Part of Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill - Committee (1st Day) – in the House of Lords at 5:00 pm on 22 April 2024.
Lord Young of Cookham
Deputy Chairman of Committees, Deputy Speaker (Lords)
5:00,
22 April 2024
My Lords, I will make a brief Intervention to support the thinking behind Amendment 14, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. We all understand the disappointment that it has not been possible to make progress with commonhold in this Parliament. We all understand that it would be impossible to try to retrofit commonhold into the existing legislation. One thing we have learned over the last two parliamentary Sessions is that the capacity of the department to produce legislation that does not need wholesale amendment as it goes through is limited. We all bear the scars of the levelling-up Bill.
We have also seen the number of government amendments that have already been tabled to this Bill. What ought to happen, and I wonder whether my noble friend would smile on this, is that at the beginning of the next Session, a draft Bill should be published on commonhold. That would enable us to iron out all the wrinkles and expedite the passage of an eventual commonhold Bill when it came forward. There is all-party agreement that we need to make progress with commonhold, so urgent work now on producing a draft Bill is time that would not be wasted. It would mean that early in the next Session of Parliament we could produce a draft Bill—we have the Law Commission’s work, which we could build on—and iron out all the wrinkles. Then, when the actual Bill came forward, we would be spared, I hope, the raft of government amendments. I exempt my noble friend on the front bench from responsibility for this; it would be a faster destination.
By way of comment, what has happened to draft Bills? When did we last see a draft Bill? If you look at the Cabinet Office’s recommendation, I think in 2022 it said that they should be part of a normal legislative programme; there should be a number of Bills produced in draft, which we can get our teeth into. All my experience as chairman of the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee is that when you have a draft Bill, the actual Bill goes through much more quickly. Again, my noble friend has no responsibility for the legislative programme, but I think we need to spend more time as a Parliament looking at draft Bills rather than at Bills that have been drafted in haste, and then having to cope with a whole range of government amendments.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
The first bench on either side of the House of Commons, reserved for ministers and leaders of the principal political parties.
A proposal for new legislation that is debated by Parliament.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
An intervention is when the MP making a speech is interrupted by another MP and asked to 'give way' to allow the other MP to intervene on the speech to ask a question or comment on what has just been said.
