European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker]

The short answer to that is no. I will give the evidence as my final point. In 2013, the coalition Government set up the balance of competences review of 32 areas of government. At the time I chaired the Food Standards Agency, a non-ministerial department, so I was part of the coalition in a way. It was a bit of shock when I turned up to a Cabinet sub-committee one day. There was a separate review on animal health and food safety. We consulted and did a lot of research work. As I said, people thought that the EU does not do much and that they were not very secure. We consulted widely on food standards and safety. The balance of views from the Food Standards Agency and Defra—it was a joint report in the end—was that we were better off being in this system of regulations. I am a Brussels sceptic but I believe that, on balance, UK customers are better protected in terms of food and feed in this system. I have not spent much time on feed, but it is the Achilles heel of all this. But the short answer to my noble friend is no. The balance of competences review, which can be found in the Library, is there for everybody to read. We have been through all this before.

I will finish on this point. What happened to the 32 reports on the balance of competences? They were buried, because they all came out with roughly the same idea: by and large we are better off being in the EU arguing our case than being out. So we never heard any more about them until we had the barmy idea to have a referendum.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I spent a lot of my time in government negotiating the 32 reports in the balance of competences review. I remind the Committee that it was a Conservative demand within the coalition agreement of 2010 that there should be an extensive examination of the balance of competences between the UK and the EU. In almost all the 32 reports, the answer was that stakeholders across the country were satisfied with the current balance and did not wish any repatriation of competences from the EU to the UK. The noble Lord is absolutely right: the No. 10 press office did its utmost to ensure that they were published the day after Parliament rose, either for the summer or for Christmas, to minimise the amount of publicity that the reports would get because the Conservatives were scared of the right wing in their own party, as they still are.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I rest my case.

Ministerial Visits: Travel Costs

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am not, of course, aware of the incident to which the noble Lord refers. There are well established practices, which, as far as I am aware, have not changed under this Government, for dividing between ministerial roles and political activities that Ministers may undertake while visiting particular constituencies. Paragraph 10.14 of my 2010 copy of the Ministerial Code says:

“Where a visit is a mix of political and official engagements, it is important that the department and the Party each meet a proper proportion of the actual cost”.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is it not the case, now that we have a fixed-term Parliament, that Ministers and departments know the date of the election? It is a piece of cake to fix all the ministerial visits to coincide with that timetable, which did not exist before the fixed-term Parliament legislation. I know from personal experience how the departments watched things as we got close to the end of a five-year Parliament, but in a four-year Parliament, when the date of the election was not known, those rules did not apply. So is it not the case that, with a fixed-term Parliament, it is easier to manipulate government visits for party-political purposes?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think ministerial visits that include some party-political role have taken place in all the years of any Parliament. Every time I drive past the Humber Bridge, I am reminded that previous Labour Governments have on occasions used quite substantial gifts of public expenditure to influence the outcome of elections in particular constituencies.

Electoral Registration

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are asking some large questions about the relationship between the citizen and the state. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, might stand shoulder to shoulder with the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, on a number of these issues.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

In one of the Minister’s earlier answers—I think it was in answer to his noble friend—he used the phrase “much to my surprise”. Will he tell us what evidence he has that caused him to have such a surprise?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I apologise if there was a slip of the tongue. We are, of course, very concerned that this process should go through successfully, and we have been working very hard to make it go through successfully. I pay tribute to all those involved in National Voter Registration Day, which led to nearly half a million registrations coming in in one week. We all have to work extremely hard. I suppose that the origin of my surprise is that I meet—as I am sure we all meet—a great deal of voter disengagement and unwillingness to engage with politics. Those are the people who do not register to vote. We have to get out there and persuade them to vote. I trust that all parties, and all of us as campaigners—those Peers who go into schools and into universities—are getting this message across all the time.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Thursday 20th November 2014 Grand Committee

[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 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.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Grand Committee

[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.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Thursday 30th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. As I came in, I was thinking that I have mixed views on housing standards. I first became aware of housing standards because of Parker Morris, when a number of houses in the Yorkshire dales were being condemned as back-to-earths which were not suitable or up to Parker Morris standards. Nowadays, those houses that remain would be regarded as extremely environmentally friendly and valuable; they were indeed beautiful homes. I once sat in on a violent argument between someone who lived in one of them and a particularly modernist Liberal councillor who believed that the Parker Morris standards were the absolute minimum and that any house that did not meet them should be immediately demolished.

On the other hand, having with my wife delivered to a large number of houses on the other side of the Aire from Saltaire just before the local elections this spring, with road names such as Cliff Rise and Steep Avenue—one house had 41 steps up to the front door—I recognise that accessibility is an issue with new housing. As I was listening to the debate, I reflected that if I wish to get out of bed in the middle of the night, in our house in Saltaire there are 15 steps down to the bathroom, whereas in my house in London there are five steps down to the bathroom, which, for someone approaching middle age, as I am, is much easier. The question of suitable and unsuitable accommodation is one which we all need to be concerned about.

First, this is not a dumbing down. As there is in much of the Bill and much government legislation at present, there is an inherent tension between local autonomy and central direction. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that no Government can ever say that they understand in full the consequences of what they propose. We do our best to conduct impact assessments, but we are never entirely sure where we will be—especially after the High Court has had a go at our provisions in a few years’ time.

The optional requirements are intended to allow local authorities to set higher requirements for development than the building regulations minimum. They are a new concept in building regulations, and we are enabling local authorities, as a condition of granting planning permission, to require a developer to meet a higher building regulation requirement than the national minimum.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is it not the case, however, that if the local authority wants to do that, it must change its plan and go through the planning process for its local plan? So it is not just a question of a committee of councillors meeting to say, “We will let this go. We want higher standards”. It has to go through the process of changing its public local plan. Does the Minister accept that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is my understanding, but I am a great deal less expert on this than the noble Lord, so I shall have to consult and write to him if I am mistaken.

The intention is of course to raise standards for new builds. We understand the reasons why there is this strong push for lifetime building standards; we also recognise that that imposes costs and that there are parts of the country—certainly the part of the country in which I live when I am in Yorkshire—where finding a sufficiently large level site on which to build, which is part of the requirements, is not easy. A great deal of housing is therefore not entirely suitable for the high standards which are suggested.

The Government intend to issue planning guidance on matters to be taken into account by local authorities in applying optional requirements, and we are consulting on the matters to be covered in that guidance.

This will mirror the approach taken with planning guidance, which supports the National Planning Policy Framework. I promise that I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, on the point he has raised just to make sure I am correct.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, often raises difficult issues for Governments, and I give all credit to him for the attention he pays to this. It is an entirely proper role for a Member of the House of Lords to look with deep suspicion at government proposals and to make sure that the Government can provide the rationale for them. Perhaps I can assure him that Oliver Letwin spoke on this on the Floor of the House and it was discussed in Committee, so it has not been entirely ignored by the House of Commons.

[Lord Rooker]

Then I apologise. My advice was that it had not been looked at in the Commons. Obviously I was wrong there.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord is entirely right to be suspicious and to make sure that this is properly scrutinised, particularly an umbrella Bill such as this. I in no sense criticise him for raising a number of important points.

This is in no sense intended to lower standards; it is intended to continue the process of raising energy efficiency standards and to achieve zero-carbon aims. I was already briefed to make the point that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, just helpfully made. This is not intended to commence until it replaces the other standards. The code on which representation has been made is a fairly complex piece of legislation. Those parts will not be abandoned; they will be incorporated into the building regulations. I stress that we are raising standards, not lowering them. I will make sure that I can say that with confidence again on Report, because I recognise the concerns of noble Lords.

By 2016, the Government plan to have tightened building regulations to deliver zero-carbon housing. I repeat that the Section 1(1)(c) amendment will not be commenced until then; meanwhile there will be no dip in standards. We intend to consolidate necessary standards to ensure that sustainable housing can be built. The current situation means that insufficient housing is being built because authorities are applying too many different standards, making sites unviable. This is a rationalisation, not a deregulation of the sort that lowers standards and enables people to move further away from the zero-carbon housing that we all very much want.

Clause 33 amends the Planning and Energy Act 2008 to ensure that local authorities in England will no longer be able to set energy efficiency standards via local planning policies for new homes in excess of the building regulations. It does so by disapplying Section 1(1)(c) for dwellings in England where government policy is that such a requirement should be found only in national building regulations. However, local authorities will still play an important strategic role in delivering carbon reductions and the Act will continue to enable them to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for that interesting suggestion. May I consider it and consult? Perhaps we can also discuss that off the Floor, between Committee and Report.

[Lord Rooker]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I am not sure what I am supposed to do now on the clause stand part because there is no amendment.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been a useful and serious debate. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, as he always does his homework extremely seriously—although the suggestion that you could find even a cigarette paper between the approaches which Oliver Letwin and I take to the Bill is one that I find quite remarkable. As a coalition Government, we are absolutely solid and arm in arm.

The noble Lord raised a number of serious questions. First, on the GEO inquiry, the 26 companies were of course under no obligation to reply; those that had the most interest replied. The GEO had taken the need to collect evidence seriously by contacting every employer at that time but there is also a question about the burden on industry and companies that one provides by pushing harder on those issues. Secondly, he raised the question of equal pay audits and how those are compared. As I think the noble Lord may know, an equal pay audit ordered by an employment tribunal is a precise and mandatory requirement, with sanctions for non-compliance, to advance equal pay in the small number of organisations where a breach of equal pay has been found. It is also directly a transparency measure, as it has to be published. By contrast, as has been stated in this debate, wider recommendations in other discrimination cases are effectively discretionary for employers and cannot be imposed.

On the question of how much evidence we have on all this, these wider recommendations have been handed down in fewer than 2% of all successful tribunal discrimination cases since 2010.

On the Red Tape Challenge, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, that the presumption is that if the legislation does not serve a useful purpose then it should be removed. The fact that it is not terribly useful but confuses people as it stands is not a reason for leaving it on the statute book.

The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, in a very helpful and powerful speech, raised the Howard case, which we are all well aware is one of the most difficult cases in this area. I should point out that the wider recommendation was intended for use in those cases where the complainant has left the relevant employer. In this case, as it happens, Miss Howard was still a Metropolitan Police employee, which would mean that the tribunal would still be able to make recommendations that benefited both her and her colleagues in the continuing workforce. Of course, even if Miss Howard had left the Metropolitan Police when the case was brought, it would remain open to the tribunal to express the same criticisms as observations in a non-statutory context.

What the Government are proposing will not result in any reduction in either the rights of complainants or the effective powers of tribunals, nor does it reduce the rights of other employees in the businesses concerned as the wider recommendation cannot be enforced on their behalf. Nevertheless, under the Red Tape Challenge the Government are committed to removing legislation that does not serve any clearly defined purpose, particularly where it none the less creates a perception of burden and unfairness. It is not just a question of those who, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, powerfully put it, have broken the law; we are concerned about the perceptions of unduly onerous legislative demands.

The power to make these wider comments, a somewhat anomalous one in a claimant-based adversarial system, came into effect four years ago. It has proved problematic. It is rarely used—we are aware of around 40 cases, as has been said, where they have been made—and trade organisations have told the Government that the power has led to additional cost, and that it is confusing.

Most of the wider recommendations made by tribunals are generic. Of the 40 or so that we are aware of, over 90% concern training for management or the updating of company diversity policies. However, as I have said, tribunals do not have the power to enforce such recommendations. Post-tribunal action is largely taken voluntarily by employers that have lost a discrimination case. Unless it was a one-off incident, business sense would drive changes in workplace practices to avoid a similar case being brought against them in future.

Perhaps I can give a few numbers in the areas that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, raised. In 2012-13, the Government Equalities Office partnered the British Chamber of Commerce in events across the country, explaining the Act to small businesses. Around 300 businesses attended the events, and a follow-up booklet, Business is Good for Equality, was more widely distributed by regional chambers to their members, which altogether employ around 5 million people. Some 300 businesses attended the 10 short sessions to learn first hand about their obligations under equality law; that is more than seven times the number of employers that have received a wider recommendation in the four years since 2010. I hope that that provides some more detail of the sort that the noble Lord was asking for.

I know that concerns have been expressed that this repeal will reduce protections against discrimination in the workplace. That is not the Government’s intention and it will not be a result of this reform. Tribunals will continue to have the power to make recommendations and observations on their behalf. The question is: has this power done its job? I would say that for the employer, the wider workforce and the business in general, the answer is that it has not. There is instead a very small and unenforceable benefit balanced against the larger cost and the problem of uncertainty for business. I therefore urge that this clause remain part of the Bill.

[Lord Rooker]

Well, I thought that was a disgraceful speech, defending law-breaking employers. I have been where the Minister is. If I had sat through the debate I have just heard, I would have said, “Actually, I will take the recommendation back”. I would go to my Secretary of State and say, “I was going to screw this up anyway; the House was against me. We need some better arguments”.

I say to the Minister that the Government need better arguments, and the Red Tape Challenge is not one to use; you cannot rely on it for this. During the Red Tape Challenge, I came across an example where anecdotal comments by two environmental health officers caused the weight of the department and the committee led by the noble Lord, Lord Curry, to come down on the Food Standards Agency and say, “Keep unsafe kitchens in parks and village halls”. We said, “No, unsafe kitchens kill people”. They said, “But the Red Tape Challenge has actually identified this”. It was two anecdotal comments from environmental health officers on a website. That is the intellectual weight of the Red Tape Challenge. It is nonsense when you actually look at it.

I say to the Minister that he cannot rely on the Red Tape Challenge in this case because I do not recall it being used when we did the committee inquiry upstairs. I say to the Minister what the then Prime Minister said to me: “One last chance”. Would he like to take this away, come back on Report, and have a little think about it with a bit more fresh evidence—fresher than we have at the moment? Does he not think that would be a good idea?

[Lord Rooker]

Well, I know that that noble Lord would not want any evidence, but he is not the Minister. I am asking the Minister. Would it not be a good idea to get more up-to-date evidence and take it away to have a little think about it? That is all that I am asking him to do.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, of course, between Committee and Report, as the noble Lord is well aware, the Government take things away and have discussions in the Corridor. Officials look at the speeches that have been made and attention is drawn to their implications. Of course we will undertake to do that, and I am happy to talk further to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. That is the way in which we always operate in this House: we take very seriously all the arguments made in Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rooker]

And the result of that is that I was asked to keep unsafe kitchens.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I simply answer that the argument is that these provisions are unnecessary. It will make a small amount of difference, but the fact that we have removed them will mean that the sheer weight of regulations and expectations that employers have will be reduced a little. That is, in itself, useful.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest of which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in his opening speech reminded me. My wife was a member of the previous Government’s Better Regulation Commission from 2006 to 2008. She reminds me that after the change of Prime Minister the previous Labour Government abolished it.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us that what the House of Lords does best, and what is indeed becoming our core role, is to examine the details of legislation placed before us. We can all agree that this Bill has a wealth of detail. Those who got all the way through to Schedule 20 understand that fully and thus we shall have lots to explore at the Committee stage. It is evident from today’s debate that there is particular concern over Clause 1 and Clauses 10 to 12. Many other clauses and parts of schedules have been warmly welcomed. Some have been queried, with much more information requested, and there will indeed be much to explore in Committee which will start when we return in October. I note what is being said about generous time being needed for that stage.

Between now and then the Government, as always, are open to consult off the Floor, with all those who wish to do so, including the Local Government Association, although not within this Bill taking on the whole universe of local licensing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, perhaps suggested. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, requested hyperlinks to previous legislation. In informal consultations the other day, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, asked for a Keeling schedule for the entire Bill. We have noted both of those requests and will see what we can do. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, talked about the distinction between better regulation, smart regulation and fit regulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others said, there is a difference between deregulation and re-regulation.

One of the things we have learnt over the past few years is that there is a constant need for adjustment and adaptation in regulation. We need to look constantly at what is no longer necessary, even as we look at what is now needed. We need a great deal more regulation of the internet, for example. If the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, were here, he would have linked the transformation of broadcasting with that of the transformation of the taxi market by things like Uber and the transformation of short-term lets by the arrival of Airbnb. These are all new phenomena that technology has pushed on us in what one of the contributors remarked as being this fast-changing digital world.

I note, however, that excessive regulation does sink economies. It was not until the crash of the Greek economy and finances that we discovered just how amazingly overregulated the Greek economy was and how much that held it back. I remember as a student the beginnings of the deregulation of the British economy by that nowadays underestimated politician, Edward Heath, in his deregulation of the retail market. The growth agenda is important and we always have to look at it in making sure that old regulations go even as new regulations are sometimes needed.

Underlying some of our discussions there have been suspicions of a hidden agenda: whether or not the health and safety culture is threatened—I wish to assure noble Lords that it is not; whether the BBC is about to be undermined; whether the proposals on marine accidents are really an attempt to get away from marine accident investigations. Again, I can assure noble Lords that they are not. We will come back to those issues in detail in Committee.

A number of other issues have been raised that are not currently within the Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Grade and Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, referred to the issue of retransmission revenues. I listened with interest to some of this. I think I have received nearly a dozen communications from Virgin Media in Saltaire over the past 12 months. Since it put cable through Saltaire it is extremely keen for us all to subscribe and is sending me some extremely generously printed brochures almost every month.

I take the point that public service broadcasters should not be subsidising commercial enterprises. We are of course willing to talk to others about how and within what framework we address Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, although the Government may be reluctant to concede that that fits appropriately within this Bill.

I noted in Schedule 20 that anyone who keeps a pigsty is part of what we are now repealing. I am just old enough as a small boy to have visited farms where they still had pigsties and indeed once visited a farm where they were in the action of killing a pig. That is part of the thing that no longer takes place and therefore we no longer need it.

We also touched on busking and Sunday trading. I share the feeling of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that it is probably quite a good thing that we are not tackling Sunday trading as well as everything else on this occasion. Perhaps the next Government will wish to reopen that immediately.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked where the figures for savings from the Bill came from. Officials have prepared a summary table of the Bill and I am very happy to share this with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, following the debate and to put it in the Library for all noble Lords. It is part of the Red Tape Challenge. Many of these are estimates but we are fairly confident that they are not too imprecise.

Clause 1, the health and safety clause, has clearly set a number of concerns running. The prescribed list of high-hazard activities is now being consulted on. The consultation went out today and is available online. It will run for 12 weeks which means that it will be completed by the Committee stage and the regulators will thus be able to issue at least some guidance towards that by the time we are in Committee. The new regulations will use definitions of health and safety already present in law, which means that we are not changing the context of health and safety. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, I am informed that Professor Löfstedt wrote to the Commons committee in support of the clause as drafted. We will both investigate further to see who is quoting Professor Löfstedt more directly.

On the question on whether the number of self-employed workers is growing because of the expansion of bogus self-employed contracts, the Government are taking parallel action in other forums to stop the use of such bogus contracts. For example, in this year’s Finance Bill, the Government introduced changes to the agency tax rules to put a stop to the growing use of those requirements. This is not intended to allow any expansion in that area. We are looking at professional people who work at home and do not employ others. That is the category from which we hope to lift unnecessary regulations.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and other noble Lords raised the question of tribunals. There is no evidence to suggest that the wider recommendations prevent reoffence. That is why the Government decided to remove this burden. In one very clear recent case involving the Metropolitan Police and a diplomatic protection officer, the tribunal made no wider recommendations but the Metropolitan Police has made it clear that it recognises that there are wider concerns. I do not think this is such a difficult issue. There is some evidence, which was presented to the Government in the consultation, that this involved additional cost for smaller employers and did not produce great benefit for others.

A lot was said about taxis and private hire vehicles and I am sure that we will have an impassioned debate on this issue in Committee. We are conscious that there is a range of concerns including, as a number of noble Lords have said, questions of safety. The question of the use of private hire vehicles by others when they are off-duty clearly needs to be examined. However, we have looked at the Law Commission recommendations and are satisfied that taking these measures forward neither undermines the Law Commission review nor necessarily means that we will not take the Law Commission proposals into account at a later stage when it produces its Bill.

Parking has also raised a lot of issues for many noble Lords, with the question of CCTV and parking fines. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, that we have not considered the risks of removing the use of CCTV as we are not talking about doing that. There were a number of questions about how CCTV is used at a local level, on which all of us have slightly different and ambivalent views. Again, we will come back to that in detail in Committee.

On short-term lets, as someone who had never really thought about this problem previously, I listened with interest. I live close to Wimbledon where, every year, a number of well-off local people seem to let out their houses for two weeks at a time for remarkably large sums. I have to admit that the Wallaces had considered whether we should go away for two weeks. My wife, however, said no, because she actually likes going to Wimbledon herself rather than sitting and watching it on TV. There are some important issues about, first, what is now happening; secondly, why the regulations in London are different from those in the rest of the country; thirdly, how far the evolution of short-term letting through the internet is beginning to change the situation anyway; and fourthly, therefore, how we respond to that.

On the right to buy, we recognise worries about whether there is an underlying agenda and how this will affect the future provision of social housing. A problem we all face with social housing is that the previous Government did not build enough social housing and this Government have so far, disappointingly, not been able to build as much social housing as we would like. Part of what is required under the Bill is that councils which sell houses use the money to build new social housing as part of the deal.

On optional building regulations, Clause 32 will not amend standards related to safety. It will allow for certain requirements to be adapted locally, but will provide for the range of what standards are permissible to be set nationally. I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others as part of the consultation between now and Committee stage.

[Lord Rooker]

The Minister referred to 12 weeks earlier. We are going to have at least 12 weeks between Second Reading and the start of Committee stage. That is very unusual. I can see at least 800 or 900 amendments. If events take their course, they will not be tabled until 10 October. Would it not be a good idea for the staff of the House, and the Minister’s own staff who are providing those responses, if we were able to table amendments from, say, 1 September rather than have to put them all in on the day we come back, which would not be conducive to having a decent debate on the Bill? It is a bit unusual, but we are in unusual times. We can do it if we decide to do so. Perhaps the Minister could take some advice and come back on that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very constructive suggestion. I will take it away and we will discuss it.

On short-term lets in London, I am told that the question was included in the consultation issued in February last year on a review of the property conditions of the private rented sector. Nearly 100 responses were received and the Government will publish their response shortly.

One of the happy surprises I have in facing this Bill is that my initial feeling that the rights of way clauses of the Bill would be the most difficult turns out not to be the case. The Ramblers, the Country Land and Business Association and others have written to me to say that they are united in asking for no further amendments to this part. I hope that we can all hold to that. It is remarkably unusual to find a situation in which all those involved in a deeply contentious area, which has been contentious for a very long time, have come to an agreement and are asking us to put it into law. Let us see how far we can get on that following their consensus.

The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and others asked about the TV licensing review. As a matter of course, I can tell him that the terms of reference will be laid in the Libraries of both Houses and the review itself must begin within three months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent.

Elections: Weekend Voting

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my first ever awareness of politics was during an election in the early 1950s when we had a fight in my primary school playground about which side one should be on in the election. I have no memory of why we fought and which side we were on, but we did know that something important was going on.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is not the cost for pupils potentially the loss of 10 days schooling over a school life? Can the Minister tell us how many fee-paying schools are required to close on a Thursday so that the pupils lose that educational opportunity?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, that is a very fair question. We will clearly have to investigate which public schools we can use for polling stations in the future.

Health: Birth Defects

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to raise the subject of fortifying white flour with folic acid in the interests of public health.

Deficiencies in folic acid have been found to lead to neural tube birth defects, including spina bifida and hydrocephalus. It is both a national and an international issue. Public health policy has been to encourage those planning to become pregnant to ensure a voluntary input of folates, either by supplement or by folate-rich foods, in that crucial period covering conception and the first 12 weeks. However, this policy is known to fall on deaf ears in some socioeconomic groups, and does not cover the issue of unplanned or unintended pregnancies. In some countries, where bread is part of the staple diet, it has been found that fortifying bread flour with folic acid can cover both the issues of the target group and unplanned pregnancy.

Bread has been a staple food in the UK for centuries. Consumption has fallen a little but it still contains more than 10% of our daily intake of key nutrients and remains a major source of them. Since the 1940s, just after the war, most of our bread flour has been fortified with four added nutrients, and that is still the case today. On 5 August this year, at the start of the Recess, Defra announced the result of the consultation on the bread and flour regulations, which was that the mandatory fortification of flour will continue on health and scientific grounds.

The idea of folic acid fortification has been around for many years. I can confirm from my own personal experience that in 1999, as Minister for food safety—before my Food Standards Agency days—I was lobbied on the issue by a leading scientist during a journey to a food conference. My initial reaction was, “It’s mass medication”. But I soon realised it was not then, and it is not now. By 2007, Her Majesty’s Government had been advised by the independent Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the Food Standards Agency to go down the route of mandatory fortification. This advice was reinforced in 2009-10, during my term as chair of the Food Standards Agency.

Scientists involved in the research, such as Professor Nicholas Wald of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, have chased the issue up over the years. Others, such as Professor Colin Blakemore, have raised more generally the issue of the lack of feedback from government on advice from scientists, where there seems to be no clear decision on policy or action to be taken, or not taken, on the basis of the advice. He cited folic fortification as a recent example.

Delay has been caused by some scientific doubts regarding the effect of too much folate in the diet, which might be the cause of some rare cancers. Justifiably, Ministers and Chief Medical Officers required reassurance on this aspect. I believe—and this is why I am raising the issue now, after leaving the FSA—that the publication in March this year of the paper by Vollset et al in the Lancet puts the concerns to rest. The study analysed data on 49,621 individuals in 13 evenly randomised trials and found that there was no significant effect of folic acid supplementation on the incidence of cancer of the large intestine, prostate, lung, breast or any specific site. Furthermore, in interpretation, the scientists pointed out that the fortification of flour and cereal products involves doses of folic acid that are on average an order of magnitude smaller than the doses used in the trials they examined.

On 1 July the noble Earl, Lord Howe, the Health Minister for England, told Parliament that Ministers were “taking stock”. Has that included talking to Ministers in the other three countries of the UK? More than 50 countries are fortifying flour with folic acid, including the United States, Canada, Iran, Argentina and South Africa. So far, none in Europe are, due to the concerns I have mentioned, which are no longer justified.

Australia introduced mandatory folic fortification in September 2009. It has been found, in a paper by Brown et al in the Medical Journal of Australia in January 2011, that,

“the introduction of mandatory fortification with folic acid has significantly reduced the prevalence of folate deficiency in Australia, including in woman of childbearing age”.

A study in the American Journal of Medical Genetics in 2010 found that food fortification with folic acid prevents neural tube defects but not other types of congenital abnormalities. The study covered more than 3 million births in Chile, Argentina and Brazil over a 25-year period, according to the authors, Lopez-Camelo et al. The paper by Blencowe et al in 2010 in the International Journal of Epidemiology concluded:

“The evidence supports both folic acid supplementation and fortification as effective in reducing neonatal mortality from NTDs”.

So it works.

The latest study, published earlier in the year in the Lancet, clears the way to vastly improve the health position in the UK. We start from a low position. England has the highest rate of unintended or unplanned pregnancies after the USA—well in excess of 200,000. As such, the women concerned will see no need for supplementation. So far as the pregnancies that are affected by neural tube defects are concerned, there are hidden and avoidable family tragedies involved.

The best figures I have—they are a little old but I am advised they are the best—are those used by SACN, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, in its report, drawn to my attention by the Shine charity. In England and Wales, there were 178 neural tube defect-affected births from 853 neural tube defect-affected pregnancies. That means that there were 675 terminations. In Northern Ireland, there were 11 affected births and no terminations. In Scotland, there were 49 affected pregnancies with 50% terminations. That means that there were more or less 238 neural tube defect-affected births and 913 affected pregnancies, with around 700 terminations. These will be late, following the 20-week scan, when neural tube defects show. In summary, therefore, there are 150 to 200 babies born with neural tube defects leading to spina bifida and other conditions, with a total of 750 to 1,000 pregnancies. Eighty per cent of the neural tube defect-affected pregnancies are terminated.

Nothing I say diminishes my life-long support for a woman's right to chose, but it is self-evident that decisions for termination based on neural tube defect-affected pregnancies would decline with folate increases. More than one in 1,000 pregnancies in the UK is affected each year. Folic fortification has been shown in the countries that have a mandatory policy to have prevented between 27% and 50% of cases of neural tube defects. Based on these figures, we have a potential to save 100-plus neural tube defect-affected births per year in UK; and significantly we could prevent hundreds of late terminations every year. Putting it crudely, the current reduction in the number of babies born with neural tube defects is actually brought about by the termination of pregnancies. I do not like the idea that in the past some DoH officials have claimed that NTD is well managed.

The Prime Minister said at PMQs on 27 February that,

“conditions such as spina bifida have come down and that folic acid has an important role to play”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/2/13; col. 311.]

They have “come down” as terminations go up, due to the rate of diagnosis getting more accurate. What we need is primary prevention. Putting folic acid in white bread flour is not mass medication. Those who wish to avoid it just avoid white sliced bread. It gets to the groups of women most difficult to get to.

I want to hear what assessment the Government have made of the impact over the past seven months while they have been taking stock of the operation in England and what discussions have taken place with the devolved Administrations and their Chief Medical Officers. It is better to have a UK solution, as I know that flour mills are not always in the most convenient locations for four separate policies.

The science policy advice to government is to do it. Scientific concerns have been raised and cleared. It is not mass medication; it saves lives and misery, and it saves money. It reduces the hidden cost of the present policy, namely the costs of terminations as a management tool. It produces more healthy babies and improves public health.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, one speaker has scratched. That will allow us to stretch speaking times from seven to nine minutes, provided that the next four speakers all observe that when 9 comes up on the clock, they stop.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Both of those services were as opposed to the military service—and I am not sure that I would think of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, as particularly military.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked who needed to know. It is not Ministers who need to know primarily. Transparency is about the public being better informed, and campaigning groups and civil society organisations making the information easy to obtain.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that perhaps if the information was easier to obtain we would not have newspapers any longer claiming that they had discovered such and such. As I listened to him, I recollected that yesterday in the Daily Mail, I think that I read the same “We have discovered” story for about the third time in about four years. Newspapers have a tendency to claim that they have discovered something that was all there already. Indeed, many years ago when I criticised the financial services industry in the Channel Islands, the local press announced that it had discovered that I was a French spy. Its evidence for this—that my wife and I had both been decorated by the French Government—came from that deeply obscure publication, Who’s Who. I am sure the press will go on “discovering” things that could already have been found out easily. Again, that is the way the press behave.

As I have listened to this debate, I have been thinking about the debate we had in the Cabinet Office about the mistake previous Governments made in going for really grandiose IT projects, trying to put absolutely everything into what they were doing and eventually coming unstuck. The Cabinet Office has now decided that incremental change in IT is easier to control. If we are moving towards transparency we have to be careful that we do not say we want absolutely everyone to be included. The best can be the enemy of the good here. The first target is lobbyists rather than every single representative of government that they meet in all circumstances. The definition of who they meet in government was adopted as “those within government who now have to publish their diaries: their lists of whom they meet”.

Amendment 3 from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in many ways stands on its own. We need to think about it in a different context from the others here. Other amendments extend the register to parliamentarians, Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, other civil servants, special advisers, all Members and staff of Parliament, all non-ministerial departments, parliamentary private secretaries and so on. We are talking about, I suspect, between 15,000 and 20,000 people. There are 5,000 members of the senior Civil Service—Permanent Secretaries, directors general, directors and deputy directors. The figure in my head for the number who work in Parliament is more than 6,000, and then we have to include non-ministerial departments. How fast and how far we go certainly needs to be considered.

[Lord Rooker]

There is an organisation in the Civil Service that they all want to belong to—the Top 200. It is an official classification. The figure the Minister has just given for the kind of people who will be covered as the decision-makers and opinion formers is preposterous. I am not saying it is limited to 200, but within the Civil Service being a member of the Top 200 means you are there. It is not just the Permanent Secretaries but the directors general as well. You are not talking about thousands. They are the chief executives of some of the departments I referred to.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take that. I was about to say that the issue of proportionality—how far we go—is a really difficult one here. However, if one is talking about who gives you access to a Minister perhaps we need to include diary secretaries for example. Who we include and who we do not is itself a matter of some difficulty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the political process flows through a whole series of meetings. Capturing every single dimension of the political process may be beyond the wit of man or woman to achieve. We are looking here at making lobbying more transparent and capturing the main actors involved. The Bill specifically includes the lobbying of Ministers wherever they are: in London, Brussels or Washington. How far down the chain of officials we go, outside the United Kingdom as well as inside it, is a matter that we need to consider under the issue of proportionality and how far we think we need to cover absolutely everything.

Perhaps I may turn to Amendment 30, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which is on note-taking. Perhaps recording rather than note-taking is what we might now be considering. As the noble Lord said, the question of how far one can legislate for good practice under all circumstances is very difficult but, again, I will take that back and discuss the matter further with him.

The noble Lord’s Amendment 51 takes us back to the definition of directly employed lobbyists versus consultant lobbyists. As I said on a previous grouping, Part 1 is intended to deal fundamentally with consultant lobbyists—lobbyists for hire—rather than those directly employed in the public affairs departments of multinational companies. From my own experience, perhaps I may say that companies and banks based in London often operate directly with government and we know who they are. Consultant lobbyists are often representing companies based abroad, foreign Governments or others who are not used to knowing how the British political system works. That is one reason why they come to consultant lobbyists, who are specialists. They advise them and then often lobby for them. That is part of what we want to catch in a globalised political system where non-British actors, so to speak, are taking an active part in our political process.

Having, I hope, answered some of the points raised and repeated that I am open to further conversations off the Floor with those who have tabled these amendments, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for his response. What the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said in his intervention regarding Brussels is absolutely right. It so happens that about 95% of the legislation affecting food in this country, and which is implemented by the government department—the Food Standards Agency—is actually European. It starts in Brussels. At the point when I joined the FSA in about 2009, my predecessor had already decided to embed someone in UKRep because we were too often too slow. If you are not there when the conveyor belt starts, you cannot influence it and we were too far down it.

Look at the evidence of what happened with the way that the food information regulations were dealt with in Europe. There was massive lobbying against some of the things that we wanted to do, such as traffic-light labelling. I will not criticise people from other countries but the international lobbying was massive. We got a first-class individual, exactly as described by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I will not name them. There are negotiations and meetings while they are trying to get this stuff ready for the Parliament, which has more interference now—I meant more contact and should not have said that; parliamentarians should interfere but the EU Parliament has a different role now in this area—but there is no way that you would get all that detail back for Ministers and perm secs. The decisions would be done, so it is on a different level completely.

I wanted to reinforce that from my own little window of experience from the last few years. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 10.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I assure the House that the Government are open-minded on the possibility of changing a number of aspects of the Bill. One thing we discovered in the course of the consultation is that the language of PPERA 2000, particularly of Part 6, does not meet the needs or requirements of a very large number of those who are now to be affected by it. I hope I will not embarrass my noble friend Lord Greaves if I quote him as having said that he had never previously read Part 6 of PPERA 2000, and now that he has, he does not like it very much. I think that opinion is shared by a number of voluntary organisations outside the House.

Clearly, we will need to look at that in consultation with others. It may well be that we will need a government amendment. That is the process through which we should go on that and a number of other concerns that were set out very well in the Harries commission report: for example, the range of activities covered, the treatment of campaigning coalitions, the reporting procedures requested of campaigning groups and so on. We are open to listening, we are open to adjustment, and we expect that when we come back to Committee and Report, this House will give the Bill the detailed scrutiny that it needs.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I have one narrow point. That was just a list of things that would be considered. One thing was mentioned specifically. It figures very largely in the report. It is the special situation in Northern Ireland. Will that be taken seriously in the five weeks? I was Minister for Northern Ireland for only a year, unlike many Members of this place, but I know that the nature of the third sector there and of its relationship with the political process is completely different from that in the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I give an absolute assurance that we will take that fully into consideration. If the noble Lord would like to come to talk to me about it, I will be very happy to hear from him as well as from others.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Rooker

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take the point that the noble Baroness makes. She has said to me off the Floor of the House that this ought to be reinforced by making sure that in the notes of the meeting there is a reference to the subject of the meeting so that those in the press and outside who want to understand what happened are informed which of the clients the meeting was about. This is therefore a step towards transparency. It does not claim to provide complete transparency on all contacts between outside proponents of particular policies and Ministers or officials. If we were to do that, we would find ourselves with a huge amount of information of the sort that the NSA loves to collect for the United States, but might not be beneficial to British politics. If we were to include all lobbyists, as some of the answers to the consultation wished, and included all charity lobbyists, I think that the answer from the charities sector would also be very negative. However, charities do have lobbyists. For example, Oxfam has people who actively lobby the public and the Government. Therefore, we have to be a little careful over how universal one needs to be. That is the importance of starting—perhaps others will want to go further—with a register of consultant lobbyists and of their major contact with the Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested that we should start at the other end by asking all officials and Ministers to register whom they have met. I see no reason why, in a sense, as transparency develops, the two should not come together. I have just filled in my quarterly return of whom I have met, including a number of people who could be described as lobbyists. Indeed, Saferworld was one of those that I reported on for obvious reasons: as I represent the Foreign Office, I talk to Saferworld and other such charities. That is part of what we already do.

The question of how far down the list one should go and whether it should include special advisers has also been raised. That clearly is a question to which we will return in Committee, and I look forward to that debate. However, I am conscious that the major concerns are on Part 2, to which I now turn.

I assure the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, that a Keeling schedule will be available well before Committee for everyone who wishes to look at it. I say with due confidence that, since he first asked me that question, I have discovered what a Keeling schedule is.

[Lord Rooker]

With respect, that is a worry, because that is the kind of thing that the Minister should have been advised about before the Bill was introduced. For the Minister to say now—and I am not being personal about this—that he did not know what a Keeling schedule was when we have a major constitutional Bill, and it is the norm to do it this way and has been for a long time, shows a failure of those who have been advising Ministers.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It shows my ignorance more than anything. The Bill team has a Keeling schedule, and it will be distributed. Of course, the Bill team has a Keeling schedule—it is part of what Bill teams have to do in preparing the Bill. Since this is a rather complicated amendment of PPERA, that is what we are into.

I stress, as has been stressed by a number of noble Lords, that this is an amendment to PPERA. It is about election law, not about charities law; charities are not the main target and not those mainly affected by it. The most recent Electoral Commission report on this said:

“The Commission believes that, where significant non-party campaigning takes place, this should be transparent and properly regulated ... We think these controls on campaigning that is not explicitly ‘party political’ are a necessary part of the regime. Without them, it would be easy to evade the rules by framing political campaigning in terms of policies. For similar reasons, we do not think the rules should exclude particular types of organisations, such as charities or voluntary bodies, as this would create opportunities for political campaigners to evade the rules and would reduce transparency. However, the necessarily wide scope of the definition of controlled spending makes it particularly important to consider the overall impact on campaigners of Part 2 of the Bill, including the registration thresholds and spending limits”.

That is what we will focus on in Committee—but it is correct that we should include this in the scope of the Bill.

I was quite surprised—