European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Report: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate, which is way above my pay grade, but in answer to the question asked by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge—which I invite the Minister to get briefed on—about how this has been allowed to happen and when, I say that it would not have happened in David Renton’s time. He was the Member for Huntingdonshire in the other place and was still active here at 92, taking parliamentary draftsmen apart on a weekly basis, under the Government of whom I had the privilege to be a member. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, recalls this. He was meticulous. He chaired a report in the other place in the late 1970s on the drafting of legislation. It was his life’s work. He could pick apart these issues. No one is doing that these days and it is allowing slipshod work by parliamentary draftspeople to get on to the statute book, and it is about time we did more about it.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am a signatory to Amendment 53, as the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, said, and I want to contribute one very small thought to your Lordships. Many of us will recall that at the outset of consideration of this Bill by your Lordships’ House, there were many attacks in anticipation that we might amend it. But the very fact that the Minister has signed our amendment indicates that your Lordships’ House is doing its job. That is the whole point of our presence in the legislative process.

Ministers were egged on and convinced by the more incendiary Back-Benchers in the other House, and the tabloid media, that it would be outrageous if your Lordships’ House amended in the tiniest detail this wonderful Bill that was going to be put in front of us. The Minister has now helped us do some amending. We have already had seven changes, I think, improving the Bill, with a large majority in some cases. So I plead with the Minister to recognise in future that we are doing our job when we improve this Bill. It did not come to us perfect. It will go back to the other place a great deal better than when it came to us. I hope that there will not be so many incendiary attacks on your Lordships’ House in future by curious Back-Benchers in the other House.

Incidentally, I yield to nobody in wishing to reform your Lordships’ House, as some noble Lords will know to their cost. I was a strong supporter of the agreed Cross-Bench 2012 Bill. I now find it rather odd that the people who want to reform this House, or indeed to abolish it, are the very people who stood in our way on that occasion.