Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, and amen to everything that has been said. I shall concentrate on the antidote to the legislative creep that has been described so well by earlier speakers.

If we are to continue to get skeleton Bills and skeleton clauses—or, as the Government like to call them, enabling Bills and enabling clauses—we must have better provision for examining secondary legislation. The important balance is between the legislature and the Executive. That is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy. Together with the judiciary, the balance and independence of each are critical for them to truly act as the representatives of our people.

I deprecate the use of delegated powers as a substitute for imperfect policy-making. I want to look at the issue of electric scooters. The delegated power that gave electric scooters the right to exist in this country only if they were from a hire company, they could drive at no more than 15.5 mph, and anyone using them had to have a driving licence has been outshone by the over 100,000 electric scooters operated illegally across this country. In fact, I was driving at 30 mph down a 30 mph road and was overtaken by an electric scooter. So noble Lords can imagine that this is an example of what delegated power is dealing with, as a substitute for imperfect policy-making.

Looking at the problem from the other end of the telescope, what can be done to achieve a proper role for the legislature in retaining its crucial job of scrutiny and ensuring that our laws are fit for purpose? There are three ways outlined in the excellent reports that the two committees have produced. One is an enhanced procedure allowing Parliament or committees of the two Houses to comment on a draft instrument before the final form is laid. The second is to amend the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 to allow enhanced scrutiny and amendments to be made to secondary legislation. The third is to require Ministers to undertake consultation on any secondary legislation derived from skeletal clauses or Bills before bringing them before Parliament, and for those pieces of legislation to introduce and include a report on how the findings of the consultation have been taken into account.

I would like to add a fourth: a flagging mechanism where either House could indicate that a piece of secondary legislation deriving from a skeletal Bill or clause was unfit for purpose or failing to meet its declared intention. The flag would require the Government to temporarily withdraw the instrument, look at it again and produce a revised version.

I am not wedded to any of those four proposals or any combination of them, and there may well be more, but, in the light of the fundamental concerns raised both in this debate and in the two reports to the House, there is an urgent need for action by both Houses, preferably together, in order to inquire into the changes that we need to undertake to fulfil our legislative function and to recommend a way forward for Parliament.

It is genuinely Parliament’s role to investigate this. It is our role as a legislature, which is gradually being eroded. As a first step, would it be possible for both Houses to co-create a committee or an inquiry to look at these matters and bring forward suggestions to both Houses on how we could improve the situation? It is clear that the creep cannot continue, but both Houses together can make it stop.

Wales: Customs Sites

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I can reassure the noble Lord that we are on track to have the digital infrastructure up and running by 1 January. I completely accept that we are running on a very tight timetable, but if we take, for example, the GVMS system—which I think is the one that he is referring to—that has been available for testing by hauliers and carriers since September and will be released to all hauliers on 8 December.

[Lord German (LD)]

Putting aside the issue of having to drive 100 miles or 175 miles in order to have your load checked, meaning that you have to go to one of two places, I am interested to know the Minister’s answer to the question that was put to him earlier about working at pace. Am I right to understand that the first communication on the siting of a potential site on the Isle of Anglesey was yesterday; and, if so, is that what the Government call working at pace?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I can reassure the noble Lord that we have been working on this solution for some time. There was an alternative proposal several months ago that most people were in favour of, which was RAF Mona, but unfortunately that was not acceptable to the local community. But, no, we have not just started work on this this week. In terms of the inland sites, to reassure the noble Lord, not every lorry has to go to them. About 2% of loads will be diverted for formal checks. So, although I accept that in the interim, before the enduring site is created on the island, there will be some inconvenience, it will be only for a very small number of loads.

Finance Bill

Lord German Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I will make two points about measures in the Finance Bill. These are extraordinary times, and the only certainty is uncertainty—and, unfortunately, greater unemployment. As other noble Lords have said, local firms and UK chains have faced a real battle competing with online companies based overseas which do not have the same overheads as physical shops and services.

The Government’s digital services tax plan in this Bill is a mouse of a measure compared with the huge profits made by American big tech companies. The Government need to co-operate closely with the European Union, which is devising an international tax with much greater teeth so that these big tech companies will pay their fair share of tax. We need a much more sustainable, long-term solution, with a broader international base.

What impact is the demand for trade deals having on this measure? British bookstores and other businesses should not face a higher tax rate than Amazon. The Chartered Institute of Taxation points out that this part of the Finance Bill is not aimed at stopping profits arising in the UK being shifted by multinationals out of the UK to tax havens. These disrupter companies play an essential role in our economy, but they use complex ways of moving and hiding the money that we pay them. They have thrived during the pandemic as our high streets have suffered. Their business has grown as demand has shifted online. Surely their tax bills should be at least comparable with those of other retailers—it is a very uneven playing field, and the limited measure in this Bill will do little to rebalance the tax paid. The jobs in this sector are the most fragile. Those who can work at home are higher paid, and it is the lower-paid, face-to-face jobs that are being most challenged.

My second point concerns small and medium-sized enterprises in the manufacturing sector. The Government’s infrastructure announcements are welcome, but the Chancellor has performed an Aladdin sleight of hand—not “old lamps for new” but “old money for new”. The IFS has crunched the numbers and the £5.5 billion announced for transport and infrastructure is old money repurposed. My point is that this money would have been circulating in the economy anyway and does not represent a real boost to companies seeking to rebuild their order books. With half of UK manufacturing companies seeking to make redundancies in the next six months, we have to make sure that there are skilled jobs left, because they are going to be lost right across the country and all sectors of manufacturing.

Unemployment

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton [V]]

As the noble Lord will know, we have announced an unprecedented level of support across the economy which includes these particularly hard-hit areas. As he will also know, we announced yesterday that shops will be able to reopen next week as part of our gradual and phased reopening of the economy. The Government are meeting regularly with members of the entertainment and leisure sectors to look at all possible solutions to help them get back into business as quickly as possible.

[Lord German (LD) [V]]

My Lords, during this period of great instability for businesses, many self-employed people have received no help at all. Freelance musicians, cleaners, taxi drivers, hairdressers and millions more have seen their incomes evaporate. As we move forward to a staggered start to normality, will the Government put in place a bespoke system of support for the self-employed so that their businesses and jobs do not disappear as well?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton [V]]

The Government’s overarching priority is to reopen the economy as quickly as is safely possible. That is how the groups the noble Lord has referred to will be able to start earning their incomes again as quickly as they can. We have in place a suite of support mechanisms for all those who have been the hardest hit, including the groups listed by the noble Lord.

Queen’s Speech

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord German (LD)]

Like many other noble Lords, I shall also address the issue of prison reform. I find myself echoing the sentiments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester. I suspect that the pendulum is moving creakingly from the space of retribution towards the space of rehabilitation, but it is important to see where this legislation fits perfectly into the glove of the reform that is necessary to overcome the difficulties people have talked about in prison reform. That is because we need to know the Government’s overall intentions. We need a clear goal and a clear pathway to reform. It is not all in the legislation, even the primary legislation. We need to know that we are not simply tinkering at the edges and adjusting just one of the factors, because that would not solve the underlying issues of overcrowded prisons, poor rehabilitation officers in prisons and a lack of job and training opportunities after release.

It is not as if we are short of numbers to describe the problem. The percentage of the prison population with 15 or more previous convictions starkly demonstrates that prisons have become recycling facilities for broken individuals. In 2012-13 the percentage of the prison population with 15 previous convictions or more was 34%, so more than one-third. That all adds up to a huge bill for the taxpayer. While the proposed Bill is to be welcomed, the test against which it can be judged is whether it will make a serious dent in those figures. Will it lead to a better outcome for individuals both within and, crucially, after leaving prison?

The Coates review has opened a Pandora’s box for wholesale reform of this agenda. The government Bill in the gracious Speech has as its main focus prison governor autonomy. That is a laudable and supportable aim, but the critical question to be asked is: autonomy over what? The current OLASS contract system, with its centralised and arm’s-length contract structure, is wholly unsuited to providing the autonomy that the review suggests. Extending the contracts until 2017 gives the Government breathing space for a restructure, but Parliament, when it is considering the legislation before us, is entitled to ask what overall direction the Government intend to take. What is the destination they are aiming for? Real autonomy means the ability to handle and flex the budget and to identify the people needed to carry out the services required in each prison. Above all else, the Government need to indicate whether they intend to invest to save in this arena.

The costs of repeat offending are well publicised. The Government’s own statistics show the savings that could be made by reducing the level of recidivism. Do the Government intend to invest some of the identifiable savings in the sort of education and training regime Dame Sally Coates envisages? Having the education budget with the Ministry of Justice helps, of course, but will the department get permission from the Treasury to invest potential savings in advance of them being made?

The unspoken context of the Coates review is that a reshaped, revamped and modernised education and training regime will be more attractive to offenders. Numbers participating will, and should, rise. An emphasis on individual learner programmes will require more and better qualified teachers and trainers. So doing more with the same funding will not cut the mustard. A reshaped system with many more participants will require more financial resource to be made available to prison governors. We need to know the Government’s intention in that respect.

Finally, I would like the Government to address through-the-gate barriers. Generally, the expectation those leaving prison have of a job or training is very low. But there are some wonderful examples of good practice: the Clink, training chefs and front-of-house staff, awarding NVQs; Key4Life, based in Somerset, developing emotional resilience and employment skills; and the Woodhaven Trust, supporting offenders into employment and self-employment.

All are great success stories and there are many more. But these examples all point to a single conclusion: that there are solutions; there are routes to solving the re-offending and employment problems. The challenge is to join up the dots, to create a seamless pathway through prison and beyond the gate. With the range of actors involved—public, private and third sector—we have an over-complex web of support. I hope that the Government will use their best endeavours to lock them all together.

Azerbaijan and the South Caucasus

Lord German Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord German]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to underline a couple of the points which have been made in this debate. I declare my interest. I have been to Azerbaijan this year, supported by the European Azerbaijan Society. One of the things that has clearly come out of this debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Laird, is the huge amount of foreign direct investment that the UK has in that country. What needs underlining is the potential for more. It is a country which has enormous amounts of regeneration prospects and the opportunity for other forms of investment from UK companies. I am afraid that we may be losing out to others, particularly Germany, which is seeking to do better and bigger business there as well.

In his winding up, will the Minister agree that we need a high-level trade delegation from this country led by a senior Minister to promote those new opportunities? After all, this country needs more opportunity to trade, to invest and to gain funding for this country.

The second issue that needs underlining underpinned some of our discussion. The amount of trade and investment that we have enables this country to be a critical friend of Azerbaijan. After all, we must recognise that it is not a perfect democracy—perhaps not even ours is a perfect democracy. It has had 21 years of existence since its life within the Soviet Union but it takes a huge amount of time to make the changes to reach a full democratic status. It is a country leaning towards that and it wants to achieve it.

As a critical friend, it seems that that is a role that the UK is well established to play. I regard investment in human rights and investment in justice systems as a crucial part of that journey, which I think this country wants to move on to. I suggest that justice systems’ support, supporting alternative measures and ways of approaching public order issues are things that this country can achieve. I believe that it is much better to support that from within than to try to complain from without.

We are in a unique position to influence the way in which Azerbaijan moves forward. It wants to move forward in a direction to which this country is sympathetic and I believe that we can undertake that. I have met Opposition MPs in Azerbaijan who have a role in human rights and say that they need support and help. They are not overcritical of the way in which their Government behave but they need the extra help that this Government could provide in the way of support. They need support for a free and open media. They have Opposition-leaning newspapers but we can provide more assistance in that direction.

In summing up, I hope that the Minister will give reassurance to noble Lords that we will be a critical but supportive friend working from within.

Universal Credit

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the careful mechanisms currently being put in place and operating recognise precisely that this is an extremely important programme, which is to be rolled out starting two years from now and running until 2017. I should add, as I was also asked about the novelty of some of these IT programmes, that the DWP is working to integrate roughly 60 per cent of existing IT infrastructure, which will be transferred to this programme. It is not an entirely novel programme: only 40 per cent of its IT will be novel.

[Lord German]

My Lords, following on from that answer, will my noble friend reassure the House that the DWP’s programme is being introduced in a gradualist way over a number of years? That will give some comfort, but what matters is getting the data into the DWP—the tube of data which comes from every company and through the HMRC. Will my noble friend also reassure the House that that tube will be open, finished and working on time, and that he will tell the House in advance if there was any danger regarding that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure what an open tube looks like but the DWP is of course working closely with HMRC. As noble Lords are well aware, the integration of HMRC systems with those of the DWP is an important part of this programme. We are all conscious that previous programmes, particularly on tax credits, have run into a very considerable number of problems about both underpayment and overpayment, and about underclaiming. It is intended that one of the great benefits of the universal credit system will be that a much higher percentage of claimants will claim and receive their entitlements.