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SOCIAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTIONS (TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS, ETC.) BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified--

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Social Security Contributions (Transfer of Functions, etc.) Bill [Lords],it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of--


(a) any expenses incurred by a Minister of the Crown or government department under the Act, and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums which under any other Act are payable out of money so provided.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]

Question agreed to.

SOCIAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTIONS (TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS, ETC.) BILL [LORDS] [WAYS AND MEANS]

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Social Security Contributions (Transfer of Functions, etc.) Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise a payment out of the National Insurance Fund into the Consolidated Fund in respect of payments made under section 42A(3) of the Pension Schemes Act 1993.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]

Question agreed to.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Departments (Northern Ireland) Order 1999, which was laid before this House on 26th January, be approved.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]

Question agreed to.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,

That, at the sitting on 11th February, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 16 (Proceedings under an Act or on European Union documents), the Speaker shall--


(i) put the Questions on the Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Michael relating to Local Government Finance (Wales) not later than Four o'clock;
(ii) put the Questions on the Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Dewar relating to the Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 1999 and the draft Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order 1999 not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the first such Motion; and
(iii) put the Questions on any Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Dewar relating to the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Transitional and Transitory Provisions) (Finance) Order 1999 and the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Transitional and Transitory Provisions) (Appropriations) Order 1999 not later than Seven o'clock.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]

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Food Standards

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That a select committee of thirteen Members be appointed to report on the draft bill on the Food Standards Agency (Cm. 4249);


That Ms Diana Organ, Ms Sally Keeble, Audrey Wise, Dr. Howard Stoate, Dr. Lewis Moonie, Mr. Martyn Jones, Mr. Kevin Barron, Dr. Stephen Ladyman, Mr. Owen Paterson, Mr. David Curry, Mr. Robert Walter, Dr. Peter Brand and the Reverend Martin Smyth be members of the Committee;
That the Committee have power
(a) to send for persons, papers and records;
(b) to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House;
(c) to adjourn from place to place within the United Kingdom;
(d) to appoint specialist advisers; and
(e) to communicate to any select committee of either House their evidence and any other documents relating to matters of common interest; and
That the Committee shall report by 31st March 1999.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]

7.29 pm

Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): I am sorry that I must detain the House for a few minutes on the motion. However, I am glad to see the Leader of the House in her place. I dictated a letter to the right hon. Lady this morning, which I shall still be sending. There are important issues relating to the motion that the House needs to pause to consider before it pushes the motion through on the nod. I refer especially to the last line of the motion, which reads:

"That the Committee shall report by 31st March 1999."

The House will be aware that I am the Chairman of the Select Committee on Agriculture, which considered food safety and the Government's proposals and published a report in April 1998. I say at the outset that I am delighted that the Government are engaged in a process of pre-legislative scrutiny on this very important measure. I have no argument about that. In doing so, the Government are following a precedent that was beginning to be established by the previous Government. It is a process that the House should follow much more regularly. However, if pre-legislative scrutiny is to be effective, it must be done well. I doubt whether the time scale that is open to the Committee for consideration of the draft Bill is adequate to enable it to do its job well.

By my calculations, if the Committee were to be convened this week for its first meeting to elect its Chairman, it would be inviting written evidence in, say, weeks two and three, taking its first oral evidence in weeks four or five--no doubt it would go at least to a sixth week--considering its report in week seven and publishing it in week eight. That is a ridiculously truncated timetable for such an important measure--one to which the Government rightly attach considerable importance.

Compare and contrast the timetable for the Bill with the timetable for the consideration by the Select Committee on Social Security of pensions on divorce--pension splitting. That Committee took some 35 weeks to consider its proposals on an admittedly detailed and complex point of law. It had eight sessions of oral evidence, which began on 24 June and ended on 16 September. The Committee eventually published its

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report on 28 October. It rightly called 33 witnesses from 11 different organisations. It called the Minister responsible and officials from the relevant Departments on two separate occasions. That is the right sort of time to give to pre-legislative scrutiny.

It is interesting to note the Committee's last recommendation, which reads:

"We recommend that Bills which are to be published in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny by a select committee in the Session before their formal introduction should be published no later than Easter, in order to allow potential witnesses plenty of time to prepare their evidence and the select committee to complete its work before the end of the session."

The Select Committee on Social Security made the clear assumption that a Bill should be published in draft in one Session and introduced in the following Session. We know the history of this--there is House of Lords reform--and I will not weary the House with it, but in this instance it is the Government's intention that pre-legislative scrutiny should take place over two months before Easter and that the Bill should be introduced for consideration in Standing Committee after Easter, for consideration to be completed in this parliamentary term.

That does not seem enough time to me. I talked to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), who chairs the Select Committee on Social Security. He told me that one problem was that witnesses came with an initial view on how the proposed legislation would work and then, sometimes after giving evidence to the Committee orally, returned with additional written evidence, on reflection, setting out what they thought the implications of the legislation would be. That seems entirely reasonable. The pre-legislative scrutiny period should be sufficiently flexible to allow that sort of dialogue.

After all, the House is seeking to ensure with pre-legislative scrutiny that Bills are better drafted. That is the point of it. I vividly recall when I was asked for various reasons to speak at considerable length on a one-clause Bill. I spoke for a morning and a half in Standing Committee and found that that legislation was significantly improved. It is right that the House should pay more attention to the way in which legislation is drafted. It is right also that the Government should assume pre-legislative scrutiny, and I welcome that. However, it is not right to confine that scrutiny to two months.

The Government, in their response to the Select Committee on Social Security, congratulated it on the detailed way in which it had considered legislation. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for East Ham (Mr. Timms), who has only recently today spoken from the Dispatch Box, said:

"We very much welcome the Committee's constructive response. You deserve great credit for your thorough examination of the draft legislation. You have been instrumental in taking forward the proposals of the Modernisation Committee to improve Parliamentary scrutiny of proposed legislation."

Noticeably, in their reply to the Select Committee, the Government, for perfectly understandable reasons, ducked any comment on the specific recommendation about the timetable for pre-legislative scrutiny. They said that it was a matter for the Modernisation Committee. I believe that they are right. It is also a matter for the whole House.

We should welcome the Government's intentions with regard to pre-legislative scrutiny, but we should say that, if this process is not to be discredited very early in its

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parliamentary history, it must be done well. Given the many constraints on Members' time and the need to give witnesses outside this place a decent amount of time to prepare for what they regard as a very important occasion--it concerns their lives as representatives of organisations with an interest in food safety--I do not believe that the timetable provides enough time.

As Chairman of the Select Committee on Agriculture, I can say that we took six or seven months to produce a report on food safety. I still think that, if anything, the report tended to be superficial. I would have liked to examine many issues in greater depth as part of the report. I appreciate that the issue is now more focused because we are dealing with the Bill itself, not the whole gamut of food safety. I still think, however, that a scant eight weeks is not enough. I urge the Government to reconsider whether this is the right way to proceed with the Bill; and whether it will enhance the dignity of the process of pre-legislative scrutiny.

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