Preparing Legislation for Parliament (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, it is a very difficult experience for me to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I look forward with great interest to the Minister’s response to him. I have known the Minister for a very long time and I have great respect for his debating skills, but he has to produce quite an answer for us this evening because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, brings expertise, experience and powers of persuasion to your Lordships’ House which not many others of us can hope to replicate.

I was extremely impressed with the introduction to this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, who, of course, had a major role in the production of these reports over the years and of the whole series that he described—these are just two of four. This is a whole comprehensive analysis of the way in which Parliament does business. They contain a formidable and forensic analysis of a major weakness of our Parliament, one that Members on all sides of the House have referred to today—I think particularly of the very interesting description by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, of their severity.

We have also had the benefit of four members of the committee bringing different aspects of their experience to bear on this problem—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, of course; my noble friend Lord Beith with his long experience of analysis of legislation in the Commons; the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, as a former Minster; and the noble Lord, Lord Norton, himself—so we heard a whole range of views. The approach has been so comprehensive over the years, and now with these two reports, that it is very difficult to find any fault in the reports. A great deal of thought can be given to what we can do to implement their recommendations.

For example, I have not been around as long as other Members in either House, but I remember the days when we used to have a Green Paper, a White Paper, occasionally a draft Bill and then the Bill itself. Then, of course, there has been the suggestion that we should have post-legislative scrutiny afterwards. When did we last have an effective Green Paper process, let alone a good White Paper that was sufficiently comprehensive to deal with all the issues that were going to be raised in the draft Bill? These reports are extremely timely and very relevant, of course, after the bruising experience we have had—all of us, in both Houses, with primary and secondary legislation—during the Brexit process. As some of us anticipated early on, all too often we have been urged to cut corners and short-circuit normal procedures in the interests of expediency, with no regard for the very dangerous precedents we might be setting, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, just said.

My prime example is one that has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. Curiously, it is that of a Private Member’s Bill handed down by Defra, which Ministers feared would not be handled at speed if, in the Brexit shambles, it was processed in the correct way, as a hybrid Bill. He referred to the report we produced in the Delegated Powers Committee. I want to quote one sentence from the conclusion, which he did not mention, that demonstrates what our committee felt:

“It is an attempt, upon flimsy grounds, to set aside the procedures which Parliament has put in place to protect the interests of citizens who would be unfairly affected by legislation”.


At this point I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, the chairman of that committee. I think he will understand that when he took over as chairman from the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, some of us had some concern and just a little hesitation: after a distinguished ministerial career, we wondered whether he would be quite as forthright and robust as the noble Baroness. I have to say he has been more than, and has been extremely effective as our leader and chairman. I am delighted to pay tribute to him as I come to the end of my service on that committee.

This is an exceptional but demonstrably vivid example of the way in which the Executive have been trying to undermine parliamentary scrutiny and the opportunities in this case for public engagement, but the charge sheet is collecting other examples. I will concentrate on the delegated powers report, because of my DPRR Committee work, but my approach to both sets of recommendations owes much to my previous membership of the Joint Committee on Conventions of 2006. Here, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. He emphasised that holding the Executive to account is the prime function of Parliament and of course, that Joint Committee of both Houses looked very carefully at the scrutiny role of your Lordships’ House in that context. Central to its recommendations were some extremely important suggestions about how we in this House should operate. It had the endorsement of MPs as well, as I shall come to in a moment. For today’s debate, I shall mention a couple of points.

In updating the so-called Salisbury/Addison convention, the committee was unable to make a definitive recommendation on the status of legislation brought forward by a minority Government. Having identified Bills introduced by an incoming majority Government as “manifesto Bills”, which deserve respectful treatment by the Lords, obviously the status of a Government whose manifesto had not been supported by a majority was less easily defined, so we were not able to make a recommendation on that point. However, the committee made a very robust recommendation about secondary legislation. I am sorry to read it at length but I think it is extremely important in the context of today’s debate.

“The Government appear to consider that any defeat of an SI by the Lords is a breach of convention. We disagree. It is not incompatible with the role of a revising chamber to reject an SI, since (a) the Lords (rightly or wrongly) cannot exercise its revising role by amending the SI or in any other way, (b) the Government can bring the SI forward again immediately, with or without substantive amendment, as described by the Clerk of the Parliaments, and (c) the power to reject SIs gives purpose and leverage to scrutiny by the Joint Committee on SIs, and by the new Lords Committee on the Merits of SIs. The Government’s argument that ‘it is for the Commons, as the source of Ministers’ authority, to withhold or grant their endorsement of Ministers’ actions’ is an argument against having a second chamber at all, and we reject it”.


That is the context of these reports from the Constitution Committee and it should be noted, first, that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was then Leader of the Opposition, so he was a vigorous and vociferous supporter of that view. Secondly, the committee’s report and recommendations were unanimously agreed by both Houses. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has consistently argued, not least this afternoon, there is obviously a democratic deficit here, one which has been brought into sharp relief in recent years, especially during the tsunami of Brexit secondary legislation in the last 18 months. As an example of the totally inadequate care taken in drafting major legislation, reporting on the Agriculture Bill our committee described the number of delegated powers as “ominous” and concluded that,

“it cannot even be said that the devil is in the detail, because the Bill contains so little detail”.

The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, our chairman, referred to that Bill earlier.

In passing, I also strongly endorse the views expressed by the noble and learned Lords, Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Judge, and the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, about the extent to which the use of “guidance” seemed to have slipped into this system: it seems very often to be given the same significance and credibility as ministerial assurances to us as an attempt at more substantial orders. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, referred to the use of “for example”: this seems to be one step further.

In the report we are discussing today, the Constitution Committee is characteristically forthright, saying:

“If the Government uses delegated powers to propose secondary legislation which makes technical provision within the boundaries of the policy and has previously been agreed in primary legislation, Parliament is unlikely to wish to block statutory instruments. However, we are concerned”—


and this report has shown—

“that these boundaries are not always respected and that ministers may seek to use statutory instruments to give effect to significant policy decisions. Without a genuine risk of defeat, and no amendment possible, Parliament is doing little more than rubber-stamping the Government’s secondary legislation. This is constitutionally unacceptable … If the Government’s current approach to delegated legislation persists, or the situation deteriorates further, the established constitutional restraint shown by the House of Lords towards secondary legislation may not be sustained”.


As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has said, this is a committee representing all parts of your Lordships’ House. This is not just the opposition parties, or just those who have never had experience of ministerial office; it is people of real experience from all sides of the House who are putting down a very important marker for us all. I remind your Lordships that this report was published as long ago as 20 November last year, since when I think it would be fair to say that the situation has undoubtedly deteriorated further. The avalanche of ill-considered Brexit-related SIs is really extraordinary.

The response of the then Leader of the Commons was dated 25 January. I entirely understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that the committee did not find that answer very acceptable. Had there been another answer since then as a result of some of the recent experiences we have all had, we would find it even more complacent. In her letter, she wrote:

“The Government agrees that all those involved in the preparation of legislation have a responsibility to assess thoroughly whether a proposed grant of a delegated power is appropriate. The Government will continue to work to ensure that this is something that is properly scrutinised during the bill preparation phase so that powers are included in bills only where appropriate and where their use can be justified to Parliament”.


The noble Lord, Lord Cope, described that response as cavalier. He is always so tactful, having had experience in both Houses; now we would say something even stronger as a result of our more recent experience. Subsequent experience of the balance between primary and secondary legislative proposals from her ministerial colleagues suggests that her attempt at reassurance was entirely without foundation. The noble Lords, Lord Trefgarne and Lord Blencathra, have had such a difficult time in their respective committees dealing with the SIs that have come forward in recent months.

Members of your Lordships’ House may not be aware that some MPs are also increasingly appreciative of the increasing deficiency in the balance of power between the Executive and legislature in this respect. There has been widespread welcome among MPs for early sight of DPRRC recommendations. Indeed, they have used them in Bill Committees there. Although this was a pragmatic response to vital Brexit legislation, I am sure that the enthusiastic use of these reports will ensure that they continue to be supplied in good order and good time to Members of the other place.

Members of the other place have also observed in the context of Brexit the unfortunate precedents which could be established in the name of expediency. The series of crash-out no-deal SIs that came before both Houses as the then 31 March deadline loomed persuaded many MPs, as well as Peers, that we were all being treated as voting lobby fodder. In that context I particularly admire the work done under very difficult circumstances by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, and his colleagues in the SLSC.

What is to be done? Ideally both Houses, perhaps with a Joint Select Committee, will have to address these issues. However, given the constitutional challenges now threatening the Commons and likely to preoccupy MPs for many weeks to come—as we have again been reminded today—maybe your Lordships’ House should take the lead. Given the widespread acknowledgment that we have given much more attention to this scrutiny role, that may well be logical and acceptable to all sides.

Personally, I hope that we can look again at modifying the all-or-nothing bilateral choice between acceptance and rejection of SIs. Perhaps we could again look at instituting a Motion that asks the Executive, with our reasons given, to reconsider. That would reduce the need for extreme veto and probably phase out meaningless regret Motions. As my noble friend Lord Beith said, regret Motions do not really have a happy history. What is surely unarguable is that the clear, consistent and compelling recommendations of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee cannot be left to gather dust on some bureaucratic shelves in Westminster or Whitehall.