Draft House of Lords Reform Bill

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham]

My Lords, our country is facing a perilous economic situation, which is likely to last for some time to come. For any Government, coalition or otherwise, to attempt to drive through major disruptive and potentially disastrous changes to our long-established and proven parliamentary structure in this situation strikes me as utter folly.

The structure of our two Houses that make up Parliament is not responsible for any shortcomings in government that there may be. It is how we, the Members of both Houses, use the structures that really matters. Some people seek to change things in the name of democracy, and we have heard much about that in today’s debate, in the mistaken belief that the changes will improve government. The truth is that the way in which we behave is often more important than the structures themselves. Certainly, change for change’s sake solves nothing; it can do more harm than good and, as in this case, could damage beyond repair a unique institution that, although far from perfect, by and large does the task asked of it very well indeed.

The only justifiable reason for change is to produce better government, but that can be achieved without destroying existing structures. I suggest that the Government and its Ministers should concentrate not on legislation but on sound administration. I was for 27 years a Member in the other place, from 1983 to 2010. I ask your Lordships how many education Acts were passed in those years. The answer is 33. Most grammar schools were abolished and the whole educational system deteriorated. How many health Acts were passed in that time? The answer is 35. We got rid of matrons from our hospitals and everybody knows what a mess the NHS was reduced to. How many Acts in that period were on criminal justice? There were 100—a veritable torrent of legislation that produced little or no benefit to anyone. The answer must surely be better administration and less legislation.

I would like to add to less legislation two things—pre-legislative scrutiny of all Bills and the abolition of the guillotine, or programming as it is currently called. If we could stem the torrent of legislation and persuade Ministers and their departments to concentrate their energies on sound administration, if we could subject every Bill to detailed all-party scrutiny before it was even published and if we could abolish the guillotine to prevent this House from having to deal with wagon-loads of undigested legislation that comes down the Corridor, perhaps your Lordships’ House, with its wealth of experience and wisdom, could be allowed to carry out its traditional role of revising, fine-tuning and, yes, occasionally rejecting legislation brought before it, which it is uniquely qualified to do. These measures, coupled with the modest reforms that the House is already prepared to accept, would deliver better government without the need for the drastic and dangerous experiment that is this draft Bill.