Legislation: Skeleton Bills and Delegated Powers

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 6th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness. I much enjoy her FT Weekend pieces and I have detected a major change in tone in the last three or four months. I used New Year’s Eve to read the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee cover to cover, and I admit to feeling quite bad about it—bad about my sheer ignorance of what had been happening to the imbalance between the Executive and Parliament. Of course, I was aware of the odd complaint, but I confess to being sadly unaware of the wholesale undermining of Parliament’s role. Built-in checks and balances have been dismantled on a huge scale.

Others have been seized of the issue, as paragraph 32 makes clear, such as the Wakeham commission in 2000 and the Leader’s Group in 2011. Over the years, those involved—I do not know who they are—have almost acted as a conspiracy by seeking to make the issue one between the elected House and this unelected House. Having served in both Houses for over 20 years and having been a Minister in both, I can fairly say that that is not the issue. The issue is indeed the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. I have been at the same place as the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, on emergencies and everything else in both Houses.

It also seems sensible to ensure that Parliament must never be in ignorance of the laws passed in its name. The report highlights the disturbing new trends in detail. As disguised law goes, I am familiar with some of the terms—“mandatory guidance”, “to have regard to”, powers to determine “arrangements” and “protocol”—but I had never heard of “public notice”. That was a new one, the consequences of it anyway. All combine to camouflage legislation.

The most worrying aspect of the discussion is tertiary legislation. That appears deadly. We have indeed delegated far too much to the Executive. I do not want this to be misunderstood, but I deeply regret that parliamentary counsel has acquiesced to all this. I have never picked up bad vibrations from parliamentary counsel to any of this. I know they are government lawyers, but parliamentary counsel is their title.

I have two points to make. Sitting days for Parliament are not mentioned. I think they should be controlled by Parliament, via the Speaker and the Lord Speaker, not the Government. If this were the case, government using the excuse of emergency very fast legislation fixed by Ministers without recourse to Parliament because it is not sitting or is not due to sit could be avoided. If we decide to sit as and when necessary, that would be one excuse out the door.

There is a strong case for a targeted and limited ability of Parliament to amend some SIs. “Targeted and limited” is a phrase I picked up during the discussion on one of the breaches of international law in the other place. It would be targeted and limited; there is no way we would go for wholesale. That should be looked at in detail.

I am interested in the future and in solutions. Chapter 5 is crucial. Some of the recommendations in chapter 5 are for the House, not the Government, so there is no excuse that the Government will not buy them. For two or three key matters, the House should make the decision. That is where the power lies, so that is really important. Scrutiny reserve is the key recommendation. I do not want to put a hierarchy on them, but that seems to be the nuclear option. The fact is that they should all be accepted.