Government and Parliament — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Government Operations
John Anderson Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I would normally begin by saying that it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, but I have to say that I fundamentally disagree with almost everything he said. On the other hand I warmly commend the speech of my noble friend from the Dispatch Box on this side of the House and strongly support the recommendations that she has put forward An effective and robust balance of power between Government and Parliament lies at the heart of good governance. It also lies at the heart of good democratic scrutiny and control of the Executive. It cannot be acceptable in those circumstances that any Government can arbitrarily decide to change the existing balance of powers or the conventions of Parliament because of a voting defeat resulting from the legitimate use of parliamentary power. Nor is it correct for the Government to assert, as they have done, that a defeat of a statutory instrument by this House is a challenge to the primacy of the House of Commons. Nothing could be further from the truth. The House of Commons does not refer statutory instruments to this House; that is done by the Government. The Government invite both Houses to express an opinion at the same time. As the Joint Committee report on the conventions of the United Kingdom Parliament makes clear, the primacy of the House of Commons is unanimously accepted not just by the committee but by the unanimous endorsement of that report by this House and the other place. The reality is that four Select Committees, which the noble Lord has just referred to—three of your Lordships’ House and one in the other place—comprehensively rejected his proposals. The House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee stated in its report: "The Government should not produce legislative proposals aimed at implementing the Strathclyde Review’s recommendations. Such legislation would be an overreaction and entirely disproportionate to the House of Lords’ legitimate exercise of a power that even Lord Strathclyde has admitted is rarely used. The Government’s time would be better spent in rethinking the way it relies on secondary legislation for implementing its policy objectives and in building better relations with the other groupings in the House of Lords" There is not much sign in that statement that the House of Commons feels that its primacy is being challenged by this place All four committees mention the overuse, or perhaps I should say the abuse, of secondary legislation by this and earlier Governments to make changes in policy, which is not what statutory instruments were originally intended to do. To be fair, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, mentioned this in his own report. The recent report by Mr Daniel Greenberg, entitled Dangerous Trends in Modern Legislation, for the Centre for Policy Studies, also highlights very succinctly the problems of the overuse of secondary legislation. Like my noble friend’s opening speech, that is a good starting point for the urgently needed discussion in your Lordships’ House. We should take the initiative and get on with it. There is no point leaving the procedures of this House and the way it conducts its affairs simply to the Executive. We should not delay. Equally, I strongly believe that we should not delay on reforming other aspects of the work of this House Let us face it, this impasse began with a misjudgment by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in trying to use a statutory instrument to make fundamental changes in policy. That is where the problem began. It did not begin in your Lordships’ House, it began in the Executive and the Government, and it was an error from which they are still trying to recover. I remind noble Lords opposite of Healey’s first law of politics: when you are in a hole, the best thing to do is stop digging I have seen no evidence to suggest that it is necessary or would be appropriate for this House to make some kind of concession in the face of these government errors. Why should this House agree voluntarily to reduce its very minimal powers, which we all agree are used only exceptionally? It would be going in the wrong direction entirely. I have even heard it suggested—indeed, it was suggested by a member of the Government to one of the Select Committee hearings—that we should agree that this power should remain but should be used only once in a Parliament. Who would make that decision? That would mean that the Government were home free for the rest of the Parliament. They could do what they liked with statutory instruments and this House could do nothing about it. It is a preposterous, ridiculous proposal, and I hope that no one will give it any credibility The reality is that we in our own House should challenge this problem head on: the problem of the overuse and the inadequate scrutiny of secondary legislation. After all, most of the scrutiny takes place in this House, so we should be in charge of reforming it.