House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, as a member of the committee, it is not my intention to express wide views about the recommendations, which I broadly agreed with, but I do want to express my appreciation of the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Goodlad, who was wise, patient, perceptive, and seemed to me to pull together quite a disparate group in reaching a consensus, which I hope will commend itself to this House.

Of the two points which I wish to animadvert upon briefly, the first is the proposed establishment of the legislation standards committee, which I hope will commend itself to this House. It would make sense to have a joint committee to consider legislation which is brought forward by the Government, some of which originates in another place and some of which originates here. That would depend upon agreement with another place, and it might be worth while considering establishing such a committee to deal with Bills which originate in this House, which would fortify both the ability of the Government to justify what they are doing, and of those who are scrutinising the legislation to judge whether or not it meets the required needs. As legislation increases in volume, and as it becomes apparent that some departments of state consider that legislation is the only way in which they can seriously draw the attention of the public to their urgent need to do something, there is a risk that the quality of legislation will decline. The purpose of the legislation standards committee is to put a block in that direction. It would look at the matters spelled out in paragraph 94 of the committee’s report, such as giving a clear justification for why legislation is the appropriate means of dealing with a problem, and also looking at the effect it has on other legislation, whether or not new criminal offences are created, and how it would fit into the wider system of justice. These are just some of the reasons why such a committee should be established. I believe that it would be an important part of the pre-legislative scrutiny process, and one which would encourage people to look rather more before they leapt. I very much hope that the Leader of the House will be able to give a favourable response to that proposal. I think it would bring together the Executive and the legislature in a most helpful way.

The second matter that I wanted to consider was the recommendation regarding the consideration of the executive role in relation to this House. The matter has been considered over some time, but we have not yet reached a very satisfactory position. The royal commission, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Wakeham recommended in 2000 that there should be a sufficient number of Secretaries of State and Ministers of State in this House. That number has fallen off, and is particularly low in this Parliament. If the Executive are going to take full note of the spectrum of views, and the individual contributions that are made by this House, not only to legislation, but to policy generally, it would make great sense if the responsible Minister were required to give the Statement to the House himself, to answer the questions himself, and, I would say, although this goes beyond the report, conduct the legislative process. Too often, one has the impression that those who are answerable for the policy are not answering to those who are raising the questions. Some of the less well conceived legislation of this Session would have greatly benefited from having the responsible Minister here and hearing the arguments early in the debate. Time could have been saved and minds could have been moved; I very much hope that that will be given due consideration. The committee recommends that that issue should be considered by the two procedure committees of the two Houses. As the Commons Procedure Committee in the Session 2009-10 recommended in its third report, if Secretaries of State are in this House, ways should be found to enable them to make Statements and to answer Questions from another place. I very much hope that that will be given the attention that it deserves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Strathclyde]

Denying a government Bill that had already passed the House of Commons a Second Reading would be an extraordinary thing. There would be another problem. For Bills that started in the House of Lords, if this were not a Joint Committee—I think that there is much more merit it being a Joint Committee than a House of Lords Committee, which I know was the recommendation of the committee—the business managers would seek to avoid starting Bills in the House of Lords. As Leader of the Lords, I think that would be a very bad thing. There are issues here that need to be explored further. There are downsides too, but the basic aim is a good one.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

Before my noble friend leaves that point, would he perhaps give us some indication of who is best placed to give consideration to this core recommendation of the report and the sort of timeframe that he would have in mind for that consideration?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, first, I think that we should invite the clerks to come forward with a proposal. The proposal should be put to the Procedure Committee and of course within this we need to decide whether it should be a Joint Committee or a House Committee. If it is a Joint Committee, there need to be discussions with another place and we would have to find out about how it felt about such things. I have no idea about a timescale, but we could get an initial view relatively quickly, and I think that that is what we should do.

The role of the usual channels got a bit of a battering; I think the usual channels and how it operates needs clarifying. Perhaps the most interesting part of the debate concerned the role of the Lord Speaker. The report has trod carefully between self-regulation, Leader’s powers and Speaker’s powers, and has come to the conclusion of an experimental period, simply to shift the Leader’s power to the chair. I am not entirely convinced that that is a solution to the problem. What has happened is that more and more people try to get in at Question Time. It is an immensely important part of the day. The House is full. The leaders, Chief Whips, Convenor—everybody is here. The Lord Speaker is in the chair. It is a focal point for the start of our day. It is Peers wanting to get in and ask their question that creates the problem.

I increasingly think that we do have to make a choice on this, and I think we ought to have an early vote and make a decision. Part of that is that you cannot have both a firm chair and self-regulation. We have to choose between one and the other. Noble Lords have said, “Well, you can have a little bit of direction from the chair and that doesn’t affect self regulation”, but I think that it does. I do not think that that is a bad thing. One noble Lord said that this House is the only legislative Chamber that does not have a firm chair. It may be that that era of self-regulation—of politeness and giving way—has moved on, for a whole variety of reasons. It is that the nature of the House and the nature of the way we do legislation have simply changed. That is the decision that I think will face us. If we move the Leader’s powers to the chair we will very quickly get into names being called. Some noble Lords are concerned about behaviour in this House. I always remind people to go a couple of hundred yards down the corridor and see a House where there is very firm authority from the chair and to really take a view. Is there better behaviour in another place? It is worth doing.