Appendix 1: Letter from the Chair of the Committee
to the Deputy Prime Minister
You wrote to me last week about the Parliamentary
Voting System and Constituencies Bill, and the Fixed-term Parliaments
Bill.
The bills were published on 22 July. Both are to
receive their second reading in September. For the Parliamentary
Voting System and Constituencies Bill, this gives my committee
a grand total of two clear sitting days in which to consider and
take evidence on the bill before second reading. The time that
we have to scrutinise the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill is only
marginally less inadequate.
Both bills are, as you say, "fundamental to
this House and to our democracy". Contrast this with your
approach to House of Lords reform, where a draft bill will be
published before the end of the year, which will then be subject
to full pre-legislative scrutiny by a joint select committee over
several months before a bill is formally presented to Parliament.
On what principle can you justify this different treatment of
legislation affecting the two Houses?
The Leader of the House has told the Liaison Committee
that your government remains committed to pre-legislative scrutiny,
and that proper pre-legislative scrutiny requires at least twelve
weeks. Even though these two bills clearly deserve this degree
of proper pre-legislative scrutiny, I have made every effort to
adjust the committee's schedule to meet the government's legislative
timetable, and I have written to you twice, on 25 June and 6 July,
to try to find a window, however small, within which some reasonable
level of committee scrutiny of the government's bills could take
place. I have had no reply to either of my letters.
Your legislative timetable has put me and my committee
in an extremely difficult position. When the House agreed to establish
the committee, it did so, in the words of the Deputy Leader of
the House, "to ensure that the House is able to scrutinise
the work of the Deputy Prime Minister". In the case of these
two bills you have denied us any adequate opportunity to conduct
this scrutiny.
27 July 2010
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