The Financial Times reported on December 7 that the Government was planning to reduce the powers of the Lords by removing its right to veto secondary legislation— Orders made under Acts of Parliament. In a letter published in the paper on December 9, Alistair Lexden drew attention to the harmful effects of such a move.
Sir, The removal of the power of the House of Lords to veto secondary legislation would have serious and damaging constitutional consequences (“Cameron moves to bypass Lords”, 7 December). It is in the Lords that secondary legislation receives most of the detailed attention that is required. As the Hansard Society pointed out recently, “its scrutiny committees are more engaged in the process and more influential with government. Peers generally have more appetite than MPs for the detail and technical work required to look at a thousand statutory instruments a year”.
Since this vast body of legislation cannot be amended, it is only through the use of the veto that governments can be brought effectively to account where circumstances warrant it. Unless the Commons suddenly discovers for the first time a taste for the necessary scrutiny work, the curbing of the Lords’ role in this area will put yet more power in the hands of the executive at the expense of the legislature which has already been weakened by the automatic imposition of guillotines on major bills, a practice that continues to thrive despite a Conservative manifesto commitment in 2010 to end it.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords