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The purpose of this Report is to provide an update on the progress of our legislative scrutiny work as the end of the Session approaches. It identifies the Bills we are still scrutinising, the Bills we have cleared from scrutiny and the Bills we have not been able to scrutinise properly. Finally it makes recommendations as to how obstacles to our effective scrutiny can be overcome.
We cleared the following four Bills from scrutiny on the basis that they did not raise any significant human rights issues: the EU (Approvals) Bill; the EU (Croatian Accession and Irish Protocol) Bill; the HGV Road User Levy Bill; and the Partnerships (Prosecution) Scotland Bill.
We have already reported substantively on the Crown and Courts Bill, the Defamation Bill and the Justice and Security Bill (twice).
We continue to examine the Children and Families Bill, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill and the Energy Bill, all of which are carried over into the next Session.
After some initial scrutiny, we concluded that the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill did not warrant further examination and we cleared it from scrutiny without corresponding with the Government.
Applying our published criteria of significance, however, and in view of the significance of the other issues we were scrutinising in relation to other Bills, we decided that we could not further examine the human rights issues raised by the Growth and Infrastructure Bill.
We welcome the Succession to the Crown Bill in principle as a human rights enhancing measure because it removes from our law a form of overt discrimination against Catholics and women. However, we are concerned about the unnecessary use of fast-track legislation in connection with this Bill as it concerns significant constitutional matters, which require full debate in Parliament. We therefore regret the limited opportunity provided by the Government for detailed parliamentary scrutiny of the Bill, including whether its provisions go far enough to remove unjustifiable discrimination.
We are disappointed that we did not have time to consider and report upon the Police (Complaints and Conduct) Bill, the Jobseekers (Back to Work Schemes) Bill and the Mental Health (Approval Functions) Bill on account of their being fast-tracked as emergency legislation. We welcome the Government's acceptance of the recommendation of the House of Lords Constitution Committee that, when it introduces fast-track legislation, it should provide Parliament with information about the efforts that have been made to ensure the amount of time made available for parliamentary scrutiny has been maximised. However, we recommend that the Government go further and bring forward practical proposals which would ensure, so far as possible, that parliamentary committees with a legislative scrutiny function have a proper opportunity to scrutinise fast-track legislation early enough to make it possible for committees' recommendations fully to inform members of both Houses. This also applies to the timetabling of other Bills, such as the Welfare Benefits Up rating Bill which was fast-tracked through the House of Commons.
We are also concerned at the late introduction of Government amendments with significant human rights implications, such as happened on a number of occasions this Session in connection with the Crime and Courts Bill. We recommend that Government amendments with significant human rights implications be accompanied by a human rights memorandum and with due notice so that we have sufficient time to scrutinise and if necessary report on the amendments before the next stage of the Bill's passage. We further recommend that the Government ensure that we are given early sight of, or are notified about, Government amendments to Bills that relate directly to recommendations previously made by us or to concerns we have expressed in correspondence with ministers.
We recommend that all Departments adopt the best practice of publishing on introduction of a Bill a detailed human rights memorandum based upon the ECHR memorandum prepared for the Cabinet's Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee. This would enable our legislative scrutiny to be more focused, and in some cases might lead to a Bill being cleared by us from scrutiny earlier than would otherwise be the case.
We intend to explore through the relevant channels in both Parliament and Government how best to give effect to these recommendations and we will continue to give thought to how we can best assist Departments to understand and meet our expectations as a committee which conducts systematic legislative scrutiny of Government Bills.
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