Government and Parliament

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the declining quality of legislation presented to us. I raise this not only because we can do something about it—as the noble Lord, Lord Lang, suggested, we have to do something about it—but because, as standards decline, there is more opportunity to ignore or even break the rules that have been devised over time to protect the public good. I thank my noble friend for moving this Motion and for her sensible proposals.

Like my noble friend Lady Andrews, my concern arises from my past membership of the Delegated Powers Committee and my current membership of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. Both these committees have witnessed the decline of which I speak. When scrutinising secondary legislation, quite rightly we look not only at what it says but why it is required, how it is explained and what its impact will be—as my noble friend Lady Smith said, whether it is fit for purpose. More and more the committee has to draw your Lordships’ attention to inadequacies in all these aspects.

We recently drew your Lordships’ attention to an order relating to standards in the welfare of livestock. In that order, regulations were to be withdrawn in favour of a voluntary welfare code based on consultation, which the Minister said would improve welfare. But the consultation said exactly the opposite. When we pointed this out, Defra withdrew the order. Do the Government consider this a defeat or the House doing its work?

Almost one in five of the statutory instruments reported to the House in the previous Session was on the grounds of inadequate explanation. Indeed, the SI relating to tax credits which precipitated the report of the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, went back to the Treasury twice because of deficiencies in the Explanatory Memorandum—deficiencies in the explanation as to why it was necessary to use secondary legislation to introduce this new and significant matter.

Why is this not picked up in the other place? As has been pointed out in many reports, not least in the responses to the Strathclyde review, there are so many other pressures on Members of Parliament that they have little time to look at secondary legislation. Indeed, only selected parts of primary legislation are scrutinised, partly because virtually every major Bill is timetabled—not, I think, an invention of the Blair Government, as the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, suggested.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, complained about the number of government defeats. Does he not agree that these defeats are not only because of disagreements over policy but because the legislation is incomplete, not properly prepared and not thought through, as most speakers in this debate have suggested?

What can be done? As other noble Lords have said, there is a Cabinet Office Guide to Making Legislation and instructions that should be given to parliamentary counsel. Are these instructions carried out? There is an understanding of the need for Green Papers, White Papers, draft Bills and a proposed schedule of secondary legislation. Is the problem lack of staff? Have we lost people with the expertise, analytical skills and experience in preparing legislation? Is this the result of budget cuts in the Civil Service?

One way of making up for this loss would be to do what lots of other people are doing—turn to artificial intelligence. As my noble friend Lady Smith mentioned, in the debate on the Queen’s Speech I drew your Lordships’ attention to this possibility and it created a lot of interest on social media. I made the point that the Government’s Science and Technology Facilities Council at Hartree has a five-year collaboration with Watson at IBM. These two organisations are at the forefront of developments in artificial intelligence. I pointed out that we already have machines that can read, prepare and analyse clauses in loan agreements and contracts of sale. With this experience and the excellence of the two organisations, it must be possible to digitalise and code the Cabinet Office instructions on legislation to at least make sure that every element of policy explanation and consultation is present. Having developed this technology, it could be offered for sale to virtually every other legislature in the world. I hope Ministers do not think for one moment that this suggestion is the start of the slippery slope of Ministers being replaced by robots—not at all.

That is just one way of dealing with the problem. Perhaps the Government have other ideas. We have to get the preparation and procedure of legislation right because, if we do not, the low standards will provide an opportunity for poor or bad legislation which will undermine our culture of strong, fair-minded and responsible government, scrutinised by Parliament to make it fair-minded. It will undermine those rules devised to protect the public good, and we will all be the losers.