Companion to the Standing Orders

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My noble friend has very cleverly introduced yet another subject. Of course, it would be entirely up to them whether they went to the Conservative Party conference.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, the whole House will understand that some of the difficulties that have arisen in usual channels and throughout the House as a whole have emanated from the fact that we have too much legislation and too much badly drafted legislation. We all agree—I am sure that the noble Lord will agree—that what we need is more pre-legislative scrutiny. At the moment we have five Bills in pre-legislative scrutiny. Does this mean that we will only have five Bills in the next Queen’s Speech?

[Lord Strathclyde]

The noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition reiterates an old saw. I can assure her that we have not been any more ambitious in this session than her party was in the first Session of the previous Government. There are a good number of Bills in pre-legislative Committee at the moment—the noble Baroness said there were five, I thought there might have been six—I am sure that there will be more, and equally sure that there will be more than five Bills when we get to the Queen’s Speech.