Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Skelmersdale

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, it seems that we are discussing, in an amendment to Clause 82, the whole subject of Schedule 20. Five or six years ago I put down a Question for Written Answer, “To ask Her Majesty’s Government” what the oldest piece of legislation still on the statute book was. It dated from the 14th century, though I cannot remember what it was. Looking very quickly through the items in Schedule 20 I notice that there is nothing older than the 19th century. Why? It is a mystery. I certainly go along with what the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Rooker, said about an appropriate and responsible body to delve into and probe obsolete legislation. I could not agree with them more.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, although I may be being a bit previous in saying this, I think that I am the only Member of your Lordships’ House who so far has sat through every minute of the debates that we have had in Second Reading and Committee. I draw two conclusions from that. Today’s open and discursive discussions illustrate that it is a strange experience to be able, in your Lordships’ House, to roam so widely through these uncharted territories of legislation. Some of it, as has been pointed out, goes back a long way, though not all that far back. We have also tried to come to some conclusions about how we might look at this.

There are two conclusions to draw. First, the exercise in pre-legislative scrutiny that was done in the Bill is a very good thing. The reports that this scrutiny generated, and the actions that were taken and the improvements that were made to the Bill by that process, exemplified by my noble friend Lord Rooker, are things that we should bear in mind. Secondly, we need to utilise that experience better. Perhaps it is something for another time. The periodic appearances of my noble friend Lord Rooker and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, have always generated, when they are here, a much better and more focused discussion in our considerations than when they are not; they have been present a lot and have raised good points. It has struck me that when we have been able to interrogate and listen to what they have been saying we have learnt a lot more about the process that we otherwise do.

That leads to a broader truth that came out in all the presentations that we have had around this amendment so far; we are probably rather ill equipped in Parliament under the processes that we have to follow to do the deep and important thinking about some of the legislation that has gone or is currently going through the House. I absolutely take the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and my noble friend Lord Rooker that it is inefficient for Parliament to try to scrutinise line by line material which is obscure and possibly not very well expressed in terms of the material we are given and the notes.

I do not want to go through each of the paragraphs in Schedule 20, but I wish to share with the Committee two things about the process. One is that without a Keeling schedule relating to the particularities of the Bills being amended, it is almost impossible to work out what they are. One simply does not have the expertise or even the time to do that, and it would not be fair to ask civil servants, even if they were able to do it, to help the Opposition on this matter. For example, in paragraph 1, the best I could get from the Bill team—and I thank them very much for it—was a set of summaries in which they tried to characterise what is being done by the various enactments. The first, which is an amendment to the Companies Act 2006 simply says:

“The provisions to be repealed were originally included in the Companies Act 2006 to address an anticipated transitional issue in relation to moving the rules requiring audits of some small charitable companies from the Companies Act to charities legislation … This means the provisions are no longer needed”.

You do not have to be an expert in logic to realise that there a bit of imaginative leap in that. I do not know what legislation is being referred to, and I have not been able to track it down, so I am taking at face value what is, I am sure, good advice that the original legislation has indeed been overtaken by changes in charities legislation, but I do not know that. Therefore, I am not able to scrutinise as effectively as I would like the work that has been done.

These are points already well made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and my noble friend Lord Rooker, and I do not want to go over them. I have a number of points throughout paragraphs 1 to 42 on these matters. I could go through them, but it would take up the good will in this Committee, so I will not do it. However, it makes the point for me that we have to have a body that we can trust as a Parliament to certify that the Bills or legislation that we wish to see excised from the statute book are no longer of practical use. That body has to be independent. It has to have the time to do research, it has to be able to certify to Parliament that it has done a full and comprehensive study of the work, duly taking evidence and drawing conclusions from work carried out in other ways, to provide a draft Bill to be taken forward. Otherwise, we are cutting corners, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said. We simply cannot be certain that what we are doing in this process is not allowing infelicities, injustices and other things to happen in areas where it would be wrong for Parliament to take things forward.

I said I would not go through them, but I cannot resist just one more example. In paragraphs 14 and 15, there are proposals to excise Sections 6 and 7 of the Atomic Energy Act because they are no longer of any use. I could quote the whole of the Explanatory Notes, but I shall jump to the end. They state that the measures define “prescribed substances” that include,

“uranium, plutonium and other substances prescribed by order which can be used for the production of atomic energy or research”.

Then they state—I do not know how to judge this statement—that,

“the United Kingdom no longer needs to search for these substances as it has a steady supply from politically stable countries”.

Need I go on? What sort of judgments are implied in that? To whom and to what Minister has that been put up as a submission? Which Minister has signed off in his or her mind that we no long require for our future energy sources for the longer term to have the right to search for uranium, plutonium and other substances which we need to keep our atomic energy systems going because we can get them easily on the open market from politically stable countries? Okay, Lord Copper, I get what you are at, but this is not sufficient to make a decision of that nature. I may be extending to make the point, but it is typical.

I signed up to this amendment because I thought it was the right thing to do. Having listened to the persuasive arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, the detailed criticisms made by my noble friend Lord Rooker and the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, about how neat and necessary it is to have a proper system here, it seems to me that we need to think very hard about this.

I appeal to the Government; they would not lose this clause if they decided to accept what is proposed here. They could take credit for making sure that the standards that we set in this Parliament are for the long term and for the good. That would be something that we would all applaud.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Skelmersdale

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, we discussed the issue of a representative of employees serving on the board of Royal Mail in Committee and it received support from across the Chamber. The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, from the Liberal Democrat Back Benches, drew on his experience as managing director of a manufacturing company. He said on 8 March at col. 1553 of Hansard:

“It is crucial that employees have not only shares but a real voice in one way or the other. Without that, so many companies fail. We want the new conglomerate to succeed, to go forward and to bring its employees with it, as opposed to management and employees being at each other's throats as has sometimes been the case in the past”.

My noble friend Lord Myners pointed out that the shareholders in a privatised Royal Mail,

“—whether it is a large corporation, perhaps based overseas, or is floated on the stock market with a large number of investors—will nevertheless individually have a very modest interest in the company … few … will own more than 1 per cent of the company; they will have diversified their risk through portfolio construction. The employees cannot do that; they will have what investors would call a high-conviction portfolio, with all their money invested in a single share and all their employment in one place of work. It is surely right that people who exhibit such a high conviction to a company should have some voice in the leadership and management of the business”.—[Official Report, 8/3/11; cols. 1553-55.]

Postal workers already have a major stake in the company, and their livelihoods are dependent on its viability. This is more than just an issue of immediate employment, because postal staff invest their livelihoods and pensions in the company. We will suggest later under Clause 3 that they should be able to invest in trust-owned employee shareholdings in the company. Surely it is not too much to ask that they have a seat at the board table for their chosen representatives.

What do we see when we look across the channel? Employee representation is commonplace. In fact, some of the companies that are held up as shining examples of privatised postal services have employee representatives on their boards. The Minister for Postal Services, in Committee in another place, stated:

“I have never been opposed to the idea of employee representatives being on boards, or on board committees”.—[Official Report, Commons, Postal Services Bill Committee, 23/11/10; col. 325.]

We invite the Minister here to go one step further and make provision in the Bill for this good idea. Failure to introduce representation of postal workers would risk missing a real opportunity to create trust and confidence for the long term. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Skelmersdale)]

If the amendment is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 5, by reason of pre-emption.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Skelmersdale

Monday 14th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Skelmersdale]

My Lords, I tend to agree with my noble friend Lady Kramer on this. Although what comes out of the discussion on this amendment will be valuable to our future discussions, as it is it rather puts the cart before the horse. As far as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, is concerned, I will ask my noble friend one question, if she will deign to answer it. Quite clearly, from what she said in our last exchanges, she has as high an opinion of me as I do of her. The Government have a policy of supporting post offices and it is quite clear that this is what they intend. The inter-business agreement—currently lasting five years, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, has just said—is one of the ways in which post offices are supported. Should her worst fears be realised and there is no future inter-business agreement at the end of the five years, does my noble friend think that the policy of supporting the post offices will continue to be self-sustaining?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Whitty. A couple of noble Lords have suggested that these discussions, particularly in relation to the assets, are putting carts before horses but I am not sure about that. We are really talking about the transfer schemes that are referred to in Clause 8 and Schedule 1. Those are clearly mammoth undertakings, which will take a lot of time, so while I understand the points being made that they should not be in a position to hold back the main purpose of this Bill, they really do underpin it.

The Post Office is a massive enterprise. The business has revenue of £838 million with a profit of £72 million and employs more than 8,000 staff. There are nearly 12,000 post offices, of which 500 are outreach services and 10,000 are sub-post offices. That network, taken together, is bigger than all the bank and building society branches put together so we know that its scale will require a lot of attention. It would be rather surprising if some work was not already being done in that way. First, it is necessary to identify the assets, then to get into the complicated task of disaggregating the parts of those assets which have to go to Royal Mail and the parts which have to go to Post Office Ltd.

It is, of course, not just a question of assets. I am sure that the Minister will want to refer to this; quite a lot of the Royal Mail’s outstanding loans, including the modernisation loan from the Government, are secured against the assets. What effect will the splitting of the assets have on that and how will that be moderated as we move forward? Then there are the normal activities that one would expect in this sort of process about headquarter costs and shared administrative functions, which will be hard to disentangle—particularly where premises and the supervision of Royal Mail activities take place on Post Office premises.