Parliamentary Proceedings: Statistics

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate—I am sure that the Minister will say the same. I certainly welcome the confession by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that the title of the debate requesting statistics was in fact a ruse to raise a broader and wider issue of some significance. After his many years at the highest levels of the Civil Service, perhaps we should ask whether the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has picked up some political tricks in your Lordships’ House or has imported some clever “'Yes Minister” tricks to your Lordships’ House from the Civil Service. Either way, we are grateful to him as this is a welcome opportunity to debate our core functions, role and work and how we could perhaps do it better.

I want to raise three points. The first is about the value of parliamentary scrutiny. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, commented that Bills are seen as being absolute when they leave the department rather than when they leave Parliament. Noble Lords who were present for the Minister’s response in the previous debate will unfortunately have seen that in practice.

This House takes its responsibilities as a scrutinising and revising Chamber very seriously. We act within the conventions that guide and inform the role of a second Chamber, although that role of scrutiny and revision is not always welcomed by Governments. The work we undertake is at the heart of a functioning democracy; it is the process of scrutiny, challenge and holding the Government to account. Again looking at the previous debate, scrutiny is not just a tool to provide Governments with a fig leaf of legitimacy for legislation, but neither should it be a Trojan horse for political challenge.

Other noble Lords may disagree or agree on this, but there is a disappointing political trend that some take the view that any challenge from your Lordships’ House is some kind of constitutional outrage. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, referred to this on the tax credits SI and Strathclyde. We have seen sabre-rattling around the tax credits issue and on Brexit. We have heard that the Lords should be abolished or suspended and there have been bizarre calls for 1,000 new Peers. I have to admit that I have found this dialogue very frustrating. Debate on serious issues needs perspective and adult consideration, not threats. Let us put on record again, in order to be absolutely clear, that we will always continue to act within the conventions of this House. We value and respect our role as a scrutinising and revising Chamber. We fulfil our responsibilities with diligence. We will not exceed our responsibilities, but neither will we be bullied into abdicating them. We will do our job: no more and no less than that.

We have also looked at who has responsibility for scrutiny. Obviously it is a matter for Parliament. Perhaps we have been little hard on the other place tonight, because this House has a special responsibility in that, unlike the other place, scrutiny is our sole focus without the competing demands of constituency representation. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lady Taylor said, the Government also have a responsibility. Too often we have seen badly drafted legislation on which the Minister responsible has been unable to provide adequate information to allow for proper consideration. When we had the Trade Union Bill, there was no impact assessment until after Second Reading in your Lordships’ House, yet it had been through all its stages in the House of Commons. That was clearly against Cabinet Office guidelines. However, we can scrutinise well. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, used the then Investigatory Powers Bill as an example in terms of the scrutiny it received. The parallel Select Committee set up by your Lordships’ House to look at the then Trade Union Bill brought cross-party forensic examination to the most vexatious and politically controversial parts of that Bill.

Can we do better? Yes, of course. In tonight’s debate we have heard that we want to do better within our remit. A number of suggestions have been made. I shall concentrate on a couple in the time available. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, suggested, slightly tongue-in-cheek, I think, stating the time for debate in the Explanatory Notes. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and my noble friend Lady Taylor indicated, time alone is not an accurate indicator of the quality of scrutiny that a Bill receives. We can all think of examples, some fairly recent, where debate has been long but wisdom short—and 10 people making a similar point is not 10 times the scrutiny of only one noble Lord making that point.

There are other examples where a short, focused speech has raised a new perspective or issue. The noble Lord, Lord Ryder, shared his personal experiences in Committee. I was a member on the government side on the National Minimum Wage Bill. The Conservative Opposition tried to prevent the minimum wage coming in and kept us up not just late into the night but through the night into the next day for the longest ever sitting of a House of Commons committee.

The substantive point made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, was about being able to assess whether a Bill has been properly examined. I think he is on to something here. One of the things I would find really useful—the then Housing and Planning Bill is a really good example of this—is that when a Bill comes from the other place to your Lordships’ House, it would be nice to know easily, at a glance, what parts of the Bill have been added on without being debated. A number of clauses were added to the Housing and Planning Bill on Report in the House of Commons which were never debated. Had we had that information easily available, we could have focused our attention and energies on the parts of the Bill that had had no consideration.

I shall make one other very brief point about the consideration of secondary legislation. This is going to be particularly important as we move forward on Brexit. Our committees on SIs are invaluable, and if we are going to have an avalanche of thousands of SIs to give effect to EU legislation, we need to consider how best to do this. If we fail, Parliament could stand accused of being little better than a sausage machine where all the ingredients are tipped in at one end and emerge from the other end wrapped up without any thought or modification.

This has been a useful debate. I hope the Minister will be able to respond positively. We value what we do, we know we can do it better and we would like to do it better.