Government and Parliament — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Government Operations
Ivor Seward Richard (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I agree with a large part of the speech that the noble Lord, Lord Lang, just delivered. It is interesting the way in which this debate is developing. There seems to be a genuinely cross-party approach to what is clearly a major problem. That is a good thing. I congratulate my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition on bringing this subject forward at this stage. When I saw it on the Order Paper I thought it would be a rerun of what we debated on the Queen’s Speech—as somebody said, déjà vu all over again. It could have been, but listening to the debate it has taken a different tack Before I turn to the Strathclyde review, I will just put some of this argument into historical context. It is interesting to look at the figures on defeats of delegated legislation. In the calendar years from 1950 to 2015 there were five government defeats on fatal Motions. The first was in 1968 against the Labour Government, there were two against the Labour Government in 2000, one in 2007 again against the Labour Government, and one in 2012 against the coalition Government. My arithmetic seems to indicate that that is 4:1. In the same period, there were 27 non-fatal Motions. There was one in 1977 and one in 1978, both against the Labour Government. One in 1983 was against the Conservatives. One in 1985, one in 1992, two in 1993 and one in 1995 were all against Conservative Governments. Then the great change happens. There was one in 1998, four in 2003, two in 2005, one in 2007, three in 2009 and three in 2010, all against Labour Governments. Again, if you add it up, there were 11 non-fatal Motions against Conservative and coalition Governments and 16 against Labour Governments. In addition there was a government defeat on a Motion moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, on 13 July 2009. Whether the Motions were fatal or non-fatal, the vast majority have come from the Conservative side of this House and not the Labour side. Almost all of them came, too, at a time when the Labour Party was in the distinct minority here in the House of Lords. Indeed, for a large part of that time, we were not even the largest single party. So let us have no more of this nonsense about the Labour Party being more rigorous or awkward in the way it approaches statutory instruments. That is not true. The facts lead precisely in the opposite direction Faced with that, we should put the Strathclyde proposals in a rather more severe context. I repeat what I have said in this House before—it has been repeated today—that the only justification for removing the power to defeat a statutory instrument here is that the Government then legislate in a proper way. By that, I mean that they use primary legislation for dealing with matters of policy and use statutory instruments for what they were designed for: the implementation of that policy. You cannot expect this House to remain silent in the face of legislation such as the recent housing Bill. If the Government insist on sending up skeleton legislation with enormous discretion given to Ministers as to how to put the flesh on the bones, this House cannot be expected to sit down and let that happen. That would be a clear breach of the spirit if not the terms of the Parliament Act Of course, that Act gives the Government the authority to disregard the views of the House of Lords in relation to primary legislation but not to secondary legislation. An attempt to use that distinction to evade the possibility of constitutional delay by this House would be a distortion of the existing constitutional arrangements between the two Houses. Nor should it be forgotten that this argument is really not about the Commons versus the Lords; it is about the Government versus Parliament. On this issue, the views of the House of Lords really cannot be disregarded One thing that has emerged in this debate is that there is a consciousness here of a very real problem in the quality of legislation as it leaves the House of Commons and comes up to your Lordships’ House, in the fact that it is not properly scrutinised in the House of Commons, and in that the drafting these days seems to be much less precise and cogent than it was years ago. Many years ago, in the late 1960s and early 1970s I sat on a committee. I have the same sort of memory as the noble Lord, Lord Butler. The committee was chaired by—I cannot remember his name, but it was a committee on drafting legislation. Ah, it was chaired by Lord Renton. We sat for a long time, took a great deal of evidence, heard from parliamentary draftsmen and heaven knows who else, and produced an erudite report asking for certain things to happen. Of course, none of it has taken place and that was nearly 50 years ago I am not optimistic that another such committee would produce more fruitful or rapid results but I am certain that such a committee ought to be set up. Given the quality of the legislation as it comes up from the House of Commons to this House, the way in which the Government now use statutory instruments rather than primary legislation, and the way in which that claim of financial privilege is used by the Government, there are issues here that deserve full consideration, and on a cross-party basis. I agree with my noble friend Lord Cunningham that there is no reason at all why this should not start up here. We do not need to wait for the House of Commons to do this. A committee of your Lordships’ House considering this matter would be a very good start. I hope that when the Minister comes to reply she will deal with this. I raised it in the debate on the Queen’s Speech but, notably, it was totally not dealt with. Perhaps today will be better.