Legislation

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Framlingham on giving us the opportunity to debate this important subject. The bait that he put on the hook may not have attracted very many fish, but it has attracted some very big fish. It has been a good debate with sound advice and recommendations for Governments of all complexions. I am grateful for the kind words that people have said about me personally. I feel like one of those fireworks that everyone thinks has gone out, and you are about to pick it up and throw it away when suddenly it bursts into flame before finally expiring.

Putting this debate in context, legislation is an important function of Parliament but not the only one. There is the key function of holding the Government to account and debating the important issues of the day. In the time that I have been in Parliament, there has been a shift in the centre of gravity away from legislation on the Floors of the Houses towards scrutiny by the Select Committees. I am sure that that is a process which my noble friend would welcome. I recall that in a recent debate my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth noted that Parliament is now arguably at its strongest in modern political history in scrutinising the Executive.

I have enormous sympathy with the proposition that my noble friend has put forward: that there should be reluctance before we legislate and we should do it only when there is no other route. During my time as Leader in another place, I chaired the Cabinet sub-committee responsible for the legislative programme, the PBL, which meant overseeing the process of drawing up the programme of Bills. I can assure my noble friend that under any Government the demand for legislation exceeds the capacity, and it may please him to know that many government Ministers went away empty-handed when they were told there was no slot in the legislative programme for their ambitious social reforms. Part of the job was to ensure not just that the Bills were in good shape but that the totality of the Bills in the programme was commensurate with the capacity of Parliament to scrutinise it.

Government departments have to go through a fairly rigorous process before they are given access to primary legislation; it is a bidding process and quite competitive. One of the things that business managers always do is push back to see whether a policy can be delivered without resorting to legislation, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beith. During my time as Leader of the House in the other place, we were able to sift out a large number of prospective Bills with that particular challenge.

The Government are of course responsible for a lot of the demand for new legislation, but there are others. Our statute book stretches back to the 11th century, so we have inherited quite a lot. Ministers are lobbied on a daily basis to reform different aspects of the law. Indeed, we need look only at your Lordships’ House where 51 noble Lords have sought a place in the ballot for their own Bills, some of which are to be debated tomorrow. As the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, a Finance Bill is required each year to prevent certain taxes from lapsing, and quite often we need emergency legislation to respond to events such as in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Beith, eloquently made the case for a measure of legislation.

However, we also need legislation to achieve the changes set out in a party manifesto. This Government have already legislated for several manifesto commitments. Sound administration, which is mentioned in the second half of my noble friend’s Question, in itself requires good, relevant legislation to underpin it. Indeed, in some cases legislation can be deregulatory or can simply consolidate and simplify existing legislation. The Deregulation Act 2015, for example, contained a wide range of measures to relieve unnecessary burdens on public authorities, or the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 which will improve administration by pushing back on overcentralisation—I am sure my noble friend will welcome those particular pieces of legislation. On top of that, we have regular legislation from the law commissions to update and tidy the statute book.

I know that some of your Lordships have concerns about the quantity of government legislation. That was one of the themes of the excellent debate we had on 9 June when we went around some of this course. I reassure noble Lords that legislation has actually decreased in recent years. Only about 750 statutory instruments were laid in the last Session, fewer than in any other Session since 1997. The average since 1997 is nearly double that, at 1,315. Over the whole of the last Parliament, fewer statutory instruments were laid than in any Parliament since 1997, and of course the last Parliament, unlike most of its predecessors, ran for a full five years. It is a similar story for primary legislation. Twenty-six government Bills were introduced in the previous Session compared with an average of 35 since 1997. The previous Parliament saw fewer government Bills introduced than in any Parliament since 1997—again, despite its longer than average length.

In my experience, as has been said in the debate, Governments are criticised either for legislating too much or for not bringing forward enough legislation, and indeed we had accusations of a zombie Parliament at the tail end of the previous Parliament. From a business manager’s point of view, with fixed-term Parliaments and five equal Sessions, it should prove easier to plan the legislative programme as we move forward rather than worrying that the Prime Minister will push the button after three and a half years and you have to get everything through quickly. However, we also have to be prepared for extra legislation, as we have seen in the wake of the EU referendum, and I will come on to that in a moment.

My noble friend is right to point out that it is important that as well as passing legislation, we continue to deliver good policy. This Government are committed to ensuring that we maintain the right balance between developing new policy and delivering it effectively. Within government and alongside Cabinet committees, the implementation task forces monitor progress on implementing existing policies. The Government also track delivery of progress on their priorities through the single departmental plans. These set out each department’s priority objectives, the key programmes and policies that will deliver them and the metrics by which performance can be measured. These show the importance that the Government attach to ensuring good policy rather than simply reaching for yet another change to the statute book.

The Select Committees—not least the Public Accounts Committee—also have a key role in monitoring existing policies, and I will return to that in a moment. We also have a regulatory policy that requires the equivalent of £3 of regulatory burden on business to be lifted for every £1 of new burdens imposed. That is independently audited and the Government have set a target of lifting £10 billion-worth of burden by 2020.

I shall try to deal with some of the points raised during this interesting debate. I mentioned the number of Bills, but I may have heard someone ask about the number of pages. While the number of Bills and statutory instruments may have dropped, it is asserted that the number of pages has increased. That was true up until 2010, but again in the previous Parliament the number of pages of primary legislation was lower than in any of the three previous Parliaments. Between 1997 and 2010, on average more than 3,000 pages of primary legislation were introduced per year, but between 2010 and 2015, the figure fell to fewer than 2,650.

My noble friend Lord Framlingham made a point about scheduling Bills. It is indeed the case that when he was in another place, in the 2005-10 Parliament, there was regular guillotining of Bills and inadequate time was left. In the 2010 Parliament, it changed. All credit to the Opposition as well as the Government for making that change. Nowadays, programme Motions are increasingly agreed by discussion through the usual channels and it is relatively unusual, although not totally exceptional, for the programme Motion to be voted against because of that discussion. That may not automatically guarantee that there is enough time for debate in Committee, but it shows that a genuine attempt is being made to ensure adequate time.

I think that lessons can be learned from the Housing and Planning Bill, but it is worth making the point that in the first Session of a Parliament there is less opportunity to deal with Bills in draft. The nature of the coalition was such that no one party could pursue its individual policy through the Civil Service, so the first Session was different.

I agree with everything that has been said about the virtues of draft legislation and pre-legislative scrutiny. We are committed to publishing Bills in draft where possible. Examples before the House at the moment are the Investigatory Powers Bill and the draft Wales Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Beith, said quite rightly that the coalition imposed a slightly finer sieve through which legislative proposals had to pass. That was certainly the case and it took slightly more time to develop policy because of the coalition.

The noble Lord asked about the impact of the decision to exit the European Union. All I can say is that, in preparation for the negotiations to leave the EU, the Government are undertaking work across a range of areas, including with their legal teams, to establish how best to deliver the Government’s objectives. That covers the issue that the noble Lord raised about separating domestic law from EU law.

I entirely agree with what has been said about the importance of post-legislative scrutiny. Each government department produces a memo on Acts five years after Royal Assent, which is then passed to the House of Commons but, with relatively few exceptions, the Select Committees have other priorities and most memos have not been scrutinised by Parliament. It is not the fault of the Government, to that extent, that there has not been post-legislative scrutiny; it is simply that Select Committees—for very good reasons, possibly—have other priorities than looking at those reports.

In conclusion, my noble friend has raised an important question, one that Governments grapple with every day, and there is a balance to be struck. Of course, we should not seek endlessly to change the law without stopping to consider whether the current law is working or looking at the impact that there would be on business or civil society. But legislation is often needed simply to make the changes that the people elected this Government to enact. It does not have to and it should not come at the expense of sound administration— on the contrary. It can support and enable effective government.

I heed the warning from my noble friend that we should be mindful about the amount of legislation that we bring forward. I hope he will be comforted that the overall numbers have decreased under a Conservative Government. The lesson that I will take away from this debate is that of the three words used by my noble friend Lord Norton: “Less, but better”. I thank my noble friend and others who have spoken in this valuable debate.

Committee adjourned at 5.47 pm.