Government and Parliament — House of Lords, 2016-06-09
Topic: Government Operations
Kenneth Woolmer (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Norton. I agreed with an enormous number of his remarks The House of Lords has an important constitutional obligation to consider these matters dispassionately, in a non-partisan way. That has been the overwhelming spirit of today’s discussions. The Government of the day, of any political persuasion, will always want to get their business through as readily as possible. That cannot be the starting point from which the Houses of Parliament consider how they scrutinise legislation; it is an important element, but it cannot be the purpose of scrutiny The issue of secondary legislation has loomed large. As has been said by many noble Lords today, the root cause lies in primary legislation, but secondary legislation gives the Executive enormous powers, with much less scrutiny than primary legislation. Most people outside Westminster do not understand the difference between primary and secondary. A large amounts of the legislation that affects people in their everyday lives is secondary legislation. Those changes can make an enormous difference to people’s lives, and the tax credits statutory instrument is a very good example of that. So the primary legislation is the root cause, but the secondary legislation that results from it has been granted secondary legislation status by both Houses; that gives the Government of the day substantial powers, with less scrutiny than otherwise. Therefore, the role of both Houses in scrutinising secondary legislation takes on rather more importance than one would imagine. With primary legislation, the House can ultimately reject the Bill or an element of the Bill; it can then be subject to the Parliament Act, but that is a substantial and very rarely used power. This House has the power to reject secondary legislation, but has done so only five or six times in 50 or 60 years. Nobody outside Parliament would regard that as excessive or dangerous use of the powers of this House The use of powers to reject is very rare indeed. It requires some care by any Government—and it could be a Government with my party in control, the current Government or some future Government. Governments will always be frustrated by that use, if it happens, but that is not the basis for wanting to change the powers. Woe betide any Government who say that they will take away the power of a House of Parliament because once in so many years it used that power. That would be an abuse of power on the part of government—and I hope that the Government think very carefully before they use one case in a long time to say that they will change the constitutional position of this House Briefly, I turn to secondary legislation. I had the privilege—although I did not think of it as a privilege when I was first appointed—of being on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for three years. I have just finished, much to the delight of the postman who delivers the mail to my house in Leeds. I learned a number of things from it; I learned how important secondary legislation is, compared to what I realised before I was on the committee. I always realised it on an issue that I was interested in, but I did not realise that it was important for so many things. I also realised how important the role of this House is in scrutinising that secondary legislation. As the Public Administration Committee said in its report, it is the House of Lords to which Parliament owes a debt for scrutiny We scrutinise around an average of 1,000 instruments a year—80% negative and 20% affirmative. We refer only about 10% of them to the House to debate. The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said, incorrectly, in his speech on the Queen’s Speech that the House of Commons considered and approved secondary legislation before the House of Lords, but that is not true. Secondary legislation goes to both Houses from the Government, not to this House from the House of Commons. We have parallel duties to consider it. Indeed, 10% or 11% of secondary legislation is considered and approved by this House before the House of Commons. We do a very important job Finally, I return to the larger issue. The Strathclyde report suggests what I call, perhaps unkindly, the snake oil solution of letting this House reject secondary legislation once, with the House of Commons then being able to override it. My experience of the House of Commons is not large, but my colleagues who were in the House of Commons tell me that that will not work. Overwhelmingly, Governments use their majority in the House of Commons to get their business through. The idea that this House will reject once, then the House of Commons will consider carefully what was said, and that there will be substantial debates and a response from the Minister is simply hocus pocus—it is not true.