Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. The traditional way of ensuring that the executive powers are responsible for their actions and that they are accountable for their effects has been the scrutiny of government legislation during the process of its enactment. However, this way of handling the issues arising out of detailed regulations associated with parliamentary Acts is no longer possible. Insufficient time is available to scrutinise these matters in sessions on the Floor of the House or in Grand Committee.

Increasingly, the regulations are enacted in secondary legislation via powers granted in the primary Acts of Parliament. The scrutiny of the regulations has been assigned to standing committees of both Houses. In the Lords, the recourse has been to assign the task of scrutinising secondary legislation to two committees. The Delegated Powers Committee polices the boundary between primary and secondary legislation, and it is empowered to object to inappropriate delegations of power to Ministers. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee attempts, on a weekly basis, to scrutinise a plethora of instruments produced under those delegated powers. It is a committee of 11 members which is served by a highly competent secretariat. It is overwhelmed by its task, and is able to operate only by virtue of a sifting process undertaken by the secretariat that draws its attention to the most important or the most contentious of the instruments.

It takes time for the members of the committee to gain sufficient knowledge of the nature of the legislative processes that they must scrutinise, and to become familiar with the behaviour of the government departments from which the legislation emanates. The members are subject to the same rule as the members of other standing committees that limits their time on the committee to three years. By the time that they have gained a competence in these matters, they must move on. It should be noted that two-thirds of the current committee is due to retire shortly. This has been brought to the attention of the authorities that govern the membership of committees. The objection that these retirements are bound to prejudice the effectiveness of the committee has been met with the bland assertion that any 12 Members of the House who might serve on the committee should be as good as the ones whom they are liable to replace. This assertion speaks of an old-fashioned tradition of amateurism that dominates our politics.

The government departments doubtless find the scrutiny of the committee irksome but, if they are well appraised of our democratic norms, they are bound to accept it with good grace. However, there is tension, with both sides pushing against each other. The judgment of the two reports that we are debating today is that the Executive have pushed too far and that much of the secondary legislation amounts to government by diktat. Also, a Government who have been in power too long have become impatient with the processes of democratic scrutiny. They have tended increasingly to resort to so-called skeletal legislation, which gives Ministers unbridled powers to create administrative regulations where formerly they would have been expected to enact their policies via primary legislation.

There is also a widening gap between the mythologies of politics and the practicalities of public administration. Many in the Government take an atavistic approach to regulations, which they tend to see as infringements on personal liberties and as impediments to economic enterprise. This contrasts oddly with the Government’s increasing use of secondary delegated legislation. This negative attitude to regulation is common, and has fuelled the agenda of the proponents of Brexit to scrap the retained European Union legislation before the end of this year. The truth is that almost all of it will need to be replicated in British legislation, which will be a wholly unnecessary exercise that will pre-empt the resources of the Civil Service. The burden of the scrutinising committees will be markedly increased, as will the objections to the undemocratic administrative steamroller.

The reports from the two Lords committees call for changes within the existing framework that might serve to redress the balance between government and Parliament in favour of Parliament. I have to wonder whether these changes will be sufficient. It appears that something more radical is required to cope with the mass of secondary legislation and to bring it all under proper scrutiny. Perhaps committees could be appointed that monitor and scrutinise the secondary legislation that emerges from each government department, and they should alert the rest of the House to whatever they find to be amiss, with greater powers to hold them in check. The Commons already has committees that shadow each department. These might take a more active role in scrutinising secondary legislation. The advantage of having such committees in the Lords is that they would be further from the reach of the Government than their Commons counterparts. Therefore, they would be able to conduct a more critical and effective oversight of the legislation.

Coronavirus Bill

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyrie]

I gladly agree to what has been proposed from the Labour Front Bench.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, my colleague and noble and learned friend Lord Falconer has provided a cue that enables me to talk briefly about Schedule 8 to the Bill, which would allow a patient to be detained in hospital—or sectioned, as the phrase is—under the provisions of the Mental Health Act, on the say-so of a single doctor. The Bill would also provide for a period of extension to be extended, if I understand correctly, by the decision of a single person.

To put these matters in context, we might look back to the late Victorian era, when a problematic member of a family could be incarcerated in an asylum at the insistence of that family. They could be left there for a lifetime, and forgotten by the family, who could thereby avoid the stigma of having mental illness in their midst.

That stigma has been alleviated, but it still exists. The sufferer of mental ill-health may be a fragile young person, whose aberrant behaviour has been in response to some dysfunctional family dynamics. To avoid the hazard of inappropriately sectioning a patient in such circumstances, it is now understood that a careful assessment is required, which must involve more than one expert and judgment. This is not a fail-safe procedure, and I have been told of its failure in some tragic circumstances. Sectioning a person under the Mental Health Act can injure a person for a lifetime. Therefore, I wish to sound a note of caution, if not alarm, at the provisions in Schedule 8 to the Bill.

This is one of only many hazards present in the Bill, and I wish to make a more general comment about such legislation. Some speakers in yesterday’s debate expressed astonishment and admiration at the speed with which the Bill has been assembled to meet an unexpected crisis. However, it must surely have been sitting on the shelf for a considerable length of time. It is the product of the kind of contingency planning that we can expect of any competent system of public administration. There is no lesser need for contingency planning to cope with the public health crisis than there is for detailed military planning. However, whereas military planning is bound to remain largely secret, there is no need for such secrecy in the plans to address a public health crisis. The contingency planning that underlines this Bill ought to be permanently in the public domain, and its clauses ought to have been considered in detail, in the absence of any need to invoke them.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I think the House might be keen for the noble Lord to conclude his remarks so that we can proceed at pace with this emergency legislation and hear other noble Lords’ contributions.

Syria: UK Military Action

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not favour extending our strategic bombing campaign to Syria. I am well apprised of the logic that declares that if we should be bombing ISIL in Iraq, we should also be bombing it in Syria, but my conclusion is that we should be bombing it in neither. There are better ways of defeating ISIL.

Bombing is a blunt and heavy-handed way of attacking the enemy. It causes grave collateral damage. It not only damages the military environment, but kills civilians and destroys their livelihoods. The civilian population in the areas controlled by ISIL should not be mistaken for the jihadists. They may be fellow travellers of ISIL, or they may have opportunistically allied themselves to the dominant power within their domain, but they should not be counted with the enemy. If they are to suffer heavy aerial bombardment, the likelihood is that they will become aggrieved and overtly hostile to the bombers. This is not the outcome we should wish for. If ISIL were to be obliterated by an irresistible force—it is doubtful that an aerial bombardment could amount to this—there would be a vacuum, which would serve only to attract further corruption and turmoil. We know this from repeated experience.

How, then, should ISIL be defeated? I propose that it should be corralled and starved of resources. ISIL is still managing to profit from the abundant oil in the region. It continues to import arms and munitions to supplement those it has captured from the Iraqi forces, which were a bequest of the Americans. It is this porosity that allows ISIL to flourish and it must be stopped. If this could be achieved, ISIL could be reduced to a small rump and the failure of its monstrous ambitions would be clear for all to see. The hard tissue surrounding the infection would be allowed to last for as long as the infection lasts, but one could be assured that, eventually, it would dissolve.

How should this outcome be achieved? Apart from taking the measures to stem the flows that I have described, we should provide enhanced logistic support to the native forces resisting ISIL. The support need not be confined to the materiel of warfare. We should also provide a modicum of personnel to be embedded in the native forces. We might remember how this was done during the First World War, when we effectively supported Arab insurgents who were intent on defeating a foreign hegemony. We might also remember some of the lessons from our colonial history. A notable example already alluded to is the defeat of the communist insurgents in the Malaysian peninsula in the 1950s, for which Field Marshal Gerald Templer deserves credit. Had the Americans heeded the lessons from that campaign, the war in Vietnam might have had a very different outcome. Instead, they resorted to strategic bombing as a means of defeating the enemy.

Such lessons as those of the Vietnam War are hard to learn and they are quickly forgotten. The Russians ought to have learned similar lessons from their incursions in Afghanistan and Chechnya, but they have not. The presence of the Russians in Syria is now a complicating factor that has to be addressed. We need to co-operate with them to remove Assad, but in a way that implies at least a partial preservation of their interests. Embarking on a bombing campaign parallel to theirs will hardly assist this objective.

Iraq

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, 75 years ago, Britain faced up to an evil that was threatening to dominate Europe. Now we are facing an evil of a similar dimension that is afflicting the Middle East. We are reluctant to face up to it, but we must do so. I am sure that, together with our allies, we will have the power to defeat this evil. If it becomes necessary or even advantageous to commit troops to the region, I believe that we should not hesitate to do so. Our forces would need to engage the enemy wherever they might be found.

Seventy-five years ago, the threat was an external one. Those who had sympathised with the fascist ideology had been effectively sidelined and neutralised. Today, the circumstances are different. The jihadist movement has attracted a substantial number of British citizens. At least 500 have joined the movement in Syria and Iraq, and there may be three times that number. It is vital that we should understand the attractions of the ideology and that we should find ways of neutralising it. However, some of the measures that have been proposed of late would surely exacerbate the problem.

It has been proposed by the Prime Minister that British citizens who have travelled to Iraq and Syria to support the jihadist cause should be prevented from returning to this country and that their passports should be confiscated, thereby rendering them stateless. An obvious objection to such a measure is that it would conflict with international law. There are other objections that ought to be considered. There would be a danger of creating a body of stateless persons who would be bound to sustain themselves by acts of terrorism. They would become a global menace. There is also a domestic danger. Many of the jihadists have British relatives who strongly oppose their brutal and alien cause. Nevertheless, these people would also become alienated from our culture if their relatives were summarily deprived of their rights of citizenship.

What should be done to the returning jihadists? The answer is that we should handle them carefully and with discrimination. We should endeavour to distinguish between those who are dangerous to us and those who have been temporarily misled. To achieve that, we need to deploy adequate and appropriate resources within the border agency and elsewhere. The returning jihadists would be thoroughly vetted and debriefed. If they have been only weakly complicit in the activities of insurgents, they should be exonerated. However, if they have committed atrocities, they should be charged with war crimes. In short, they should be treated in much the same manner as the citizens of the defeated German nation were treated at the end of the Second World War.

Liaison Committee: Third Report

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bowness]

My Lords, I wish to endorse the words of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, the chairman of the European Union Select Committee, and to agree with my noble friend Lord Jopling. I confirm that the views they have expressed are those widely held by the members of the main committee and its sub-committees. Having said that, I do not intend to indulge in special pleading for any particular part of the European Union Select Committee, and I am sure that if the recommendation is approved today, it will find a way so far as is possible to continue its work at the level and standards that have been achieved under its successive chairmen.

However, I have two observations to make. First, we are being asked to reduce the number of sub-committees against the background of the express desire of the Minister for Europe that parliamentary scrutiny of European legislation should be improved. That is a matter for Parliament and not for Government, but it is an objective which presumably we all share, whatever our views of the European Union. Are noble Lords in the House today quite certain that that exhortation to do more can be achieved with fewer resources, and has there been—as we frequently ask the European Commission—an appropriate impact assessment? Secondly, it was the Government that chose to increase the number of Members of your Lordships’ House, and quite reasonably the House now has to find ways of ensuring that as many of our number as possible are able to play a part in the committee work of the House.

As I read it, the Leader’s Group recommended an expansion of committee work with additional resources and not at the expense of existing committees. I would submit that it is not really possible to expand the House by the numbers it has and, despite the House Committee’s desire to hold or reduce costs over the current planning period, to improve scrutiny and increase the amount of committee work. The Leader’s Group recommended additional expenditure of just over 1 per cent of existing expenditure. Moreover, if I read the report correctly, the cost of the two extra committees would be some £450,000, which, if the Sunday Times is correct—I cannot be sure of that, of course—is what we will save as a result of not sitting an extra week at Easter.

I wish that we could have had a comprehensive debate about the working practices report, especially those parts concerned with resources, rather than the piecemeal approach of a recommendation here and a recommendation there. I hope that it is not too late for that to happen.

[Viscount Hanworth]

My Lords, the Liaison Committee has proposed to curtail the work of the Science and Technology Committee by effectively halving the time and resources that are devoted to it. I should like to declare in the strongest possible manner that to do so would be a misguided action. I would go so far as to say that in the perception of many people, it would be an act of vandalism. It appears from the report of the Liaison Committee that it sees the role of Select Committees primarily as that of contributing to the House’s scrutiny of the Government’s legislative and executive activities. It proposes to curtail the work of the Science and Technology Committee in order to make way for two new committees which might serve the purpose of engaging Members of the House more fully in committee work. Be that as it may, the fact is that the Science and Technology Committee plays a much larger role than has been attributed to it by the Liaison Committee.

Ever since they have been published on the web, and no doubt for much longer than that, the reports of the committee have disseminated scientific information and judicious opinion on scientific matters to a very wide readership. I have read the submission of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, to the Liaison Committee and it is my opinion, at least in that context, that he has been far too modest in proclaiming the importance of the Science and Technology Committee. However, today he has left us in no doubt at all about its importance. I am sure that the reports produced by the committee have contributed greatly to the reputation of the House of Lords as a forum for serious and informed debate. If the committee’s activities are curtailed, the House will suffer a commensurate loss of reputation. I do not think that I can express the matter more clearly than that.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I think it might be useful to hear from these Benches and from another side of the argument. One of the essences of science is the requirement to look at all the different arguments. The Liaison Committee has had to look at a number of difficult problems, and as a member of that committee, it is important for me to bring them to your Lordships’ attention.

The first point is that we do not have sufficient resources, financially or otherwise, to service all the areas that Members quite properly wish to address. That is a fact. On the island where I spend as much time as I can, when I look across the border I see that people have had their pensions and salaries reduced by about 10 per cent overall. We have escaped that on this side of the water, but we have not completely escaped the need to address the problem of austerity. We simply do not have the money to devote to all the things we would like to do.

The second point is that we have substantially increased the number of Members of your Lordships’ House. Those Members are bringing with them considerable expertise. In some areas they may even be bringing more up-to-date expertise than that of those who have been here for some time, so they should not be undervalued. In that context, we need to find a way to move forward. It is absolutely right that we should dwell on our reputation from the past, but it is equally important to continue to develop and to move forward, otherwise we will simply become stuck.

One crucial area of development is that of information and communications technology. We have a Communications Committee; it is neither a Select Committee nor a sessional committee, but in effect a kind of ad hoc committee on communications. It is quite clear that over the past year or two, that committee’s understanding of its remit has developed. It now looks not just at questions of the content of communication and broadcast, but at the technology of broadband and digital communication. Whenever, as a member of the committee, I asked whether there had been some kind of formal communication between it and the Science and Technology Committee about this, I was told that there had not. That was a failing on the part of both committees. If the Science and Technology Committee was not consulting with the Communications Committee, and if that committee was not making requests to consult with the Science and Technology Committee, both of them were failing to look to the future. I have to say that science and technology is also social science and social technology, and we have had only a very modest amount of research in those areas by the Science and Technology Committee. There was a recent rather good report on behaviour change, but the overall amount has been very modest.

It is not enough for us simply to say, “We want to keep what we have and we want more”, because we do not have the resources and we do have new people with their thoughts and ideas. It is therefore not enough simply to say, when it comes to the European Committee, “We have got seven sub-committees, but we want eight, with one on foreign affairs”. We do not have the money for that.

So, what do we do? The proposal is to continue with the Communications Committee, and a specific proposal that I myself put to the Liaison Committee was that we should ask it to consult with the Science and Technology Committee over the coming year so that areas of overlap can be accommodated in the work of the Communications Committee, and indeed that its name should be changed to exemplify the fact that there is a science and technology component to its work. It is not a matter of shutting down but of opening up and of further understanding. Here is an area of science and technology that is extremely relevant. When you go out on the streets, you can see that young people are more aware in their daily lives of the communications aspects of science and technology than of any other. Again, it is not a matter of closing down but of developing.

There is absolutely no reason why some of the ad hoc committees, which will be relatively short term, should not pick up on issues of science, technology and medicine. Nothing should restrict them just because they are ad hoc committees. Indeed, in pre- and post-legislative scrutiny, there is no reason why some things that they pick up should be in these areas.

I appeal to noble Lords to understand the dilemma of a Liaison Committee, acting on behalf of the House and with modest resources, that has to deal with a substantial increase in the number of Members, an ever increasing amount of material that we could reasonably, legitimately, profitably—and in a way that enhances the reputation of the House—consider, but that also has to address the reality of the boundaries and limits imposed on us. I trust that however we choose to vote, the conversation will continue so that we continue to do the best we can for the House while addressing all the pressures that are on the Liaison Committee and the other committees that have to take responsibility.