My simple reform – telling the Lords which parts of a bill have not been scrutinised already – would restore power to MPs

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The quality and therefore implementation of legislation is under serious threat as more powers move from Parliament to the government.

I was not sent to the Lords two decades ago to undermine the Commons, and in the short time available I am determined to help strengthen the powers of the elected House. Sad to say that today’s MPs do not quite appreciate the powers they have lost to the government.

The House of Commons has the last word on every issue. And the Lords is, in effect, a subcommittee of the Commons, with the role of revising and asking it to think again, and maybe again.

The question arises as to what the Lords is revising when it comes to bills.

Since 1997, all bills in the Commons have effectively been time-guillotined via a “programme motion”. That means the government takes control of the timing at the beginning of a bill rather than after protracted debate.

It began, like all good ideas, quite well. But over the years, the time allotted by the programme motion has been reduced to squeeze more bills through the system. (Governments love boasting about how many bills they introduce.)

When I became a real backbencher in the Lords in 2013, I began to notice issues relating to bills not being properly scrutinised before they reached the Lords. I raised the idea of a certificate arriving with the bill indicating which parts had not been dealt with. “Too complex and just not practical,” I was told. So I left it.

On 16 July last, I was present at a lecture by the Lord Speaker on the role of the Upper Chamber. The issue of bills arriving in the Lords with great chunks being neither debated nor scrutinised was raised in discussion. So I made my suggestion. It was well received. I therefore decided in the dog days of July to do something about it.

I managed to find a form of words which fitted the rules, one of which is not to criticise the Commons. My criticism is of the government. I want to restore some lost powers to elected Members.

Over the years, the time allotted by the programme motion has been reduced to squeeze more bills through the system

The first bill on the Order Paper for September was the Public Office (Accountability) Bill. I noted that on Commons Report (after Public Committee stage), at the time the guillotine came down on debate, some 10 new clauses, six schedules and over 70 amendments went into the bill on the nod.

Reaching the Lords for revision, it is not possible to identify them in the bill as numbers change when reprinted. I simply put a motion asking for the government to provide a list of material the Commons did not have time to consider on the floor of the House.

The effect in the Lords is that we end up sending more amendments back to the Commons than we would need if the Commons had been allowed a first scrutiny. I understand that, when this happens, government whips in the Commons moan to Labour backbenchers that all the extra work is the fault of the Lords, leading to calls for reform of the Lords. Such amendments do not receive the consideration we intended, again due to the ‘government chopper’.

I regret the Representation of the People Bill was of the same order of scrutiny, so again I requested a list.

My aim is to get a list with nothing on it, so we will know the government has returned to the Commons some of the powers it has taken away.

To save the whips some bother, I have tabled the same motion for the Health Bill Second Reading on 13 October.

Lord Rooker is a Labour peer