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Lord Elton: On a practical point, the proposal is that we should have two Sessions of an experiment and review it at the end. When he comes to reply, I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House will tell us what will happen to Bills that are candidates for carry-over at the end of the second Session. A Bill that has been reviewed pre-legislatively—I do not know what is the composite word; the Germans would have one—in the first Session is likely to be held over to the second, so the second part of the process falls into the experimental period. But what will the Government Chief Whip do about Bills that he would like to be candidates for carry-over into the third Session, when it is not known what the House will decide about the validity of the experiment itself?

I leave the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the House and the noble Lord the Chief Whip to consider that, and turn briefly to carry-over. I feel strongly that the function of Parliament is to control the Executive. A principal means of doing so is that described by my noble friend Lord Jopling. This is the place at which the system pinches; this is the sluice gate that controls the volume of legislation. I have been a Minister in several departments and was struck from the first by the enthusiastic rivalry between departments to have more Bills on the main programme than their rivals. Ministers were tempted to think that their machismo was judged by the amount of parliamentary time that they could secure.

So there is great pressure to put Bills before your Lordships and a need for a counter-balance to that. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, the former Chief Whip, suggested that, however many Sessions there may be in a Parliament, they in fact form a continuous process and that the question is whether we get a blockage here, there or at the end. He temptingly suggested to us that it would be more profitable to us if the blockage were at the end.

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I pause at that point and ask the noble Lord to stop thinking about us and to start thinking about oppositions. We will not be here for ever; it is just possible that noble Lords opposite will not be there for ever. One day, whoever is in government, they may be in opposition.

I thought that the noble Lord the Lord Chairman of Committees was supposed to be impartial. He should have forgotten his origins and not be gesturing.

The Chairman of Committees: I was only pointing out that there is another option, which is that perhaps one day my former colleagues could form a government.

Lord Elton: I do not want to venture quite as far as that as a hypothesis.

This is a serious matter. We are discussing the functioning of this House, not individual blocs of people who happen to be in it now. The functioning of the House depends on a proper balance between the Government and Opposition of the day and the Cross-Benches. In that light, we should consider proposals to restrict the volume of legislation.

My noble friend Lord Jopling was extremely persuasive, but I also took careful note of what the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said, when he pointed out that, in the end, the decision whether there will be carry-over will be a decision of this House. I should add in parenthesis that the candidates for carry-over will be numerous. The nearest thing to pre-legislative scrutiny in which I have been involved was in 1983, when I was at the Home Office and in charge of a Bill about the police—a large and important main programme Bill. The 1983 election struck in the middle of Report. I went home blithely for the holidays—for the weeks of the election—thinking that when I returned, my task would be easy because most of the work had been done. Not at all, more amendments were tabled when we returned to the Bill than when we first considered it.

So pre-legislative scrutiny may make for better legislation, but it will not make for quicker legislation. I shall wait to hear the winding-up speeches, but Members will have observed that my name is attached to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth. If this amendment fails, I shall speak with vigour and conviction in favour of that amendment.

Lord Peston: The intervention by my noble friend Lord Carter was devastating. I hoped that one of the noble Lords opposite would tell us why my noble friend was not completely right.

Unless an infinite amount of time and space is available, a government who choose to carry over a Bill must pay a price. They must give up time and space in which to do it. I was particularly amazed by the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. It made no sense. If he carried over a Bill, he would lose another Bill, and he would have to explain to one of his

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ministerial colleagues that his Bill had been lost because they carried the other one over. He might lose a few friends.

My noble friend's intervention should have saved our having to proceed further with this amendment and the later amendments. He won the argument with no trouble. It is about time we allayed such fears and got on to the matter that really interests me—can we go home early?

Lord Donaldson of Lymington: My noble friend Lord Bledisloe and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said that the decision on whether there should be carry-over would depend on the will of the House. At line 15 of page 4 the report says:

"Carry-over would be achieved, after discussion in the usual channels, by a motion agreed by one or both Houses, depending on where the bill had been introduced".

Judging by those words, it does not seem that it would necessarily follow that this House could defeat a carry-over.

Lord Roper: I am in the rather unusual position of being a former member of the usual channels in another place, like the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, having been a Chief Whip at that end. I am now a member of the usual channels here.

I agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. It represented the situation in the House of Commons where governments have majorities and oppositions have time. That is not the case here. We are—or we should be—concerned about using time effectively to carry out scrutiny of the Government. We tried to do that in the proposals that the Leader's group and the Procedure Committee have put before the House.

Pre-legislative scrutiny is important. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, will read the recommendation of the Procedure Committee at line 23 of page 3 of the report. It says that the committee supports pre-legislative scrutiny,

"provided that the quality of pre-legislative scrutiny is maintained at a high level and also that pre-legislative scrutiny committees are not required to work to unreasonably tight timetables or to consider draft bills that are incomplete".

We made it absolutely clear that we did not want just one session of three hours but proper pre-legislative scrutiny.

The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said that he always resisted pre-legislative scrutiny in the other place because it took up time. The inevitable price we had to pay was not that there would be automatic carry-over of every Bill that had been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny but that the House should be more prepared to consider for carry-over a Bill that had been subject to such scrutiny and thus had taken more time, if the scrutiny had been carried out in this House.

We have come up with a proposal that is in the interests of the whole House and, in particular, would enable us to achieve something that was recently

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strongly recommended to me by the previous first parliamentary counsel. He told me that he had tried for years to get governments of both parties to accept the idea of pre-legislative scrutiny because he believed that it would lead to better legislation. We have a chance to achieve that; I hope that we will take it.

Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market: I hesitate to intervene in the debate, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Carter, referred to me, I shall do so briefly. I also hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Jopling, particularly as we normally agree on issues. My experience as Leader of the House in another place was different from his. I must also explain why I am speaking about the amendment. I support Amendment No. 8, but, if this amendment were carried, we would not reach Amendment No. 8.

A major problem for us is that, outside Parliament, there is enormous criticism of the way in which both Houses scrutinise legislation. I share that view. I feel strongly that there is great inadequacy in the other place. The proposals—it is only a trial—go some way to meeting those criticisms. The difference between theory and reality is huge. In reality, many Bills are hardly scrutinised at all in the other place and rarely scrutinised here. Often, they are badly drafted in the first place. Pre-legislative scrutiny will not apply to all Bills. Indeed, I hope that it will apply only to a few. However, I can think of cases—the Financial Services and Markets Bill is an example—in which pre-legislative scrutiny would have led to our having a better Bill in the first place. If we have proper pre-legislative scrutiny—not done in a short time—it is difficult to get a Bill through in a Session.

Lord Carter: The Financial Services and Markets Bill received substantial pre-legislative scrutiny. It was sent to a Joint Committee of both Houses, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and was discussed in draft. It received an enormous amount of pre-legislative scrutiny, and we then discussed the proposed amendments to it, which were more numerous than for any Bill for a century.

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