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Lord Greaves: My Lords, I do not suggest that all Conservatives do so. I notice that my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, is looking quizzically at me. I willingly except him from the accusation of being Left/liberal! Nevertheless, people have said that some on the Conservative Benches represent the last bastion of the old Liberal/Tory tradition. Long may it continue.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said that we are interested in these matters but asked whether anybody out there was. These are vital matters because the detailed procedures of this House, as part of the British Parliament, involve the basic liberties and rights of Members of the British Parliament to hold the Government to account. I do not suggest that we should go as slowly as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, said we had been going during the past 100 years; however, we should move carefully. I believe that the package is modest, evolutionary and reversible and therefore, as a package, I am very happy to support it.
I turn to Thursday morning sittings. I am with my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie and not with my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones in this regard. I was once described by David Steel, as he then was—my noble friend now—as being a "North of England nationalist". I said, "No, I am not. I am no more a nationalist than you are a Scottish nationalist. My view of the North of England is as your view of Scotland". I have spent my life arguing against people who believe that the institutions of this country should be organised only for those who live and work in London. I do not suggest that we should move Parliament to Harrogate—
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I do not suggest that for the moment; and I do not suggest that our arrangements should be only for those living in the North of England. We are simply asking for a bit of give and take.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones said that if he could not be here at 11 o'clock on a Thursday, scrutiny would be more difficult. However, it may be that towards the end of business on a Thursday, many Members from the North of England, Scotland, Cornwall or wherever who currently go home early and miss our proceedings will be present and able to scrutinise. Individual Members of this House—myself, my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and anyone else—do not necessarily have to be here; the important thing is that enough of us are here and that there is a balance. I am in favour of the proposals for Thursdays. I should go on later than 10 o'clock at night, which is
nowadays a bit early to finish. I should go on until 11 o'clock or midnight, but not later than that. However, that is a detail.The package as a whole is a welcome step forward. As a "North of England non-nationalist but protagonist", I suggest that it is a small step towards a future in which this House is more representative not just of the people in the South East or London but of people from all the regions and nations of this country.
7.26 p.m.
Lord Grenfell: My Lords, the hour is relatively late—although possibly not as late as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would like—and we have had a long debate, so I shall try to be brief.
I find this package eminently sensible. I also find the proposals, as my noble friend Lord Peston said, extremely reasonable. My noble and learned friend the Leader of the House made the case for the package eloquently and persuasively. There is little that I can add at this hour. Many other noble Lords, on all sides of the House, have made a similarly positive case.
There is no hidden agenda in the report. It is an honest attempt to improve our working practices to the benefit of the whole House and—dare I say it—Parliament as a whole. If there is any hidden agenda, I suggest that it is to be found not on these Benches but somewhere else.
We will have plenty of time to discuss all of the proposals in detail when, as I hope, the proposal is agreed and the Procedure Committee comes back at a later date. At this late stage of our debate, I shall say no more about the substance of the report except to express a certain relief and pleasure that among the excellent recommendations is the call for a thorough review of the House's scrutiny of European legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, said, that is urgently needed; I totally agree with him.
As a next step, it strikes me as wholly logical and businesslike to remit the report as it stands to the Procedure Committee with an instruction to come up with detailed proposals by 8th July on the implementation of the package so that the House has an early opportunity to debate the proposals fully and to vote on them. Equally logical and businesslike is the proposed trial period of two Sessions. That means that changes in our working practices are not immediately set in stone but can be revisited in the light of two Sessions of practical experience. On that basis, any suggestion that the proposals are being rammed down the throats of noble Lords would be totally absurd.
I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Denham—a person for whom I have both respect and affection. The report's proposals comprise 14 points. As noble Lords may recall, some 85 years ago President Woodrow Wilson produced a rather more famous list of 14 points. Of them, Georges Clemenceau said:
- "They bore me. Even God Almighty had only ten".
I should love to think that the noble Lord's amendment was motivated either by mere boredom
with the recommendations or by a simple complaint that there are four too many. I am afraid that that is not the case. Like the noble Lord, Lord Denham, and, I believe, probably the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and a number of others, I was brought up on Hymns Ancient and Modern. But I did not make a personal mantra of the famous line:
- "Change and decay in all around I see".
Agreement to the amendment would risk unnecessary delay, and that carries with it the risk that this House would be seen as delaying changes on the mere supposition that they might not work rather than putting them early to a practical test to see whether they can work.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will be kind enough to give way for a moment. Can he explain how, if the House sits for less time, it can provide greater scrutiny?
Lord Grenfell: My Lords, I understand that the whole purpose of the proposals is not that the House should sit for fewer hours; their purpose is simply to bring about a redistribution of the time in which we sit. I honestly believe that that was the intention of the recommendations, and I welcome them.
That, and particularly, if I may say so, the very negative line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, hardly squares with what I perceive to be the prevailing consensus in this House; that is, that improvements in our practices are needed to enhance not only our efficiency but also the quality of our working life and that those improvements are long overdue.
Whatever the effect of the amendment, it certainly cannot lend impetus to the process of change, without which we shall remain hobbled by practices which simply do not match the demands of a House which is in the process of modernisation.
Herbert Samuel once, rather unfairly I believe, complained that with the Civil Service there was always,
- "a difficulty for every solution".
7.32 p.m.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I fear that the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House may have been painfully aware of the fact that, when I joined his committee, I did so in a somewhat gloomy and grumpy frame of mind. I had the gravest doubts as to whether a Leader's committee was the right body to consider change. I had the gravest doubts as to whether it was
the right time to consider change, when second stage reform was in the offing. And, looking at what had happened in the House of Commons, I believed that I had every reason to be suspicious when the Leader of the House seemed to think that change was necessary.It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord Peston, to mock those of us who are suspicious of change, but he should go down to the other end of this building to see what change has done there. In the Commons drastic change has taken place in the name of modernisation: change which has drastically curtailed debate; change which has made life easier for the Members and much easier for the Government; and change which has almost completely destroyed the effectiveness of the place. If anyone doubts that, they should ask themselves what would have happened if, when we took the terrorism legislation through this place, the same restrictions on debate had applied here as applied in the House of Commons. No proper consideration of that legislation would have taken place at all. The Commons have made complete fools of themselves and have allowed the Government to make fools of the people. And—I must say this to the House—I did not want us to make fools of ourselves.
But the committee met and we found that we were able to work together. We came to the conclusion that it was only common sense for us to try to find issues on which we could all agree. The result is a report which is a compromise. One proposal which might advantage the Government is balanced against another which might not. For example, carry-over would occur only if pre-legislative scrutiny took place, and there would be more use of Grand Committees, but not to give the Government even more time to introduce bad legislation.
Perhaps I may deal with just four of the proposals. First, I turn to carry-over. I can tell noble Lords that I should never have agreed to carry-over had it not been linked to pre-legislative scrutiny. Almost every person today has said that pre-legislative scrutiny is a good idea. Here is an incentive to the Government to provide for it. It goes without saying that we were not agreeing to token pre-legislative scrutiny, with the committee setting a ridiculously tight timetable for reporting. Therefore, it will mean that several months will elapse from the publication of a consultative document on a draft Bill to the committee reporting, and the whole legislative process will be considerably extended. Therefore, it does not mean an easy ride for the Government. Indeed, I have my doubts as to whether, in reality, the Government will be able to proceed on the basis that virtually every Bill will have pre-legislative scrutiny.
We tried to strike the same type of balance in relation to the use of Grand Committees. I want to emphasise to noble Lords that the report recommends a greater use of Grand Committees; it does not recommend that many more Bills go to Grand Committee. It does not recommend—here I must correct the Leader of the House if I heard him aright in his opening speech—that the type of Bill envisaged by Rippon should go to Grand Committee; it
recommends that additional Bills of the type envisaged by Rippon should go to Grand Committee. To me, that signifies "some" more Bills.But, even with a 10 o'clock cut-off, it is clear that simply a few more Bills going to Grand Committee will mean that more time is available on the Floor of the House. That is not to be used for even more badly prepared legislation but for more debates—debates on Select Committee reports and general debates.
As to the 10 o'clock cut-off, at no time did the committee envisage that that would mean less time for Bills taken on the Floor and less time for Bills which went to Grand Committee. At no time did anyone on the committee—least of all the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House—suggest that a 10 o'clock cut-off would imply some type of timetabling. Nothing of that kind is mentioned in the report, and I should never have agreed to a cut-off if there had been any such suggestion. The Government are honour bound—I know that they will proceed on that basis—to ensure that Bills receive the same time as they do now.
So far as concerns starting at 11 o'clock on Thursdays, I consider that to be a reasonable solution to a problem recognised on all sides. There was some unhappiness about the decision not to switch the business on Wednesdays and Thursdays. We all considered that it was far too early to readdress that issue. But this is a different way of approaching the very real feelings of those who, in particular, live a long way from London and have a hard time if there is important business on Thursday and the House sits until late in the evening.
With regard to recesses, I believe that recommendation 31(l) is a little unhappily worded. We did not discuss longer recesses at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. However, we did agree that, if the House of Commons rose at the beginning of July and returned in September, we should be wise to follow suit. The same applied in relation to the other recesses.
I do not think much of the suggestion in paragraph (m). I went along with it because my understanding is that from 2003 the House of Commons will sit in September and, as a result of our other recommendations, this House will sit in September. Therefore, the situation of this House not sitting and a Committee sitting on Bills will not arise. That was the only basis on which I agreed with the suggestion that the Leader of the House wanted to put in the report, but which I could see was entirely irrelevant.
I support the recommendations in the report, but in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Peston, I say that the Motion before the House means precisely what it says. Clearly the Procedure Committee is entitled to recommend as it thinks fit: it can recommend that the report be implemented or that some parts of the report be implemented and not others. That is that.
7.41 p.m.
Lord Brightman: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I want to take advantage of the gap to
make what will be the shortest speech in this debate. I want to add a word about those orphans, consolidation Bills, that the Leader of the House told us in opening were securely locked in a cupboard and no doubt the key has been thrown away. Perhaps I may give your Lordships the figures. In the three Sessions, 1990 to 1993, no fewer than 28 consolidation Bills were enacted. In the three Sessions, 1998 to 2001, only one consolidation Bill was enacted. That information was kindly given to me in a Written Answer by the noble and learned Lord's predecessor. I hope that some working practice can be invented that will cope with the backlog of consolidation Bills.7.42 p.m.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated and express my gratitude for the evident care and conscientious approach that has been demonstrated. The noble Lord, Lord Waddington, summed up our deliberations in a masterly and generous way. He may be wrong about the second part of paragraph (g). I thought I said that,
- "(a) the House should normally rise not later than 10pm;
- "(b) this should be coupled with greater use of Grand Committees for the kind of bills considered suitable by the Rippon group".
I believe that we all approached each other with a certain degree of caution, overlain with a certain degree of suspicion. At every meeting it was a pleasure to see how much closer we could get, with everyone having to give and take. I shall not respond to every point because I hope that we shall have an early opportunity to debate the matter and to come to our distinct conclusions. I shall deal with the substance, and then turn to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Denham.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, has just dealt with consolidated Bills. I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Consolidated Bills do not change the law in substance; they pull it together and they are not contentious. They are important. We could carry out useful work. Not every noble Lord would need to be present at a Grand Committee on a consolidation Bill or a Law Commission Bill. The key is that those who wish to be present in September—if we use that opportunity—could attend. There will be no disincentive, no discouragement for anyone else who simply wants to attend for the whole or part of the Session, whether he or she wants to contribute or not.
The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said that I was trying to steam matters through—in my dreams!
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