House of Lords: Working Practices

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, perhaps I may cross the bounds between the Statement and what we are about to debate by drawing attention to the recommendation of the Back-Bench Peers’ informal group, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, that time for Statements might best be found in the Moses Room or in Grand Committee. However, this has been an extraordinarily important Statement and I know that the whole House will have listened to it with great interest.

I begin by thanking the noble Lord the Leader of the House for announcing at the beginning of the debate that a Leader’s Group would be established to consider its substance and, I assume, many of the reports which have preceded it, including those of the three informal groups established by Back-Benchers, which have produced a range of extremely important and detailed recommendations—and which there is certainly not time to cover in a debate of this kind. I also thank the Lord Speaker for the important address that she gave to the Hansard Society last December on strengthening Parliament. She put forward a number of propositions, the relevance of which is clear and which ought to be among the first matters to be considered by the Leader’s new committee.

In particular, however—here I hark back again to the Statement—we ought to know whether it is procedures, processes or outcomes that we are most concerned about in considering these issues. In the Statement that they have just made, the Government have taken the view that outcomes are more important in the National Health Service context than processes. I beg to suggest that it is important that in considering the reform of our processes we are clear what we are trying to achieve. There is a degree of ambiguity about this. It was made somewhat clear by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, in her remarks that we must be complementary to the workings of another place. Sometimes, that may seem like taking crumbs from the rich man’s table; sometimes, it may seem as though what is required is for us to pick up the ball when it has been dropped in another place.

I suggest that this ad hoc approach is really not appropriate for a modern Parliament and that there ought to be a much clearer delineation of the roles of the two Houses. Of course, we touched upon that in our recent debate on the reform of composition and powers and I do not wish to go over that ground again, but we have to know what is in mind before we can judge the suitability of the changes of process. It seems to me that that needs to be made explicit by the Leader’s Group both before it starts operating, so that the evidence it takes is geared to answering that question, and in its final report on how it sees these process changes actually assisting the goals which it has set out.

In her speech, the Lord Speaker made the point—it was a very valid point—that when one House changes its way of working it has an effect in the other. She particularly spoke of the timetabling of legislation in the Commons leading to the Lords taking on its line-by-line scrutiny role. We are told, and reference has been made to it in this debate, that another place is considering the recommendations of the Wright committee. While that is good, it affects what we do here. It therefore seems to me that we cannot at this point in time consider more than a number of discrete proposals that might have immediate relevance. We should certainly not attempt to rewrite the Companion or any of the guidance in a wholesale manner. That would be untimely, not least of course because of the wider debate on powers and composition but also because we do not yet know how another place will tackle its role and what should be the complementary role, at the very least, that this House plays.

I ask my noble friend how the Government see the interaction with the other place during these discussions. We should not simply tweak our timing here and there, whether we sit during the Summer Recess in September or take on certain ways of handling prelegislative scrutiny, which we can do only in an interim fashion until we know what prelegislative scrutiny arrangements may be favoured in another place. What we should be determining today is how we interrelate in these discussions with another place. I would have hoped that we might have some kind of Joint Committee with another place to consider how best to distribute the work between the two Chambers. Yes, second-guessing is sometimes of value, but separation of functions and priority to one House for one set of issues is to be preferred to always second-guessing. As we have discussed, money Bills are primarily for another place, but in this place there are some areas of policy that our procedures should allow us to take particular account of and be apt in delivering the outcomes. I hope that we will look at that. We have heard from the Leader of the House that the mandate or remit of his committee will be very wide. It would help us a little in feeding into that work to know exactly the areas or topics that it would consider appropriate for evidence purposes.

One subject that I would suggest the committee considers, because it has not been considered anywhere else in this House, as far as I am aware, although I cannot possibly cover all the recommendations made by these three significant sub-committees or Back-Bench informal groups, is a post-legislative review. That is crying out for attention. We have had a lot of talk about overlegislation; it in a sense pre-empts the consideration of legislation that has ceased to be of value. We should also consider the flagging up of legislation mentioned on both Front Benches that has not been properly considered in another place. That is of very great importance because we cannot allow Bills not to be properly considered. There may be difficulties in determining procedurally what is appropriate to flag up, but that is a very significant task, and it is a new constitutional development because the practice of timetabling has become so much more common.

The noble Baroness, in opening the debate from the opposition Benches, raised a number of issues on which I support her. She was right to draw attention to the number of occasions on which this House has carried amendments to legislation that have gone unchallenged subsequently. The quality of the input into that scrutiny depends upon the expertise and knowledge of those who are participating in the debates. As we move towards a differently structured House, it may be necessary to make different procedural arrangements to ensure that evidence is taken on a more standard basis in pre-legislative scrutiny and during the passage of legislation if this House is going to do more than replicate the political arguments that may have been heard already at the other end of the Corridor. These are wide matters but what I am most interested in hearing in the conclusion of this debate is how the Government propose to open this discussion up to evidence and ensure that its wide remit is fulfilled, answering all the many questions and suggestions that have been made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, that is a fair point. I would certainly encourage the Whips on the government Front Bench to intervene. They would certainly have the support of this side of the House if they sought to do so. Essentially, their role is to help the House to regulate itself.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, does the noble Lord acknowledge, even if he does not agree with Statements being taken in the Moses Room or in Grand Committee, that Back-Benchers do not get a fair crack of the whip? Even today when we had a major Statement on the National Health Service, there was very little scope for the House to express its views.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I have two points on that. The noble Lord is right that 20 minutes is a fairly limited time. Equally, a Statement is not an occasion for Back-Benchers to make general statements about what they have heard in a Statement; it is to elucidate answers from the Minister. An extension of time would be welcome but, equally, some self-discipline among Members would be appreciated.

On the legislative procedure, many interesting points have been made about how we can go into Grand Committee more often and how the process in Grand Committee can be improved. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made a very useful comment about Report stage and how we might change the procedures there. I also thought he was right about time intervals. Experiencing opposition for the first time, and the awesome task of having to write one's own speeches and amendments, a little time between stages is indeed welcome and very necessary.

In conclusion, I welcome the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. We shall support it; it is a constructive move. I would comment on what the noble Lord said in the debate on the Queen's Speech. He said that Peers in this House already enjoy rights not given to Back-Benchers in the other place to table amendments at three stages of a Bill and to have each one heard and replied to. Today, he said that he had no desire to move from that, no desire for compulsory grouping of amendments or for timetabling Motions or for preventing every amendment being considered. That is welcome. I detected a veiled warning perhaps that that depended on noble Lords not abusing the flexibilities that they have. I have seen no signs of that. I agree with him that we need to update our working practices. The Official Opposition will support only change which increases the effectiveness of the House. Ultimately, the Minister must recognise that that will not happen if the parties opposite simply railroad their legislation through this House.