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Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble Baroness says that there has been a drop in the average age of this House. However, she will find that between the removal of the hereditary Peers and the formation of the new House post-1999, the average age of the House actually rose.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, although I am happy to be corrected by the noble Lord, my understanding is that the average age has dropped from 75 to 72; but we shall have to discuss that further. There is no doubt that Members have to balance their parliamentary duties with their outside responsibilities, which we have to recognise and respect.
I am sure that we all appreciate and thank the Chief Whip for the better planning of our time, for earlier notice of dates of Recesses and for earlier notice of business. Now is the opportunity to further improve the domestic management of this House and to some degree remove our unpredictable and unsociable hours. I am sure that we should all be very happy to have extended breaks at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. However, those cannot be achieved without some other adjustments on time.
In addition, we sometimes forget that this House is a major employer. Changing the procedures, including sitting hours, would be of great benefit to the staff, who do an amazing job, working such ridiculous hours. Late hours do not equate to effectiveness, efficiency or adequate scrutiny. It is a myth that we earn respect from sitting into the early hours of the morning. That is, and is perceived to be, a nonsense. The proposals before us do not diminish the time taken on our deliberations—rather the reverse. The fact that the Committee stage of more Bills will be held in Grand Committee will allow parallel sittings to take place and will make it feasible for us to end our Sessions at about the reasonably respectable hour of 10 p.m., after which time no new item of business could be raised.
As my noble and learned friend the Lord Privy Seal said, there are other advantages of increasing our work in Grand Committee. It would allow for greater flexibility in the number of days spent in Committee and, consequently, for greater exploration of issues, more detailed debate and more detailed questioning of the Government as Bills are examined line by line. It certainly would improve the level of our scrutiny of legislation.
When the idea of a morning sitting was previously considered, it was suggested that it would create a clash with Committee work. So far in this debate, that has not been suggested. Before it is, I would say that the argument is not relevant, as many Select Committees now sit in the afternoons and, to my knowledge, no one has suggested that the House should cease to sit in the afternoons in order to accommodate the Select Committees.
We all agree that any procedural change must increase our ability to check the Government, to make them pause and think again and to make good law. We have here a package of measures that would do exactly that, by providing more power of scrutiny to Back-Benchers. That could be achieved in important and cleverly constructed ways, by the extension of Question Time, and by enabling more detailed examination of the merits of every statutory instrument subject to Parliamentary scrutiny—something that we do rather badly at the moment but which has a direct impact on the implementation of legislation and on people's lives.
Increasing the number of policy debates would be a valuable way of making the Government consider issues in detail—not necessarily issues that they would have chosen to debate. A sharper focus on our many excellent Select Committees would ensure a greater government awareness of our views on topics of public importance, which often prepare the way for future legislation.
Last week, the Constitution Committee of your Lordships' House, of which I am a member, as part of its work on devolution, visited the Scottish Parliament to take evidence. That included a consideration of its procedures for the pre-legislative scrutiny of Bills. Its exposure of Bills to public criticism and to non-parliamentary groups not only influences the shape and quality of Bills before they are finalised, but also the entire legislative process is perceived to be much more open and accessible than it is in Westminster—a lesson from which we could learn. The clear advantages of pre-legislative scrutiny are set out in paragraph 7 of the document. I agree with them all. I particularly agree that if they create a less confrontational approach to the way in which we handle our legislation they must be good.
Although it is right that each item should be considered on a case-by-case basis, I believe that, whenever possible and appropriate, a Joint Committee of both Houses is the best course. That would not only provide more acceptable legislation to both Houses but would also assist the development of better relations between the two Houses.
It is also eminently sensible to link that proposal to the question of carry-over to subsequent Sessions. It is a waste of parliamentary time—that is, our time—and a little ludicrous that when we reach almost the final stage of a Bill at the end of a Session, we have to start it all over again in the next Session. That seems to me, and I am sure to many of the electorate, absolutely ridiculous.
In conclusion, the fact that we have functioned in a particular way for a long period—I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Roper, spoke about the 17th century—does not mean that we should always work in that way. It is clear that some people are opposed to and refuse to accept that change is absolutely necessary. The composition of this House has changed, expectations have changed, and we need to adapt accordingly. We need to evolve to suit the changed House. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who is no longer in his place, I believe that there is a need for change. That was clearly illustrated in the debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, when Peers on all sides of the House called for changes to our procedures.
The proposals before us form a package of measures that gives your Lordships an opportunity to more effectively scrutinise the Government, to improve the quality of legislation and to make the House more people friendly. I hope that these proposals will gain the support of the House and that the amendment, which will prevent us doing that work more effectively, will be rejected.
4.50 p.m.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I am sure the House will be relieved to know that I shall make an extremely short speech. That is because I wish only to make one proposal. If this report does go to the Procedure Committee, as I suspect it will, it is a suggestion that that committee might like to consider. It concerns the question of Bills going to a Grand Committee.
When I read the report soon after its publication, I scribbled in the margin against paragraph 23, the paragraph recommending greater use of the Grand Committee procedure, the question, "Why not split the Bill, cf. Finance Bills in the House of Commons?" I was involved in the huge arguments that took place on the Floor of the House of another place during 1966, 1967 and 1968, at the end of which it was initially decided that the whole of the Committee stage of the Finance Bill should go before a Standing Committee.
However, in the end, that decision led to a procedure that has found favour under successive governments and oppositions of different parties. The procedure is quite simply this: when the Finance Bill is tabled, and after Second Reading, the opposition parties are given the opportunity to identify particular issues of great political or economic importance which they would like to take on the Floor of the House. Those debates are taken first. Thereafter, when those issues have been debated in Committee of the whole House, the rest of the Bill is remitted to a Committee upstairs.
That process would enable us to overcome the difficulty referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Roper; namely, of there being no votes in Grand Committees in this House. Apart from anything else, I find the Moses Room an absolutely impossible place to hear what anyone is saying that I do not go there very often. If you have a good debate in the Moses Room during a Committee stage, I can well understand it being very frustrating if you cannot vote at the end of it. All I am asking at this stage is that the Procedure Committee should consider splitting the Bill as one of the ways of making the sending of Bills to a Grand Committee perhaps more acceptable to the House. If the Opposition have the chance of choosing certain issues in a Bill for debate in the full House before it goes upstairs, or wherever, that would seem to me an advantage.
On delving into the matter, I discovered that the other place does not now confine this procedure to Finance Bills; indeed, it has been applied to a number of Bills in recent years. I am told that it was applied to the Criminal Justice Bill 1989-90, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill 1989-90, the Sunday Trading Bill 1993-94, the Family Law Bill 1995-96, and the Firearms (Amendment) Bill 1996-97. In those cases, it was applied particularly to issues that might be described as "issues of conscience"—in other words, issues on which there might be a free vote. However, if the Opposition, as in Finance Bills, is choosing the subject, that could equally apply to issues of considerable political consequence.
I know that my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said that we should not,
- "import procedures from the increasingly discredited House of Commons".
I am attracted by the parts of the package that involve sending Bills to a committee because of the advantage that it gives in providing more time on the Floor of the House for major debates. Perhaps I may plead a particular case. After an inquiry that I was privileged to chair, the Select Committee on Science and Technology produced a report a few years ago entitled, Science and Society. As those who follow such matters will know, since that report was published there has been an enormous amount of interest and activity, especially among the learned and scientific societies and other bodies, in recognition of the fact that the whole relationship between science and the public is changing, has changed, and, indeed, must change further.
We had to debate that report on a Friday. Like other members of that committee, I tried very hard to get a debate in the middle of the week when the subject matter would have attracted more attention. We had a good debate, but it took place on a Friday and attracted no attention outside the House. There are other examples of Select Committee debates suffering a similar fate. If one of the consequences of this package is that such debates on Select Committee reports can be taken on the Floor of the House in prime time, I should be prepared to see more Bills going to a standing committee, subject, of course, to my caveat that we should adopt the procedure of the other place, which is not of recent origin—it dates back 30 years—of splitting the Bill and having the more controversial parts debated on the Floor of the House.
I do not necessarily share the fear expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, though I hope I get my Virgil right when I say:
- "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes"—
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