Liaison Committee

Lord Sewel Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Chairman of Committees]

That the 2nd Report from the Select Committee (Review of select committee activity and proposals for new committee activity) (HL Paper 127) be agreed to.

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Sewel)]

My Lords, the present Parliament has seen House of Lords Select Committee activity at a higher level than ever before, including two additional units of committee activity. This increase, including in particular the growth of ad hoc committees and the introduction of post-legislative scrutiny committees, has been popular with Members and has added to the work of your Lordships’ House and its standing in the country. So, too, has been the practice of inviting Members of the House to suggest their own proposals for ad hoc committees. This year, we had 42 proposals by the time of the deadline.

As usual, the Liaison Committee discussed the work of this Session’s ad hoc committees with their respective chairmen. We concluded that the three new ad hoc committees and the post-legislative scrutiny committee on extradition law worked well. The committee recommended maintaining the current high level of committee activity in the first Session of the new Parliament.

We have also made provision to support the work of pre-legislative scrutiny committees in the new Parliament, recognising that the production of draft Bills in the first Session after a general election can—shall we say?—be somewhat unpredictable. There has been one such committee this Session—the Joint Committee on the Draft Protection of Charities Bill, which has recently reported.

Turning to our recommendations for ad hoc committees in the next Session, we bore in mind our previous agreement in principle that one of the committees chosen each Session should be on an international relations subject. The noble Baroness, Lady Helic, proposed a Select Committee on sexual violence in conflict: the UK and global response. As she highlighted in her proposal, there is a growing recognition that war-zone sexual violence is a key foreign policy and security issue. There is cross-party consensus on the importance of this issue but there has never been a parliamentary committee of either House exploring it in depth. An ad hoc committee on sexual violence in conflict would therefore be breaking new ground, and we recommend the appointment of such a committee in the new Session.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Whitaker, proposed a Select Committee on policy for the built environment—another area where a cross-cutting inquiry is overdue. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, proposed a Select Committee on social mobility, focusing on the transition from school to work. The Liaison Committee thought that such an inquiry would be timely in the light of increasing recognition of social mobility as a key social policy issue. The Liaison Committee recommended the appointment of an ad hoc committee on each of those subjects.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, proposed a post-legislative scrutiny committee on the disability provisions of the Equality Act 2010. This Act is wide-ranging, and the committee agreed with the noble Baroness that limiting the review to disability would help ensure a focused inquiry, allowing it to examine the issues in greater detail within the one Session.

With 42 proposals, inevitably it is not possible to please all Members of the House. However, I am confident that these new committees will deliver as high a quality of report as those which have just reported. In the present Parliament, the House of Lords Select Committee system has gone from strength to strength. Long may this continue. I beg to move.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the Liaison Committee and those who have been involved in the negotiations on ensuring that in future Treasury officials and Ministers will appear in front of the Select Committee of your Lordships’ House. Until now, that has not been the case, with the one exception of an economic committee. It is plainly wrong that Ministers and officials should not have appeared before your Lordships’ committee on matters in which the Treasury is clearly involved. Therefore, ensuring that in future we will have the benefit of evidence from Treasury officials and Ministers is a considerable step forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, perhaps I may deal with a couple of early points, and then get on to what has taken us so much time.

First of all, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, for his comments. We have worked with the Treasury to make sure that we get a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between the department and our Select Committees. I am more than hopeful that, from now on, we will have a very much more constructive relationship with the Treasury. I think that that will again enhance the quality of our reports.

To the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I say that we are increasing, year on year, the amount of resource that we allocate to Select Committee work. We obviously have to take into account our responsibility for public expenditure, but that is not cramping the work of our Select Committees; I am sure of that. A usual Select Committee inquiry taking place over about a Session costs about a quarter of a million pounds. I think that that is money well spent, but we have to have a proper, reasonable and responsible attitude to the expenditure of individual committees.

I turn now to the matter of international affairs, foreign affairs, or whatever we wish to call it. I think that the present system is working rather well. Let us look at the topics. The most recent topic was on soft power, on which there was a very high-quality report and a high-quality debate. Today, I hope, we will decide to have a Select Committee on sexual violence in war zones. We will be breaking new ground when we do that. It will be the first parliamentary inquiry covering this area. I believe—and I think the House believes—that it is an important area of policy and one that we should examine. I just wonder, in the back of my mind, had we had a permanent Select Committee on foreign affairs, would it have really looked at soft power or at sexual violence in war zones? I leave that for the House to decide.

The Liaison Committee did consider the establishment of a separate Select Committee on foreign affairs as a sessional committee. I believe that the Liaison Committee has now come to a settled view that it would prefer a different approach to international affairs, whereby all Members of the House have the opportunity to put forward a topic for Select Committee inquiry—that we invite everybody to bring forward what they consider to be an important and relevant area on which this House can bring its expertise to bear. That is now the settled view of the Liaison Committee and I believe that it is the right view.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My noble friend asserts that the Liaison Committee has reached a settled view. Would he be prepared to put that settled view to the test by giving the House an opportunity to vote on it?

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, there would be an opportunity for the House to vote on it now if it wished. That is the matter before us.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the Chairman of Committees is in a bit of a hole, and I ask him not to go on digging. For example, the point that he made about all Members of the House having the right to put forward subjects could perfectly well be fulfilled within the remit of an international affairs committee. All that you need to do in setting up such a committee is to require it to be open to all Members of the House for suggestions as to what subjects should be chosen. It could be done just as well that way as in this way. I do not oppose the choice that the Chairman of Committees has put forward as the international subject for the next Session, but will he please agree to ask the Liaison Committee to consider putting the matter to the House for decision?

[The Chairman of Committees]

The noble Lord offers us the novel suggestion that a permanent sessional committee would canvass the views of all individual Members of the House. I am not aware of any other sessional committee that makes decisions about its future work programme on that basis. Perhaps others would like to try that novel suggestion out first.

There is another reason why the Liaison Committee has come to this view. It is simply that foreign affairs is a fairly heterogeneous area. It is fairly clear that if you are having an inquiry on Ukraine, say, you are more than likely to want to bring in people with expertise and interests that are slightly different from those of people interested in things like sexual violence in war zones. We are able to bring together the best collection of people with expertise in the whole foreign affairs field to deal with particular topics, rather than having a continuing committee of roughly the same sort of people going on for several years. That gives us a much greater opportunity to have variety and novelty and to bring expertise to bear, and that is why we have such high quality and a high reputation for the work of our ad hoc committees.

Motion agreed.