The recent spat over whether a Bill should be taken in Grand Committee or on the floor of the House rather masks the more important limitation of committee scrutiny. Whether a Bill is taken for committee stage in Grand Committee or on the floor is not a major issue. Grand Committee is not a committee in…
We had a very useful debate yesterday on the working practices of the House. The debate was wide-ranging and enabled us to press the case for strengthening procedures for legislative and non-legislative scrutiny. There were some good proposals advanced and broad support for enhancing pre and post-legislative scrutiny, as well as enabling Bills introduced in…
I see that in response to Lord Taylor’s recent post, Alex has commented: “there is no point to the house of lords – they are unelected and just use up our taxes. their only power is to delay bills by one year”. That completely misunderstands the House of Lords. The cost to the public purse…
Most of the time of the Lords is given over to legislative scrutiny. Spare a thought, therefore, for those peers who sit on the Opposition front benches. They have to spend hours in the chamber when a Bill falling within their portfolio is going through the House. It can mean long hours not just on one…
I promised in response to a comment on an earlier post to discuss post-legislative scrutiny. When I chaired the Constitution Committee of the Lords, we undertook a major inquiry into the legislative process. We looked at the legislative process holistically, examining not only the process when a Bill is before Parliament but also pre-legislative and…
