Commencement Orders

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, for this interesting short debate about the statute book, which is indeed littered with legislation that has never been commenced. I was delighted to learn—for the first time, to my shame—of the important commission and the forthcoming report.

I think that this commission was set up by the Conservative Party but this is very much a non-political point and I would probably sign up to everything in the report—I do not know but I will certainly take a closer look now. As has been noted, Governments of all persuasions are equally culpable. It is an issue that I have thought about in the past in relation to our citizens’ trust and the relationship that we have with them because in Parliament we quite rightly spend a lot of time debating legislation and sometimes we incite the interest and concern of the public. The public know about these things going through Parliament and, understandably, they automatically assume that the Acts will be implemented but, as has been pointed out, far too many of them are not. Were the public to know this, they would be deeply concerned. This is one of the many things that we have to do in order to restore confidence with the public.

Interesting things have been said about the time that we as parliamentarians take in scrutinising legislation and, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, there is a contrast between what we are doing here today—having a very leisurely, enjoyable debate—and what is happening in the Chamber, and we really have to do something about that. Interestingly, someone told me that they overheard a colleague in the other place talking about a part of a piece of legislation that had not been implemented. It was said that this particular section of the legislation was introduced via an amendment in your Lordships’ House and the person down the other end of the Corridor was heard to say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter because they won’t implement it anyway”. That is an interesting view of what can happen and we really must do something about it.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, suggested that there should be a Joint Committee of both Houses to look at the issue, which is potentially interesting, but I happen to think that there are two ways forward: first, if every piece of legislation, especially every constitutional piece of legislation, was subject to proper pre-legislative scrutiny, that should obviate the need for that sort of committee; secondly, noble Lords may recall that the Leader’s Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, who is not in his place today, recommended that there should be a committee on standards in legislation. If that sort of committee were to come into force, it could deal with some of these issues.

As I said, I probably would sign up to many of the recommendations of the report that has been mentioned and I think I would personally favour the recommendation made by the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that today. But I would like to take this slightly further. The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, mentioned statutory instruments and spoke of his experience on what used to be called the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Of course, I well understand that not every statutory instrument deals with enactment or commencement orders but, having looked at the tables that were helpfully produced by the Library, they clearly demonstrate not only that there are far too many SIs but that they have become much more complex over the years. For example, in 1975 there were 1,340 SIs, which amounted to only 8,379 pages, whereas in 2009 there were slightly more SIs—1,420—but there were 11,414 pages. They have become a lot more complex and Governments of all persuasions these days are relying far too much on statutory instruments as a consequence of framework legislation.

I go back to the need that is clearly demonstrated so often for pre-legislative scrutiny and well drafted legislation that knows what it is doing and why it is there. There is much to be done in improving our system of government and the laws that come before us. We also have a duty as parliamentarians to ensure that the structures and systems that we follow are more effective in ensuring that we really can deliver what citizens think we are delivering and, therefore, regain their trust.