Bismarck said, according to Susanna Kalitowski from the Hansard Society, that “Laws are like sausages; it’s better not to see them being made”. Kalitowski, whose report will be launched tomorrow afternoon and ‘previewed’ in the House Magazine yesterday, has studied the role of parliamentary scrutiny of legislation, interviewing over 80 interviews with Ministers, MPs, peers, government officials and pressure groups. The consensus is that while changes to a bill are often forced through in the Lords, the issues on which to fight are often identified in the Commons and Ministers ‘softened up’ to move on an issue. External actors like lobby groups and campaigners can have a  major influence and probably more than they think.  There is also general agreement that the weakness in scrutiny lies in insufficient pre-legislative scrutiny of many bills and a feeling in Whitehall that to change anything is a sign of weakness, a cultural problem which could be addressed if ministers showed more confidence. Certainly her findings accord with my experience. A collaborative approach by the bill team and a willingness to talk and talk again outside the debating chamber is usually key. 

I did think of blogging today after sitting listening in the Chamber to the Jack Straw proposals for Lords reform. It is a shambolic woolly paper that’s for sure, green not white. See Lord Norton’s link in his last blog to read it in full. So no attractive redundancy package for me then? (only joking). Looks like no-one can quite see how to get from where we are now to the magic ‘legitimate’ elected House. This one could run and run, I think I’ll have retired long before anything sensible is done. I would quite like to see an elected element introduced into the House as a pilot, perhaps replacing say 20% of the existing political appointees who have come straight from the Commons or local government. They would broadly bring the same skills as former politicians do now but without their experience. Lets see how we could devise an appropriate constituency for such elections and monitor what changes in scrutiny such a new element would introduce if any before tearing down the whole edifice. Can’t we just drop the titles and become fixed term appointments as a starter? Baroness D’Souza made a well thought out response on behalf of us threatened crossbenchers, which brought cheers from all sides of the House.