Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Lord Rowlands Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rowlands (Lab)]

My Lords, it was my very good fortune to have served for four years, under the noble Lord’s chairmanship, on the Delegated Powers Committee. It is currently my good fortune to be serving on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. As the noble Lord reminded me, I have been here rather a long time; I have seen some dozen Prime Ministers come and go. Throughout that period, the one thing has driven me—and I think it has driven all Members of this House and the other—is the profound belief that parliamentary legislative scrutiny is vital to the whole issue of parliamentary democracy. It is an essential, integral cornerstone of our constitution.

The Delegated Powers Committee report is a very fine one. First, it is rooted in detailed research, and for that we must pay tribute to the staff who advised us. It is a very finely researched report. Secondly, it all draws upon something like two decades of experience that the Delegated Powers Committee has. I recommend that Members of the House look at Appendix 3 of the report, which lists more than 30 Bills that the committee has reported upon, drawing attention to what it considers to be inappropriate delegated legislation. The findings and recommendations of this report are rooted in the experience we have had, over nearly two decades, in scrutinising delegated legislation. Therefore, the findings of report are, in my opinion, irrefutable.

There has been a growing and dangerous development: the increasing use of delegated powers legislation, such as skeleton Bills; Henry VIII powers; the new devices the report describes in detail; mandatory guidance, which is a quasi-form of legislation; and, of course, most obnoxious of all, tertiary legislation. The House might remind itself what tertiary legislation allows a Minister to do. It allows a Minister to give power to unelected bodies, such as a quango, to amend or repeal an Act of Parliament—after all the efforts both Houses make, power can be granted to an unelected body to repeal or amend. That cannot be justified in any sense.

Unfortunately, I think the quality of this report was not met by the initial response of Ministers in their letter of 2 January last year. The letter was signed by the then Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House, the right honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg. Unfortunately, in the very first line of this letter he thanks the committee for its letter dated 23 November 2021 and copy of the SLSC’s report entitled Democracy Denied? He got the wrong committee: it was the Delegated Powers Committee that submitted this report, not the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. That shows some of the character of the response we had and it seemed hopelessly inadequate.

I hope now, with a new Front Bench and a new set of Ministers, that we will have a much better and much more reasoned approach to the issues, and these very useful and not excessive recommendations. They are practical, useful recommendations that will allow this House and the other House to fulfil their fundamental role of scrutinising legislation. As we say in pages 4 and 5 of our report, this is not an “esoteric constitutional” issue but:

“The way our laws are made can have a profound effect upon the lives of millions of citizens … parliamentary scrutiny is a cornerstone of parliamentary democracy … As our historic account of delegated legislation shows, there have been times when the government of the day have been impatient of parliamentary legislative constraints. … But Parliament rightly demands patience in fulfilling its most important role—the making of our laws”,


because that is in fundamental to the whole nature of our parliamentary democracy.

I invite the Minister, when he replies, to take a new look. I hope he will come to the Dispatch Box with a better response than we received a year ago from the previous Lord President. I ask my own Front Bench to endorse, in the strongest possible way, the powerful recommendations in the Delegated Powers Committee’s report.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Rowlands Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

I cannot quote a combined national referendum and national election but that does not mean that you cannot have one now. In respect of the comparison with 2007, Ron Gould said:

“I do not believe that holding both on the same day would create the same degree of confusion and resultant rejected ballots especially if sufficient advance public information and guidance was provided to the voters”.

The rigorous testing carried out by the Electoral Commission should also reassure those worried about voter confusion. The new draft clearly enables the electorate to understand the choice they are being asked to make and to express their views. The Bill also gives the Electoral Commission a role in providing information about the referendum and how to vote in it, which will help to minimise confusion. For those reasons, I hope the noble and learned Lord will feel that we have covered all the questions that he posed.

The only election which comes to mind when there was a combined referendum was the one which the noble and learned Lord will remember so well in London in 1998.

[Lord Rowlands]

Does the noble Lord think that he knows better than all the Members of the National Assembly and the First Minister of the National Assembly, that this would not be a major distraction to the elections in Wales?