House of Commons Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons The Legislative Process First Report of Session 2005–06 HC 1097 House of Commons Modernisation of the House of Commons The Legislative Process First Report of Session 2005–06 Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 25 July 2006 HC 1097 Published on 7 September 2006 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £0.00 The Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons The Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons is appointed by the House of Commons to consider how the House operates and to make recommendations for modernisation. Current membership Mr Jack Straw (Labour, Blackburn) (Chairman) Mr Paul Burstow, (Liberal Democrat, Sutton & Cheam) Ms Dawn Butler (Labour, Brent South) Ann Coffey (Labour, Stockport) Mr George Howarth (Labour, Knowsley North & Sefton East) Mr Greg Knight (Conservative, Yorkshire East) Mark Lazarowicz (Labour/Co-operative, Edinburgh North and Leith) Mrs Theresa May (Conservative, Maidenhead) Mr Adrian Sanders, (Liberal Democrat, Torbay) Mr Richard Shepherd (Conservative, Aldridge-Brownhills) Graham Stringer (Labour, Manchester Blackley) Paddy Tipping (Labour, Sherwood) Mr Edward Vaizey (Conservative, Wantage) Lynda Waltho (Labour, Stourbridge) Sir Nicholas Winterton (Conservative, Macclesfield) The following Members were also members of the Committee during the Parliament: Liz Blackman (Labour, Erewash) Chris Grayling (Conservative, Epsom and Ewell) Mr David Heath (Liberal Democrat, Somerton and Frome) Mr Geoffrey Hoon (Labour, Ashfield) (Chairman) Jessica Morden (Labour, Newport East) Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrat, Hazel Grove) Powers The powers of the Committee are set out in an Appendix to the House of Commons Standing Orders. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publication The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at http://www.parliament.uk/modcom. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Ms Helen Irwin and Tom Healey (Clerks), Susan Morrison (Committee Assistant) and Jane Cooper (Secretary). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk, Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons, Journal Office, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA . The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 3318; the Committee’s email address is [email protected] The Legislative Process 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 Introduction 5 Connecting with the public 5 The volume of legislation 6 Primary and secondary legislation 7 Pre-legislative Scrutiny 9 Development of pre-legislative scrutiny 9 Impact of pre-legislative scrutiny 11 Connecting with the public 11 Improving the law 12 Smoothing the passage of legislation 13 Making pre-legislative scrutiny more effective 15 Volume of draft bills 15 Continuity of membership 16 Information about bills 17 Second reading 19 Programming 21 Committee Stage 22 Special standing committees 25 Nomenclature of standing committees 26 Making public bill committees more flexible 28 Public bill committees and pre-legislative scrutiny 29 Making public bill committees more effective 30 Committee papers 30 Notice periods for amendments 31 Explanatory material for amendments 31 Use of computers 32 Reporting the bill to the House 33 A substantive report from the committee 34 Showing the amendments made to the bill 35 Third Reading 35 Post-legislative scrutiny 36 Consideration of Lords Amendments 36 Programming Lords Amendments 37 The Reasons Committee 39 Making Lords Amendments easier to follow 40 2 Modernisation Committee Timing of Votes 41 Resource implications 43 Conclusions and recommendations 45 Formal Minutes 49 Witnesses 50 List of written evidence 51 The Legislative Process 3 Summary The House of Commons should revise its procedures so that it is easier for the general public, as well as lobby groups, representative organisations and other stakeholders to influence Parliament’s consideration of bills. Pre-legislative scrutiny of draft bills, one of the most successful Parliamentary innovations of the last ten years, should become more widespread, giving outside bodies and individuals a chance to have their say before a bill is introduced and improving the quality of the bills that are presented to Parliament. Members who have served on pre-legislative committees should be invited to return for the standing committee stage, drawing on their experience with the draft bill to contribute to the detailed consideration of the bill itself. This will not necessarily mean an easy ride for the Government; there is evidence that, by informing Members more thoroughly about the issues surrounding a bill, pre-legislative scrutiny can make the Parliamentary stages of a bill more challenging for Ministers. As a matter of routine, Government bills should be referred to committees which have the power to take evidence as well as to debate and amend a bill, and these committees should be named public bill committees. This is not intended to be a substitute for pre-legislative scrutiny; it is to enable the Members who will be going through the bill in detail to inform themselves about its contents and to give the Minister a chance to respond to questions from the Committee, a process which is likely to be more fruitful that a series of debates on ‘probing’ amendments. The standing committee stage itself could be improved by increasing the notice period for amendments—giving Members more time to prepare for debates—and Members should have the opportunity to table brief explanations of their amendments. The House should take the first steps towards computerising standing committee papers and providing on- screen access to papers in committee rooms. In the longer term, this could have far- reaching implications for the way that Members use standing committee papers, for example, by providing hypertext links between different documents and showing how the bill would look if particular amendments were made. Standing committees—a term which, to the extent that it says anything about what they are, is positively misleading—should be re-named ‘public bill committees’ in respect of bills and ‘delegated legislation committees’ in respect of statutory instruments. A more flexible approach to the timing of bills could bring some benefits. In particular, a move away from the ‘standard’ one-day debate on second reading could allow for longer second reading debates on some bills, and shorter debates on others. Parliament should improve the quality of the information it provides both for its own Members and for the public. A new series of ‘legislation gateways’ on the internet will provide a single source of information for each bill and the House of Commons Library will produce a Research Paper covering the committee stage of most bills, supplementing the Reports that are currently produced before second reading. Greater use should be 4 Modernisation Committee made of information that is already available, such as the Government’s Regulatory Impact Assessments. The Legislative Process 5 Introduction 1. It is in making, or giving effect to the law that Parliament impinges most directly on individuals, by conferring on them a wide range of rights and duties. 1 Individual citizens are also affected indirectly by legislation which confers powers or responsibilities on the Government. The prerogative powers of the Crown encompass matters of fundamental importance such as citizenship, foreign relations and defence. But they are in principle circumscribed, and comparatively few in number, in relation to the functions of the modern state. By contrast, Parliament’s legislative powers are in principle boundless; in Blackstone’s phrase, ‘it can, in short, do everything that is not naturally impossible’.2 Most of the edifice of government—the National Health Service, the social security system, the transport network, schools, public libraries and social housing—rests on statutory foundations. The question of how the public can be more closely involved in the legislative process has been a key feature of this inquiry. 2. An effective, democratic legislative process must be as open as possible. This means not only that the public should be able to observe every aspect of it, but that they should wherever possible have the opportunity to become involved as active participants. This is a fundamental point of democratic principle, but also a prudent strategy. Members of Parliament have no monopoly on wisdom; the Government has no monopoly on effective consultation. A system which allows the individual or organisation who has spotted a way in which a pending piece of legislation might affect them to bring this readily to the attention of the legislature is less likely to produce laws which are defective or redundant, or which lead to unintended (even unforeseen) consequences. Connecting with the public 3. Although the question of involving the public in the legislative process runs through this Report, there are two connected recommendations about the way information is provided on the internet which are intended solely to benefit the public’s understanding of bills and do not relate directly to our other recommendations for improving the legislative process. 4. The House of Commons Library currently maintains on the Parliamentary