Inside the sausage factory

Writing in The House Magazine, Susanna Kalitowski introduces a Hansard Society study of the role of parliamentary scrutiny - which found MPs of all parties agreeing on the need to deliberate before you legislate

Parliament's primary and best-known function is to make laws which affect all of us on a daily basis. However, there is a widely held view that Parliament does not have much impact on the content of legislation - that it simply puts a rubber stamp on the government's proposals.

It is clear that the government rarely loses a whole bill and that it is only occasionally defeated on individual clauses. If nothing changed between the day that a bill left a department and the day the Queen gave her assent, then that would indeed be an indictment of the legislative process.

But to what extent is this actually the case? While a great deal of public attention is given to individual laws, the process by which policy proposals evolve into acts of Parliament is not well understood.

In an effort to illuminate the law making process - and Parliament's role and influence in it - the Hansard Society undertook a detailed study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, of five recent pieces of government legislation. We chose to ignore Bismarck's advice that ‘laws are like sausages: it is better not to see them being made' and tracked what happened as they journeyed from the consultation stages, to pre-legislative scrutiny (if undertaken), and through both Houses of Parliament.

We conducted over 80 interviews with ministers, MPs, peers, government and parliamentary officials and pressure groups. At the heart of the study is a consideration of the influence that parliamentarians themselves have on legislation. The results of our research appear in a book published this week, Law in the making: influence and change in the legislative process.

One of our most important findings is that parliamentary scrutiny does make a difference to a piece of legislation. Looking at our five case studies, the government's main proposals became law, but they were altered measurably as they made their way through the legislative process. Sometimes this change was dramatic, but usually it was in small but significant ways.

There is a tendency to judge the relationship between Parliament and government in terms of clear-cut notions of victory and defeat, dominance and submission. However, we found that rebellious votes and government defeats reveal only a certain amount about the relationship between Parliament and government, and that there are many other approaches used to influence legislation that are not so easily measurable.

For example, it is commonplace to hear it that the Lords has more impact on legislation than the Commons. It is true that it defeats the government more often than the Commons. Most changes to bills are made in the Lords, usually at report stage, often in an effort to avoid a defeat.

However, our case studies reveal that the arguments raised and the assurances given in the Commons are frequently the determining factor in allowing the Lords to clinch the deal of extracting concessions. As a government minister explained to us, ‘the Commons does the passing and then gives the Lords the opportunity to score the goal and make the change.'

In addition, we found that on the whole, external actors such as campaigners and lobbyists, working closely with parliamentarians, can make a noticeable difference to the final shape of a piece of legislation - often more than they themselves realise. On the other hand, the impact of the media, which tends not to cover the process of scrutiny, is far more variable.

A number of people we spoke to asserted that Parliament's scrutiny of legislation is improving, and that far more changes are made to legislative proposals now than in the past. Nonetheless, interviewees identified a number of obstacles which hinder scrutiny, including lack of time and resources and the increasing volume and complexity of legislation.

We were also told that one of the highest barriers is cultural. Parliamentarians from all parties explained that there is a predominant belief within Whitehall that to change a bill is a sign of weakness. Many said a cultural change is needed in order for change to be viewed as possible- and even desirable.

Our study reveals that improved scrutiny mechanisms such as pre-legislative scrutiny and a range of parliamentary and external factors improve legislation without in any way affecting the government's ability to deliver its programme.

However, it remains to be seen whether there is any appetite for further moves towards a more deliberative model of legislative consideration.

Law in the Making: influence and change in the legislative process will be launched on Wednesday 16 July 2008 at 2pm in the House of Commons. The event will feature a keynote speech from the Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. For more information, email hans_admin@hansard.lse.ac.uk or call 0207 438 1222.

 
This article was originallly published in The House Magazine on 14 July 2008