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Mr. Maclennan: Before the right hon. Gentleman deals with those matters, will he perhaps lend support to his argument by instancing examples, drawn from his long 15-year experience of government, of when the Government might have been assisted by the House of Lords exercising powers, and when he believes that, ultimately, amendments for the better would consequently have been made? Will he give some examples? An admission that Governments have got it wrong is very rare in this Chamber.
Mr. MacGregor: I shall list four issues related to powers additional to those already held by the House of Lords, and, in doing so, I should answer the right hon. Gentleman's question. All the issues arise from my own feelings and experience in government.
Secondary legislation is the first issue. I am delighted that, in its submission to the royal commission, the Conservative party has highlighted the importance of strengthening both Houses--although, in this debate, we are talking only about the House of Lords--in their handling of secondary legislation. I am delighted also that, in one of its questions, the royal commission asked about
Mr. Letwin:
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the prevalence of so-called Henry VIII clauses, in which secondary legislation is permitted to amend or revoke primary legislation, has almost got to the stage of turning the tables by making secondary primary, and primary secondary?
Mr. MacGregor:
That is not always the case, of course, but very often it is. It must be a subject of great
As we all know, this House is able either to reject in toto or to accept in toto secondary legislation--statutory instruments--but cannot amend it. In Committee, when one is under pressure on a particular aspect of a Bill referring a matter to secondary legislation, the big concession that one makes--I have been guilty of it--is to agree that it is important, and therefore to agree that it should be dealt with by affirmative rather than by negative resolution. Big deal. When a Government have the majority that the current Government do, affirmative resolution does not amount to a row of beans. Therefore, there is no opportunity for either this House or the other House, which has a convention on secondary legislation, properly to scrutinise secondary legislation. There is no opportunity for this House to examine and amend in detail those crucial pieces of secondary legislation.
Mr. Grieve:
I ask this as someone serving on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is most extraordinary that, even when scrutiny--which is limited to identifying whether legislation has been properly drafted--reveals that legislation is defective and deficient, it is still open to the Government to decide, as they very frequently do, to continue with the statutory instrument in that form, with the mere assurance that, at some later date, it will be corrected?
Mr. MacGregor:
I agree. The practice underlines just how few powers of scrutiny the House now has over secondary legislation. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that much worse than the example he gave is when there are real criticisms of one policy aspect of the secondary legislation, but hon. Members are asked to accept the whole thing or nothing at all. As I said, with the current Government's majority, it is well known that that entails accepting the whole legislation.
Mrs. Beckett:
I do not particularly want to make a partisan point, and agree with much of what the right hon. Gentleman has said--perhaps more than he has recognised. However, the notion that the practice has been introduced by the Government and is a consequence of our majority--[Interruption.] It is not a consequence of our majority. The practice has been growing over very many years, and I think that we all recognise that it has defects. Although I understand the astonishment of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) to hear the Government saying, "Yes, this is defective, but we will come back to it at some other time", I assure him that, to my knowledge, the practice has been going on for at least 15 years.
Mr. MacGregor:
I thought that I had already said that all Governments have done it. However, I also said that the practice is worse now, primarily because there is increasingly a tendency to put legislation into secondary form, but also because of the Government's large majority.
Mr. Hogg:
I must ask my right hon. Friend whether there is not a further dimension to the matter. Secondary
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. and learned Gentleman, but I am sure that he knows that he should be addressing the occupant of the Chair.
Mr. Hogg:
I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
In that respect, no mechanism is available to us, either in this place or in the other place, to address the merits of that legislation.
Mr. MacGregor:
That was going to be my second point. I should first finish dealing with secondary domestic legislation.
Mr. Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent, Central)
rose--
Mr. MacGregor:
I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for not giving way again for a while. There are things that I want to say on composition. I do not want to speak for too long, and there have already been interventions in my speech.
I just want to underline the fact--I am glad that all the interventions, including that of the Leader of the House, have supported it--that we have to address the issue of how secondary legislation should be dealt with.
The House of Lords may have more time than we do to consider secondary legislation, and if the other place attracts people with outside experience and expertise, it may have a greater ability to consider secondary legislation. I therefore believe that the House of Lords has a particularly important role in dealing with secondary legislation. It should be given powers to amend it, and certainly to delay it, to give Governments time to think again.
The second issue relating to powers that I should like to raise--European legislation--was just mentioned briefly by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). To be very brief, I shall simply say that we have, of course, developed mechanisms for scrutinising European legislation. This House's mechanisms for scrutinising such legislation are fairly extensive, and are probably more extensive than those of other democratic institutions in the European Union. Nevertheless, I think that there are matters on which we could go further and in which the House of Lords could have a specific role to play.
The role of the House of Lords should include consideration of issues that will be decided in the Council of Ministers and in European legislation, but well before those decisions are taken. I stress the importance of consideration well before the decisions are taken. In my experience--as a former Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and as a former Secretary of State for Transport--the House of Commons far too often debates issues that are almost already settled in a negotiating framework in Brussels. Anyone who has experience of how the Brussels system works will know that to be true.
In one sense, therefore, there are limitations to what the House of Lords could do on European legislation before final decisions on that legislation are taken, not only for
the reason that I have given--which could be dealt with by considering the issues very early--but because every Minister has to engage in negotiation with other Ministers and cannot himself or herself entirely achieve the wishes of this Chamber or the other Chamber.
The House of Lords could also play a much bigger part in the implementation of European legislation. As we all know, it is a common cry that the United Kingdom tends to implement legislation much more extremely and thoroughly than other member states do. Clearly, there is a role not only for the second Chamber but for this Chamber in ensuring that we do not burden ourselves with consequential legislation that goes way beyond what is needed. The second Chamber should also have a role in subsequently examining how European legislation has worked. The other place should have powers in performing that important role.
My third point is that more use should be made of the revising power of the second Chamber. Two years' breathing space on legislation may well be desirable. I do not often agree with Earl Russell, but I agree with what he wrote recently in The Sunday Telegraph about the House of Lords:
"providing for the Second Chamber's opposition to any subordinate legislation to result in delay and reconsideration (by the Commons), rather than rejection."
I think that the way in which Parliament as a whole deals with secondary legislation is now a disgrace. The situation has become very much worse because of the habit of all Governments, but very much of the current one, of addressing so many key issues in secondary legislation because they do not have the time or do not wish to think through the consequences in primary legislation. As the practice has become so much more intensively practised, it has become much more important to answer the question of how this Chamber and the other Chamber should handle secondary legislation.
"It is only because we have the power to vote that the Commons ever listens to anything we say. Only if the functions of the reformed House include the right to revise legislation, against the wishes of the Commons, will it be worth bothering with."
There is a grain of truth in that. The revising powers need to be looked at.
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