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10.23 am
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby): I shall not attempt to follow the right hon. Member for Northavon (Sir J. Cope), who has great expertise in these matters. All that I can do is humbly to agree with the majority of what he said. However, I do not altogether agree on self-assessment, which is a disaster waiting to happen. I attended an Inland Revenue briefing on self-assessment last week, hoping to learn how the system would work and how it would affect me and my constituents. I was so baffled and so uncomprehending at the end of an hour and a half that I had to be carried sobbing from the room. The Inland Revenue had not thought to provide grief counsellors.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) on initiating the debate. It is characteristic of the earnest seriousness that he contributes to this House that he has taken up this issue and pursued it. I could barely stand the excitement of his speech. His intelligence and his devotion to serious causes are a credit to him and to the House, and no more so than today.
It is shocking that, after two years, the Government have still not dealt with the Hansard Society report on the legislative process. There has been no real reaction, despite an extensively signed early-day motion requesting one. We have not been given the opportunity to debate the report in the House, nor have the Government made any proposals to implement any of the report's recommendations. That is appalling. The report was prepared by a distinguished royal commission--not least because it had me as a member--
with a distinguished chairman. It heard a wide range of serious evidence and reached an effective set of conclusions that deserve implementation.
It is a shame that a Government who are obsessed with charters; who say that they want to listen to the citizen as the consumer; who say that they want to involve people and make them feel that their views are taken into account; and who are obsessed with improving the efficiency of government, have not done something in an area where that improvement in efficiency is desperately needed.
Instead of the cones hotline, the Government should have set up a legislative hotline, saying, "Turn in your MP; complain about legislation; what is your reaction to such and such a clause?" and so on. Of course, that is reducing the matter to a partial dimension, but if the Government really want to listen to the citizen, there is no more important area where the citizen, needs to influence and needs to be heard than the legislative process. The Hansard Society recommendations would have achieved that.
I am aware that the Government are prejudiced against royal commissions. Under the previous Prime Minister, there was even a prejudice against rational analysis-- it was an exercise of will. The Government's failure to listen to rational argument and their failure to reform the processes will damage not only their reputation but that of Parliament, which is far more important. Parliament is not functioning efficiently; it is not consulting and listening to the people. It could do so if we implemented the reforms recommended in the Hansard Society report.
There is a chorus of complaint--we have heard a small echo of it this morning--about inadequate, badly drafted, incomprehensible legislation, which is causing difficulty for the courts, resulting in the necessity of amendments this year to legislation enacted last year or the year before. That is creating an inadequacy in and a problem with the processes, yet the Government have done nothing about that or about the Hansard Society report. It is a serious indictment of the Government.
Why have not the Government done anything about the report? It is because it does not suit their convenience to do so. Ministerial convenience is the essence of the problem. They want their convenience to hold sway in a knee-jerk reaction to propitiate public opinion--for example, in the debate about dangerous dogs, which resulted in disastrous legislation. They want their convenience to hold sway when it comes to the exercising of will--for example, the poll tax, which again proved disastrous. They want their convenience to be dominant when it comes to political posturing by the Home Office. If the courts do not trust the Home Secretary's judgment and overrule him, why should Parliament trust him in the legislative process?
The problem is that Parliament is ill placed to prevent ministerial convenience from holding sway. Our role is to check the Executive and to protect and represent the views of the citizen, but we do not have the power to do that, because the will of the Executive dominates and therefore Parliament is the creature of the Executive, through the party system. It is bound to be so. We have an elective dictatorship and the job of the Opposition is just to heckle the steamroller. If the driver of the steamroller will not listen to the complaints of citizens, put to him by the Opposition and by Back Benchers, Parliament is impotent.
The parliamentary majority overrules all. In those circumstances, the Government have a responsibility to reform procedures so that we can be more effective and have a say.
Frankly, 45 per cent. of the time of this place is devoted to legislation, and it is a farce. Our influence, control and ability to provide better legislation and check it is minimal. Standing Committees are a total farce, because all the Opposition are trying to do is hold up the Bill in the hope that public opinion will influence the Government to make the changes that should be made. The Government do not make changes because the Opposition say so or because there is obvious good sense behind the proposed changes. They make changes only because of political pressure generated outside the House. The process is therefore really a waste of a Standing Committee's time.
We could introduce a statutory delay that would allow public opinion to become effective. To be able to consult the people, to give us as Members of Parliament a useful job and to give Parliament a useful role, we need to make the kind of changes envisaged in the Hansard Society report.
I shall concentrate briefly on two major points that arise from the report and the motion. The first is about the preparation of legislation. I certainly feel strongly as a Back Bencher that people often catch up with legislation only when it has been passed. We receive letters from pressure groups and citizens asking us what we are going to do about a Bill or what is wrong with some part of it-- but it is too late; the legislation has gone through.
People and pressure groups are not given adequate notice of proposed legislation and do not know enough about what is going on in this place for it to be drawn to their attention. The people want to be heard. Although they certainly complain about legislation as it is passed, there is no effective procedure that involves them and enables us to consult them and listen to complaints in the wider community.
I recommend the New Zealand practice, which the Hansard Society report endorses. A major improvement has taken place in legislative processes in New Zealand which could well be adopted here. Legislation is introduced and is referred to what they call a select committee. It is a matter of terminology. It could be a Standing Committee or a Select Committee; the title does not matter. That committee has to go through a Bill before it is discussed formally and changes are made to its drafting. That is its purpose. To do that, it puts adverts in the papers saying that a Bill has been introduced on a certain subject, with certain provisions, and calls for citizen representations.
On controversial and major non-political matters such as family, divorce and social legislation, representations pour in. Pressure groups and concerned citizens make their representations to the committee, which assesses them. If the representations are considered serious, people are called to give evidence to the committee and are given the opportunity to put the case for or against what is being done and to suggest changes to the way in which the measure is proposed to be enacted. The committee then goes through the Bill with those representations before it in a process of influencing legislation in the light of what the public want.
The great virtue of such a system is that the people feel involved. They have had a say; they have been consulted in a way that does not happen here. That strengthens the
role and the perception of Parliament. The committee considers recommendations for changes and it can produce its own Bill. It has a Government majority and a Government member as the chairperson. He or she informally consults a Government caucus--the 1922 Committee, or the parliamentary Labour party in our case, or a committee thereof--and the Minister concerned.
During that process of informal consultation, changes are made. It is a negotiation process. The chairman is representing the views of the committee, the Minister is representing the views of the Department, and usually some kind of compromise is reached so that legislation is changed by the committee. That means that Members of Parliament are effectively involved. The Bill then goes through the formal processes.
That is a much more effective way in which to deal with legislation, involving Members of Parliament by giving us a useful job, and involving the citizen. Why cannot we have a similar structure here? It would take more time and slow up legislation, but that would be no bad thing given the inadequacies of much of the legislation that has been introduced. I commend that idea in the Hansard Society report. It is important.
Secondly, we recommended a review of legislation by a Select Committee after a period of, say, a year or two. It would ask how the legislation had achieved the purposes originally set out and provide a chance to set those purposes out more clearly. It would ask whether it was working and what was wrong with it. Let us have such a review--again, one in which people can make representations--to tidy it up and avoid stupid legislation lingering on the statute book and causing enormous problems in the courts, as happens now.
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