Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 21, 22 July and 13 October be approved.

Relevant document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 19 November

Motions agreed.

Commonwealth: Young Entrepreneurs

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Baroness Benjamin (LD): My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in so doing, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Royal Commonwealth Society.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, at the UK-Caribbean Ministerial Forum in June, both sides committed to bringing together young leaders in business, entrepreneurship, civil society and academia. In 2014, our support for the Caribbean has included progressing scholarship programmes between higher education institutions and the UK, and enhancing regional competitiveness and enterprise innovation. In the wider Commonwealth, the range of UK programmes includes supporting a social entrepreneurship programme for young women in India.

[Baroness Benjamin]

I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. As part of her Diamond Jubilee, Her Majesty created the Queen’s Young Leaders Award. Part of that programme is to discover, develop and nurture young entrepreneurs across the Commonwealth, which is wonderful. However, more opportunities are needed for young entrepreneurs, especially in the Caribbean. What are the Government doing to encourage links between business schools here in Britain and those in the Caribbean? How much priority does DfID give to encouraging entrepreneurship in the Caribbean?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is not just a question of DfID programmes: there are also UKTI programmes and British Council programmes. The British Council is concerned particularly with a creative young entrepreneurs’ programme, which covers the Caribbean as well as some other areas. It is clearly the sort of area where services and new industries can develop.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, last week I spoke at the opening event of Global Entrepreneurship Week here in London. I was delighted that a report released at the event showed that London is one of the top two cities for entrepreneurship in Europe. Is the Minister aware of the Sirius programme backed by UK Trade and Investment, which attracts young entrepreneurs from around the world and which I was involved in launching? Will the Government assure us that they are promoting this Sirius programme throughout the Commonwealth, along with countries such as India?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am certainly aware of the Sirius programme. It is being promoted across the Caribbean and the Commonwealth, as well as in other areas.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that this is Dominican Republic week in the United Kingdom and that various events are being organised by the embassy and by industries with an interest in the Dominican Republic? Will he encourage Commonwealth Caribbean countries to do similar by having a Trinidad week, a Barbados week and a Jamaica week in the United Kingdom? Maybe I should declare an interest as president of the Caribbean Council.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord may be surprised to know that I was not aware that this is Dominican Republic week. However, I am conscious that there are a range of Caribbean-related festivals not just in London but across Britain. Indeed, on one occasion I presented the prizes at the Miss Grenada Commonwealth competition in Huddersfield at what should have been about 10 o’clock at night but turned out to be one o’clock in the morning.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I have to declare an interest as president of the Royal Commonwealth Society. Does my noble friend agree that what these young entrepreneurs really need is access to funds to get their businesses started? If, as in many other parts of the world, the banks will not play and are not really being as helpful as they should be, should we not also encourage the development of all kinds of alternative finance built on peer-to-peer lending and so on, as well as many other opportunities, which are enabling small businesses all over the developing world and certainly in the Caribbean to have proper access to funds for the first time?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, of course we should be doing that. Part of the problem in the Caribbean is that, apart from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, we are talking about very small islands with very small economies, and getting major enterprises going in such areas is often a little more difficult than it is in larger countries.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Caribbean area is not, to put it mildly, a priority for DfID aid, should Her Majesty’s Government be doing more to assist some of the smaller islands there, some of which not only suffer from deep poverty but need support in order to succeed in establishing successful trading and business concerns?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my brief says that the Caribbean is very much one of DfID’s priorities. We are of course conscious of the difficulties that some of the smaller Caribbean economies have. I am told that, apart from Guyana, none of the Caribbean economies is at present demonstrating very strong economic growth.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, will my noble friend also have a word with the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Secretariat to ensure that it promotes such activities so that other Commonwealth nations can benefit? Not only could they learn from us but we could learn quite a lot from some of the Commonwealth countries.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, certainly we are actively engaged with the Commonwealth Secretariat. The UK is the largest funder of the Commonwealth Secretariat and also the largest supporter of its youth fund.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust and as a person who was born in Dominica, one of the tiniest islands within the Caribbean. Mention has already been made of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee scholarships which are going to be given to the 53 countries. Can the noble Lord tell us what assistance the Government intend to give to make sure that Caribbean members get a proper opportunity to demonstrate their skill, their talent and their ingenuity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a very good and complex question, and I think it is better that I write to the noble and learned Baroness with a full indication of where we are. I am very conscious of her background in Dominica and indeed, with my World War I hat on, of the contribution that her family and many others in the Caribbean made to the British war effort in the Great War.

Sri Lanka

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare an interest as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are studying the implications of the ECJ judgment and considering appropriate next steps. The UK is committed to maintaining an EU listing. The court’s decision was based on fundamental procedural grounds, but the court rejected the LTTE’s argument that it could not be listed as a terrorist organisation because of its involvement in an internal armed conflict. The UK condemns the Tamil Tigers as a brutal terror organisation, and it remains proscribed under UK law.

[Lord Naseby]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that his Answer will be greeted with a great sigh of relief by nearly all the Sri Lankans who live in the United Kingdom and, indeed, virtually all the citizens of Sri Lanka? However, is he also aware that this coming Thursday there is to be a rally at ExCel to celebrate the life of the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Mr Prabhakaran, and the other Tamil Tigers, and to raise money for Eelam? Will my noble friend bring this to the attention of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police? It seems to me that this is covered by the proscription. Frankly, if the terrorism Acts mean anything, this particular rally should be stopped.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I would be surprised if the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is not already aware of it. The United Kingdom Government are actively concerned to promote reconciliation and reconstruction within Sri Lanka among all of its different communities.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, President Rajapaksa has called an early presidential election for 8 January next year. Last week there were defections by senior Ministers from the Government, including Mr Sirisena, who will be the principal opposition candidate. Given the history of such elections in the past and that reports this weekend suggest that Mr Sirisena’s first broadcast has been blocked and his bodyguards removed, what do Her Majesty’s Government believe are the prospects for a free, fair and inclusive election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the British Government and others are talking about the best way in which to make sure that there is effective monitoring of the elections. We will of course be raising such issues with the Sri Lankan Government.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister say what progress is being made with the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry into the behaviour of all parties, including the Tamil Tigers, and if the Government of Sri Lanka are giving any signs of co-operation with that at all?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord is aware, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has just reported that he is not receiving the co-operation which he needs from the Sri Lankan Government.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, will the Government condemn the refusal of the Sri Lankan authorities to grant visas to the OHCHR team which was to investigate the atrocities committed in the final stages of the civil war by both the Government and the LTTE? Will the comprehensive report of that team, headed by Martti Ahtisaari, nevertheless be published in accordance with the mandate of the team at the 28th session of the Human Rights Council in March 2015?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the UK was a sponsor of the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council. We are actively concerned in this issue. We are not at all happy about the refusal of the Sri Lankan authorities to co-operate with the attempts to have an external inquiry, because of our concerns that the internal inquiry’s recommendations have not yet been implemented.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House what action the British Government will take to ensure that the Sri Lankan Government co-operate more fully with the UN report that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, just mentioned in his question?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have actively made our position clear to the Sri Lankan Government and will continue to do so.

House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

With the greatest of respect—and I have great respect for my noble friend—I think that he has missed the point. I agree that substantive reform of the Lords will not take place until the relationship between this House and the other place is fully resolved. I believe that conventions will need to be codified in an Act of Parliament to have any chance whatever of there being a relationship between two elected Houses, if we are to have two elected Houses. Other noble Lords will disagree but I say to my noble friend that the argument that the Government have deployed on a number of occasions is that we cannot agree to sensible, incremental measures because we are committed to a fully elected second Chamber. That seems to be the argument that essentially comes out, certainly from the Minister and his party. My point is that even if we were to reach consensus and a reform Bill went through both Houses, it would be some years before it could actually be put into practice.

In the mean time, we still want a second Chamber to be as effective as possible. The way we are going, the issue about numbers is becoming so serious that we are running into a real problem of credibility. That is why I hope that the Minister will be very positive on this Bill but that he will also reflect on what his noble friend has said about allowing the House to discuss these other matters and come to a view very quickly, which I believe could be done.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hesitate to open up a wider debate about long-term Lords reform. We all know that we are already into substantial discussions about constitutional reform of this multinational state. I suspect that after the next election and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just said, with whatever shape of government should emerge from it, the future of this House will be caught up in those discussions. Two of the three parties are already committed to a constitutional convention, so there are a range of things—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am sure he is right but does he also accept that it will be some years before any change can take place? Therefore, the argument that the House should be given a fair wind by the Government to make some incremental, sensible change is overwhelming.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord and I will discuss, off the Floor, the question of how easy it will be to get consensus on the principle of retirement. I will tell him about some of the conversations I have had with Members of his own Benches about this over the past two years, some of which have been extremely vigorous.

Meanwhile, we are dealing with the Committee stage of today’s Bill, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, rightly pointed out, is concerned with the conduct of the House. It has a limited and specific purpose and is concerned with the reputation of Parliament as a whole. We welcome that. The Bill is also concerned with rebuilding public trust in our political institutions and, as she made clear, is intended to give the House precautionary powers—powers which are intended to be available but to be rarely, and, one hopes, never, used. We recognise that and the Government also recognise the sentiment around the House on the Bill. We are very happy to work with the noble Baroness to ensure that the amendments are tweaked into a form that would suit.

We understand the spirit of the amendments but there are some issues about the exact definition, which we need to clarify. The noble Lord, Lord Finkelstein, raised one example: what do we do if we become aware of past conduct which was egregious but was not previously known? What do we do about past conduct, the effects of which are continuing? The issues of retrospectivity are complicated in this regard and the House will also need to be concerned that we currently have an inherent power of suspension, which may or may not be used with retrospective regard to past conduct. If we were to pass this, we would be limiting the power of suspension that the House currently has. What I can do on behalf of the Government is to say that we would be very happy for Cabinet Office officials and lawyers to discuss between this stage of the Bill and the next, with the noble Baroness and others, how we might reshape these amendments to put them into a reasonable form.

The Government are giving the Bill a fair wind in this House. How far we will be able to assist it in the other place is a matter which the Government do not yet need to address and have not yet fully addressed. All Members of this Chamber will know of the complicated internal procedures that the Government need to go through. It will be tight to get the Bill through the other House, given the queue of Private Members’ Bills before the next election—although I take the comment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that some of them are not entirely overworked at the moment—but we need not address that issue definitively at present.

For the moment, I am very happy to say that the Government will work with the noble Baroness to revise the amendment into a form that would suit the purposes that are intended, and that we have thought through some of the complications about the principle of retrospection, which is a very delicate and important one in the issue of conduct.

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[Baroness Hayman]

I suspect that we will not have the same level of debate on this technical amendment. It was pointed out to me that it would be helpful, in spelling out the consequences of expulsion under the Bill that are to mirror those under the “Byles Bill”—the House of Lords Reform Act 2014—if I referred not simply to Section 4 of that Act but also to subsections of that Act. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, here again the Government are sympathetic to the principle, but there are some technical issues about how the Bill refers to the 2014 Act and how one relates to the other. Again, the Government would be very glad to talk to the noble Baroness between Committee and Report to sort them out and perhaps come back with a different amendment on Report.

I read the latest Code of Conduct again this morning, thinking that we need to be sure what we are on about. One of the issues that perhaps we need to discuss informally off the Floor is how far this measure is intended to refer only to conduct that is mentioned in the Code of Conduct or to egregious conduct of other sorts conducted by Members of this House. However, that is a question that we need not have in the Bill itself, but it is certainly a question that the Committee for Privileges and Conduct and others will need to consider at a later stage. With the reassurance that we will be very happy to discuss how we remodel this amendment between now and Report, I hope that the noble Baroness is happy with the Government’s response.

[Baroness Hayman]

My Lords, one thing I would never claim as one of my core skills is parliamentary draftsmanship. Therefore, I am not just happy but very grateful to have the discussions that the Minister suggests.

I agree with the Minister that the heavy lifting about getting this right has to be done within the House, with the Committee for Privileges and Conduct looking at the code of conduct and Standing Orders and making sure that we have the appropriate procedures. This is an enabling Bill to allow us to get on and do that meticulous and careful work under its auspices.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 92C, I will also speak to Amendment 92D, and—this may sound peculiar—I will specifically not speak to Amendment 93. What arguments I shall make in speaking to these two amendments should not be read across to our position on Amendment 93, which stands up on its own, and which will be well presented by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and supported by my noble friend Lady Thornton.

Essentially, the amendments probe Clauses 83 to 86. Once again, we have degrouped from the proposed original grouping the question that Clause 83 stand part of the Bill. We did that because we want to make it clear that we are not against the underlying concept of this group of amendments, providing that they are benign in intent, and that the Government are willing to accept either our amendment or appropriate other amendments which secure the benign nature of the intent.

It is interesting to look at just how important these clauses are. The Minister, Oliver Letwin, who has the wonderful title of Minister for Government Policy, said in another place:

“In that context, clause 61”—

which is now Clause 83—

“which is probably the single most important clause in the Bill, creates a growth duty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 37.]

Therefore the Minister for Government Policy thinks that it is the most important clause in the Bill.

In Second Reading in the House of Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was a little more careful. He said:

“Clauses 83 to 86 create a statutory duty for non-economic regulators to consider economic growth when carrying out their functions. This duty will be supplementary to”—

we may come back to those words, perhaps not today, but in the course of the passage of the Bill—

“and will not supplant, the regulators’ other statutory obligations. It will make them take economic growth into account as they exercise their regulatory functions. Guidance on this has just been published”.—[Official Report, 7/7/14; col. 16.]

I will come on to that guidance.

The importance of this clause is a matter for appraisal. It rates the positive value of this set of clauses between zero—which is pretty low—and £240 million per annum. I am reminded of Tesco’s “Every little helps”. However, it is a little. Some £90 million may be a big figure, but it is stretched across the whole gross domestic product of something over £1.5 trillion, and I ran out of noughts while trying to find out what percentage it is of that. A more down-to-earth figure is that it represents £3 per annum, per worker. Therefore this is a push in the right direction, if you believe in all the benefits, but not that significant a push. If it is the most important clause in the Bill, as the Minister said in the other place, it does not say a lot for the other clauses.

The reason I stress the size of the impact is that when we make a piece of law, we have to consider the unintended consequences. This set of clauses could have serious unintended consequences, because they go to the root of the concept of regulation. To quote Oliver Letwin, a right-wing Tory Minister:

“I will begin by saying something that several in the House might find mildly surprising in the context of this debate: regulation is often sensible and necessary. It is no part of the Government’s plans or our view of life to suggest that regulation is never useful. Indeed, like previous Governments, this Government are presiding over an immense amount of regulation, much of which is constructive and helpful”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 35.]

I passionately believe in regulation. I believe that it is the essence of what creates a society. It is the process by which individuals are protected from abuse by persons—I draw the distinction in the sense that “persons” includes firms, the state and all different collections and interests—while enabling the flourishing of society in general. It is essential to civilisation and for most people, it is barely noticed. That is one of the problems with regulation: there is little appreciation of how important it is in society. It is as old as history, of course. The first regulations that we tend to learn about are the Ten Commandments, and they go on and on. We call them laws but, in many ways, criminal laws are just as much regulations as regulations which are not criminal laws, and they overlap.

In this House, due to our longevity, one can pray in aid the Clean Air Acts. One has to be fairly old, but the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will remember the 1962-63 smog in London, which brought the city to a halt, a phenomenon which was common.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My noble friend is not old enough.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

We were there together. The regulations that cleaned up the atmosphere totally changed the city of London. It was worth cleaning the buildings afterwards. Nobody knows about the Clean Air Acts, but they are central to our lives.

When I was young, aeroplanes used to crash quite frequently. Being an airline pilot was a dangerous pastime. People used to go on to aeroplanes wondering whether they would get to their destination. People do not think about that now. They assume that it is safe. What makes it safe is a great feast of regulations that governs every bit of that activity to make it incredibly safe. We do not think about regulation when we go into a restaurant; we go in assuming we are not going to be poisoned. Why can we make that assumption? Because there is a raft of regulation that makes sure food is safe; everything from what varieties are allowed into this country in the first place to how it is handled, how it is checked and so on. Regulation is a crucial part of our lives but most people do not notice it.

I notice it because I have been involved in regulation for 50 years. My initial training was as a pilot, and you immediately realise how regulation contributes to the safety of the operation. Over those 50 years I have been a pilot, an air operator, a railway operator, chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, chairman of the Rail Safety and Standards Board and involved in safety in the MoD. Finally, as a Whip, I had to explain the failure of regulation that caused the Nimrod crash in Afghanistan and killed servicemen unnecessarily. I am a passionate believer in regulation and its protection.

Let us turn to what the clauses do. One of the most useful documents when looking at legislation is the impact assessment. The reason it is useful is that it is usually written by reasonably junior people and they are, putting it nicely, less nuanced than some of the more superior documents. You frequently get to what people are thinking about when they have the legislation in mind. The relevant part of the impact assessment is pages 16 and 17. It is all relevant, but pages 16 and 17 set out the areas of advantage that the impact assessment envisages these clauses will bring about. They include: reduction in duplication costs for information, £28.17 million; reduction of information requirement costs, best estimate, £41.43 million; reduction in time required for inspections, £7.21 million; reduction in unexplained duplication of inspection, £1.01 million; reduced reliance on external contractors, £12.4 million. I remind the Committee that the range is nought to £240 million and the best estimate is £90 million. Those impacts of these clauses are benign. They are about the process of implementing regulations. They are about being sensible with the regulator and making sure there is no duplication, that regulators talk to each other and that processes are efficient. If all these clauses have impacts like those, they are benign, and we support them.

The problem is the clauses themselves. Clause 83(2) states that,

“the person must … consider the importance for the promotion of economic growth of exercising the regulatory function in a way which ensures that … regulatory action is taken only when it is needed, and … any action is proportionate”.

Those words by themselves seem a pretty high test for a regulator. As I tried to illustrate, our lives are made acceptable and benign by regulators acting pretty well as they do at the moment to protect us. So are these new clauses a licence for regulators to approve regulations that kill people to save money? When you put it like that, I am sure everybody will say, “Of course not”. Nobody could believe that the intention of these regulations is to kill people to save money. The trouble is that in my very long career in regulation I have heard discussions about killing people to save money. Nobody uses terms like that. They will say: “The risk of this event is so low and the costs we are having to put in to prevent it happening are so high that it is unreasonable. Why are you forcing us to spend this money for this mitigating measure?”. These conversations go on. They go on in more complex circumstances. They go on in situations where a new regulation is being introduced which, as a consequence, mitigates most of the risk in a particular area as well as mitigating other risks. Other people can then say, “The residual risk is now so small, surely you do not want that regulation to continue in place, costing money, when people only kill other people very occasionally”. In other words, the risk is small enough to be put to one side. Do we intend praying in aid quite strong words such as necessary and proportionate for those sort of circumstances to be envisaged?

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Am I right in assuming that this actually applies only to England? A very large number of matters that we are talking about today are indeed devolved or not reserved, as the wording would have it, to these respective bodies. That means that certain regulators that have a UK-wide remit will have an even more difficult job in interpreting the Government’s wishes in this most important clause if at the same time they are required not to exercise these functions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but only in England. If they wish to have them exercised they will presumably have to negotiate separately with the respective Parliaments in those places. That sounds fun.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the many noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. When I was on the opposition Benches I did on one occasion attempt to challenge the extent clause of the Bill at about 9.45 in the evening, to the deep discontent of those on all Benches. My particular concern was with how far the legislation applied to the Crown dependencies—the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. It is clearly something that, at some point—as I said a good five years ago—the House of Lords could usefully devote some time to because of the extent to which UK law extends to the Crown dependencies, and how far they can cherry pick what they accept from UK law is a matter of considerable interest to us all. Perhaps that is something that the noble Lord and I could explore further off the Floor of the House. Part of the problem with extent clauses is that one almost always reaches them when everyone is exhausted by the Committee stage of the Bill and does not want to have another long debate.

However, this has been a long, serious and useful debate. We are of course ready to discuss further off the Floor to provide what assurance we can and to discuss whether the current drafting and guidance is adequate or whether it could usefully be strengthened. We have some time before Report to set that process in train.

The aims of the Bill are to reduce duplication. The consultation on this clause, as with others, produced a number of examples of duplication of different bodies attempting to regulate the same thing or requiring information from businesses for different purposes. If possible, we wish to reduce that and provide simplification. This is not an attempt to destroy vast areas of regulation. We all recognise that an effective and efficient market is a well regulated market. Our aim is better regulation. Efficient regulation also means no more regulation than is needed, but that is where many of the most difficult issues come up. How much regulation does one need? How efficiently and effectively is it maintained? That is the area that we clearly need to discuss further.

I was interested that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, regarded the Ten Commandments as regulation. I rather regarded them as commandments, which is a stronger term. Leviticus and Deuteronomy, where one gets into dietary laws and cleanliness, are where one gets into the regulatory parts of the Old Testament. Again, that is a matter that we might discuss further.

I was interested that the noble Lord sees the Clean Air Act as being in the very distant past. When I was in my first job as a junior lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1967, if I left my papers on my desk on a Friday, I had to blow the smuts off on the Monday. It is not that long ago that we were still cleaning up the air, particularly in northern cities. I think it was probably in the late 1980s that I got off the train in Leeds and realised that I could actually see the hills in the distance. That was a mark that the air in Leeds had at last started to become clean again after probably about 150 years.

The constant message from all those who have spoken is that we have to be concerned about unanticipated consequences. I recognise that that is where we have to provide the best reassurance that we can and, in particular, to provide reassurance that those involved in the consultations that have already taken place have done their very best to consider what those consequences could be.

To start with, and before I answer any of the questions, perhaps I may set out as clearly as I can my understanding of the purposes of this clause. The purpose of the duty for non-economic regulators to have regard to economic growth—or the “growth duty”, which we have all been discussing—is to give regulators a statutory obligation to carry out their primary duty of protection in a way which does not undermine economic growth but is supportive of it, if possible.

The draft guidance, published in January, makes it clear that the growth duty will not override, undermine or cut across powers of protection; nor does it compromise the independence of regulators. It provides examples of ways in which regulators can have regard to growth without compromising protections. For example, they can: first, keep administrative burdens to a minimum; secondly, be proportionate in their decision-making; and, thirdly, understand the business environment and tailor regulatory activities accordingly.

This guidance is subject to the approval of each House of Parliament, and those who are subject to the growth duty are under a requirement to have regard to it. The growth duty does not permit regulators to ignore illegal behaviour—with particular reference to the Gambling Commission—nor does it diminish the responsibilities of businesses to comply with the law. The Government recognise that an environment where legitimate business is trusted and where protections are in place is a key factor in facilitating economic growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, particularly made clear.

It is not appropriate for government to dictate how the growth duty should rank in relation to other duties and factors which regulators also need to consider. Some regulators will rank it higher than others for unavoidable reasons. Regulators are best placed to weigh up the desirability of economic growth against each of the other factors that they must consider and to tailor their approach accordingly. It will be for each regulator to use their expertise in deciding how much weight to afford to each factor in their decision-making. I hope that that makes it clear that we do not intend to compromise the independence of regulators.

A third of the regulatory bodies that were consulted replied that they already considered that they did take account of the need to promote and to have regard to economic growth in their interpretation of their duties, so we are talking about a tweaking of the range of functions concerned, not a revolution.

Listening to the debate, I was thinking that I might have a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, as a former head of the Food Standards Agency, about the effect of tightening up the control of slaughterhouses some years ago in north Yorkshire on the reduction in the number of slaughterhouses. I know the area well because I walk there a lot and have done quite a lot of politics there. There was a much larger reduction in the number of slaughterhouses than I am told had been intended, and it had a very adverse effect on what one might call the home production of quality food by specialist producers. That is a good example of where, if they had thought about the importance of food exporting from farm industries in north Yorkshire, they might have paid attention to a slightly different interpretation of the regulation. I am not an expert on this and perhaps I might come for a tutorial with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, at a later stage, but that is the sort of thing that we are looking at.

[Lord Rooker]

There is no need for that, because the story is that those slaughterhouses were not paying their proper costs. The fact is that the taxpayer subsidises the meat industry because neither Government have allowed the Food Standards Agency to reclaim its costs for checking the abattoirs. In that case, the smaller ones were paying a disproportionate amount for regulation—which is governed by Europe, by the way, as most of our food is—so it is probably to do with collecting the fees that they were required to pay for inspections. In that part of the sector there are charges and the FSA is not allowed to collect its full costs. Full cost recovery does not apply because Governments of both parties have not wanted to challenge the meat industry.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification; I was sure he would know the answer. I thank him for his extremely helpful contribution.

The duty will, I stress, complement existing duties and will not override or cut across regulators’ other powers of protection. The growth duty requires regulators to consider growth when carrying out their regulatory functions, so environmental and other issues that I mentioned will not be overruled by this. I should say in passing that when I saw the noble Lord’s amendment I was immensely impressed. My first instinct was to wonder whether we could add a government amendment to the amendment to add four or five additional things that people should take into account.

Those who have been regulators, such as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, would probably say that a good regulator takes into account a wide range of issues and then attempts to strike the best balance among them. We also accept that, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said in moving the amendment, the issue of how much risk, if any, one is prepared to accept in regulation is one of the most difficult issues in regulatory powers. You cannot guarantee that you can ever provide a situation of nil risk, but the question of how far away from nil you are prepared to move is one of the most difficult issues.

I am not sure that I can answer absolutely all the questions that have been asked about specific agencies, but again I am very happy to discuss this further off the Floor. However, on the question of responses to the consultation, a wide variety of respondents welcomed the growth duty. Many businesses and trade associations said that the first priority of regulators should be protection and that the growth duty should be added but should not take precedence over others, and we have taken that into account. I have already remarked that over one-third said they considered that regulators already had regard to growth. Respondents cited a variety of ways in which regulators could support growth. These include co-ordinating, providing more targeted advice, being generally risk-based and proportionate, and helping businesses to achieve compliance. I also mentioned that a care to avoid duplication of regulation—particularly the sort of regulation that asks businesses for information—is one of the areas that we wish to look at. The growth duty should make a difference in precisely those areas where there is duplication and where regulators have not thought about the growth dimension, but again we are not suggesting that this is a revolution—this is a modest change of balance.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked whether the growth duty would have teeth. The answer is that, as with all other aspects that regulators take into account, businesses will have the chance to challenge a regulator which has not had regard to one of the dimensions of their task. They can challenge them though the regulator’s own internal mechanisms or statutory appeal mechanisms. They can, if necessary, challenge the enforcement decisions in court and, in the last resort, they can pursue judicial review if a regulator has failed to apply the duty, or applied it in a way that is clearly unreasonable. Again, we do not expect or anticipate that that would be a frequent dimension.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rosser]

The Minister has accepted that Clause 83 may lead to additional legal action. I appreciate that he attempted to dismiss it by saying that it would not happen very often but, if we are talking about businesses, the pockets of some of them that might think about taking legal proceedings in relation to Clause 83 may be somewhat deeper than those of the regulatory bodies. First, how would the Government intend to address that situation to ensure that a regulatory body did not feel that it could not contest proceedings for fear that it might lose them and find itself paying quite considerable bills? Secondly, as I understood it, the Minister said that the provisions of Clause 83 should not carry any greater weight than any other requirements on a regulatory authority or any other issues that it should take into account. Is it the Government’s intention to write that into the Bill?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Government’s position is that the guidance plus the statutory instruments, which Clauses 84 and 85 deal with—I recognise that we are in effect discussing all four of these clauses on the basis of this amendment—will be sufficient. However, that is also a matter which we are prepared to discuss between Committee and Report to make sure that we can agree a satisfactory level of what needs to be in the Bill, in guidance and in further regulations or statutory instruments as we go through.

[Lord Rosser]

What about the question of financing any legal action taken against a regulator or authority, bearing in mind that it could involve some quite large businesses whose pockets would certainly be deeper than those of the regulator?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I shall take that back, too, and we will discuss it between Committee and Report. I hope that I have managed to answer a number of questions. I recognise the concerns that have been expressed. We have a well operating system of regulation in the United Kingdom. The question of balance between good regulation, better regulation, sufficient regulation and efficient regulation is something around which a great deal of hard politics revolves. All of us who read the Daily Mail as loyally as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and I do know that its constant campaign against all health and safety regulations is one end of the spectrum, but the other end of the spectrum is the overregulation that we all also have to be concerned about. That is going to be a continuing basis of politics, and this clause aims to strike the right balance.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Does the Minister accept that his Prime Minister is also at the Daily Mail end of the spectrum?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I could not possibly comment. I do not begin to think that the Prime Minister accepts the Daily Mail approach to health and safety. He knows as well as everyone else that there is always a difficult balance to be struck in this area. I am well aware that there are a number of things, from his own personal experience, that the Prime Minister feels very strongly about in terms of proper provision of public services and proper regulation.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

On that point, surely it is not right to say that everyone else knows that. The Daily Mail does not know that and, unfortunately, it tends to say to a lot of other people that they should not know that either. I just think that we ought to remind ourselves that the common sense that he and the Prime Minister put forward is rather important.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Writing common sense into law is one of the most difficult things that we all spend our time on, however.

[Baroness Thornton]

I was not particularly surprised at the Minister’s response on the CQC. Given that we know that the CQC cannot answer the Opposition’s questions about this, why would we be surprised to hear that the CQC said that it is fine? The Department of Health has said that it has to say that it is fine. We now know that it is being told what to do by the department, which is worrying. As for the questions I asked, which are those that need to be asked in order to test this legislation, the Minister cannot tell me that those questions have been asked and what the answers were, and we therefore need to pursue that further.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all very conscious that we are talking about a range of regulatory bodies which, as has already been said, have different relationships with Governments. Some are entirely independent, some are agencies of departments, and that is part of the universe with which we need to deal. I have already offered to discuss this between Committee and Report and I recognise, as I have already said, the concerns which have been expressed in this debate.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

The Minister has said that there is a possibility of further discussion between now and Report, but will he nevertheless undertake to arrange for written answers to be available to each of those questions in advance of that meeting? In order to make sure that nothing slips from people’s view, it would be very helpful if he would commit to getting us written answers where we have asked for them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I shall do my best to ensure that written answers are provided to the very large number of questions that have been posed in this debate about a substantial number of different agencies. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

Before my noble friend gets up, as we are in Committee, and as the Minister has been very open in wanting to discuss issues that my noble friends have raised, I shall raise another for him, which I failed to do when I was at the FSA. Let us take all these regulators here. They are all a pinprick on the main department by which they either get funded or are attached to. They are not really the big player; they are a very small part of each function of a government department. As such, they never really get any parliamentary scrutiny. The issue arose when I arrived at the FSA in 2009, because at no time since 2000 had it ever been called before a Select Committee to look at what it does on the tin—the business plan or the forward plan, the strategic plan or the general plan. The Health Committee deals with doctors, nurses and hospitals, the sexy political bit of policy. I raised the issue with the Leaders of both Houses of Parliament. Because it is the non-politically sexy part that is ignored by MPs, it is ideal for this House.

I suggested after talking to people that this House should have a Select Committee on regulators; maybe every three years, every regulator would get in front of a Select Committee, not because something has gone wrong, in which case the regulator would certainly come before the departmental committee, but to check that it is doing what it says on the tin, to be asked about function, finance, forward and business and plans, and for some of them the science base. It would give them a raison d’être to know that they are actually accountable to Parliament—because that is the reality; at the end of the day, they are. But I was told, “Oh, we don’t want any more Select Committees”. As I say, I raised it with the Leaders of both Houses, the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and Sir George Young, who was Leader and then retired and came back as Chief Whip.

I still think that there is a missing function for this House, in that regard, because it does not compete with the other place; all the big issues are dealt with by the departmental Select Committees, but they will never run the rule over the regulators, particularly when there are no problems, when they are carrying out their normal regulatory function. But once in a while—say, every three years—it would be quite useful for them to come for a couple of hours or an hour and a half before a committee to explain what they are doing and why and how they are doing it. In going back to have a think about things with the powers that be, perhaps this should be thought about, because it is a genuine issue of parliamentary accountability.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very interesting point but very wide of the amendment under discussion. I am very happy to discuss that also with the noble Lord off the Floor. Perhaps I could add that the pre-legislative scrutiny committee thought that the clause was a useful part of the Bill. So in recognising all the critical comments that have been made by the opposite side, we are pleased that the committee examined this and thought that it was a valuable addition to a Deregulation Bill. Having made all those comments, and looking forward to further discussions, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I thank all who have participated in this debate. I can respond immediately to the point that has just been made. Our concern about these clauses is not about their existence but about their unintended consequences. The general view is that regulators should do their business in a way that aids society. The vehicle here for society is growth, but forget that—what we are talking about is getting regulators to have a wider concern for society. That is not contested; what is contested is whether the wording is safe and does not have grave unintended consequences. As I said at the beginning, and as the debate has proved in its sheer volume, depth and complexity, these clauses go to the essence of regulation, which is so important.

I very much thank the Minister for his offer to have discussions off the Floor. I think we will probably have to have discussions about discussions first, because we would have to try to bring some focus to those discussions. Clearly, with the CQC, we would particularly like its representatives in one form or another to try to explain how these growth clauses might affect it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, when I first stood up today, I realised that I should have apologised to the Committee. I unintentionally misled the Committee the other day when I said that industry interests had not lobbied on the question of liqueur chocolates. I apologise because, on checking back, I discovered that there had indeed been some conversations in that regard. I trust that that corrects the record.

I am impressed by the youth of my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. I first met my noble friend Lord Deben in the winter of 1959-60 when we were undergraduates. The noble Lord is a mere stripling compared with my noble friend Lord Deben and me.

The issue at stake is simply whether one need include this body in an exceptional way in the Bill or whether this can be dealt with under secondary legislation. The noble Lord will be well aware that listing inclusions and exemptions in a Bill is not generally regarded as appropriate because primary legislation would then need to be amended each time a regulatory function were changed or created.

No specific regulatory functions of any other named body are listed in the Bill and the Government’s argument is that it is not necessary to do so in relation to the regulatory functions of the EHRC. The regulatory functions to which the growth duty is to apply will be set out in secondary legislation subject to the affirmative procedure to enable proper parliamentary scrutiny. Before any secondary legislation is made bringing the non-economic regulatory functions into the scope of the growth duty, the Minister must consult any person exercising functions to be specified in the order and such other persons whom the Minister considers appropriate. This consultation should provide enough opportunity for scrutiny, making it unnecessary to include this in the Bill. Naming a particular regulator or function in the Bill would also not allow the necessary flexibility for any new functions to be included.

I have some experience and some past expertise on the operations of international organisations. I know the speed at which they move, and I do not think that the delay between the passage of this Bill and the passage of the secondary legislation would jeopardise the position of the EHRC. I assure my noble friend Lord McNally and the noble Baroness that it is absolutely the Government’s intention that this will not be included in the Bill. I hope that that assurance is sufficient to reassure my noble friend and on that basis I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, at this stage, I certainly will withdraw the amendment. I fear sometimes that my noble friend, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, takes responsibility for so long that the iron enters his soul. The truth is that on the international stage, people do not read the fine print. The rumours get about and a status can be undermined. I will discuss with my co-sponsor and will consult with the commission and others in your Lordships’ House who are not here today who have this concern. Although I will withdraw the amendment now, unless I get some good advice to the contrary this amendment will come back on Report with a great deal of support on the Floor of the House.

I say to the noble Baroness that I fully acknowledge the origins of the commission. I hope that when the history of events around 2010 comes to be written, my role in the commission’s survival will not be considered ignoble. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

I never thought that I would be taking issue with my noble friend Lord Rooker. I followed him as a Minister and found that we sometimes contradicted each other in minor ways, but having arrived in time for this amendment I want to make some cautionary statements about putting a growth duty on the inspectorate. There is a growth duty on the inspectorate, in effect, in the sense that there is a presumption for development in the planning system. That presumption for development is really important because planning inspectors have to arrive at a balance in their decisions. That is why we invest them with such authority. They are the arbiters of various pressures that go into deciding what is a good and sustainable development and what is harmful development.

There are ways of determining what is harmful development, for example, in relation to the financial, physical and historical environment. What worries me about my noble friend’s amendment is that if we were to put a growth duty specifically on to the planning inspectorate, we might disturb the ecology of the ability of the planning inspector to make such a balanced judgment. In the National Planning Policy Framework, we worked very hard to get the balance right. I could not agree more with my noble friend about the need for housing—my goodness, it is an open and shut case—but the presumption for development needs to be balanced against those protections that are absolutely essential to maintaining the other things that we need in this country, which is a care for open spaces; he is a great advocate of that. From my point of view, it is also about care for the historic fabric of this country, and we have the historic protections that are there explicitly to be taken into account to protect against significant harm.

I know that my noble friend says it is a probing amendment but we need to be really careful about putting explicit duties on to the planning inspectorate, which could damage its ability to make balanced judgments. Decisions do have to be made.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on getting this within the scope of the Bill. I recognise exactly the motivation as we are facing more delays in getting our housing industry going again than we ever anticipated. It is deeply frustrating for all parties, and anything that one can do to give an extra push in the right direction is desirable.

My speaking note points out, however, that the majority of the planning inspectorate’s functions do not fall within the definition of “regulatory functions” in the Bill. Further work would be required to establish whether the functions of the planning inspectorate which do fall within that definition are non-economic in nature and could be brought into scope. If the Government consider in the future that the planning inspectorate regulatory functions could be subject to the duty they will consult on the proposal to include those functions before a final decision is made. That is a rather po-faced answer to a very determined intervention. I think that the answer to the noble Lord is that we should all encourage him to keep pushing in this direction on all occasions. We all share his view to get housing construction going again, but this may not be the most appropriate Bill in which to give it that particular push. On that basis I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.

Relevant document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak also to the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014 and the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.

The Committee will be aware that individual electoral registration was successfully introduced on 10 June in England and Wales and on 19 September in Scotland. For the first time ever, people in Great Britain can apply online to register to vote. To date, some 67% of the 3 million people who have applied under IER have done so online. The draft instruments before the Committee today will make some further refinements designed to improve the operation of IER.

As noble Lords will remember, this is one of a long series of statutory instruments in this process. The process is being taken through with considerable care. Our aim is to ensure that the largest possible number are registered as we make the transition and that the integrity of the register is maintained as we do so. So far, the process has gone well. The matching process has been more successful than we expected, but we are concerned to maximise the number all the way through and we will be maintaining our efforts until the next election and beyond.

The Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014 will establish a pilot scheme, enabling information about entries in electoral registers in 24 areas in England, Wales and Scotland to be compared with information held by the Secretary of State for Transport about individuals’ driving records and vehicle registration documents. The current IER system involves matching data against DWP records, and we are keen to see if there are other public data sets that could be used as well to increase the completeness of the electoral register. The order will require participating EROs to disclose their registers to be matched, including the use of the IER digital service, against name, address and, where held, date of birth information to be provided by the Department for Transport and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Committee may recall noble Lords’ support for using DVLA data during the passage of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act, and will be pleased to see this practical scheme to pilot the use of this data. In 2011 a small-scale pilot indicated that using DVLA data, in addition to the match with DWP data, might increase the confirmation rate by a further 10%. The pilot scheme established by this order will test whether DVLA data will indeed add significantly to the confirmation match rate. The scheme will also allow for the piloting of data matching using DVLA data to identify potentially eligible individuals who are not currently registered. The pilot scheme will end on 30 June 2015.

I have heard, anecdotally, that people—particularly young men—who move very frequently do not on the whole bother to inform the state agencies with which they interact of their new address, including not reregistering with doctors. However, we are told that they do ensure that their driving licence is up to date and the right address is on it, so the DVLA data may help us in teasing out one of the under-registered groups in the population: young, unmarried men living in rented accommodation.

The Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014 and the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No.2) Regulations 2014 will enable Crown servants and British Council employees living abroad to register online. The current electoral registration process for Crown servants and British Council employees relies on a paper-based declaration sent via the individual’s organisation, as well as an application to register. This means that these individuals cannot currently apply wholly online. The changes set out in the draft regulations enable them to do so. The figures that I have already given showing the high percentage of people who have registered online in recent months suggest that it would be very advantageous to enable them to do so. The regulations also replace the requirement to send the declaration via the employer, with a requirement for people, as part of their declaration, to supply their staff number or payroll number. The electoral registration officer will then be able to check with the employer that the applicant is entitled to register by virtue of a declaration.

In addition, EROs will be required where necessary to send a second reminder to people, such as overseas electors or service voters who are registered by virtue of a declaration, that their declaration is about to expire. Noble Lords may recall that in May the House approved regulations that disapplied the follow-up process for overseas and service voters, and may wonder why we are now being asked to apply it again. The answer is that we are not proposing to reinstate the previous process that would have required EROs, after the expiry of the declaration, to send an invitation to register to special category electors, followed up by two reminder letters and, theoretically, a visit by a canvasser. That process would have been expensive and impractical in the case of many special category electors, and it is right that it is no longer a mandatory requirement. Instead we are introducing a requirement for EROs to send just one further reminder to those special category electors whose declaration has not yet expired but which is about to do so. I am told that in a large number of cases, online addresses are available and it will be possible to do this online. This is a relatively simple step to take, without the need for the more protracted subsequent process that we rightly removed earlier in the year. The regulations also make minor updates to statutory references to registration appeals.

The Scottish regulations will also extend to Scotland one of the provisions on data sharing by local authorities for electoral registration purposes that were introduced for England and Wales in May. These allowed for the disclosure to an ERO of information contained in records held by the authority by which he or she was appointed, provided that a written agreement was in place between the authority and the ERO as to the processing of the information.

The different local government structure in Scotland rendered a provision for two-tier area data sharing, as set out in the legislation introduced for England and Wales, unnecessary. At quite a late stage in the drafting of the England and Wales legislation it was decided to provide additionally that the ERO’s own local authority may disclose its data to the ERO, provided that a written agreement was in place covering the use of the data. It appeared that such a change might also be relevant to Scotland but we undertook to consult EROs and local government organisations in Scotland about that before we sought to legislate. That has now been done. Here, therefore, is the regulation.

The Electoral Commission is content with the provisions of these instruments and the Information Commissioner did not consider that they raised any new or significant data protection or privacy issues. The three statutory instruments before the Committee will each play a part in the continued successful implementation of individual electoral registration in Great Britain, and I commend them to the Committee.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak particularly to the second statutory instrument in the group, which relates to the pilot scheme to which my noble friend referred in the early part of his remarks. He quite rightly—and I welcome this—spoke of the whole context of this transition to IER. Those of us with the battle scars of a number of debates in Grand Committee over many years, going back to the previous Government—IER was a previous Administration’s initiative—will recall that this context has caused quite a bit of controversy, and rightly so because, as he emphasised, the register is a critical foundation stone of our whole representative democracy. The present Government, the coalition Government, have not changed the transition in any substantial way but accelerated the process. So my noble friend has rightly referred to the extent to which the Government are determined—I think the phrase he used was that they intend to take “considerable care” in how this transition proceeds. It is in that context that these orders are so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their helpful and intelligent comments. I start by reminding them that in another area of the Cabinet Office, we are much concerned with data sharing, digital privacy and the whole question of public and private data. Concerns about data privacy have been one of our inhibitions about moving in this area. Unfortunately we have not managed so far to bring forward a Bill to harmonise and update the laws which apply to different government departments on their collection and maintenance of data, many of which were put into effect long before cloud computing and two or three generations back in terms of the use of computers. The terms under which some government departments hold data are significantly different from those of other departments. I am sure I do not need to tell noble Lords that the sensitivities of the privacy organisations are such that we move with care in data matching, certainly in disclosure, both between different central government departments and between local authorities and central government departments. This is one reason why we have moved with all deliberate speed on this, using, first of all, the DWP database and moving on from there to the DVLA database. When we started out on this process there was some hesitation within the Department for Transport as to the terms under which the DVLA database ought to be made available for these purposes. We are in a very sensitive area in terms of data privacy and data sharing.

[Lord Tyler]

Before my noble friend leaves that point, is he saying that there was actually some legislative, statutory problem with the DVLA which did not apply to the DWP? If so, I totally understand the delay, but three years of delay because of some administrative, bureaucratic decision making within the Department for Transport is more depressing. I accept that good progress has been made and I hope my noble friend has not taken my contribution as being in any way negative about the overall process. However, this particular episode is not a very happy one since we were raising these issues more than three years ago.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, makes a very fair point. We are all looking back with care: we understand that we have to be right and proper, but it comes with a bit of a spring in your step at the same time. There is a question of care and there is also just not moving very quickly. I think we need to get on with it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We understand that but I stress that there are other major issues. I happen to have been involved in some of the discussions about changing the system of legal protection for government collection and sharing of data. Noble Lords may remember that there were discussions early in the coalition Government’s period of office about whether or not we could do without the census next time round because all the material collected in the census is actually collected by the Government in the process of normal procedures, year by year. Some of the data are collected by local authorities, such as those about children going to primary school, which is one of the best indicators of the changing social and ethnic basis of a local community. If we were able to put all the data together, much of what we get from the 10-yearly census would be provided. However, if we put all of that material together—including health records and NHS data—we would be in an area in which ordinary citizens and those concerned with data privacy begin to be extremely upset. This is part of the reason why the good progress we made with the DWP data gave us a feeling that we could move along in that way. We are now extending this by looking at the DVLA data. I am told that the pilot will start in December or early January and should be completed by 31 March. It will not be too late for late registration for some of these people. As I said in my opening speech, I stress that access to the DVLA database is not merely a matter of matching but also of discovering people who are entitled to be on the register but who are not registered. The unmarried young men category in particular, which we are all familiar with as a weak area, would enable us to make the electoral register more complete.

Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that Experian has a symbiotic relationship with the electoral register because it uses it for a great many things. If you are not on the electoral register, you are often not on the Experian database. Another area we are concerned about is the overlap between public and private databases. When discussing the issue with various people who are concerned about it, I have explained that there is no clear boundary between some public and private databases. For example, when I renew my car tax online, the first thing the DVLA does is check the private insurance database to ensure that my car is insured. That is an example of the public going to the private and coming back. These are all part of what is changing as public and private databases become much easier. The Government—whichever Government they may be—hope that an enormous amount of time, effort and money will be saved by moving more and more of these kinds of data online.

The problem is that this has huge implications for individual privacy and we have to be concerned about it. When talking in Bradford nearly two years ago about why so many people are not on the register, I was told vigorously by local councillors and officials that those people do not want to be registered. They do not want the state to know who they are and where they are. That is part of the issue here.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

The noble Lord is absolutely right on the point about the merging of public and private databases, and indeed it is the point I was trying to make. So much information about people is now being held by Experian and a host of other bodies that I cannot believe it is beyond the Government to talk to Experian and others, saying, “We are not looking for people’s medical records or driving licences. What we are after is the data matching that is taking place for you being provided to local authorities. They can then see that in a certain street there are three people who are not on the register but they do actually exist. We know that because we have their bank details and driving licence particulars and we know where they shop”. All we would ask for is that Experian should give the council the name and address; it is as simple as that. I get the privacy point, but my worry is that we will end up with fewer people on the register than we have ever had before, and that is a terrible place to be. I think that the Government should do everything possible to make sure that that does not happen.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I would mark that after the next election, we will have a major debate and a draft Bill on the question of data sharing. If we were to access the Google and Amazon databases, I am sure that that would go a good deal further to identifying those who are not on the register, but the Government do not have the legal right to do so, and again, it raises huge questions of privacy.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who raised the question of an additional door-to-door canvass in the spring of 2015. When I visited the ERO for Wandsworth a couple of years ago—I should mention that the Wandsworth ERO is a member of the Government’s consultative panel—he told me that given the mix of sheltered social housing and new apartment blocks at the top end of the market, the borough of Wandsworth now has some 25,000 homes that are behind locked doors. The problem of gated accommodation, which all of us who deliver leaflets are painfully aware of, is making it more and more difficult to conduct the door-to-door canvass that we used to think was such an important part of the exercise. That is why we have to do all these supplementary things as far as we can. We intend to complete a door-to-door canvass as far as possible, but that is becoming much more difficult as we go on.

I will have to write to the noble Lord about precisely who was on the advisory panel of EROs. I have met a number of EROs during the last three years of the process, and have much enjoyed talking to them about the particular issues with which they are concerned. I will happily write on that.

There were a number of other questions. Why has it taken us so long to get round to data matching? I have explained that DWP records actually took us a very long way, and we are now seeing what we can do to gain further completeness. I was asked whether it was a cross-section of 24 areas—incidentally, it is 24 areas but 21 electoral registration officers, because in Scotland the electoral registration system covers several local authority areas. The areas range from Harrow, Southwark and Trafford to the City of Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Coventry and Newport—a fairly good mixture. I have marked one or two areas which have a high concentration of students and several inner-city areas. It includes the City of Edinburgh, for example, as well as Stratford-on-Avon. It is a pretty good cross-section of the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, rightly keeps pressing us—as I hope he will continue to—on how confident we are that we will come out with a higher rate of registration than before. I can say only that we are continuing to work towards that objective. We have made some extra funds available to local authorities for this and we are now considering whether further additional funds would be helpful. From what has happened in the last two or three elections, we all know that late registration produces a great boon. We will not know how successful we have been probably until the middle of April 2015, because a lot of the target groups will not have got round to filling in their online forms until the campaign is upon them.

The Government will continue to stress the importance of registering and of people being involved. We are working with a number of non-governmental organisations. I spoke at a Bite the Ballot conference a couple of months ago. Bite the Ballot is working very hard, as are a number of other organisations, with particular vulnerable groups—in its case, young people. However, it is a matter for all of us, in all political parties and beyond, to keep up the momentum as we approach the election of saying that it is very important that you register to vote and that you do vote. That is the final dimension of trying to capture the maximum number of people.

I have two other things to add about the overseas dimension.

[Lord Tyler]

I am sure, from the long experience that my noble friend will acknowledge, that the best possible way to get people to register and to vote is to have a very close election, as was demonstrated in Scotland, of course. When I got a majority of nine, I managed a turnout of 83% on a very wet and cold night in Cornwall. When my majority went up, the turnout went down. I do not know how he can achieve a close result in every constituency in the country, but that is the ideal way to get a good turnout next May.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will not have to organise the next election. Many of us fear that it will be very disorganised in this respect and that the competition among four or five parties nationally, which will quite often be a competition between different pairs of parties in different constituencies, may make for an extremely confusing election campaign. I spoke at an annual general meeting in Yorkshire and said that I thought we were going to have what would feel much more like a series of by-elections across the entire country. It will be very different constituency by constituency when it comes to it, but let us hope that it does raise the interest.

On the question of overseas voters—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again. I know one or two local authorities. One of them is Manchester, where there has been a catastrophic drop-off in some areas in terms of registration, and that needs addressing. I also know of a local chief executive who was embarrassed to tell us that he sent letters out saying, “You haven’t been matched”, only to get one himself. He lives in the borough that he is the ERO for, and he himself had not been matched. He is not someone who has moved around very often; he has lived in the borough for many years and I assume that he has a bank account and stuff, but he did not match at all. There are one or two places where there has been a catastrophic drop-off. That is really bad. Perhaps the Minister could get his officials to talk to some of these local authorities. In certain pockets there are problems bubbling away.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We are well aware that one of the reasons why the electoral registration business is a local one is that the pattern varies so much from one place to another. The debate now going on about whether additional funds should be made available would of course be concentrated in those areas that have found the greatest difficulties. Again, we are well aware of that.

I will just pick the noble Lord up on one of the things he said. He said that we have never had an overrepresentation problem in the UK. I think I would agree with him that we have never had an overrepresentation problem in Great Britain, but those of us who know something about Ulster politics know that there have been interesting issues in Ulster over the past 50 years.

We are exploring further measures to increase student registration ahead of the general election. We are, for example, looking at emerging evidence from pilots undertaken in Sheffield and Manchester that tested the scope for integrating electoral registration with university enrolment. A lot of these things are under way but we do not quite know where we are.

On the question of overseas voters, we will be having a debate on this next week so we will return to it then. Overseas registration, as I think noble Lords will know, is an extreme example of the extent to which the number of voters registered more than doubles in the run-up to a general election and then falls off afterwards, so again we may anticipate that. The extent to which we can encourage more overseas voters on to the register will be assisted by this measure because the easier it is to register online, the more that overseas voters are likely to do so. I hope that I have answered all the questions and points that have been made, and I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme Order 2014.

Relevant documents: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

Motion agreed.

Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment No. 2) Regulations 2014.

Relevant Document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

Motion agreed.

Deregulation Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

82: Schedule 18, page 175, line 13, leave out “A” and insert “Subject to subsection (3A), a”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Schedule 18 amends the Poisons Act 1972. It introduces a common licensing system for the acquisition, importation, possession and use of poisons as well as of chemicals that can be misused to make explosives—termed explosives precursors—within Great Britain.

Current poisons controls are outdated and ineffective. In 2012, the Poisons Board made a number of recommendations after being reconstituted to review the Poisons Act 1972 as part of the Red Tape Challenge retail theme. These included that the Poisons Act 1972, the Poisons Rules 1982 and the Poisons List 1982, which are owned by the Home Office, should be amended to reflect current retail market practices. It also recommended that greater clarity should be given regarding inspection and enforcement of retailers and businesses involved in the trade of poisons, which are very often of course for household use. Schedule 18 does that.

In making these changes, we are aligning controls of dangerous poisons with new regulations that control the sales of explosives precursors that are susceptible to being used to create explosives to commit terrorist attacks. The Control of Explosives Precursors Regulations 2014, which implement EU regulation 98/2013 on the marketing and use of explosives precursors, came into effect on 2 September 2014. The amendments to the Poisons Act 1972 will create a streamlined, cohesive regime that will make it easier for retailers to implement and reduce costs, because there is only one regime to follow.

Schedule 18 removes the current requirement for businesses to annually renew a local authority listing that allows them to sell common household products. This will save businesses some £20,000 a year. Paragraph 1 abolishes the statutory Poisons Board, whose constitution is written into the Poisons Act 1972. Abolishing the statutory body would mean that appropriate and specialist advice can be sought.

The purpose of Amendments 82 to 87 is to make minor technical amendments to Schedule 18. Amendments 82 and 83 provide for the reporting duties in new Section 3C of the Poisons Act 1972 to apply to explosives precursors at all concentrations, as required by EU regulation 98/2013, which is directly applicable in the UK. New Section 3C will impose reporting duties in respect of both poisons and explosives precursors, and is therefore wider than the EU regulation. However, the reporting regime in respect of explosives precursors must be compliant with that regulation.

Amendment 84 creates a new power by which the Secretary of State may, by regulations, make provision modifying new Section 3A of the Poisons Act so far as it applies to any supplies that involve dispatch of a regulated substance to Northern Ireland or export of it from the United Kingdom. Currently, the proposed new Section 11(6) of the Poisons Act provides that any reference in the Act to supplying something does,

“not include … export to a person outside the UK”.

Amendment 87 will remove this aspect of the definition. Amendment 84 will enable the Secretary of State to make regulations about export from the UK, and dispatch to Northern Ireland, having regard to EU regulation 98/2013, in particular its territorial scope, and other prevailing circumstances.

Amendment 85 clarifies that the 12-month time limit for commencing criminal proceedings for offenders under the Poisons Act applies to summary offences only. There is generally no limit for triable offences.

Amendment 86 introduces a transitional provision relating to maximum statutory fines in the magistrates’ court pending the commencement of provisions in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which will remove such maxima.

Amendment 87 is purely consequential on the new regulation-making power introduced by Amendment 84. That is to say, it changes the definition of supply for the purposes of the Poisons Act so it does not automatically exclude exports. I beg to move the amendment and that the schedule stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I have been prompted to rise to my feet on Amendment 84, to which the Minister has just referred. I will ask a very simple question: are there no regulatory supplies from Northern Ireland, given that Amendment 84 refers to,

“any supplies that involve despatch of the substance to Northern Ireland or export of it from the United Kingdom”?

Of course, Northern Ireland is included in the United Kingdom, so I wonder if the Minister could, at some point in this debate, answer my question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Northern Ireland has separate legislation that controls sales of poisons and will implement separate legislation that controls sales of explosives precursors and their exports. The reasons for this are entirely clear and that is why this is concerned with Great Britain.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

Then the term “UK” might perhaps be incorrect in terms of drafting.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The UK is, of course, an integrated market, so it is difficult to say, “exports from Great Britain”. That is the reason why we vary between Great Britain and the UK in different references.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

We are getting somewhat held up: I am sure that this can be resolved very quickly. The point raised first by the noble Lord opposite was that we need to know what the Government are trying to say here. Are they saying that material exported out of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland by definition, is caught by this, or is it meant to mean that there is a separate territorial area called Northern Ireland for which different regulations apply and that therefore, the schedule bites only on Great Britain?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will write to the noble Lord if I am misinformed, but I think that if this were to read, “Export for the United Kingdom” or “Despatch of the substance within the United Kingdom to Northern Ireland,” it would be entirely clear.

Amendment 82 agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

83: Schedule 18, page 175, line 20, at end insert—
“(3A) For the purposes of section 3C however, and the meaning of “regulated substance” in or in relation to that section, a “regulated explosives precursor”—
(a) is a substance listed in Part 1 of Schedule 1A, and(b) includes a mixture or another substance in which a substance listed in that Part is present,but, in each case, only if the substance or mixture is not excluded.”

--- Later in debate ---

I have posed a series of questions to try to understand the Government’s thinking. As I have said, we never want to regulate for the sake of regulating, but nor do we want to deregulate for the sake of deregulating if we are removing public protection. However, here it seems that we are merely replacing one set of regulations with reregulation rather than deregulation, with additional costs to some users. If the parts of the Government’s consultation that we have been allowed to see are accurate, a number of people who currently use poisons in small amounts at home, such as for their fish tanks, may in future be prevented from doing so. If the noble Lord can address those points, that will be quite helpful.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that very detailed and well prepared set of questions. I have to agree with her that in a sense this is a much less deregulatory measure than many of the others in the Bill. It is a revision of regulations more than deregulation. Indeed, in terms of safety, these proposals are designed to strengthen controls over those selling and purchasing dangerous poisons and explosives precursors. We are continuing a long trend of tightening government regulation of poisons and, increasingly, of explosives precursors.

A hundred years ago, a good many arsenic compounds were available for purchase and they were, on occasion, used for nefarious purposes as well. Over the last 40 years, the European Union has increased regulation and, in some cases, has banned a number of poisonous substances for use not only in the home but in gardens and allotments. Here, we are in part implementing those regulations. We are also concerned, as the noble Baroness will understand, with the use of substances which had not been misused as explosives precursors in the past but which are now widely recommended on the internet for those who wish to make explosives for nefarious purposes—hydrogen peroxide and others. I am referring to substances which, when purchased in large quantities, can be mixed into what then becomes explosives. There have been one or two cases of people being accused of terrorist offences who had managed to purchase large quantities of the same substances that hairdressers, for example, purchase in small quantities.

I note in the extensive list that I was given of the various different substances that there are a number of metallic substances. Their main home uses are listed as metal cleaning, etching, electroplating, painting and soldering. I am told that there are those who even use metal substances and metal complexes at home for extracting the gold from their old mobile phones. This is a delicate issue. Members of the Committee may not do this, but others may wish to do all sorts of things at home. Happily, my children did not get into chemistry particularly heavily. On the question of the Poisons Board’s preferred options, I am told that the Poisons Board accepted our policy approach and objectives in its final note to the Minister for Security and Immigration.

The noble Baroness has seen a summary of recommendations and I am happy to talk further to her about what extra things she would like to know about the replies to the consultation.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

It was not a summary of recommendations, but a summary of the consultation responses, and I identified one or two that were not included in the summary but would have been very helpful in considering this clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My understanding is that Appendix A of the report on the consultation had a summary of consultation responses. I have now been deluged with notes that I will attempt to absorb.

The Department of Health was a statutory consultee as part of the Poisons Board and was consulted on the draft legislation regarding any consequential amendments. The Home Office ran an open research call to find research into alternative substances for Part 1 poisons and licensed explosives precursors. Research proposals are currently being evaluated. The Home Office remains the primary enforcement body, although a range of others, including the police, come into play at certain points.

In some ways I rather wish my wife were here. She is much more experienced in poisons for household and garden use. She has strong views about some aspects of EU regulations because a number of poisonous substances, in safe hands, are very useful to use in the home and garden. However, policy in the United Kingdom and in other countries has been moving in the direction of tightening up controls on these because of what can happen in unskilled hands and how desirable it may therefore be to tighten control of them.

On the question of how much a licence would cost, a new licence application costs £39.50 at the moment for a maximum three-year period. Any amendments to current licences are free of charge to encourage compliance with conditions to notify changes in circumstances. Replacements of lost or stolen licenses cost £25. The Home Office has kept costs to a minimum by using existing IT systems as far as possible. A similar background to the checking process for firearms licensing is being followed up, with some differences. No home inspections or face-to-face interviews will be conducted.

Firearms licensing is governed by a different policy and we are looking to full cost recovery in this area, but I will write to the noble Baroness about the comparisons that she has been making with the licensing of firearms. I understand the point that she is making.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I appreciate that because I have had different responses from different Ministers on the issue. Before the Minister moves on, I asked about the cost of new licences. I am not sure whether that was the figure he gave me. If it was, I thank him. I was not 100% clear about whether it was the new licence for home use that he referred to. Can he clarify that he was saying that the fire service was not consulted? Will he confirm that he will publish the consultation?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I do not have an answer on the fire service and will have to come back to the noble Baroness on that. The costs I was quoting are for new licence applications. I hope that that answers the majority of the questions raised by the noble Baroness, and I am happy to talk further or correspond if necessary on any other questions that I have not followed up. I thank her for the detailed effort she has made to ensure that we have got it right. It is an important area, although I have to say that when I looked at the extremely long list of the various substances that will now be controlled differently, I did not understand what a good many of them were or what their uses are. This is unavoidably a rather specialised field.

There is a regulation-making power in the schedule to vary, add or remove a substance or limit its concentration. After all, chemical substances are changing in terms of how they may be used, and our ability to combine chemicals for various purposes is also changing, so a degree of flexibility is highly desirable.

I have now been told that we have consulted the fire service, particularly on home storage, and that it supports the proposals.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

I am grateful for that, but I am puzzled why, in the list of consultees, the two I asked about were not included, although the Minister has been able to reassure me. It would be helpful to have a comprehensive list of consultees. I have one final point. I asked about the publication of the consultation responses—I made that same point in last week’s debate. Can he confirm that the Government, subject to the normal procedures of ensuring confidentiality of those who have responded, will publish the full consultation responses on the two consultations—poisons and explosives?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is entirely understood. I will do my best on that, and will write to the noble Baroness with the assurances that she is asking for.

Schedule 18, as amended, agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness King of Bow (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment which is also in my name. Never has there been greater concern around failures of child protection and greater revulsion about the scale and breadth of the abuse visited on vulnerable children. In light of so many recent scandals, the Government’s position seems at best puzzling and at worst possibly negligent at some point in the future. The amendment would ensure the continued requirement for those providing social work services on behalf of councils to be registered, regulated or inspected. The two key points at issue are the lack of consultation on the one hand and the general opposition from almost all those involved on the other, as well as the fact that we remain unclear as to how this will work in practice for local authorities.

The Minister will no doubt have read with great interest the views of the College of Social Work. The Government’s approach is puzzling because I accept that they want to improve safeguarding services. The Minister will no doubt set out, like his counterpart in the other place, that the Government view registration of providers of social work services on top of their contractual arrangements as a potential duplication. Those of us opposing this view it as a potential extra risk to children.

The College of Social Work points out that earlier this year the Government published a set of regulations to accompany the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 to allow local authorities to delegate almost all their statutory duties. These reforms, taken in the round, could have an extremely significant impact on the delivery of social work services in England. There is a feeling in the sector and indeed elsewhere that there has been quite simply inadequate debate around these very serious and important issues.

The College of Social Work summarised its objection to Clause 71 as follows:

“The new power to delegate social work functions is at the experimental stage and the evidence is not yet available for conclusions to be reached about the impact on the most vulnerable children and adults. It may in future be appropriate to remove this requirement to register with the regulator but it would be risky to remove this safeguard at the present time”.

My main question to the Minister is: why would he want to take this risk at the present time? Why would the Government want to take the risk, given all the problems that we know are taking place at the moment?

As we heard from my noble friend Lady Donaghy, the consultation carried out by the Government did not find support for this—far from it. Even Ofsted’s own consultation found a strong desire to maintain registration checks. Local authorities themselves are calling for external inspection. Why will there be no overview of quality and working practices in some of the key areas, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Donaghy? Why is asymmetry and inequality in the services essentially being written into the Bill?

In summary, if the registration requirements are removed, the Government are essentially dismantling what the CSW describes as the backstop. Will the Minister explain why in these current circumstances the Government would want to remove a safety backstop? Surely, if anything, the Government should be bolstering the backstop and not weakening it. For that reason, I support the proposition that Clause 71 should not stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I recognise the passion with which these objections have been made, as well as the experience and expertise of those who made them. I shall be very happy to hold further conversations between Committee and Report to make sure that we can come to some agreement about the balance between regulation and potential risk, to which the noble Baroness, Lady King, rightly pointed. We are all quite clear that children’s services are a very important area where we must make sure that we get the balance right.

The Government’s view after consultation and consideration is that the double layer of inspection provided by Ofsted’s national perspective and the responsibility of local authorities to inspect and to license providers is duplication. Our view is that Ofsted’s existing duty to register providers who may discharge children’s social care functions is completely separate from its duty to inspect and to hold local authorities to account in the discharge of their functions.

I am also very grateful for the correct comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that we are talking not just about for-profit providers but about third sector providers, which often provide very good services in this area. Nevertheless, one wants to make sure that those services are always of a consistent quality. She has a great deal of experience in this area. I have very limited experience but I am very conscious that third sector organisations can be absolutely superb but sometimes not superb.

It is argued that the removal of the requirement for providers to register with Ofsted is a benefit to the system because it ensures that there is no doubt or confusion about where the statutory responsibilities then lie. That makes it clear that local authorities are fully accountable for any decisions made by third parties to whom they have delegated functions. The argument here is that it should not be the responsibility of Ofsted to make sure that the third parties to whom local authorities wish to delegate functions are fit for the job.

Under the current registration regulations, Ofsted is required to check on: first, the fitness of the provider to do the work; secondly, the appointment and fitness of the registered manager; and, thirdly, the staffing arrangements and premises. The regulations also include provisions for making changes to any of the above. To cover Ofsted’s costs, providers are required to pay fees for registration and for making changes to the registration once made.

These requirements duplicate the “due diligence” that a local authority will perform as part of its procurement of a provider. No local authority would appoint a third party provider to undertake its functions without making such checks. However, the current system creates confusion as to where accountability lies. The requirement for providers to register with Ofsted is separate from Ofsted’s continuing duty to inspect and to hold local authorities to account. How Ofsted inspects local authorities is for it to determine. For other provision—as for children’s homes—it conducts separate inspections, but it has concluded that delegated functions should be inspected as part of the local authority single framework inspection and has published a plan as to how this will operate. The Government consider that that is adequate and that it provides the regulation required without unacceptable risk.

[Baroness Donaghy]

I apologise to the noble Lord for interrupting but I wish to seek clarification. Clearly, on the face of it, it does look like double accounting, but similar things exist in other areas—for instance, in the construction industry, where there is a pre-qualification system. At the moment local authorities are given confidence in employing a company which might cover a lot of local authorities. There might be a very small strapped-for-cash local authority—as nearly all of them are now—but it is given confidence because the name of that company is on a register. It has already qualified to meet a certain level of standards. I am not sure that in the Minister’s answer so far—he may be coming to it—he has explained how local authorities have the confidence to get to the pre-qualification stage of saying, “Okay, let’s look at these people with a view to hiring them”. I am not saying that they do not have the responsibility to inspect—of course not—but it could save a lot of time and money if there is already in existence a body of knowledge and a body of standards which local authorities can apply.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I understand that point. I am not entirely clear as to the balance between for-profit providers and not-for-profit providers but I am getting some information from my officials. There are some important distinctions here, which I would like to take back and discuss further with them because I recognise that it is absolutely important that we get this right. The Government’s case is that the clause provides the necessary protections without unnecessary duplication. I recognise that we need to provide the reassurance to all those who have spoken in this debate that we have got the balance right.

Incidentally, we did consult in January and February 2013 and got only some 20 responses, which broke on both sides. There were mixed opinions as to whether the registration regime should be removed; 45% said no and 40% yes. A majority agreed that the proposal would reduce burdens; 53% said yes and 32% no. So the answer is that it did not give us a clear set of arguments as to how to respond.

Again, I recognise the great concerns which have been put forward. The Government have argued consistently that removing this extra level of the registration regime preserves necessary protections. I am very happy to have further discussions between Committee and Report to make sure that we can provide those assurances before we return to this.

Clause 71 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his remarks, which ranged much more widely than the limited proposals in Clause 72. Clause 72, on the whole, makes technical changes to the governance arrangements for the Electoral Commission. Clause 73 makes similar technical and modest changes to the governance arrangements for the Local Government Boundary Commission.

As the noble Lord said, the Electoral Commission is the independent body established by Parliament and overseen by the Speaker’s Committee with governance arrangements set out in Schedule 1 to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, known to us with great affection as PPERA.

At present, the Electoral Commission has to provide a five-year corporate plan, with the new plan having to be prepared and submitted annually. The National Audit Office is also required to undertake annual value-for-money studies. The Speaker’s Committee has reviewed these governance arrangements, comparing the Electoral Commission with other modest similar-sized organisations, and has recommended the following changes. First, a five-year corporate plan should be produced in the first financial year of a Parliament. The statutory requirement to update this on an annual basis should be removed, although the Speaker’s Committee should retain the right to request updated plans outside the five-year cycle. Secondly, value-for-money studies by the NAO should be linked to the production of the organisation's five-year plan and not on an annual basis.

Noble Lords will be aware that the approach that central government take to the funding of public bodies is through a spending review. These spending reviews are fixed and spending is planned over a number of years. As such, the existing statutory provisions for the Electoral Commission to provide annual updates to their corporate plan seem excessive.

In terms of removing the statutory requirements for annual value-for-money studies, the NAO has said that it supports such a reduction as the current statutory provisions are disproportionate to the size and spending power of the Electoral Commission. Clause 72 simply implements the recommendations put forward by the Speaker’s Committee. The Government see these as sensible and proportionate changes to the governance arrangements for the Electoral Commission

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, raised some wider issues about whether it is not now time, after 14 or 15 years of operation of the Electoral Commission, to review the overall balance, and whether the current arrangements, including, as he said, a Select Committee as well as the Speaker’s Committee, provide sufficient oversight. That is an interesting discussion to throw out. As he rightly remarks, we will not get very far with this over the next five and a half months. But this House may appropriately return to this after the election when we have seen how the Electoral Commission has operated with its responsibilities, which are most important in the course of and the run-up to an election campaign. Perhaps at that point he and I and others might talk together about how we take such wider issues further.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, before we leave this clause, I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Minister a question. I am a strong supporter of the Electoral Commission, with no qualification whatever; but next year’s election will be the first time that it has had four and a half years to plan for the date. Therefore, is there an absolute rock-solid guarantee that there will be no chaos in any of the polling stations in this country of the kind that occurred in 2005?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I join my noble friend and add to what he said. My noble friend knows that I come from Birmingham and I was shocked by some of the behaviours I saw outside some Birmingham polling stations, to which I suspect he is referring. I particularly remember a polling station in Moseley, where large groups of men—about 20 or 30—were outside. This was clearly intimidatory; it was very difficult—particularly for women—to go and vote. The current system is so slow to react to situations like that when they arise. This is a very serious matter: in some parts of the country, people are not able to exercise their democratic right to go to a polling station free and unfettered.

For some years, the Electoral Commission took the view that it could only take measures that applied to each part of the country in an equal way. That was madness; it has been clear for a number of years that we have a real problem in some polling areas and we need a response from the Electoral Commission that recognises that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it would be foolhardy to give a cast-iron guarantee that no problems might break out. These are not purely matters for the Electoral Commission; as we all know; the local police and the local electoral registration officers have clear responsibilities here as well.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

In the case I mentioned, there was a police van outside; I approached the police van and the officer, of his own volition, went to speak to this group and kind of negotiated that the numbers would come down from about 20 to three or four on either side. I applaud the fact that a police constable, of his own volition, was able to make his own judgment, but that does not necessarily happen, and there is no guarantee that there will be police outside each polling station during the whole of the day. The other problem is that the polling officers are in the polling station in the school, a long way from the road where people can congregate. I accept the point he is making, which is that it is not just down to the Electoral Commission—but the Electoral Commission has a leadership role here.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, let me take that back and make sure that the Electoral Commission is informed of this. I trust that the incidents were reported to the local authorities and the local police at the time. I am conscious from my own experience with polling stations in parts of west Yorkshire that there can be problems; although my strongest memory of the last election is of passing a polling station 10 minutes before it closed and meeting a large extended family coming out of the polling station after voting, having a very sharp and loud argument as to whether each of them had voted the right way. I fear that, in this coming election, there may be rather more of that sort of confusion than any of us would really like to see. Meanwhile, I can assure the noble Lord that I will take these points back and make sure that they are reported to the Electoral Commission. I repeat that local issues like this are very much about local support. It is for the local police, local education and the local political parties, of course, to make sure that the police and the electoral authorities are doing their duty.

Clause 72 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness very much. In listening to her, I was remembering that I discovered a new third cousin 10 days ago when the political adviser to someone in the Government in the Emirates got in touch with me. I recognised his unusual name, which happens to be my mother’s maiden name. In inviting him, I asked him to bring the names of his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather. He arrived with an A3 family tree and the comment from his uncle that the missing bit was a group who had moved away from Somerset, which is where this uncommon local name comes from, and were alleged to have set up as fishmongers in Leicester. That was my grandfather. I now have a new third cousin and quite a useful set of additions to our family tree. I also have a strong desire to visit Australia, where the third cousins who have made good live. They are apparently very generous to their visitors. I should also say that this summer my wife and I were in north Yorkshire looking for her family and we spent a very enjoyable and constructive time in the local history section of Stockton library. The local historians were extremely helpful and provided us with a number of useful bits of family history, including some birth certificates for nothing. The local dimension is as important as the national one.

I can reassure the noble Baroness that officials in the Home Office who lead on this issue will be very happy to meet her soon to discuss the issue further. There are, however, a number of technical issues which mean that the Government cannot accept the amendment as it stands for reasons that I will summarise. The proposed new clause would enable copies of historic births, deaths and marriage records aged 100 years or more to be provided in formats other than a paper certified copy or certificate. It allows for such copies to be produced on paper, electronically or in another prescribed format with a stipulated cost to the customer of,

“no more than £3 per record”.

The amendment seeks to address restrictions laid out in primary legislation that currently prescribe that the only way to access information from a civil registration record, regardless of age, is to purchase a certificate either from the GRO or from the register office where the event was registered, at a standard cost of £9.25 or £10 respectively. While recognising that allowing historic civil registration records to be treated differently from modern records may support government objectives around transparency of data and digitisation, there are some aspects of the clause that make it unworkable in its current form.

For example, the proposed new clause limits the amount that can be charged for an historic record to £3, but further work would be needed to ensure that this allows for compliance with Treasury rules regarding the management of public money—such as rules about full cost recovery. Of course, specifying the fee cap within the clause hinders a regular review of fee levels, as any resultant changes would require further amendment to primary legislation.

The title of the proposed new clause refers to,

“Births, marriages and death registration”,

but the clause seeks to amend only the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, which does not provide for the issuing of marriage certificates. We would expect any amendment that provides for a change to the issuing of marriage certificates to be included in the separate marriage legislation, which is the Marriage Act 1949. In addition, the clause applies the same definition of “historic” to all types of records, but this is not aligned—as the noble Baroness has suggested—with the systems of civil registration in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland, which operate under separate legislation. The legislation in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland provides for records to be defined as historic at 100, 75 or 50 years respectively, depending on whether the information relates to a birth, marriage or death, which goes further than the proposed clause suggests.

The clause makes no changes to the information available from the register office where the event was registered, meaning that while the GRO could make historic records available more cheaply centrally, local register offices would have to continue to provide any information from a record, regardless of its age, in the form of a certificate. The impact on the local registration service of introducing a legal distinction between modern and historic records needs further consideration: the amendment as it stands would disadvantage local authorities, which would continue to be legally obliged to maintain the original historic records but would see the demand for information from them decrease as customers chose a cheaper, centrally provided service.

The Government therefore cannot accept the amendment as drafted on the grounds that a number of aspects would prove problematic in practice. In addition, by defining all records as “historic” at 100 years, rather than following the precedent of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and preventing the change to be applied to marriage records by failing to amend the Marriage Act 1949, the clause as it is currently drafted fails overall to achieve the intended aim of opening up as wide a range of records as possible to greater public access. We therefore express sympathy with the aim but reservations about the clause as currently drafted, and we offer an invitation to meet and discuss it further. On that basis, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and certainly look forward to having a meeting to see how we can progress this further. I have been trying to talk to somebody about this for about five months now, so I hope that even at this late stage it is not too late to bring something forward for the next stage of the Bill, because this is a very important issue for people researching family history. As I have already said, there are many millions of such people. The point about local offices is, of course, valid, but the fact is that most people who order copy certificates would do so through the website of the national GRO. That particularly applies to people from abroad. We should be doing everything we can to open up our records where appropriate to people resident both here and abroad who look to us as their historic homeland. I look forward to having meetings as soon as possible and perhaps taking this further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

88: Schedule 19, page 195, line 33, after “(1)” insert “, if that sub-paragraph comes into force before paragraph 123(c) of Schedule 12 to the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014,”

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have an extremely long speaking note on this. Amendment 88 is a minor and technical amendment to paragraph 14 of Schedule 19 to the Bill. It makes clear that the repeal to a provision of the Public Audit (Wales) Act 2004 made by that paragraph will come into force only if a duplicated repeal of the same provision made by the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 has not yet commenced. The purpose of the amendment is legal clarity. I beg to move.

Amendment 88 agreed.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

As I am not the Minister in charge of the Bill, I am not sure I can give that commitment and am wary of doing it, having just invited the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, perhaps to suggest candidates—although I did qualify that invitation by saying that he should give plenty of time so they could be properly looked at and considered.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I can say that it is not our intention. We will take the warning.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am advised that it is not the Government’s intention to bring forward further pieces of legislation into this. We take heed of the warning that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has very effectively delivered.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they plan to re-examine the Strategic Defence and Security Review.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in January the Prime Minister informed the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy that work was beginning on the next strategic defence and security review—SDSR. This work is in its preparatory stages and will intensify after the general election for the post-election SDSR.

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that information. The last SDSR took place in the context of a Westminster election and the global economic crisis. From the point of view of many of us, it was overly impacted upon by those things. Since then the situation has changed. The Middle East is dissolving into chaos; the European Union is in disarray; cyberaggression has increased exponentially; and in our relations with Russia, we have not only found difficulties over Syria, Crimea, and Ukraine, but also an increasing statement by Mr Putin of the strength of its nuclear weapons. In the light of this, can my noble friend assure me that during this review, this House will be given an opportunity of having a number of serious debates on the question before the completion of the review, not merely a post-hoc debate after decisions have been made and a posture adopted?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I cannot of course commit the next Government in terms of managing the business, but there is time for this House to have a debate on one or two of these issues before then. Since the 2010 SDSR was published, we published in 2011 a cybersecurity strategy, in 2012 a climate change risk assessment and in 2013 the Ministry of Defence’s report on global strategic trends. We are keeping pace as far as we can with all the expected and unexpected developments that the noble Lord mentions.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

Has it occurred to the Government that the cuts by many NATO countries in defence expenditure, in which this Government—our Government—unfortunately led the way, might just have had something to do with the much more aggressive policies pursued by Mr Putin over the past couple of years?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a slightly unfair question in many ways. Britain remains the second largest member of NATO in terms of the amount spent on defence. We are currently deterring Russia through the use of sanctions at least as much as through defence. So when we talk about national security we do not only mean defence in strict terms.

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that if by some cruel mischance the Labour Party wins the next general with the assistance of the Scottish nationalists, it will have to find the money to move Trident, not to mention covering all the unemployment in that part of Scotland?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I find it very interesting that the noble Lord should describe the possibility of the SNP taking a very large number of seats in Scotland away from the Labour Party as assisting the Labour Party.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, coalition at the end of a fixed-term Parliament is a difficult beast. I would like to know what the Government’s policy is on having a strategic defence review in every Parliament as a statutory review. It is very difficult to ask a member of the Liberal Democrat Party because that is not, I think, its policy. I wonder whether the noble Lord could answer on behalf of the Government.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The coalition Government promised in 2010 that there would be moves towards a regular SDSR. The noble Baroness will well understand that this is because the Labour Government did not have a strategic review between 1998 and the end of their 13 years in office. It is our intention that the next Government—however they may be constituted—should conduct a post-election SDSR as a matter of urgency.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

Could the Minister give the House the government assessment of the security risks from terrorism that will be included in the review?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, terrorism, just like transborder organised crime, is clearly one of the major threats that we have to consider. There is a domestic dimension as well as an international one, and the Government are devoting considerable resources to both those overlapping issues.