4Pre-legislative scrutiny by Select Committees
74.There are no direct precedents for this inquiry, in which we conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of a Private Member’s Bill tabled by a member of the Committee to implement some of the recommendations of a Committee report. In the 2003–04 Session Lord Lester tabled a Private Member’s Bill on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act 1998 (Making of Remedial Orders) Amendment Bill [Lords], to implement recommendations made by the Committee in a report in the 2001–02 Session.65 The Committee wrote to the Leaders of both Houses and to the Lord Chancellor seeking Government support for the Bill, which although passed by the Lords, made no progress in the Commons beyond First Reading.
75.Also in the 2003–04 Session, the Public Administration Select Committee published a report on the need for a Civil Service Bill, which included the text of such a Bill.66 A Civil Service Bill was tabled by Oliver Heald MP, not a Member of the Committee, but this made no progress.
76.We therefore had ourselves to establish procedures for scrutinising the Bill. We were conscious of the need to avoid putting Bob Blackman, a member of the Committee scrutinising his Bill, in a position in which it could be suggested that there was a conflict of interest. We therefore agreed that although he would be present at the evidence sessions on the Bill, he would not ask questions, but he could answer questions of fact about the Bill or clarify the intention of particular wording: an analogy may be drawn with the role of the Comptroller and Auditor General at sessions of the Committee of Public Accounts.67 (In the event, there was no need for him to intervene.) By the same token, Mr Blackman has played no part in agreeing this report.
77.We are convinced that our scrutiny of the draft Bill has been useful and hope that Mr Blackman will be able to draw on the conclusions and recommendations of this report to amend the draft in advance of Second Reading. Private Member’s Bills are a subject of continuing interest to the Procedure Committee, which has recently recommended better preparation of legislation which can command widespread support in the House before introduction and certainly before Second Reading.68 The circumstances of this inquiry—a Committee inquiry concluding in time to enable a member of the Committee who is successful in the ballot for Private Member’s Bills to table a Bill to implement recommendations of the Committee’s report, and the Committee having space in its timetable to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny before Second Reading—are perhaps unusual, but we believe that our experience is a model on which other Committees and sponsors of Bills can draw.
65 Joint Committee on Human Rights, Seventh Report of Session 2001–02, Making of Remedial Orders, HC 473
66 Public Administration Select Committee, First Report of Session 2003–04, A Draft Civil Service Bill: Completing the reform, HC 128
68 Third Report of the Procedure Committee, Session 2015–16, Private Members’ bills, HC 684, paras 39–47
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13 October 2016