Baroness Hamwee writes for ePolitix.com ahead of her oral question on post-legislative scrutiny in the House of Lords.
Baroness Hamwee is to ask the leader of the House whether he will support discussions between all sides of the House of Lords to establish a formal structure for post-legislative scrutiny by peers
A good deal of work on how best to undertake scrutiny of legislation has been done by peers, on an informal basis, following a seminar hosted by the Lord Speaker under the title 'Strengthening Parliament'. I believe the time is ripe for formal arrangements for this task.
I do not suggest the Lords has the monopoly of wisdom on this – but what cannot be covered by Commons select committees might be done at our end of the building. We ought to be able to co-operate in order to cover the ground, and there is quite some ground to be covered.
Parliament has been open to looking at legislation, sometimes in draft before a bill is presented and positions are set. Often witnesses give evidence; ministers explain the underlying policy thinking, stakeholders talk about how they may be affected. (This does not happen when a bill starts in the Lords – the current Academies Bill might have benefited from such a process.)
Pre-legislative scrutiny is progressing. Post-legislative scrutiny should be part of the same process. Assessing whether legislation is working out in practice as intended, and identifying how it might have been better, should feed into future legislation. And not just primary legislation – government produces huge numbers of orders, scrutinised (sometimes to startling effect) by the House of Lords merits of statutory instruments committee, but not as part of a fully integrated structure.
This is not a party political point, but too often when government thinks primary or secondary legislation is not working, it adds another piece. The outside world has little confidence that the reasons for failure have been considered adequately or transparently.
With reform in the air, the functions of our House must be reviewed. This is the sort of work which we could do well, and I believe there is an appetite to do it.
