My Lords, I have taken the unusual step of tabling an amendment to transpose two clauses—the effect of which I will come to shortly—to draw the attention of the House to a point that I was not able to raise at Second Reading because I was on local authority business. It was discussed briefly in Grand Committee,
but proceedings were curtailed. I do not intend to detain the House long on the matter, but it gives rise to important issues.
I refer to the manner of writing sub-headings in italics, “How does the Adjudicator arbitrate disputes? … How does the Adjudicator carry out investigations?”,
and so on. This is a new way of writing Bills which is reminiscent of the “frequently asked questions” pages on government websites. I tried to use one such page on the HMRC site the other day and was very glad after 10 minutes of struggling to get through to a nice lady who was able to help me.
I was told, first, that there was no discussion with the House about the new way of writing Bill sub-headings. When I asked the House authorities, they said that it had not been discussed and, since the drafting of the Bill was the responsibility of the noble Lord in charge—in this case, a Minister of the Crown—it would not fall within the terms of reference of the Procedure Committee of your Lordships’ House. The Public Bill Office confirmed that it was not possible to amend such sub-headings. My noble friend circulated a very helpful note to noble Lords demonstrating that the Government can contrive to amend the sub-headings in response to issues that are raised in Parliament. That is by grace and favour of the Executive, not by the will or desire of Parliament.
I am suspicious of these sub-headings for several reasons. The first argument put to us is that they are in plain English. I do not think that many of them are. On page 2, line 3, the heading is, “How does the Adjudicator carry out investigations and enforce their findings?”. That is 11 words, whereas “Investigation and enforcement”—which was the old way of doing things and is what is meant—is three words. On line 11 of page 4, the heading is, “What advice, guidance and recommendations does the Adjudicator give?”. That is nine words. Once the sub-heading would have been, “Advice and guidance”. That would be plain English. There are many other examples in the Bill, but I will not take the House through them.
Once we start changing the way in which legislation is written, whatever our good intentions there is the risk, in an area where Parliament has little direct control, that we will tend towards more descriptive writing. Noble Lords will remember that in the late 1990s we had rather more exciting titles to legislation, with “stakeholders” starting to appear in the gracious Speech. There is a risk that value judgments could interpose.
If the sub-headings are intended to be plain English traffic lights or signals to help the public find key matters in Bills, Parliament ought to have some responsibility for them. In Committee, I gave the example of the sub-heading, “How is the Adjudicator supervised?”, which covers the issue of abolition that noble Lords have just discussed. If you are slipping through these sub-headings, you would not find it. Who decides to highlight these things? There are clear difficulties.
Before Clause 14 there is the sub-heading, “What are the Adjudicator’s reporting requirements?”. Again, if a member of the public were accessing the Bill by
means of these signposts, they would go to the sub-heading, but the text covers only Clause 14, which concerns the annual report that the adjudicator must publish. However, there are many other reporting requirements on the adjudicator in the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, won a victory in respect of one of the reports that the adjudicator has to present. The sub-heading goes much wider than the subject of the annual report covered in Clause 14. A real plain English heading for Clause 14 would be the good old, “Annual report”. Why not choose that? Why have this new and potentially misleading wording? I realise that these matters may be beyond my noble friend the Minister, who has been incredibly helpful in responding to them, so I hope that the powers-that-be will think again about the misleading effect that some of these sub-headings might have, or the incomplete information that might be given.
I will not repeat the arguments I gave in Committee about logical inconsistency. I understand that my noble friend has responded positively in relation to the sub-heading on line 1 of page 9: “Will this law mean other changes to the law?”. This is logical nonsense. When the Act comes into effect, the amendments to other legislation will already be law, so the sub-heading is totally illogical. I understand from my noble friend that it is proposed to rethink that. In Committee we discussed the sub-heading on line 3 of page 8: “How is the Adjudicator funded?”. However, the clauses covered, Clause 19 and 20, both speak in terms of how the adjudicator “may” be funded; for example:
“The Adjudicator may require … a levy”,
or:
“The Secretary of State may make grants”.
The new-style sub-heading is illogical because it uses “is” and gets into “may”/“must” arguments.
I agree with the Government that we should keep the law as plain as possible, using short, simple English. The more words you use, the more risk there is of inconsistency. The confusion that can be caused by the placing of headings is illustrated by my amendment, which proposes that Clause 17 should be moved to below Clause 18 because both clauses relate to the handling of information by the adjudicator and the sub-heading is: “How does the Adjudicator handle information?”. I understand that my noble friend has an answer to that.
I will bring my remarks to a conclusion, but we seem to be straying into unnecessary territory. If the Government—the masters of plain English—wish to give the public new signposts to find their way around legislation, let us not complicate the face of legislation; why not have a separate, short document, which may be available electronically? If people wanted to find out what the adjudicator’s reporting requirements were, you could have brief references to Clause 5, Clause 14 and so on, and people could be signposted around the Bill. The way it is done now just leads you to one clause, which gives an incomplete answer.
If this well meaning approach is intended to go forward, for it to be really accessible it should be done separately, not on the face of legislation. If Parliament is not going to be able to amend these sub-headings—and it never has been able to—we should leave the Bill
absolutely simple, which would not risk any question of executive value judgments or misleading placement of sub-headings. The pursuit of plain English guidance could be done in a short companion to the legislation, if that is required. The more we go to electronic access to legislation, the more these kinds of sub-headings will become important.
I hope that my noble friend is going to give a favourable response on the sub-headings that will justify the points that I have made. Obviously I do not intend to press this matter to a Division but it affects both Houses of Parliament, and it is reasonable to bring it to the attention of Parliament, given that this is the first Bill in which this new manner of writing legislation has arisen. I beg to move.