Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

I give general support to the general idea behind the amendment. The details of the amendment are probably impractical, but the underlying purpose of moving it as a probing amendment is absolutely vital. It goes to the very heart of why many of us are unhappy about this Bill as it stands at the moment. There has been a lot of talk about procedures and super-affirmatives and all that kind of thing, but the basic problem at the heart of the Bill is that it proposes to put on the statute book a list of organisations which the appropriate Minister will have the power to abolish or merge, or the power to modify their constitutional or funding arrangements, to modify or transfer their functions or to authorise delegation. In some cases, organisations appear on more than one of these lists. That happens in Clauses 1 to 6. I shall ignore Clause 11 and Schedule 7 at the moment, as they give rise to a different issue altogether—a list of organisations that may or may not be added to these other lists in due course. What is to happen to those is all up in the air and all rather a mess.

Clauses 1 to 6 set out the Government’s clear and stated wish to abolish all the organisations in Schedule 1, for example. That is government policy, as we have it so far. If the Government have a policy to abolish this long list of organisations—and I, for one, do not disagree with the abolition of quite a few of them, although I would argue about some of them—there is not just the question of the abolition of the organisation. Abolishing an organisation is a mechanical thing; you close it down and no one is employed by it. The crucial thing that this amendment gets to the very heart of is what will happen to the functions of those organisations. In my judgment, it is far more important that the Government tell us what is to happen to the multifarious functions of those organisations than it is to say that they wish to close them down as bodies or structures. The functions are absolutely crucial.

That is information that in some cases we are being provided with outside the confines of the Bill. We have some ideas about what will happen to the functions of the regional development agencies. We know that some of those functions are being ended and that their planning functions are being closed down altogether; in fact, they have been closed down in most cases already. Some functions will be transferred to local enterprise partnerships if and when they exist everywhere, although they do not yet exist everywhere. Even the regional development agencies have functions that we do not know who will carry out. There is the whole question of rural development and its funding, and two or three weeks ago I put down a Written Question on that matter. The answer, in effect, was that it had not been sorted out yet, that for the time being it would continue to happen through the RDAs but that sooner or later it would be transferred to someone else. The assumption is that it will be transferred to someone at the centre, but no one really knows. Even with bodies like RDAs, where quite a lot of work has been done and documents and White Papers have been published, we still do not know at all what will happen to the functions. With many organisations, we do not have a clue. It seems that this is the fundamental problem that the Government have with the Bill.

Later we will discuss amendments that would delete almost every organisation in Schedules 1 and 2, right through to Schedule 6 and the infamous Schedule 7. It will take a huge amount of this Committee’s time to go through these and try to prise out of the Government what they propose to do. I suspect that many of these amendments have been tabled not to delete the organisation from the list but to find out what the Government’s intentions are for the existing functions of each of those bodies. Which are to be closed down, which are to be transferred to other outside bodies and which are to be brought in-house within departments? Who knows what will happen to some of them? That is the crucial thing. It is what these bodies do that matters, not their structure, unless you work there and your job is on the line.

Therefore, this amendment is fundamental in that it gets to the very heart of one of the main problems with the Bill. We simply have not been provided with information by the Government as to what is to happen to each of these bodies. As I say, the time to provide that information is not, as set out in the Bill, after Royal Assent and before commencement. The time to provide that information is now, to this House and then to the House of Commons, so that we can be absolutely certain when we consent—if that is what we do—to the different organisations being in one or more of these lists of how the services and functions that they provide will continue.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I very much agree with the purpose of Amendment 180. It is of fundamental importance that the purposes of the making of the order are fully understood in respect of the transfer of functions. It is more than desirable; it is inevitable and necessary that if the changes are being made to procure efficiency, economy or accountability, it should be possible to judge whether those goals are being achieved by the transfer of authority or the winding up of the body. I know that, in respect of the regional development agencies—notwithstanding the announcement of the LEPs—there is a great deal of uncertainty, for example in respect of the distribution of the European rural development fund, which has not been resolved. It has been suggested that this may be transferred to another body. It has been suggested that it might be transferred to a privatised body, perhaps even consisting of existing members of the RDAs, which have been responsible for this for some time. We have no idea how this will be handled. That is not satisfactory. It is a reasonable objective that the Bill should make this clear, for the reasons already given in this debate. The language of the amendment might not be absolutely suited to bringing this out; none the less, I hope the Minister will give serious thought to that requirement of transparency.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I support this amendment and I agree very much with the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Maclennan. Amendment 180 is much needed if we are to have a rational and sensible process for deciding how we deal with public bodies. I return to the example of economic development. This is a classic case of a decision to abolish a body being taken without anyone thinking about what to do with its functions, what the costs and economic disbenefits are likely to be, and what will happen to the liabilities and assets.

The fact is that none of these questions was answered before the Government announced this decision. They are trying to make it up as they go along. That is not satisfactory. I know about this because of my interest as chair of Cumbria Vision. It is a very sad thing to see because the rhetoric is all about localism and setting up local economic partnerships that are supposed to be more local than the regional development agencies but the Government are devolving very few, if any, functions to the local economic partnerships. What is actually happening is that most of the things that were done in the regions are being centralised into government departments. Is that really sensible public policy-making? Should not the Government have been subject to the discipline embodied in this amendment in terms of explaining clearly what they were doing when they announced this decision?

As regards expected costs and their impact, I put down a Written Question to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, in which I asked for information on costs, how many people were likely to lose their job and what the impact on this, that and the other would be. I received the Answer that no such information was available or was being sought, or something like that. That is not a satisfactory due process. The Government must do better than that as regards other bodies. That is why these amendments being put forward from this side of the House are so important. I hope that they will draw support from all sides of the House.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, Amendments 4 and 180 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, which were introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, seek to introduce a requirement for the Secretary of State to make a statement to Parliament setting out how the functions of all the bodies listed in Schedules 1 to 6 would be carried out in the future, and the expected costs and liabilities associated with the proposed changes to bodies listed in those schedules. This statement could then be followed, after one month, with a statutory instrument that would commence the Act.

It is right and proper that, before approving a specific change to a particular body or office, the House should have access to appropriate information on that change, including information relating to functions and costs. I support the spirit in which I believe this amendment is tabled. However, I do not believe that it is required. As has been discussed at length in earlier debates today, it is a shared intention of the Committee that, when laying a draft order under the powers in the Bill, Ministers will publish an explanatory document setting out the reasons for making the order. Indeed, one glance at government Amendment 118 makes clear the detail that will be required to accompany a draft order. Orders at this stage will also have gone through the impact assessment process, and this impact assessment will be published at the time the order enters Parliament, in line with existing practice. I am therefore confident that existing requirements will ensure that Parliament is fully informed on the content and implications of orders before being asked to approve them.

I do not believe it to be appropriate to amend the Bill in this fashion; I believe that it would add limited value to the process and would, in so doing, risk an unnecessary delay to the reform programme that the Bill seeks to enable. Therefore, while I appreciate the intention of the amendment, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw it.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I wonder whether my noble friend would consider the possibility, if not of accepting the amendment in this form, of some expansion of Amendment 118, to which he specifically referred, to enable the matters under discussion to be considered as part of the explanatory documents. Explanatory documents have always varied in quality and content, and it makes sense that these specific pieces of information should be given and that there is a standard for performance in respect to that.