Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I think this House should be extremely grateful to the two noble Lords who have introduced their reports today. Both of them have the joy of being experienced in both Houses. They bring years of dedication to public service, and here we have before us not large tomes of material but just a few poignant pages of the issues we have been discussing this morning and afternoon. I am not going to cover what has already been covered by other noble Lords, but I wanted to say to them, and to all Members who served on either of those two committees, my personal thanks, and I hope the thanks of all of us, for the dedication and commitment they have shown day after day on these committees.

I will voice my thoughts on one particular area. I had the privilege of being the Deputy Speaker and Chairman of Ways and Means in the other place. I remember there was a procedure—certainly in the Speaker and myself talking, and I think the other deputies also—of having brought to our attention when and why the Henry VIII clauses were being used, so that we, who were sitting in the Chair, had knowledge of the situation. I have to say to my good and noble friend Lord Blencathra, that was longer than 20 years ago, and I think Henry VIII has the ability to last through the centuries. From my point of view, that is a typical example.

I also had the privilege of sitting on the Public Accounts Committee for some 12 years. It was all-party and the joy of today is that this is all-party. That committee had the benefit of the work of the NAO to scrutinise what had happened to certain pieces of legislation and to put before our committee what we thought Parliament should do about it.

We, almost every time, set a sunset clause, and I believe that is one of the fundamental areas that must happen in every single piece of legislation. I have read carefully the two letters from the Leader of the House in the other place, and it seems to me, reading them, that the sentiment of those letters is that there is a willingness not just to listen but to act. Maybe not to act on every dimension that was raised in the two reports, but it seems to me that the climate is there, and that is so important in life.

We are a parliamentary democracy, and we do all care. Many of us have stood in the other place looking after constituents, and we still care for what we do, because that is our primary role for being here in the first place. By “we” I mean the Commons and the Lords, and this is one time when the two really must get together. My noble friend on the Front Bench has a degree of sensitivity to the nuances of Parliament. We should look at the titles of these two documents. The one from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is Democracy Denied? The Urgent Need to Rebalance Power Between Parliament and the Executive; and the other one is Government by Diktat: A Call to Return Power to Parliament. I look to my noble friend on the Front Bench to recognise the sincerity, the depth of work that has been done, and the real need for positive action on both these fronts.