Member

I appreciate that there are fewer people in the House at this point and we have already discussed important matters today, but in my government career, one of the most informative roles I had was, as Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, being on the Cabinet committee that looks into legislation, the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee. By the way, the Leader of the House of Lords and the Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords are on that committee. The purpose of the committee is to go through legislation, particularly the Leader of the House of Lords and, at the other end, the Lord Privy Seal. It is designed because those offices of state are there not only to represent the Government in Parliament but to represent Parliament in government. I have already made the point that we have moved from an initial 149 pages of legislation to, now, 299 pages of legislation—never mind all the amendments coming in—and not lots of scrutiny at the other end; I am not criticising the Commons because, unfortunately, it has evolved over quite a few decades that a lot of the work gets left to this Chamber. But even then, we see how that process has evolved as strongly flawed, because with the Bill having doubled in size from when it was originally presented, the statements made about whether it contravenes human rights and the impact assessments are all from October. Very minor changes were made in March. Nothing else has had an impact assessment. Even then, the impact assessments are almost irrelevant, because they more or less say, “Well, we don’t really know how to do this; we’ll get into that decision when we get into regulations, or we consult”.