My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 227A in my name, which is also supported by the noble Lords, Lord Lisvane, Lord Tyler and Lord Judd. The amendment is intended to be helpful to the Minister, although it is unlikely that he will regard anything as helpful at this time of night. Nevertheless, it is intended in the spirit of helpfulness to ensure that the statutory instruments that the Government are proposing turn out to be correct and effective. Many of the changes made by the statutory instruments will be technical and potentially uncontroversial but some will involve policy choices. The aim of my amendment is to ensure wider consultation on statutory instruments before they are formally laid.
The nature of the challenge is quite severe. There will be an awful lot of them—potentially 1,000. I have been looking primarily in the last year at the number that will be required in Defra alone—over 100—on environmental issues. They will need to come thick and fast, and in many cases they are being dealt with in departments by staff who have only recently been recruited. Having seen these departments shrink in times of austerity, lots of people are now being recruited, some of whom are old faithfuls but some of whom are rather new and probably not as well acquainted with the policy area as we would like.
So there is a risk of two things: one is cock-up, if noble Lords will pardon the unparliamentary language—things just going wrong because of the sheer volume and pace; and the other is conspiracy. A large number of the Defra SIs will be roll-ups of a whole variety of issues. I am being ignoble in suggesting that the Government might hide under a pile of harmless stuff the odd thing with a slight curveball in it, but increased transparency and consultation would help reassure people that no fast ones were being tried.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out—and it is inalienable—that the process of both the affirmative and the negative procedures means that once measures are formally laid there is very little room for manoeuvre, so it is important that this consultation happens in advance. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for his letter of 20 February, following Second Reading. It provided more information but offered only that the Government would make efforts to publish a sample of statutory instruments in draft where appropriate. That rather misses the point, which is to let loose on these drafts expert eyes from across a variety of sectors of stakeholders to help the Government with that checking process to make sure that nothing has been missed, there has not been a cock-up and the policy intentions have not been perverted in any way. I hope the Minister will consider this and see it as a genuinely helpful proposal.
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