Liaison

Lord Higgins Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Amendment to the Motion agreed.

[Lord Higgins (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that the House is anxious to get on with the Budget debate, as I am, so I shall not delay it for more than a few moments. However, paragraph 12 of the report that we are considering draws attention to an extremely serious situation, where the work of the ad hoc Select Committee on Personal Service Companies has been seriously handicapped by the fact that the Treasury Minister concerned refused either to give oral evidence or to allow his officials to give evidence. That was on the grounds that we were concerned only with the administration of the situation, whereas quite clearly the whole thing operates within a legal and legislative framework that is the responsibility of the Treasury. We ought to have been able to question Treasury Ministers on the implications of that legislation for the subject that we were discussing. The committee’s report clearly says that this situation is “unfortunate”, but I am not clear what representations the Liaison Committee is making to the Government, and perhaps to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in particular, about this extremely unfortunate situation, which has handicapped the ability of the committee to carry out its work.

Motion, as amended, agreed.