The present session may appear light in legislative terms given the relatively few Bills being brought forward.  However, the number of Bills masks the extent of the Government’s attempts to enact legislative change.  It has developed a penchant for introducing Bills that are in effect several Bills in one.  I have already written about the Constitutional Renewal Bill, which comprises five distinct and essentially free-standing parts.  That Bill  may or may not be introduced this session; Jack Straw has said that the intention is to introduce it in the Spring.  However, two omnibus Bills are already before the Lords.  The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill – described as three-Bills-in-one – has already had its Second Reading; so too has the Marine and Coastal Access Bill  – two-Bills-in-one.  Both will begin committee stage when the House returns next month.

Such Bills create problems in terms of parliamentary scrutiny.  There is limited opportunity to scrutinise to each of the distinct elements in depth.  This is especially the case in the Commons.  There is the problem of ensuring that the public bill committee appointed to examine the bill has members that have knowledge of each part.  Public bill committees can take evidence, but the time to do so is limited: this means either concentrating expert evidence on one part of the Bill or spreading it thinly over the whole Bill. 

In the Lords, the problem is less severe in that any peer can take part in committee proceedings.  Those with expertise in a particular part of a Bill can thus contribute to the proceedings on that part and leave it to experts on other parts to deal with those when they are considered.  On the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, for example, I plan to take part in proceedings on the local democracy part but have little to offer on the remaining parts.  We do not utilise evidence-taking committees (though I believe we should), so there is not the equivalent problem to that faced by committees in the Commons.  Given the nature of the bills, it is important that we allocate sufficient time to each to ensure that there is detailed scrutiny.   The use of omnibus legislation is something that we will need to monitor.