House of Lords: Working Practices

Baroness Andrews Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, it is a rare pleasure to follow the Leader of the House and particularly to welcome his commitment to a swift response to the report from the group of which I had the privilege to be a member. It was an harmonious committee and we benefited hugely from the inclusive and incisive leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad. Very distinguished members of it from all across the House are flanking me at this very moment. I see this report, informed as it is by the views of your Lordships, as a timely contribution to the current debate on the future of this House as an effective, indispensable revising Chamber.

Before I turn to the few key elements of the report, I want to focus on myself. I have to declare a second interest, which is now as a member of the Joint Select Committee which will look at the reform of your Lordships’ House. This is a very great honour and responsibility. I should also say that, after the many good wishes that were offered in the debate last week, it is beginning to feel like winning a place on Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the Arctic. Without wishing to recall the rollicking style of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, as he wound up, our great helmsman, my noble friend Lord Richard, who I think is in his place, will bring us safely into harbour. Our little craft will also benefit enormously from the clarity, historical reference, political wisdom and objectivity of the views of your Lordships in the debate last week.

What we did not hear in that debate was the sense that nothing must change. In fact, there were many references to the need for change—including references to the work of this committee. Indeed, in sharp contrast with the White Paper on Lords reform, our committee started with first and fundamental principles: the functions of this House as a revising Chamber, which assists without threatening the primacy of the other place, and how best to improve on them. I hope that we have been able to show that by modernising our working practices we will reinforce this proper role of the House and strengthen Parliament as a whole.

In contrast to the White Paper and the House of Lords reform Bill, we did not start with a best guess about what should be done and did not specialise in heroic assertions. Instead, we identified how we could more effectively bring collective experience to interrogate Ministers and policy and how we might improve our scrutiny of legislation and extend our influence by the urgency and content of our debates. In doing that, it addressed some of the systemic issues in the relationship between the Houses, not least in the inherent difficulties that the other place has in challenging and changing premature and often, frankly, unworkable legislation.

As we know, too often it is left to this House to dig the Government out of a pit of their own making. This is not to make moral or political judgments about the other place. It is simply a fact of history, time and its procedures. Finding ways to strengthen that, rather than damage the alliance between the two Houses, is the task of this generation in this House. But if we are to continue to win the compelling case for ourselves as an expert and independent revising Chamber, we have to address all the aspects of the working practices of our House which make us less relevant, less effective, less visible and less heard than we could be. This has been done before in this House in many different ways, but in this report we bring together a greater narrative of what it will mean to make use of all our resources: our time, our space and our unique range of expertise. This is urgent at a time when the House is larger and therefore fewer expert voices find opportunities to be heard.

Let me start briefly with that part of the report which deals with opportunities for better debate, especially Back-Bench debate. The question we sought to answer is: when we are supposed to be so expert, why are the opportunities to challenge or explore policy issues so limited and frankly so random? The recommendation we make for the Back-Bench committee is self-evident. That committee should now manage the time and topicality of Back-Bench debates, when that experience can be better deployed. That is also why it is right, uncomfortable and difficult though it might be, that the House considers its working hours, to make more room and space for Members to be heard.

I hope that in the same spirit the House will also look kindly on the recommendations for two additional Select Committees. Our Select Committees are masterclasses in how expertise can be made accessible but there are whole areas of policy that we do not touch, and we not have a cross-cutting facility to enable us to consider whether or not the Government are internally contradicting themselves.

The test will be whether we can have a greater impact on the quality of legislation. However, there is a prior step. Ministers need to acknowledge that much legislation leaves departments unfit for purpose and sometimes contradictory to purpose. The spectre of the Public Bodies Bill is the worst, but by no means the only, example in this Session alone of legislation conceived in haste and abandoned in humiliation. That is why the committee recommended a legislative standards committee that would require Ministers to get a grip on the legislative process inside their departments. That may seem like a counsel of perfection—I have some experience of this—but it is significant that Ministers have never been challenged to show, for example, why legislation is the only course possible. Is that not a revolutionary idea?

I hope that it will be hard to argue against that innovation in principle and impossible to argue against the next, to which the noble Lord has already drawn attention to. I refer to pre-legislative scrutiny. Although that habit is growing, we could have avoided some car crashes this year, notably on the Health and Social Care Bill. From there, it is a small step to make the case for post-legislative scrutiny, which is long overdue. For too long, Ministers have got away with thinking that the Bill is the end of a process rather than the beginning of the impact on individuals and communities. We would do communities a great service if we were to look systematically at that.

My final point is about self-regulation, a fundamental point that runs through the report as a seamless argument for the genius of this House in the way that we conduct ourselves. However, it is under strain because of the sudden expansion of the House and the new geopolitics of coalition. It was in that context that the question of the limits to self-regulation and the role of the Speaker was raised by the committee itself, and its importance was confirmed by the fact that it was on this subject that we received the majority of responses. The committee rehearsed the options thoroughly because we know that self-regulation is a rare prize that should not be compromised lightly. I believe that we have put forward an honourable compromise for a trial period. I hope that it is something that the House can agree with.

I know that many noble Lords will not agree with many of the recommendations—maybe some will agree with none of them—and, because personal circumstances differ, life could be made more difficult for some of us and for Ministers. In fact, I am partly in favour of making life difficult for Ministers. Ultimately, though, I hope that the main recommendations will be accepted because your Lordships need to take control of their future, to recognise and enhance what we do best and to make an irresistible case for this Chamber as a continuing, revising part of Parliament. I believe that the report does that, and I hope that your Lordships will be able to support it.