Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hutton of Furness, because he made some extremely perceptive and very good points, particularly in the context of skeleton Bills. The defining feature of this debate—and I have heard all of it—has been support for the two committees of your Lordships’ House and a very real concern that the balance of power in our country is getting out of kilter. I pay tribute to my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts for their excellent and powerful speeches and, even more, for the reports that they have placed before us. It is indicative of government’s cavalier attitude towards Parliament that we have had to wait so long for this debate, and I deeply regret that.

When I entered the other place, way back in 1970, I was taken to one side, after taking the oath, by two very experienced parliamentarians: the late Sir Derek Walker-Smith and the late Sir David Renton, later Lord Renton. They said to me, “You are of course here as a Conservative Member of Parliament, and you will be expected to give general support to the Government, but that doesn’t mean agreeing with everything that they say. Remember”, said Sir David, wagging his finger at me, “it is the Government who are accountable to Parliament, not Parliament that is accountable to the Government.” I have tried to make that my watchword through the last 52 and a half years.

Certain messages come out of this debate. There is too much legislation. The question that should always be asked, before any Bill is introduced, is whether it is necessary. That is why it is so important—a number of colleagues have touched on this—that we should, as a matter of course, have pre-legislative scrutiny. We should also have post-legislative scrutiny, because we need to see how what we have enacted has impinged on the lives of our fellow citizens. The two Houses need to come together, because the fundamental flaw in parliamentary democracy in this country is that there is effectively no scrutiny in the other place: timetabling destroyed it. I was there when it happened, and I fought against it. Conservative spokesmen then said, “We’ll get rid of this”, but it was so convenient for the Executive that they did not get rid of it; they kept it. We will never have a true balance of power until there is proper scrutiny in the other place as well as this one.

In his excellent speech, my noble friend Lord Norton also talked about delegated legislation and our being rather afraid to use the power we have. That point was picked up by others; I think the noble Lord, Lord German, used the term “refer back” in his speech. We should have the courage to refer back to the other place delegated legislation that the Government have thrust upon us; we are not obliged to accept it. The Government are accountable to Parliament, but they will not be properly accountable to Parliament unless Parliament makes them so.

All these problems are not new; they are in a different guise. When I taught 18^th-century history before I came to this place, I often talked about Dunning’s Motion of 1780, in which he said that the power of

“the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished.”

If we substitute “Executive” for “Crown”, that is true today. We have to get a better balance and remember those very famous words that “the price of liberty”—of which we are the guardians and for which we are responsible—“is eternal vigilance”. There has been so much appalling legislation, to whose length the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, referred, put before this House in recent years that we should all be thoroughly ashamed of it.

This has been a good debate. It is an honour to take part in it and we are all deeply grateful to the two noble Lords who led it so brilliantly.