Queen’s Speech

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, I, too, want to deal with the quality of legislation presented to us. In recent years I have served on your Lordships’ Delegated Powers Committee, and I currently serve on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. During this time, I have become more and more concerned about the poor state of legislation presented to us by the Government, and it is getting worse. The Executive have to do something about it.

Of course, what brought this to a head was the statutory instrument regarding tax credits. This precipitated the Strathclyde report, to which many noble Lords have referred. But this was not the only example of poor preparation, or of using secondary legislation to introduce new and significant matters. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has recently drawn attention to matters across the whole spectrum of government—social housing, hunting, building regulations, feed-in tariffs. Last week, we drew your Lordships’ attention to the use of secondary legislation to bring about a large West Midlands combined authority with a directly elected mayor—surely a major change in local government—for which there was three weeks’ consultation, and that was via the internet. The previous month we drew to your Lordships’ attention the withdrawal of statutory regulations by Defra regarding the welfare of certain farmed animals, replacing them with a voluntary code on the grounds that this would achieve higher standards. But the responses to the consultations indicated the opposite. The order was cancelled.

Do the Government consider that to be a defeat, or is it the House doing its job? By drawing attention to these weaknesses and errors in legislation, the House has assisted the Government in avoiding some very nasty and awkward unintended consequences. The result of this poor preparation is that the passage of legislation has become uncertain—even, in some cases, chaotic. It lacks authority when it lacks detail. Indeed, while the Welfare Reform and Work Bill was still before us, the Government used secondary legislation to implement a major change—while the Bill was still in progress.

I put it to the Minister that the Government are losing votes not only because there is disagreement over policy but because the legislation is not thought through. It is poorly prepared and incomplete. That is why we have recently seen government U-turns or policies changed or abandoned. What worries me is that as standards decline, opportunities grow to avoid, evade, ignore, or even break the rules—rules that are devised for the public good. Poorly prepared legislation forced through will undermine our culture of strong and fair-minded government.

So, what is to be done? Is the problem a lack of staff with the expertise, analytical skills and experience in preparing legislation? Have departmental cuts gone beyond trimming the fat and unnecessary bureaucracy, so that the bone is damaged? We all know that when cuts are made, the cost reductions soon look good in the budget but the deterioration in service, quality and standards follow later. Is that what is happening? As the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, implied, Ministers have a responsibility, too. As he said, they need to make speeches, present Green Papers and White Papers, do the pre-legislative scrutiny, present draft Bills and proposed schedules of secondary legislation. Is that work being done? It would appear not.

Then there are all the departmental checks. Are these being done, and is LegCo—the Cabinet Committee—doing its work? Here is what I hope is a helpful suggestion—artificial intelligence. The Minister may have read about it in the Huffington Post today. The Government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council at Hartree has a five-year contract with Watson—that wonderful equipment at IBM. After all, machines now read and analyse clauses in loan agreements and contracts of sale. Could legal technologists help to prepare better legislation? They could ensure that draft legislation contains all the Government’s own principles and standards on consultation and on impact assessments, and that everything is included in the Explanatory Memoranda, and even point to possible Henry VIII clauses.

It would be wrong to introduce legislation curbing the powers of your Lordships while leaving everything else as it is. It would be just like getting rid of an irritation. Without dealing with the cause, the irritation will come back.