Social Security (Up-rating of Benefits) Bill

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, it is very late and I have not participated in the Bill before, so I shall be extremely brief. My interest is not so much in the matter we are debating; I understand that people feel very strongly about it, on both sides, but I have no particular dog in that fight. My intervention comes because I am chairman of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee of your Lordships’ House. As is well known, we produce a report every week where we try to provide a commentary on the instruments that are coming up through the process so that your Lordships have some guide—some thoughts, some suggestions—about areas that might usefully be probed as we undertake our primary role, which is of scrutiny and the ability to hold the Government to account.

I have read my noble friend the Leader’s letter with great care and I recognise and accept the seriousness of the points she makes and has spoken about this evening; that we are a self-regulating House and how this amendment, if I may summarise what she is saying, is pushing the envelope too far. I introduce to the House the concept of Isaac Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I think Newton’s third law of motion may explain some of the background to the issues that we are debating so strongly tonight.

The SLSC, along with many other Members of your Lordships’ House, is increasingly concerned about the use—some might say misuse or misapplication—of secondary legislation, which, as all Members of your Lordships’ House know, and the Government very conveniently find, has a very much lower level of scrutiny. So, in summary, while my noble friend may be pushing the envelope, I think the Government have been pushing the envelope in recent months and years a great deal. What do I mean? I shall give just two examples which I think are of particular relevance to our debate this evening.

Permanent changes to our laws, which probably should be introduced by primary legislation, are being rushed through in regulations, and sometimes being rushed through under the excuse that they are needed for the pandemic. Planning regulations have nothing to do with what we are discussing today but are something that may change our high streets, perhaps for ever. They have nothing to do with the pandemic, yet are now law because of regulations made under a pandemic regulation. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, made a point about impact assessments. Regulations with sunset clauses have no impact assessments because they are going to last for less a year, and then—surprise, surprise—they are extended, they go over the year, but still no impact assessment is produced; or impact assessments are introduced long after the debate in your Lordships’ House, when regulations are in place, and are of no real value, therefore, in influencing the way the House decides.

Last week, we looked at the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021: these concern critical issues about road safety and no impact assessment has yet been provided. If debate and scrutiny are stifled, as they are by not providing this information, the Government must expect Members of your Lordships’ House to try to find ways to get round the point, and that is what brings us to the issue we are facing tonight. The system for scrutiny has not provided a way for a proper extent of looking at and considering issues which mean so much to people on both sides of the argument that we have been discussing for the last couple of hours.

I will not go on but will conclude by saying that while of course I understand my noble friend the Leader’s concerns and worries, I say to her gently that I think there is a view in your Lordships’ House, and outside in academia, within the Hansard Society and elsewhere, that the Government, the Executive, have made a grab for power at the expense of Parliament, the legislature, and that these actions have led to the equal and opposite reaction that we are debating tonight.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, has made an important contribution in your Lordships’ House, albeit at this late hour. This is a terrifically important debate; it is about our role as a House that scrutinises and about the democratic deficit the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, referred to earlier. I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for coming to the Cross-Bench Peers meeting last week and setting out the arguments about scope, but also about the Bill in general.

I think there has been, across the House, outside and inside the Chamber tonight, a really important discussion about our role as parliamentarians, and what our job is in these kinds of circumstances. Ultimately, despite my incredible affection, as she knows, for the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes—I am sorry we disagree on this occasion; I have enormous respect for her, and we have spent much of our lives in both of these Houses defending democratic values—I do not think the argument is about whether or not the amendment that has been tabled tonight is in scope. It is about the position and rights of this House to reach a decision on this issue. I agree with the noble Baroness that, looking at the Title of the Bill, she is right to come to the conclusion that she has, but taking the argument that the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, had put, that was advanced by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, in her remarks tonight, it demonstrates that in some circumstances we can reach a different conclusion.

Those circumstances, as the Leader of the House has told us, ought to be extraordinarily rare. Therefore, I do not say that I came to a short, sharp decision on this issue. Indeed, my mind is still open and I have been listening carefully. I recognise it takes some courage to persist in the face of procedural questions of custom and practice, especially in a House such as this. The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, has given decades of commitment, along with the noble Lord, Lord Freud, to these issues. They have done this with extraordinary conviction, knowledge, courtesy and passion.

I will say a word about precedent and this issue of scope. I have also occasionally found myself in disagreement with the clerks and have, on the whole, of course, accepted their decisions. There are three questions, though, that might tilt the balance for me, and which I think apply in this case.

The first is, of course, the position of the elected House. Until I stood down from the House of Commons, I had the privilege of serving there, following my election as long ago as 1979. Within my recollection, there were a number of occasions where, on all sides, we were relieved when Members of your Lordships’ House sent back an amendment that gave us the opportunity to think again. Indeed, as recently as in the last 12 months, your Lordships persisted with an amendment to the Trade Bill on the question of genocide. At the end of a protracted process of ping-pong, an accommodation of sorts was reached between both Houses. Several senior Conservative Members, including a former party leader, expressed their thanks to your Lordships that we had given them, in another place, a chance to think seriously about an issue that had not been debated at any stage of that Bill’s progress in the House of Commons.

Secondly, what would tip me in favour of the noble Baroness’s amendment today is the support that she has received from an illustrious former Minister who dealt with these matters: the noble Lord, Lord Freud. The noble Lord will remember that I harried him when he was a Minister on an issue that went to ping-pong. It was about mesothelioma, which for personal reasons I know he felt deeply about. He defended the Government’s position, as he was right to do. We went to ping-pong and ultimately an accommodation was reached, and it went further than that: the noble Lord then introduced an entire Bill on mesothelioma. It is part of his extraordinary legacy from his time as a Minister. He is a man I enormously admire. I note too that six former DWP Secretaries of State since 2010 have said that the £20 uplift investment should remain.

Thirdly, there is the little issue of manifestos. Commitments made in government manifestos are very much in scope when we come to consider legislation. The Government’s current policy regarding uprating is entirely at variance with that commitment. It is not a trivial issue; it is something on which our colleagues in the elected House have the right to deliberate. This amendment would give the opportunity to do that in the House of Commons.

What of the substantive argument about the universal credit £20 uplift? Sir William Beveridge, who was a Member of both Houses, said it was our duty to provide a safety net—a phrase that was used by the noble Baroness earlier on—against the “giant evils”. Today, there are cuts and sears in that safety net that we must repair.

Finally, at Second Reading, the noble Baroness set out her formidable objections to the removal of the £20 uplift, but also her serious concerns about the democratic deficit. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, talked about public confidence and thought that if we took this decision it might erode public confidence. I think it will have precisely the opposite effect, and this is not something I argue for lightly. I certainly think we need to give it a great deal more thought.