Industrial Action Update
Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Gavin Shuker(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a really powerful point. I join him in supporting and thanking all those people, including governors and other volunteers, who have rallied round to ensure that, wherever possible, schools could be kept open. That is very much to their credit. The strikes have been called on the basis of increasingly thin mandates, and people’s determination to keep public services open and available has increased. It is particularly wrong that a special school of the type that my hon. Friend describes should have been closed in that way.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Ordinary hard-working people, such as those I represent in Luton, should have the right to withdraw their labour in a responsible way and to stand up against people, many of whom are on much higher salaries, such as us here in Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman talks of mandates and legitimacy. Some police and crime commissioners were recently elected on the strength of securing just 5% of first-preference votes. Does he accept that that shows the lunacy of what he is saying?
Mr Maude
I repeat the point that I made earlier, which is that all local residents are affected by policing decisions and that all local residents who are voters have the right to vote in those elections. The constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) whose children have been denied access to the special school they depend on were never consulted about this. They had no say in it; they just have to take what happens as a result of a strike called by union leaders on flimsy, outdated mandates, and I think that that is wrong.
Public Bodies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Maude of Horsham and Gavin Shuker(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Maude
Powers to amend primary legislation by secondary legislation are not unprecedented. An amendment made in the other place, which the Government supported, will mean that either House can require an enhanced affirmative procedure. Such a procedure not only requires consultation before a draft order is laid, but allows a further period for reflection on, and analysis and scrutiny of, the proposal. It is reasonable to have a reasonably accelerated process for the reform of public bodies. Otherwise, we will end up in a position in which we have a wholly incoherent landscape of public bodies. I confess that even at the end of the process that we are currently proposing, that landscape will still be quite muddled, but it will at least have been cleared up to some extent.
Gavin Shuker
Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) on the OFT and Competition Commission, is that not an odd state of affairs? There are reports that one of those bodies will take responsibility for NHS contracts worth more than £70 million, yet today we are discussing the changes to them abstract from Monitor’s responsibilities.
Mr Maude
The functions will continue to exist, but there will be a rationalisation of the landscape of the bodies. A single competition authority will be created. A number of the consumer advocate functions will be given to citizens advice bureaux, which will strengthen their role and bring welcome additional funding to them—[Interruption.] I would hope that hon. Members welcomed the enhancement of the role of CABs that the Bill brings about.
The Bill provides an ability to make further changes as need arises in future. Each order-making power is limited in its application to those bodies that are listed in the relevant schedule to the Bill. Clause 1 creates a power for a Minister to abolish a body or office by order. Such an order may either abolish the body’s functions if they are no longer required, or transfer some or all of them to another eligible party, such as a Government Department, a charity or another public body.
In some cases, an order under clause 1 will be motivated by the principle of accountability—that a Minister should be directly accountable for Government actions within their sphere of influence. For that reason, we propose to abolish the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission and to return its functions to the direct control of the Department for Work and Pensions. In other cases, a body will simply be abolished to halt unnecessary expenditure and duplication. For example, clause 1 will also be used to introduce orders to abolish the Valuation Tribunal Service, the functions of which can now be performed by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, and which therefore no longer needs to be a separate entity, with its own overhead costs.
The next four clauses of the Bill create a complementary set of powers to merge groups of bodies, to modify constitutional or funding arrangements, or to modify or transfer a body’s functions. The breadth of those powers is a reflection of the breadth of the Government’s reform agenda. We aim to enhance the scope of civil society by the creation of a new waterways charity to replace British Waterways. Our agenda spreads to the modification of regulatory bodies such as Ofcom and the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure that they are fully focused on their vital regulatory functions.
In total, 294 bodies currently appear in the schedules to the Bill, demonstrating the importance of this measure to the reform agenda. Details of our proposals for each of those bodies are available in a document that has been placed in the House Library. I can assure the House that that document will be updated regularly throughout the passage of the Bill, and I hope it forms a valuable basis for debate in Committee.
In addition, the Bill creates specific powers for Welsh Assembly Ministers to take forward a number of changes to public bodies operating in Wales. Those will assist the Welsh Assembly Government as they seek to simplify their public bodies landscape and to deliver further savings, and I hope that those measures also enjoy the support of the House.
As I have indicated, the passage of the Bill through the Lords saw a number of modifications to the mechanisms of the Bill. The modifications tighten the purposes for which those powers can be used and ensure the appropriate balance between speed and scrutiny in the reform process. Those changes mean that the Bill that was introduced in this House strikes a carefully crafted balance. It will enable Ministers to make much-needed reforms to public bodies without recourse to specific primary legislation, an innovation that I believe will support efficient management of public bodies both now and in the future. Yet at the same time, the Bill requires Government to make the case for their proposals to stakeholders and to Parliament, guaranteeing that proper consideration is given to the exercise of important public functions.
I should tell the House that the Government intend to introduce a number of amendments in Committee. In particular, the House will be aware that following the written ministerial statement on 15 June by the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), who has responsibility for business and enterprise, the abolition of the regional development agencies will now be taken forward in primary legislation through the Bill. Abolishing the RDAs in the Bill will ensure that the Government can meet our timetable for the development of a new framework for regional growth, providing clarity and opportunity to businesses across the nation.
Similarly, we will seek to amend the Bill to modify the Broadcasting Act 1990 to revise the funding arrangements for S4C by removing the retail prices index link, while securing the channel’s independent future status and delivering significant savings.
I can also inform the House that the Government will seek to reintroduce the office of the chief coroner and the Youth Justice Board to the Bill’s schedules, overturning votes in the other place. As I said earlier, my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor has listened to the concerns raised in relation to the important functions that those bodies are designed to carry out, and I believe that our revised proposals will gain wide support. We have agreed that the office of the chief coroner should remain on the statute book, and our amendments will propose adding it to schedule 5 to the Bill to enable some of its functions to be transferred to the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor.
The Government will propose a number of more technical amendments to the Bill, including measures to clarify the requirements of the consultation process in clause 10, to ensure that any orders made under the Bill in relation to the funding arrangements of bodies or offices require the consent of the Treasury and to modify the list of taxes subject to variation in their provision as part of a transfer scheme made in connection with an order under the Bill.
The Government are committed to bringing about radical change in the administration of government in the UK—change that responds to the public’s demand to place the principles of transparency, accountability and value for money at the centre of what the state does. Quango reform has been long promised by parties on both sides of the House and is long overdue, but we have now taken the difficult decisions necessary to make it possible and to make it happen. By enabling a comprehensive and overdue reconfiguration of the landscape and by creating a framework to support better management of public bodies in the future, the Bill gives the Government the essential tools with which to turn this commitment into reality. I commend it to the House.