Associated topics which the Lord President wishes to include in discussions with his opposite numbers and other Parliamentarians include the extent to which the drafting of legislation is solely in the hands of the Government; the possible use of outside experts for drafting, or for commenting on, Bills; the possibility of carrying over some Government Bills, as well as private Bills, from one session to another; and the extent of formal consultation on legislation before and/or during its passage with outside interest groups, professional lobbies and pressure groups etc and the wider public, (we do this sometimes for some Finance Bill provisions, but
but the publishing of a complete Bill in draft for comment is something we have tried only rarely in the UK, but is likely to be pressed on us by the Hansard Society).
All these subjects would ideally require meetings not only with Leaders of House/Chief Whips, but also with Ministers and Opposition politicians who have been involved with particular Bills in the relevant Select Committees or other types of pre- legislative consultation exercise, so that the Lord President can form a candid impression of how arrangements which sound attractive on paper actually
actually work in practice in similar Parliamentary systems to our own.
A separate topic, on which we have some information already but on which the Lord President would welcome the views of senior politicians both Government and Opposition - in both countries is the extent of direct public funding of Opposition parties. In this country, we have the system named after a previous Labour Leader of the Commons, Edward Short ("Short money"}, which provides a sum of money for each of the main Opposition parties based on a formula combining number of seats won and number of votes cast for the party at the general election. It is left to the Opposition parties to decide how to share this money out. This is quite separate from the reimbursement from public funds of expenditure by individual MPs on office equipment, secretarial and research assistance,
The "Short money" is normally reviewed early in each Parliament and
Parliament and the Lord President is coming under some pressure to carry out such a review. Against the background of much more far-reaching Parliamentary reform than has been seen for several decades, there is obviously the likelihood of pressure for significant and expensive developments here, and the Lord President feels it will be much easier to resist such pressures on the basis of an informed understanding of how other Parliaments closely similar to our own deal with these issues, and how the politicians consider their systems work in practice.
Although the Lord President sees Parliamentary issues as the primary focus of his visit, he would obviously be more than content to play whatever role FCO Ministers think appropriate on the wider diplomatic front. When we spoke, you noted that with the UK's Presidency commitments, there were no other Cabinet level Ministerial visits planned to Australia and New Zealand for later this year, and that in principle a visit that demonstrated the continuing commitment of the UK to maintaining bilateral relations would be attractive. The Lord President mentioned to me that the point about the Presidency pre-empting most of his Cabinet colleagues' travelling opportunities had already occurred
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