Government’s New Approach to Consultation: “Work in Progress” (SLSC Report)

Viscount Simon Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am tempted to speak at double speed in the hope that we may finish before we have the next Division. This is for me also the second debate in two weeks on machinery issues, as it were—how we go about things. I started on both thinking, “This is very dry”, but I think that this shows the House of Lords very much at its best—looking at, in the previous instance, how we handle secondary legislation and, in this instance, how we handle consultations.

I intend to answer this not by defending the current Government, because I am aware that these are structural problems of government and of the way in which the Executive deal with the legislature and vice versa. I am conscious, as I think back, that I first used to worry about Henry VIII clauses when I was in opposition many years ago. In reading back to the 2007-08 consultations, I come across phrases like “consultation fatigue” and “the struggles of the Better Regulation Executive”. Indeed, I have a dim memory that my wife was on the Better Regulation Advisory Council at the time, and would come home very frustrated with some of the problems that it was facing about all the different contradictions in attempting to improve regulation and consult with the widest number of parties but nevertheless to reach an end to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Hart, rightly said that speed is not the universal hallmark of good government, but of course delay over extended periods is not the universal hallmark of good government either. If one looks back at some of the other areas in which successive Governments consulted most—airports policy in south-east England, for example—one could not say that one ever cut short consultation on that process. Over the past 30 years, the occasional decision by a Government, whichever Government it was, to override one or two of those consulted parties might have been a good idea. Consultation does not necessarily lead to consensus. I have been involved in consultations over House of Lords reform over the past 20 years, and we have not quite reached consensus on it yet through each successive process of consultation.

One of the starting points for the current Government on consultation is to say to departments, “The earlier that consultation is engaged in, the better”. A process in which you more or less decide what it is you want to do and then, when you have decided, you carry out a 12-week consultation process in which you ask everyone what they think about what you have decided is actually a very bad thing. It would be much better and more constructive—this is part of what the Cabinet Office has been saying to departments—to engage with your stakeholders as early as possible, before things have hardened into a consensus within Whitehall, so that you learn where the obstacles are likely to be and you can actually have a worthwhile exchange of views. That of course means that the Government are likely to consult first with the visible stakeholders and that there is always the problem of those who might be excluded or those who want to be involved. A later-stage consultation in which you allow others who you might not have thought of in the first instance to come in nevertheless is there to be added at the later point. Late consultation risks being a formal allowance for objections to be made; the earlier it is, therefore, the better.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee rightly talked about the burden of consultation on both sides. That came back in some of the evidence submitted to the committee —the number of occasions on which the Government are asking for consultations.

Looking back into some of this, I was struck when I came across the phrase, “the consultation and engagement community”; the professionals who were out there doing their best to catch each consultation as it came through. I am conscious of how far this industry—in a sense, this community—has grown. Coming back on the train—

[The Deputy Speaker (Viscount Simon)]

My Lords, a Division has been called in the House. We will adjourn until 6.56 pm.