Trade Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Faulkner of Worcester

Committee stage
Thursday 15th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no requests from noble Lords wishing to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contribution to this debate. I especially thank those who supported the amendments in either my name or that of my noble friend Lord Bassam, particularly my noble friends Lord Rooker and Lord Judd.

My noble friend Lord Rooker made a very good point about the additional legitimacy which stems from public hearings, and he was picked up on this by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. Their points were strong enough to be convincing, although I am sorry that the Minister did not give a very explicit reason why he was not prepared to accept the amendment as it stood.

I am reminded that when we discussed this issue last time around, we had a slight advantage: we knew that the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, had actually been through that process of hearings as she had been the prospective chair of the BBC. Unfortunately, she was not terribly enthusiastic about the process itself, but I think she agreed with the points made today about the additional support it gives to those who have been through the process, and the general sense in which these appointments are, on one level at least, open for wider consideration and discussion.

In thinking through some of the issues raised later in the debate on the particularities of how organisations appoint, recruit and sustain their organisational structures, we need to have regard to the long-running debate—which I precipitated with some of the amendments that we tabled—about whether these people are to be seen as representatives or whether their background, having been gained in particular areas, would be of value to the organisation concerned. Perhaps I am not as naive as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Noakes, alleged in suggesting that we needed to have a firm representative structure in place for the TRA; that would be ridiculous.

Taking a step back to look at some of the outcomes of processes to try to have a representative group on boards to help with better decision-making, legitimacy, transparency and all the other issues we are concerned about, it is quite interesting that we do not always get in place the sort of backgrounds reflected by the amendments in front of the Committee. I simply point that out. If the Minister is saying that the advisory committee may be the route here, that the words mentioned in this debate will be reflected on by the TRA, and that he will make sure that this is the case, I think we can feel we have made that point and do not need to continue discussing it.

I have two final points. First, to reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, I did not mention any names when talking about appointments to the Board of Trade. Indeed, my amendment was specifically about the absurdity, or the Gilbertian situation we seem to be in, that there is one member and loads of advisers. This is more like a court than an advisory group; I wonder why we go through this charade.

If it is limited to privy counsellors that is one way of doing it, I suppose; it is probably better than some other routes we can think about. However, there are hundreds of privy counsellors. There are probably 100 engaged in this process at the moment—not including myself, of course, but others have been honoured by that. I would not have thought there would be difficulty in finding a privy counsellor if we wanted to make it two instead of one member of the Board of Trade. It really raises the question of why we have a Board of Trade with only one member if it needs advisers to advise it, but does not seem to produce anything one way or the other, yet we have thousands of other people sitting in trade advisory groups and other groups yet to be appointed. I leave that on the table.

My last point is that the Minister was intriguing when he said that the department hoped to deepen its engagement with the trade unions. I am pleased to hear that. I think I can speak for the trade unions to say that they are ready and willing to do what is required. I can only suggest that he gets ahead with his invitation, whatever it is he is going to do.

This is not an attempt to try to hijack things, but the feeling I am left with at the end of this debate, which has been a good, rich and important one, is that there is a bit of ground to make up. All that the Minister can do in using his experience of the processes needed to get fair appointments, the systems that need to be in place in the bodies once they are established, and the engagement with civic society and the wider group of people who are interested and want to support them, is important and will be the sustaining point as we go further down the track. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Data Protection Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Faulkner of Worcester

Monday 6th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I rise to speak to another rather wide-ranging group, in terms of numbers, although I think we will find the amendments are a theme and variation on an issue that will run through not just this Bill but a number of Bills to come. I refer to secondary legislation and powers in the future when it is necessary for the Government of the day to try to change that which has been set down in primary legislation in the past.

Amendment 22, which kicks this off, is taken very largely from the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I make no apology for that. I think it is a very good report, as always, from that committee which does a fantastic job on what we are doing. I think I am probably interposing in a dialogue that may be carrying on out of our direct ken since normally in this matter one would get a memorandum, which I think we have seen, and I thank the Minister and the Bill team for that. The first response from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee will make some comments and I think it likely that the Minister and his colleagues will respond to that. We are only in the early stages, so I suspect we are a bit previous on this point.

However, this is an issue of some substance that may well be in all the Brexit-related Bills soon to arrive in your Lordships’ House, which suggests that we might just have a quick canter around it at the moment.

In preparing for this particular area, I had thought that we would just stick with Clause 9, but I was drawn into also putting in Clause 15, because there is an interesting point here that I wanted to raise with Ministers. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Paddick, have had less restraint, and therefore we are covering quite a large number of the issues raised by the DPRRC. I look forward to hearing the response and to the wider contributions from those who have tabled amendments in this group.

The main theme that seems to run through this is what the committee says in paragraph 20 of its recent report, that,

“we take the view that the memorandum does not adequately justify the breadth of the power in clause 9(6) of the Bill, and that it is inappropriate for Ministers to be given carte blanche to rewrite any or all of the conditions and safeguards in Schedule 1 by regulations in order ‘to deal with changing circumstances’ instead of bringing forward a Bill”.

The committee then slightly changes its position by recognising that currently this is under the affirmative procedure, quite a strong measure to have in play in legislation, and suggesting an alternative approach:

“It may be appropriate … for Ministers to have a more focused power enabling them to update specific paragraphs”.


Maybe that is a line the Government will take. The essence of this is Henry VIII powers—how egregious they are and how bad it would be in future to come across them. At the same time we have to balance that against the obvious need, particularly in this Bill—as we have already discussed we are talking about fast-moving technology, although it applies in other areas—for some flexibility on the part of the Government of the day to bring forward amendments and changes as and when required. It is a balance and has to be struck properly, but the first shots in this have tended to be that Ministers are too aggressive. We await further discussions, but that is the ground which we will be traipsing around.

Amendment 106A relates to Clause 15(1)(b), at line 44 on page 8, which talks about,

“the power in Article 23(1) to make a legislative measure restricting the scope of the obligations and rights mentioned in that Article where necessary and proportionate to safeguard certain objectives of general public interest.”

I take this to be a quote from the GDPR. It is therefore couched in language which I think would be unexceptional if we were transposing the GDPR into the Bill, but of course we are not, and we are not allowed to amend it. The question really is what a legislative measure is. This is not a rhetorical question, because I would like an answer. In our system, as I understand it, Secretaries of State bring forward legislation in the form of a Bill. If they are not doing that, they bring it forward in secondary regulations. But a legislative measure has no apparent meaning in terms of the work we do—maybe the Minister will confirm that this is perfectly right. But for the moment, this probing amendment not only underlines the point made by the DPRRC in relation to the power in Clause 15 but is also about the particularity of the language used. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I remind the Committee that if this amendment were to be agreed, I would be unable to call Amendment 22A for reason of pre-emption.