Equality and Human Rights Commission: Funding

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Baroness Northover

Monday 9th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I do not have any information about what would happen to money that has not been allocated. Nine bids were submitted and five of them have been approved. One of them was somewhat contingent on the progress made within that bid, after which further money will be brought in if it goes well. However, I do not have any information about the money that is left over.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, we are told that core funding is okay because that is a totally separate question. However, one’s impression is that we passed legislation with a need to implement it through secondary legislation, and the EHRC has many times been given the responsibility to monitor and implement that secondary legislation. Is the Minister saying that the core funding is keeping pace with all the extra secondary legislation that we are asking the EHRC to implement?

[Baroness Northover]

I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, will come and tell us one way or the other. However, my understanding is that the Ministers responsible are working very closely with the EHRC—I am very glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, nodding—to ensure that it can focus on those core responsibilities. There was, as the noble Lord will probably remember, a previous concern—for example, from the National Audit Office—that some of the extraneous activities around the edge were taking away from those core responsibilities. The bids here do not relate at all to the monitoring of how statutory instruments and so on might operate. That would all be part of the core responsibilities. To come back to the previous question, neither would one assume that all bids would automatically be approved—to do so would be fallacious. Just because the EHRC put in bids for the amount up to the limit of what might have been available, that should not indicate that it will all be allocated if all those bids do not pass the same tests as those that were accepted.

Africa: Development

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Baroness Northover

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right and she will be aware that DfID’s priority is fragile states for those very reasons. I know that DfID has great concern about all the issues that she has flagged up and is doing its best to try to improve the governance and justice systems within those countries. Looking at the report mentioned in the Question, I note that half of African countries still depend on aid and the other half do not. Of the half that do, those are the ones that suffer the kind of fragility that she referred to.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

China is obviously now making a bigger contribution to investment in Africa. China was not invited to the G8 and in some respects that might be a pity because China is now claiming that it is observing all international norms and that it is not an exceptional country, as it was thought to be. Is there some way in which the Government are encouraging dialogue with China to ensure that this is the case and that it is observing international norms with regard to investment in Africa?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord flags up an area that has caused some concern. One of the reasons why Africa has been particularly resilient in the last period is because of trade with China and other developing countries whereas trade with the EU and the US has been dropping off. There is clearly a benefit for Africa. It is important to try to convey to those who are involved in trade in Africa that it is in their long-term interests to follow the kind of rules referred to by the noble Lord.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Baroness Northover

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

Perhaps I could remind the noble Lord that, according to the Companion, he is expected to keep to 15 minutes. Given the time on the clock, he might want to draw his remarks to a close.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I am sorry. I have read the Companion. I am moving on amendment so the time limit is 20 minutes.

[Baroness Northover]

The important thing is for us to focus on the matter in hand; perhaps the noble Lord might bring his remarks to a sharp conclusion.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

No, I am sorry, but I think that that is a bit rough when I planned on the basis of what I was told this afternoon was the interpretation of the Companion. Are you making a ruling?

[Baroness Northover]

I am reading what it says in the Companion. We are losing time. Whether it is 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I am sure that the noble Lord will wish to bring his remarks to a clear conclusion.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I will take another three minutes as a compromise, if I may, because I am not there yet.

Carbon capture and storage is another good example where lobbyists say that they need to give confidence that they can recover their up-front costs. That is in fact a demand for an open-ended subsidy. I could go on. Those are all difficult questions to put into the jigsaw puzzle that the statisticians have to put together. We cannot just have random subsidies all round.

I could mention the electricity market reform proposals, where there are four options—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, will be pleased to know that I will not read them all out. How many people in this country —how many people in this House—know about them? If we are talking about baseload nuclear and the problems of making wind power work, we cannot shut down wind power, so will nuclear have to shut down when the range of electricity use between the summer night and the winter night is between 25 gigawatts in summer and 50 gigawatts in winter? What will the rules be about that?

I make my last point. We may think that this is complicated, but it is against the background of a spike in the world price. We must be clear which is the world price effect and which is domestic subsidies for people in the street. That is essential politically. I hope that no one thinks that I am talking in a partisan sense. It can mean less need for higher indirect taxation if people take the view that the important thing is the reduction of carbon growth, but the Treasury will not be keen on seeing that as a scope for lowering indirect taxation.

I am on my last thought. I am very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, in our last day in Committee, said that she agreed with a few ideas in my amendment then—there were some things with which she disagreed, which I have therefore taken out. The Government are ticking the box of transparency. Secondly, they are taking the first tentative steps to what I call saleability. We still have to jump the next fence of how to get a high degree of responsibility around the country. That is the signal, which I hope can be taken on board, that there is a good deal of convergence on the view that the approach of the amendment is rational and reasonable. It is very much in the Government’s interest, as well as the wider public interest. I hope that the Minister will now, having heard about the rationale and future adjustments that can be made, give careful consideration with her colleagues before the Bill reaches the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I have to come back and say that he is totally misinformed about how this amendment was written, when it was written, where it has been placed in the Bill, and so on. This amendment was written for debate in Committee—just like the innumerable amendments that were debated with speeches of several hours at a time by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. That is the first thing. The second thing is that the fact that it has been placed at the end of the Bill was not my doing. I could have had it in Clause 2, and then that argument would have fallen. Thirdly, I have made it clear that we have reached a stage where a lot of noble Lords have said that the points are interesting in terms of scrutiny. The amendment also has to go to the House of Commons. I find it amazing that that is the best argument that the noble Lord can offer regarding an amendment to which I have given a lot of study and thought. I have looked at statistics and discussed it with civil servants—

[Baroness Northover]

I remind the noble Lord that he will have the opportunity to respond to all the points made in this mini-debate at the end of the debate, after the Minister has replied.

Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lea of Crondall and Baroness Northover

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, we come back to the heart of the Bill at its conclusion. At the very start, my noble friend Lord Marland laid out the vision of this Bill. These amendments, which are about the transparency required to ensure that we deliver what we are seeking to do, have brought us back there again. Therefore, I welcome the opportunity to be able to debate this set of issues. The Government are very committed to greater transparency, thus building on what the previous Government were committed to and we seek to take that further. It is extremely important that transparency enables the public to hold politicians and public bodies to account and we are strongly committed to that. We need to be very clear and very public about where we are heading.

On these amendments, I point out that publications by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change already provide information relating to revenues, tax expenditures and distributional impacts similar to those suggested in the amendment. They clearly are not especially popular in the sense that not everyone is totally familiar with them all. However, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lea, for taking the time to go over these publications with DECC and Treasury officials and for discussing his amendments with them. His opening speech showed that a tremendous amount of material is already available and it reminded me of the discussions I hear my sons—both of whom are doing PPE—having about the economic effect of this and that and whether it will happen in this direction or that. Nevertheless, the noble Lord was able to do that, I suggest, because much of that information is available.

Obviously, we need to go further and faster, as I think we would all agree. However, a great deal of information is already available. We welcome the noble Lord’s suggestions about how to take this forward. I also point out that DECC produces an annual publication, alongside the annual energy statement, setting out the impact of energy and climate change policies on gas and electricity bills for households and businesses. People may not pay too much attention to that, but it is available.

The department is looking for opportunities to build on and refine the analysis so that it is more accessible to the public, and the noble Lord’s contribution will feed into that. For example, we expect the next publication to include an analysis looking at the impact on illustrative energy-intensive users, which was mentioned just now. It is also extremely important to remember—the previous Government deserve credit for this—that the Equality Act, which we passed just before the general election and which we are now implementing, requires an assessment of the impact in various areas, including on those who may be in deprived groups, of various policies right across government. Wearing one of my other hats, I know that this is indeed happening and that the assessment of the impact of policies is being made in a way which I think the noble Lord, Lord Lea, would welcome. This is an early stage of the development but it is very important and will be taken forward. It is already happening.

I turn to the important elements emphasised by the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Whitty, which is that we need to stand back and look at what we are seeking to do here. Clearly, we need to get the case across. Transparency helps, but do not doubt that statistics will be used by both sides in different ways as they seek to bolster their own arguments. In the end, that is why it comes down to what the Government decide should be the right strategy. There is a tremendous amount of agreement in the Committee, although there are one or two dissenting voices, but generally speaking we know where we are trying to head and we certainly wish to have greater transparency so that we can take people with us. In the end, the decision will go beyond that. Either we have to tackle climate change and we have the tools in this Bill to do that, or we do not. Generally, I think we agree that we need to do that, which is why we have introduced the Bill and why we are taking these proposals forward.

As there is already a lot of information available and as we welcome the suggestions about how we improve on that, how we take that forward and how we ensure that there is as much public discussion as possible, although not necessarily on the details of hypothecation, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken, not least the Minister, for a very positive and helpful conclusion. I will disappoint her if she thinks that I am inclined to leave the matter here. Some alterations are needed and some of this material needs to be altered by an amendment on Report. I hope my Front Bench agrees, but I have yet to find out.

I will just, if I may, say that I did not know the Equality Act had been a topic in looking at this. I know that there is horizontal equality, but I did not know that vertical equality was part of the scope of the discussion arising from the Equality Act.

[Baroness Northover]

Perhaps I can help the noble Lord by pointing out that you have to look at an impact assessment of everything you are doing to see how it might disproportionately affect different groups. Therefore, policies such as this come within that. Everything that the Government do comes within that.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

I thank the Minister. She knows that I have the highest regard for her. But can I take it one by one, if I may put it that way? I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, for her broad support for the idea. She said that it was something that needed to be raised even though she stopped short of making it a mutual admiration society. That would be awkward for both of us. Many things that she said rang a bell with me. I will look at all the points that she raised.

We all know the noble Lord, Lord Deben, much better as Mr Gummer. He may remember Rio where I was a delegate, in 1991 or 1992. I am sorry that he adopted a slightly theological approach. I will rephrase that: it was an ideological approach. It was as if anybody raising the point that I was raising must be trying to destroy the policy. I have been on this wicket batting and scoring runs for as long as he has and we will hit a brick wall—to mix my metaphors, which I always do—unless we get some more buy-in in Burton upon Trent. I am very glad that Burton upon Trent has been mentioned four or five times. I will rechristen the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, the Bishop of Burton upon Trent. That will help also the scoreline.

I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about this point. Surely it is making a mountain out of a mole hill to say that the Treasury cannot do the work. As we have just heard from the Minister, a lot of this material is around.