Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Brixton and Baroness Randerson

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I have two questions relating to the issue of what constitutes a public body. My major interest in this Bill is Clauses 12 and 13, about local government pension schemes. It is interesting that it requires a separate section of this Bill to deal with local government pension schemes; that clearly indicates that these organisations are not public bodies. The Government’s commitment was in relation to public bodies and yet the Bill is being extended to these other organisations, which require their own section in the Bill, as they are clearly not covered by the general term “public bodies”. Perhaps the Minister could confirm or explain that particular point.

I have a different point relating to pension schemes. Some of these public bodies that we have been talking about have their own funded pension schemes, which are making investment and procurement decisions. As I understand it, because they are separate trusts, they are not themselves public bodies. But they belong to a public body and they are associated with the public body, so it is possible, within the bounds of trusts law, for those pension scheme trustee bodies to consider a decision that might potentially fall foul of this legislation. Therefore, we have the odd situation that the trustees can discuss these matters, but presumably the sponsoring organisation, which does count as a public body and is covered by the Bill, cannot discuss what the trustees whom they nominate should or should not be doing. There is a certain contradiction here, and again I invite the Minister to explain how that will operate in practice.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly go back to the Government’s own list of public bodies on GOV.UK. Of that list of public bodies, there are 18 listed for the Department for Education, none of which is a university. The Minister referred to overlapping definitions in the Bill. I have been sitting here and thinking about that, and wondering where the University of Buckingham sits in the Government’s concept of where universities lie, because that is a private university but one which is fulfilling exactly the same functions as all the other universities in the UK. Those other universities are, of course, exempt charities and so we are on a whole series of conflicting paths here, with just one aspect of the definition of public bodies that this Bill seems to wish to encompass. I raise these issues so that the Minister can perhaps give us some of her thoughts on these overlapping definitions and where they actually sit within the Bill.