicated. We have seen this week, in having to pass an emergency piece of legislation correcting something that was not done properly 10 years ago, some of what goes wrong. Whether a legislative standards committee would make very much difference, I am not sure. Like the noble Lord and probably the rest of those who have spoken today, I look forward to the report from the House of Commons before we can take this further.

One question that has been raised by noble Lords and was posed by the Leader’s Group is whether we might make better use of our time in the Chamber. In order to free up time on the Floor of the House, the group proposed the introduction of a rule that most government Bills should be committed to Grand Committee and suggested that we might extend the sitting hours of the Grand Committee by introducing morning sittings. A variant of those proposals was put to the House by the Procedure Committee last March, only to be rejected emphatically. That is the point that I was making about members of the Procedure Committee, as well as members of the Leader’s Group, voting against that recommendation. In due course, I am sure that we will have to look at that again.

The next key question that many speakers raised was the attraction of a Back-Bench business committee—or a debates committee, a description mentioned by, I think the noble Lord, Lord Luce—in the expectation that a sifting mechanism for Back-Bench business might increase the topicality and profile of our debates and might serve the House better than the ballot and waiting-list mechanisms through which we currently select topical questions. My noble friend Lord Faulks pointed out some of the difficulties with this idea. It is not that the Back Benches would be deciding; it would be that some Back-Benchers would be deciding. We would have to go with care to decide whether or not this was actually an improvement. Of course we already have a sifting mechanism for most Thursday debates, which are selected by the political parties and the Cross-Bench group. Our debate this afternoon was selected in that way by the Labour group. We therefore already have some degree of intelligent selection, if one can call it that. It is interesting that at its next meeting the Procedure Committee is going to consider whether we should stop having a queueing system for Starred Questions and replace it with a ballot, so ballots clearly have their uses somewhere.

As for Questions for Short Debate and some of the Thursday debates, I see the ballot as a useful complement to the debates selected by the parties and groups. They provide Back-Bench Members with an alternative outlet for securing debates on subjects that, for whatever reason, did not appeal to their party or group. We have only to consider that a few weeks ago my noble friend Lord Maclennan led a balloted debate on the potential break-up of the United Kingdom and my noble friend Lord Lexden secured time for a QSD on the treatment of homosexual men and women in the developing world. They served to showcase the House at its best.

My main concern is that a Back-Bench business committee would in practice place a new obstacle in the way of Back-Bench Members wishing to secure time for a debate. Rather than Members walking into the Minute Room to table their Motion and then waiting their turn or taking their chance in the ballot, they would, if we were to follow the Commons model, find themselves filling in application forms and arranging to appear in person before a committee to plead their case. If they failed to persuade the committee, that would be that. We would have removed the last remaining vehicles for Back-Bench Members to get their debates on to the Order Paper directly and, in all likelihood, all we would gain in return is to become a mirror image of the Commons, debating all the same subjects. I urge noble Lords who are keen on this to come forward with a proposal that the Procedure Committee can examine.

As others have mentioned, one area in which we have taken major steps to make better use of the skills and experience of our Members is in the appointment of Select Committees. We have now established the new quick-fire, in-depth examination, annual, extra, cross-departmental committees. I think that they are an excellent addition. The government Chief Whip has recently told Conservative Peers that they should consider choices for next year’s Select Committees, and I urge the Opposition, my noble friends the Liberal Democrats and indeed the Cross-Benchers to do the same. I think that these will be really good committees. Over a five-year Parliament, we should be able to deal with 10 committees. That will strengthen our reputation for scrutiny.

I hope that my remarks this afternoon have served to illustrate that we have made considerable progress since the start of this Parliament. We have taken forward a majority of the recommendations from the Leader’s Group and, although some of them have been turned down by the House, I believe that I have done more to change the working practices of the House than any of my recent predecessors. I therefore see the withdrawal of the House of Lords Reform Bill not as a turning point in that process but rather as a milestone.

Talking of House of Lords reform, I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds and many others talked about the size of the House and how it should be reduced. I know that bishops retire at 70, but I think that most noble Lords in this House would regard that as a little young. There are possibly ways that we can find to encourage Peers to retire, but Peers ought to be careful what they wish for. They may discover that culling Peers is more popular than culling badgers. The Steel Bill remains in the House of Commons. Let us see where it goes. As the noble Lord knows, I have no in-principle objection to the Steel Bill, and I think it does some perfectly valid things, but the House of Commons has recently voted for an elected House, although it could not quite follow through.

This has been a useful and interesting debate. I have gone beyond my time, for which I apologise. I will try to pick up some of the other issues that have been taken up. I shall finish with this point: one of the most interesting and senior committees of this House is the Procedure Committee. It has a remit to look at and examine proposals that are laid before it. Any Back-Bench Member can put forward proposals to the Procedure Committee and I suspect that in the next few months we will see a lot more representations being made.