Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I will interpolate a few comments in support of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. This amendment is not, as some are still supposing, a plea to prolong the tenure of some of the existing members of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Rather, it is an attempt to draw attention to the dysfunctional aspects of the existing arrangements affecting Standing Committees, and a plea for some reforms.

I intend to make some brief comments under two headings. The first concerns the logistics affecting the scrutiny of secondary legislation, and the second concerns the nature of the legislation and the kind of scrutiny it requires. It is clear to all who have had experience of these matters that a committee of 11 members that meets once a week is incapable of dealing adequately with the plethora of secondary legislation that comes its way. Its recourse is to pay attention only to the most outstanding issues. The secretariat of the committee sifts the material and, given that in the process every instrument must be studied, this is an extraordinary labour, undertaken by only a handful of people. In short, the secretariat is understaffed.

In 2018, in order to cope with the demands of the secondary legislation arising from the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was split into two and its membership doubled. The existing members were divided between the two sub-committees. I believe that the same is bound to happen again in consequence of the phenomenal number of statutory instruments arising from the intended abolition of retained European Union legislation. In that case, the four surviving members of the committee will be divided between the two sub-committees that will contain 18 newly appointed members, of whom few will have had previous experience of these matters. This will be far from ideal.

The other matter on which I wish to comment is the nature of the scrutiny and the recommendations the committee is empowered to make. The committee labours under the injunction that it cannot call into question matters of policy that supposedly would have been established in primary legislation. In fact, much of what transpires in secondary legislation is the exercise of new policy initiatives. The committee cannot propose amendments to the legislation, and it is even doubtful whether it is empowered to ask the Government to think again. The effect is that we are now suffering from government by diktat.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for raising this issue because it applies also to committees beyond his own. I am chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, and we look forward to welcoming the four new members who are joining us tomorrow. However, the Senior Deputy Speaker said that at some point in 2020, there was an agreement that Peers would serve on a committee for three years. The four people who are being rotated off my committee tomorrow have not served even two years, so clearly, the Committee of Selection can choose to have some flexibility when it suits it. We need to return to this issue.

Next year, my committee will rotate off seven members, including the chair, which is more than 50%. That means there will be nobody on that committee sitting on a committee that was formed less than three years ago. This House has many experts, and I absolutely take the Senior Deputy Speaker’s point that we can survive with the excellent staff we have. We do not want old duffers sitting there for ever, but the House needs to think about the suggestion of a more softly, softly rotation of one-third, one-third, one-third, rather than this up and down. Even though we will not be taking any action on this rotation—and, as I said, I welcome the new members joining my committee tomorrow—I hope that the Committee of Selection will reflect upon this issue.

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, in moving his Motion so ably, has spoken for all of us on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and I hope for many other Members of this House. As the noble Lord said, we all support the premise behind the rules on rotation of membership of our Select Committees. It is a good and sensible procedure for all the reasons he set out, as did the Chairman of the Committee of Selection. However, it is perfectly right and proper that this House must and should continually remind itself of the basic premise and purpose behind this three-year rotation rule. If we find—as in fact I think we do—that it is working in a way not envisaged when it was formulated, we should be prepared to revisit it and correct any perverse impacts.

I am sorry to say that this is what is happening today. The rule is not promoting sensible rotation; it is promoting upheaval, which is a different thing altogether. If we do nothing today, we are locking ourselves into an unhealthy pattern of future appointments to our Select Committees. I do not think we should do that, and nor do I think this is what lay behind the original purpose of the three-year limit on committee membership. As the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has pointed out in relation to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, this locks us into a pattern of “seven, one, three” which would repeat itself indefinitely.

We have today appointed people for three years. There is the possibility of casual vacancies—we all understand that—but we cannot plan on that basis. That is not the basis on which we should decide committee membership. With the greatest of respect to the Chairman of the Committee of Selection and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, whom I hold in the very highest regard, nor can we say that this is a problem for the committees themselves to sort out.

The House is appointing people today for three-year terms, so we are locking ourselves into a pattern of seven, one, three for this committee. I defy anyone listening to this debate to justify that pattern of rotation—but that is what we are contemplating. It might turn slightly differently, but as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, himself pointed out, it is entirely reasonable to remind ourselves of the fourth report of the Procedure and Privileges Committee, which spotted this as a potential problem years ago.

All the noble Lord’s amendment asks the House to do is invite the Committee of Selection to have another look at this pattern of rotational movement of members off our Select Committees. This is not how the rule was intended to operate. As the noble Lord said, this is not a revolutionary moment for your Lordships’ House. It just invites people to think again about the practical impact of this rule and see if there is a better way of avoiding disruption to the work of the Select Committees, because that is what we are talking about.