My Lords, there is an early opportunity, at the beginning of a Session, to raise these issues. As noble Lords will be aware, they have come up before. I want to make a brief comment and offer a way forward that I think may be helpful to both the Government and the House.
First, we have only to look at the previous Session of Parliament and read the reports of the Constitution Committee, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and the Delegated Powers Committee to see that they all raised concerns about the Government’s overreliance on secondary legislation and the use of skeleton Bills. They commented that the Government’s reliance on secondary legislation has grown markedly in recent years. The Constitution Committee said:
“Skeleton Bills inhibit parliamentary scrutiny and we find it difficult to envisage any circumstances in which their use is acceptable”.
There are examples from the previous Session. The noble Baroness was involved with the then Medicines and Medical Devices Bill, which was a particular issue, and there was also, again, immigration legislation from the Home Office.
The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is slightly different, because he asked questions in Committee during the debate on a statutory instrument, to which the Minister was unable to respond. She is still unable to respond to him even at this stage when we are being asked to vote on that order.
I can recall an instance when a former Home Office Minister, in response to me, agreed not to bring something forward until they had answered the questions that
I had asked, because they were unable to answer them in Committee. The House may want to consider that idea in future because it is best to have answers to questions before we are asked to vote.
It is inadequate to have an early debate on revised legislation. However, it would help—I have raised this idea before with the Government, and I hope that the Minister will take it back if she cannot give me an answer today—if the Government could commit to ensuring that, although there may be an occasional exception, draft SIs are published prior to the Report stage of legislation going through. That would give this House an opportunity to look at an SI while discussing the legislation, which would then give us an opportunity to scrutinise it better. I would be happy to discuss this further with the Government. The situation at present is not always, but too often, unacceptable— but there is a way forward that might help both the Government and your Lordships’ House.