Political Parties and Elections Bill

I have no difficulty at all in recognising that fact. It is obviously worth referring to in the context of how this amendment has arrived here but I do not think that it can be blamed on the Official Opposition. Fortunately, scrutiny in the House of Lords is automatically available. It is one of the glories of the House of Lords that that is so. I do not in the least begrudge the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, bringing forward this amendment, and I think it is a very good thing on behalf of the nation that we should have the opportunity to scrutinise it. The second thing of a generic nature to which I wanted to allude was his observation about the advice that had, I gather, been offered to Labour MPs, although I know not whencesoever it came and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was not able to tell us. The commission briefing on the subject, while pointing out some of the difficulties, makes it quite clear that the issue that we are debating is a matter for Parliament and not for itself. The commission states that it is not for it to make a judgment on the issue. In the context of the advice, I shall briefly recount a conversation that I once had with a Permanent Secretary of a department in which I was serving as a Minister. We had been contemporary undergraduates, so we knew each other very well in a private capacity. He said that politicians of both parties—I think the Labour Party is a little more prone to this than the Conservative Party, but there is no question that my party is prone to it as well—are extremely resistant to what they regard as negative advice given to them when they come into office, when civil servants tell them why what they want to do is impracticable. He said that they are making a mistake because members of the Civil Service are themselves part of the Government, and they take pride in the manner in which business is conducted because they are paid from the public purse. The civil servants have two preoccupations. First, if a Minister does not listen to all the arguments against what he is proposing to do, there can be a moment when he is caught out at the Dispatch Box. That could happen even at the Second Reading of a Bill on which the Minister has intervened on dozens of occasions. He has to look at difficulties contained in the Bill which he has never considered before because he has brushed aside the advice that he has received. That is embarrassing for the civil servants sitting in the Box, who have no way of advising him. Secondly, it is worse when a Government do not take advice in the early stages and then find themselves having to retreat in midstream from the legislation on which they have embarked and start again. It is infinitely easier to prepare legislation over six to nine months than to suddenly have to produce it in a month, to which there has previously been some allusion even in this Committee. I do not think that the Government are wrong to point out the difficulties of doing certain things. It is the right thing to do so that everyone taking part in the debate on the legislation knows what the real practical difficulties are. I say that on behalf of people who have been in government in both major parties.