Legislation: Pre-legislative Scrutiny

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend is entirely correct that this is an important issue. For some years now there has been good practice from the former Government and this Government in attempting to publish Bills in draft and apply a process of pre-legislative scrutiny. The reason why there is not a mandatory structure for this is in part that it is not possible to have formal pre-legislative scrutiny early on in the Parliament. Some departments, through the process of consultation and the publication of Green Papers and White Papers, already allow for a certain element of pre-legislative scrutiny, although not necessarily the one preferred by my noble friend.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, will the noble Lord the Leader of the House concede that pleading resource constraint does not constitute a credible argument against publishing as many Bills as possible in draft? Does he recall what the Liaison Committee in another place concluded in 2001 in its report, Shifting the Balance: Unfinished Business? It said:

“We repeat our view that the benefits in terms of better thought out and properly examined legislation will be out of all proportion to the modest expenditure involved”.

Is that not still true today?