Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Barker

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, this is obviously a long group of amendments. In moving Amendment 59, I will speak briefly to Amendment 76 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope.

In Amendment 59, we have a chance to look at Clause 3, on the sunset of retained EU rights, powers and liabilities. Again, the particular purpose of this amendment is to take the sunset clause in relation to the retained EU rights, powers and liabilities contained in the Bill and extend it to 31 December 2028; this reflects earlier debates that we have had.

The context of this group of amendments is to consider how EU law will be assimilated into UK law, and what the procedures and timescales for this will be. Amendments 60, 61, 64, 70 to 72, 74, 75 and 100 have a similar theme in this regard. I know my noble friend on the Front Bench thinks that he has heard these debates before, but take Amendment 60 as an example. The reason why this amendment is important is that it seeks to delete Clause 3(2), which declares that any retained EU law sunsetted by subsection (1)

“is not recognised or available in domestic law at or after that time (and, accordingly, is not to be enforced, allowed or followed).”

In the view of the Law Society of Scotland—I am grateful again to Michael Clancy for helping me prepare for today’s debate—this is

“an unnecessary provision and adds nothing to the interpretation of the clause. Accordingly it should be deleted.”

As noble Lords will realise, it is ultimately the role of lawyers to apply the law that we will, in time, pass in this Bill.

Amendment 61 provides the ability for the sunset of retained EU rights, powers and liabilities to be extended to a later time by a relevant national authority. As presently drafted, Clause 3 provides for a sunset of retained EU rights, powers and liabilities et cetera at the end of 2023. However, there is no provision to extend this sunset such as applies in relation to Clause 1. Amendment 61 makes provision for a relevant national authority to be able to make regulations to provide for such an extension.

Amendment 64 is a consequential amendment which provides clarity about the time when the sunset of the principle of the supremacy of EU law comes into effect. As we heard in debates, the principle of the supremacy of EU law was developed by the Court of Justice of the European Union and provides that, when there is a conflict between national and EU law, EU law will prevail. It is key to the EU legal order and ensures consistent application across the EU. In Retained EU Law: A Practical Guide, Duhs and Rao comment on the application of the principle. They note the comment by the House of Lords Constitution Committee that it is impossible to see in what sense the principle of supremacy of EU law could meaningfully apply in the UK once the UK has left the EU. They go on to explain that it is retained because one of the stated aims of the European Union withdrawal Act is to incorporate EU law into domestic law. To incorporate EU law into the domestic statute book while retaining the principle would imbalance the statute book. Therefore, it is logically consistent that, when retained EU law is being abolished, the principle should also be disapplied. However, the Law Society of Scotland, with which I agree, questions whether the abolition of this principle will not affect the interpretation of EU law when it becomes assimilated. Therefore, is this not a factor to be taken into account when considering how to assimilate that law? In earlier debates, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, pursued this with some eloquence in relation to earlier clauses. Amendment 64 relates to Clause 4. Providing a later sunset date of 31 December 2028, as I seek to do in Amendment 64, will allow for a thorough analysis of the consequences of the removal of the principle in relation to the interpretation of assimilated law.

I also support the proposal that Clause 5 stand part of this Bill. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and others, got there ahead of me, but I am delighted to lend my support. Clause 5 amends various sections of the EU withdrawal Act so that retained general principles of EU law are no longer part of UK law from the end of 2023. This clause will achieve the Government’s policy of removing retained principles of EU law. However, will not the abolition of these general principles affect the interpretation of EU law when it becomes assimilated? Should this not be taken into account when considering how to assimilate that law? The Government should therefore justify the necessity for Clause 5.

Amendment 70 looks again to extending to 31 December 2028 with regard to Clause 6. It is a consequential amendment providing clarity on precisely how and when retained EU law will be known as assimilated law. The reference to the end of 2023 in Clause 6(1) is vague, and therefore the greater precision set out in this amendment follows the precedent within the definition of IP completion day found in Section 39(1) of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. The additional time should be used for a more thoughtful approach to amending by renaming retained EU law. The choice of date should be made on the application of good legislative practice, including consideration and analysis of the legislation involved and to permit consultation with those who will be affected by the variation proposed by the regulations under Clause 19. This later date will allow for that process to be completed.

Amendment 71 is a consequential amendment, again extending the deadline for a different provision in Clause 6 to 31 December 2028, when it will become known as assimilated law. Equally, Amendment 72 has equal effect on a later provision in Clause 6. Amendment 75 again looks to extend a later part of Clause 6 to 31 December 2028. Amendment 100 is fairly self-explanatory. It is a consequential amendment to] the other amendments in this group to leave out Clause 8(4).

Before I move Amendment 59, I would like to speak to Amendment 76 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who has unfortunately had to leave and can no longer be with us. Amendment 76, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff,

“gives the Scottish and Welsh Ministers a power, equivalent to the power of Ministers of the Crown in Clause 6(6), to amend legislation in consequence of the change in terminology from ‘retained EU law’ to ‘assimilated law’ made by Clause 6.”

That goes to the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, in the previous group that it is important to have equality of governance across the UK between Ministers of the Crown and Ministers from devolved Governments.

With those few remarks, I hope that my noble friend will give a fair wind to the arguments that I have made to extend the sunset in those various clauses and looks favourably on the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, as well. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

Your Lordships should know that, if Amendment 59 is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 61 or 67 for reasons of pre-emption.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Barker

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, who speaks with such knowledge and authority on these issues. I will speak to Amendment 110, but first I will make some comments on the amendments spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and my noble friend Lord Black.

The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, highlights the difficulties that those of us living in rural areas have. I regret to see the downgrading, in particular, of the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton, where my father, for one, was treated to great effect. I associate myself with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. I know that the Minister is familiar with these arguments now, because he very kindly spent an hour with his team listening to me on these issues. Whereas before, national health policy used to recognise and measure rural health policy, particularly as regards rurality and sparsity of population, those markers have now gone.

The House will be familiar with my work with the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. I regret the fact that, whereas my father and my brother in their time would have been rewarded by the number of patients that they had on their list, and by the distance they had to travel from the surgery to visit patients in their own homes or when called out to an emergency, that has now gone. Much of the bread-and-butter income, as I understand it, for dispensing doctors and pharmacists in rural areas is made up from dispensing. So a separate argument to be had on another day is how, from the beginning of April, I understand, those reimbursements are going to come under the cosh. I will just leave that with my noble friend; I will ask for a separate meeting with him on that. I pay tribute to the work that dispensing doctors do in rural areas under these pressures and I am delighted to be working with them in this regard.

My noble friend Lord Black spoke eloquently on osteopenia. There is a cohort of people—mainly women—who, like myself, are diagnosed with osteopenia. I had not been in the House very long when, having broken one bone six months previously, I broke another. I was sent to the fall clinic where, unsurprisingly, we were mostly women being tested to see how likely we were to have a fall and break a bone. When my noble friend said that many women could die within a year of breaking a hip, I recalled that I was told that I had an 11% chance of breaking a hip. The good news, I suppose, is that I have an 89% chance of not breaking a hip, and that is something I cling on to.

I was put on a course—as I am sure others have been as well—of very strong vitamin D tablets. Since I completed that course, I have had no further treatment, but also no recommendations as to how to prevent the condition—in my case, and I am sure in the cases of other women—deteriorating into osteoporosis. I will just leave the Minister with the thought that, given the seriousness of the condition, those who are on the cusp of descending into osteoporosis itself should perhaps be given greater guidance.

Amendment 110 is intended as a probing amendment, and I am delighted to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, has lent her support to it. I am very grateful to her for that. We had many debates on domestic abuse in the context of that Bill, now an Act, but domestic abuse remains a scourge in our society. While it is recognised as a crime, it is most often manifested initially in a GP’s surgery, not at a police station. In the context of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, describing the Bill as essentially an integration exercise, I believe it is important to see and recognise a victim of domestic abuse in a safe place or a safe haven—in a setting with trusted professionals, such as a GP’s surgery.

I am sure that the Minister will share my concern that there is currently no training for GPs or other health professionals enabling them, or expecting them to be able, to spot or treat an individual suffering from mental or physical abuse or to instruct them on how to engage with the police. Does he share my concern that that is indeed the case? I understand from Anne Marie Morris, my honourable friend in the other place who moved this amendment at that time, that Devon is the only health system to have a dedicated individual on the CCG board and a health and care strategy for victims of abuse. That strategy has improved health and care outcomes through training and other interventions. Surely, this should be rolled out nationally for other local health services to benefit from.

While it is welcome that the Government have agreed to take this issue into account—and I understand that the amendment was agreed in the Commons—I urge the Minister and the department to go further. ICBs should be mandated to have a strategy to deal with domestic abuse. I am sure that the Minister would agree that, if it is not mandated, it probably simply will not be done. Additionally, the role of the domestic abuse and sexual violence lead on the ICB is essential to spearhead the work in this area and to provide essential expertise. As there is only such a lead at the moment in Devon—who does fantastic work which can be seen first hand, and has been seen to help a number of related pilots roll out in that area—I would like to see this work rolled out throughout the country.

Amendment 110 therefore sets out a duty to prepare a strategy to support victims of domestic abuse using the services set out in that amendment. It asks for various consultations to take place not only with the local authority for the area within the integrated care board but with the domestic abuse local partnership board and other persons whom the integrated care board considers appropriate. I humbly submit that this is a gap in the Bill at the moment that Amendment 110 would fill.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 297J in this group, but I will preface my remarks by returning to the purpose of this Bill. The stated purpose of this Bill is to promote integration of health and care services in order to reduce health inequalities and to promote better outcomes. I have chosen, in this amendment, to speak on the issue of HIV and AIDS services. I have spoken in previous debates about access to sexual and reproductive health services such as contraception and abortion. They are two services which we would do well to look at in considerable detail, because they are services addressing issues that cannot alone be solved by the National Health Service. They are services which will only be solved by not only integration but collaboration between health and social care. Having, like many Members of this House, discussed these issues for many, many years, I come back to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, the other day, that we are trying to seek integration and collaboration between two fundamentally different services. One is organised as a national and essentially top-down system, and the other is organised on a local and democratically accountable basis, with a completely different ethos.

At this point it is worth us taking advantage of the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, and noting what he said the other day about the National Health Service. He said—and I paraphrase—that one of the best ways to ensure that the National Health Service does what we expect it to do is to ensure that it has resources, and he is absolutely right. Would that people took the same attitude to social care—but they do not, and in the matters of both sexual health services and HIV services, we see in graphic and demonstrable terms the failure to do just that.

Turning to HIV services, it is important to note that although, overall, we have a very good story to tell on HIV in this country, and a reasonably good story to tell in the last few years as we are on a path towards the complete ending of transmission by 2030, we do have some problems. Last year, the number of people living with HIV in the UK rose to 106,000. In 2020, the number of people being tested at clinics decreased by 30%, and more so in black and minority communities, where late diagnosis, with all its complications, remains stubbornly high. However, there was a very great increase in online testing. HIV is an area in which there have been and will be, over the next few years, huge technological changes in diagnosis and treatment, which the NHS and social care should be up to speed with if we are to get to the stated aim of ending transmission by 2030—which we can do. The problem is that, at the moment, we have an increase in the rate of late HIV diagnosis—it was up to 42% in 2019—and we know the concomitant costs that that presents for the health service.

Anyone who has spoken to anybody involved in HIV services, be it in social care, local authorities or the NHS, will have heard exactly the same story since 2012. Just look at commissioning. HIV testing in sexual health clinics and community settings is commissioned by local authorities; HIV testing in GP settings, where it is clinically indicated, is commissioned by NHS England; HIV testing in GP settings as a public health intervention is commissioned by local authorities; HIV testing in secondary care, where it is clinically indicated, is commissioned by CCGs; HIV testing in secondary care as a public health intervention is commissioned by local authorities—keep with me, my Lords. Home testing, which is increasingly popular, is commissioned by local authorities and by Public Health England, for some periods, at some times in the year. Is it any wonder that it is a mess? We are not taking advantage of any of this and we are letting people down. The fragmentation in this area—even for people who have HIV, who are some of the savviest patients the NHS comes across and who are up to speed, sometimes in advance of their clinicians—is really difficult and does not make sense on any level; it does not make sense on a public health level or an individual level. I do not need to go into great detail, as noble Lords can work out for themselves all the consequences of that.

It is quite interesting to talk about one piece of work that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on HIV/Aids did. We did some in-depth research in south-east London, where there are some of the most advanced integrated care services for HIV. Even there, where there is very high prevalence and they know, largely, what they are dealing with and the populations where this is the biggest problem, they struggled to make sense of this fragmented commissioning picture.

I am not asking that all this funding be put into the NHS—most definitely not, because we all know that once money goes into the NHS, it never comes out again. I think there is a case to be made for increasing budgets, not least the budgets of local authorities, which have been slashed, in order for them to carry on doing what is important, which is getting to people long before they are anywhere near being any kind of medical priority.

What I am asking for in this amendment is a formal duty to collaborate. I have no doubt that the Minister will say that that is not necessary, but we cannot carry on as at present: we are badly wasting resources when we should not be. We have enough knowledge in this Committee of the levers that make decision-makers and commissioners change what they are doing, not least when they understand that there are new and more efficient ways to meet the needs of the population. I propose this amendment with no great sense of hope, but, if he does not accept it, I hope the noble Lord will at least understand that we cannot continue with this inefficient way of dealing with known issues. We must stop failing people when we could be sorting out the issues.

Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps etc.) (England) (Revocation and Amendment) Regulations 2021

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Barker

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I am speaking in this debate because my noble friend Lady Brinton cannot be in her place to take part. We have the technology to enable remote participation in debates in the Moses Room, but the House authorities have not yet permitted that for contributions in Grand Committee, so virtual participation in these proceedings is unfortunately not possible, even though we have seen in this last week that the very few participants who need to take part remotely can be managed very effectively without recourse to extensive speakers’ lists.

It is also a loss to the Committee, because my noble friend Lady Brinton cannot take part for one very important reason, about which she has been quite public: she is clinically vulnerable, and one thing she cannot do is travel on public transport, which she cannot do because people are not wearing masks. Of all people, she should have been able to be here to make that point.

Yet again, these SIs were tabled very late. They came in just before the recess in late July, so yet again we are back to debating things that are long in the past. We have repeatedly asked the Government to respect the House and timetable SIs when they are not genuinely urgent. However, these are, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, quite pertinent in view of the Statements being made this week.

This statutory instrument mostly deals with the revocation of statutory instruments on 21 July, which confirmed a number of the changes in the Prime Minister’s so-called freedom day. However, there is one extension, in Regulation 4, to the expiry date of the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) (No. 3) Regulations, which are now to end on 27 September. The Explanatory Memorandum says that this

“will ensure that local authorities retain powers to respond to local serious and imminent public health threats as a result of the spread of coronavirus. The No. 3 Regulations will continue to act as an important public health tool for local authorities in their local coronavirus outbreak management, compliance and enforcement activities. This is particularly important in light of the revocation of the other restrictions mentioned above”.

As we have said all the way through this pandemic, it is important that local authorities have the power to manage local outbreaks. Simply extending that power in law, but not making sure that they have the resources, will not work. As epidemiologists have said to us in terms, there will inevitably be points when it is important to close all the pubs in a certain area, simply because an outbreak has to be contained. While we welcome that, it behoves the Minister to say something about local authorities such as Croydon, which is insolvent, and how it will have the resources to manage this significant and enduring public health problem.

We regret the removal of face coverings on public transport and other crowded venues. I can say, as somebody who travels on the London Underground every working day, that fewer and fewer people are wearing masks and, as more and more people are on the Tube, I am certain we will see a spike in infections as a result. I also point out to noble Lords that the bad messaging on this does not help. There is genuine confusion. One of my colleagues was on a train to Scotland in the summer and, when it got to the border, there was an announcement that the law now required everybody on that train to wear a mask, and they did, as they should have done all the way.

It is now clear that the Government, and in particular the Prime Minister, have been so desperate to place emphasis on the vaccination programme as our primary defence that they have forgotten to look at the role of other mitigations against the disease. Although we support the passing of these regulations, we need to make the messaging clearer as a matter of urgency, so we can avoid the confusion that is now prevalent among people in England.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the regulations and congratulate my noble friend on bringing them before us. To a certain extent, my comments echo those that have already been made by previous speakers. I was fortunate enough to visit my family in Denmark and Scotland this summer, and the guidance in each place was much clearer. Speaking as an older person, I prefer to keep my mask on, on all forms of public transport. I am sure my noble friend will recognise that one of the reasons why there was not a high incidence of flu last year was, in large measure, because we followed the example of the Asians after the SARS epidemic in the late 2000s of masking up. Even the common cold was kept under control.

I understand the Department of Health and Social Care’s concern about a high incidence of flu this year, but I am sure we can encourage people to mask up, particularly in areas of close proximity. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, mentioned the Tube. I am still reluctant to go on the Tube at busy times, but even the trains on the east coast main line are incredibly busy now, and you can find yourself next to someone who you are not normally accustomed to seeing.

To me, wearing a mask is not an infringement of my liberty; it is my passport to health and keeping safe. I hope that it will keep others safe as well. Does my noble friend imagine that the guidance will be revisited? It is in stark contrast to what has applied in Denmark and in Scotland.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Barker

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 1st October 2020 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I have received a request to speak after the Minister from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Younger for explaining in some detail the negotiating mandate we have agreed with the US. Could he confirm that this extends to animal welfare, as well as environmental protection standards, which is the subject of Amendment 69?

I was a little confused when my noble friend Lady Noakes talked about tomatoes. I had not talked about tomatoes, but there we are. The Minister referred to “unintended consequences”, which I am loath to envisage, and specifically to tea, cocoa and bananas. I understand that they are largely covered by fair trade provisions for marketing in the UK. Is that indeed the case?

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Barker

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 7th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I associate myself in particular with Amendments 2 and 82 but, like other noble Lords, I support many of the amendments in this group in principle.

A constant theme since Second Reading is the need for key workers to continue to supply workforce in the UK, not least in the NHS and social care. It is a matter of fact that, quite apart from us potentially sending out the wrong message to those coming from countries other than the EEA and Switzerland—international care workers on whom we currently depend—many of our care home workers and care workers in general are sourced from Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and other EEA countries. I therefore suggest that this is a wake-up call to the potential immediate crisis that the social care sector could face on 1 January next year as a result of the Bill, if my reading of it is correct.

I always remember that during my time as an MP, when I used to ask the local jobcentre where the main vacancies were, the answer usually came back that the vacancies that were the most difficult to fill and therefore the longest on the register were those in the care sector. I hope this might provide an opportunity to really look again at the status of social care workers. They are the flip side to the NHS family. I remind the Committee of my interest in that I come from a medical family; my brother and father were GPs, and I currently work with the Dispensing Doctors’ Association. We can see the extent to which we were dependent on care homes taking often still quite poorly patients out of hospitals in the immediate pandemic circumstances of Covid-19.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will use her good offices to liaise with the relevant departments in this regard, particularly the Department of Health and Social Care, to look at valuing the skills and caring qualities of our social care workers and look to raise their salaries to more realistic levels.

I also ask my noble friend whether a compromise in this regard, particularly in view of the visa requirements, might be to look at whether it would be appropriate for the immigration system that will commence in the new year to have a two-year temporary work visa so as not to leave the country potentially short-staffed in this crunch period, as we deal with the knock-on effects of Covid and its economic consequences and as a result of our ending the transition period as we leave the European Union.

Furthermore, like other noble Lords who have spoken, I am deeply concerned that many of the details are not in the Bill and that we are relying very heavily on secondary legislation and a points system, the details of which are not that transparent.

I conclude by lending my support to Amendment 2 in particular, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Adonis, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Brinton. It requires the Government to commission an independent review of the social care sector, which would, I hope, cover many of the points that I raised today.

I also support Amendment 82, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, which would introduce a duty to report on migratory options for health and social care workers who are ineligible for the skilled worker route. It is nonsensical to have such a constraint on a sector on which we are so heavily dependent.

I found the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, very moving. In my days as an MP, I visited a Leonard Cheshire home, where I encountered the tragic case of a young Olympic rower who had suffered a stroke and was incapacitated. If this Bill was passed, these two amendments—and all amendments in this group—could do so much good for people of all ages who are in care, particularly the vulnerable and the disabled in the community.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

I want to return to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in his introductory remarks. The important amendment in this group is Amendment 2. All the others could be things that potentially fall out of a review, and so the key is to have that review and then look at the most appropriate way forward.

Many of the issues that have been spoken to in this debate are not new; we have been talking about social care for as long as I have been in the House. We could say many things about the current situation we find ourselves in, and some of the issues are fairly long-standing. One that I talk about a lot, but not many others do, is the fact that there are currently about a million people who are ageing and do not have children. Our health and social care service is predicated on the fact that you have children who will look out for your needs in any health or care setting. We will have 2 million people in that position by 2030. We have, therefore, an acute and growing need for paid social care. Also, at the moment, a number of our biggest care providers are owned by private equity firms, run at very low cost and margins—they are not about to stay in this business if they cannot do that, and to them, it is a business.

At Second Reading, the noble Baroness talked about the need for the United Kingdom to stop colluding in an international trade in low-cost care. I can understand that argument but, at this moment, given where we are, we would be the first affluent western country to take itself out of what is, in effect, an international market in care. No other affluent western country—nor Australia, for that matter—has solved its care problem by suddenly turning off all access to people from other nations. It would be a very bold statement if we were to do that, but noble Lords have today pointed out the dangers of doing so.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is right to argue that, at this moment, there is a case for a review. The Government, if they were not being so ideologically pure on the matter, would want to give themselves flexibility in addressing these issues as they arise. There is no need to do this: it is just government ideology. The Government could bring in a transitionary process, over about five years, that would enable people to get through a period of uncertainty. I therefore commend Amendment 2 to the Minister and ask her to look at some of the other amendments in this group.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and Baroness Barker

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering [V]]

My Lords, I have no substantive remarks to make, other than to congratulate my noble friend Lord Howe on taking on board the comments made by the committee.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, a number of Members of your Lordships’ House may wish to claim that it was the force and power of their oratory that caused the Government to think again, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the mere prospect of the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, leading a band of opposition rebels was enough to concentrate minds—and I am very glad that it did. There was broad consensus around the House that the powers taken within the legislation were far too broad. I am glad that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has come back and talked in detail about those which have been ceded and those which have not.

Towards the end of his remarks, the noble Earl said that the Government had retained some regulation-making powers to address the needs of different sectors, should it become apparent that regulations need to be made to save businesses in certain sectors. That is the issue to which I draw attention, following on from the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns. Like me, she has an interest in what happens in the charity and social enterprise sector. Welcome though the letter from the Minister was—exactly as the noble Baroness just said, it talked about charities with wholly owned subsidiary trading companies which give back their profits to the charity—a number of charities have different company forms, and there remains a lack of clarity in the Bill about some of those entities.

I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, and his officials have talked to me about this. The Bill applies to those charities which are companies limited by guarantee—it is mostly community interest organisations that will fall within this—but it will not apply to charities that are unincorporated, nor to excepted charities and royal charter charities. There is also a big consideration around the extent to which the Bill will apply to community benefit societies, mutuals and co-ops. I am not asking the Minister to reiterate the detail of that today. I merely draw attention to the fact that there may be matters to which it is necessary to return when the Government make regulations under the Bill.

I signalled to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, one of the issues that has been drawn to my attention by the museum sector. We have a number of independent museums—not the large museums set up under an Act of Parliament, nor those associated with local government—and they are typically charitable companies. They have a very big fear. If they are in danger, and a number of them currently think that they may well be, their collections immediately become part of the assets of any insolvency procedure. The big concern is that, if there is no exemption for those assets in regulations, later on this year a large part of Britain’s cultural heritage may suddenly come up in a fire sale. That would be extremely damaging, not just to those organisations but to the local economies that they support as part of the tourism sector and so on. All they are asking is that, when it comes to making regulations under the Bill, there be consultation with them and with the charity lawyers, accountants and insolvency practitioners who have expertise within what is, I know, a very niche but important part of company law.

That said, I add my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, and her Amendment 48. What she is asking for seems entirely reasonable.