Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

As we all know, the tradition is that we do not vote against or amend secondary legislation. That convention would be stretched if we had not previously had the kind of debate that I am envisaging in these amendments. I am asking the Government at least to recognise that at some stage we need to have that debate and that parliamentary decision on the basis of a formal document from the Government. This would make the Government’s life easier; at least, I hope so. It would certainly help us to get the Bill through the primary stage rather faster, and I wish that the Government had come forward with such a measure earlier. For the moment, I beg to move.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. I spent part of my previous career sitting on various quangos, some of which are included in the Bill. I must say that I thought that the quango-sitting that I did was very useful, that our contribution was a good one and so on. I would like to think that they would not simply be closed down and consigned to what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, described as the “bonfire of the quangos” without adequate examination by Parliament. That is exactly what my noble friend is suggesting: before the quangos are dispensed with, there should be a thorough examination, Parliament should determine whether or not they were valuable or useful and should continue to operate and, unless that happened, the quangos should continue to operate. Perhaps they would do so in a different form but the functions would not be dropped; there would be some provision for the functions that they had carried out to be performed in future. I hope that my noble friend’s arguments will attract support from the Government. The amendment seems to be very reasonable, proposing that Parliament must have the final say. That is very important, and I hope that the Government will be prepared to accept it.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I am not sure I have any brownie points left in the bank after various earlier exchanges but I hope I have a few. I express my sympathy with the general thrust of the point that was made very well by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and which has just been supported. I imagine it will be further supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.

There is, as I have said on several occasions in the House, a complete lack of intellectual coherence in the approach that is being adopted towards different bodies, particularly in respect of those parts of the Bill relating to the Ministry of Justice. I will not go on again now—although I will later—about the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, which I formerly chaired. However, we have a curious situation in which the AJTC is in—and for the moment stays in—Schedule 1 but the other two justice councils, which were in Schedule 7, have been cast out. The Civil Justice Council’s terms of reference were those on which those of the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council were modelled. Nobody has explained why what is right for the Civil Justice Council is wrong for the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council, with which it overlaps. Picking up the fundamental thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, there is a case for a coherent explanation, across the board, of what the Government are doing. I hope we may get at least some assurance on that in the course of my noble friend’s response.