TNAG-2619-FCO40-3810-Official-visits-from-the-UK-to-Hong-Kong-1992 — Page 45

LORD F

PRESIDENT

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(PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE

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25 June 1992

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We discussed the Lord President's wish to make an official visit to New Zealand and Australia during the Summer Recess. I agreed I would write to set out in more detail what the Lord President has in mind.

The primary focus of the visit would be on Parliamentary matters and his responsibilities as Leader of the House. There is now considerable activity in the UK on reform to the working practices of both Houses of Parliament. The Government is taking forward the Reports of the Commons Select Committee on Hours of Sitting chaired by Michael Jopling MP and the Lords Committee on Select Committee work chaired by Lord Jellicoe. A further focus for interest in this subject is an independent study into the legislative process by the Hansard Society who have set up a Commission involving ex-Ministers, senior Parliamentarians and retired officials. They are expected to report later this year.

The previous Lord President made considerable use of the insights gained from his visit to Australia and New Zealand last September, in his Written and Oral evidence to the Jopling Committee. The main lessons drawn from that trip related to the balance of time in the House between Government and backbenchers, and the routine timetabling of legislation. With the report of the Jopling Committee, and the other two high level inquiries which I have mentioned, the pressures for change are opening up on a number of new fronts.

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The Jellicoe Committee recommended the use of Lords Select Committees to scrutinise legislation prior to Second Reading, drawing on the experience of the Australian Senate Committee on the Scrutiny of Bills (and a somewhat similar system which operates as a matter of course for legislation in New Zealand). This is already sparking interest in the Commons in introducing similar arrangement and/or in making much more use of an existing procedure for special Standing Committees, which take evidence on specialised technical and non-controversial Bills before they start their Parliamentary progress in the usual way. The Hansard Society is understood to be thinking on similar lines and its report, which will have considerable authority given the membership of their Commission, will require careful handling against the background of a commitment to Parliamentary reform from the Prime Minister.

The Lord President is therefore keen to find out how practitioners in the Australian and New Zealand Parliaments both Government Ministers and Parliamentarians who serve on such Committees - find the system of pre-legislative scrutiny works in practice.

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