Democracy Denied (DPRRC Report)

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this is an extremely important debate and, as the Government by Diktat report says, we are talking about

“the principles of parliamentary democracy, namely parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law and the accountability of government to Parliament”.

The report says:

“In recent years, the balance of power between Parliament and government has shifted significantly towards the government, a trend that has been accentuated by Brexit and the pandemic.”


I recall the noble Lord, Lord True, in his previous position, declaring that Boris Johnson was accountable as Prime Minister to the British people rather than to Parliament, as ratified by both the 2019 election and the Brexit referendum—popular democracy against the alleged elitism of parliamentary democracy. I hope that, now we are on our second Conservative Prime Minister who has not been immediately ratified by the British people, the Leader of the House, with his customary flexibility, will now return to arguing that it is parliamentary democracy that supports a Prime Minister and a Government, rather than popular democracy as such.

I am worried about the extent to which a number of current Ministers have preferred a sort of permanent campaign to recognising that the hard business of government is worrying about detail and difficult choices, and that the devil is very often in the detail. We have talked about the problem of skeleton Bills. The DPRRC report says

“the principal aspects of policy should be on the face of a bill and only its detailed implementation left to delegated legislation”.

Some of us have been dealing with the Procurement Bill in recent weeks. The beginning of Part 2 is headed “Principles and Objectives”, and it states:

“A Minister of the Crown may publish a statement setting out the Government’s strategic priorities in relation to procurement … Before publishing the national procurement policy statement, a Minister of the Crown must … carry out such consultation as the Minister considers appropriate”.


That is as good a definition of a skeleton Bill as one could find.

The National Security Bill, with which we are currently dealing in Committee, has an entire part—Part 3—introduced in Committee in the Commons without pre-legislative scrutiny or very much detail at all on how it is to be implemented. The Minister in last night’s debate assured me that one needs to implement the possibility of guarding against threats to Britain’s national interest as strongly as against the Netherlands, China, Iran and Russia. I think it requires a little further scrutiny than it has so far had. We have heard from others already about what we expect with the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

I am concerned, as I think many of us are, about the declining quality of legislation coming into this House. The proper legislative process should start where necessary, with complicated Bills, with pre-legislative scrutiny, a Green Paper, consultation with stakeholders and early publication of draft secondary legislation and guidance. That has not happened with too many Bills currently before the House. There should then be post-passage scrutiny of secondary legislation, carefully undertaken as it goes through—and, if necessary, that draft secondary legislation should be sent back. We have to grapple with that one.

The likelihood of a change of Government in less than two years’ time should surely concentrate the Government’s attention on proper parliamentary government and the need for effective opposition in challenging Government as they go forward. Perhaps we can expect again cries of electoral dictatorship from the Conservatives as soon as they are in opposition. It is the role of this House to work to ensure that legislation is workable and easy to understand. I was struck in Committee last night by the ranks on the Cross Benches who knew a great deal more about national security and the intelligence services saying they did not understand parts of the legislation as currently framed. Legislation has to be clear and, as it goes through, command public consent, sufficient consent to last beyond the next change of Government. That is the role of this House as a revising Chamber, and that is what we should defend.