Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Adonis

Monday 4th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

The case made by my noble friend Lord Hunt in respect of the super-affirmative procedure is extremely strong. There is a fundamental point of principle here: do we take ourselves, the House of Lords, seriously as a legislature? If we do, I do not believe it right that we should delegate the degree of power that we are delegating to the Executive without retaining more of the power of control simply to debate and amend the proposals that come forward in respect of the merger, abolition or reconstitution of public bodies. The critical factor at stake is that all these bodies were established by statute. They are all important bodies—you just need to read the schedules to see the importance of the bodies listed—and they were all subject to lengthy debate in Parliament when they were established. All that my noble friend Lord Hunt is seeking to do, with the full authority of the relevant committee of the House, is to give the House a somewhat larger power to amend orders and to require proper debate and a proper account by the Government to Parliament where they are not minded to take account of that debate and any amendments that are proposed. It seems to me that, if we are not prepared to stand up for the rights and responsibilities of this House to that extent, we are quite wrongly denuding ourselves of our proper responsibility as a legislature.

[Lord Whitty]

I can only agree with what my noble friend Lord Adonis has just said with regards to Amendment 71. However, I rise in the regrettable absence of the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, to speak to Amendment 69D. This refers to the functions of those bodies that are to be abolished in Schedule 1 and would require the Government to give a clear indication of which functions are to be retained and by whom they are to be carried out.

I draw attention to this and have become active on this Bill because of an interest of mine as the former chair of Consumer Focus. Consumer Focus is still in Schedule 1, but, as I have previously argued, that is probably the wrong place, in that the Government have indicated that they want to transfer its functions rather than to abolish them. While Consumer Focus remains as a body to be abolished, it is right that the legislation should require the Government to specify to whom its functions should be transferred. The Government’s current indication is that they wish to transfer the majority of its functions to Citizens Advice and some of its functions to a body relating to Northern Ireland law, the Consumer Council for Northern Ireland. Citizens Advice is a charity incorporated under English law and separately under Scottish law. It is not at all clear that the Government will actually transfer all those functions to Citizens Advice or, pre-empting an amendment that the Minister will move in the last group, whether Citizens Advice would necessarily agree to take on those responsibilities; as an independent charity, it has a right to refuse to do so.

Developments in Scotland and Wales may well also result in somewhat different arrangements being set up after the forthcoming elections. Indeed, arguments relating to the regulated industries are different from the general run of consumer issues. Given all that uncertainty at this stage when we are passing the primary legislation, it is surely incumbent on Ministers or future Ministers to give a clear indication to Parliament of where the current functions set down in primary legislation are going to go or whether they are going to lapse. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, would achieve that objective and therefore I see no reason why the Government should not accept it, if not tonight then at some later stage.

In the mean time, I endorse the general view expressed by my noble friends Lord Adonis and Lord Dubs and by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, that at some point we are going to have to look at the way in which we deal with the secondary legislation under this Bill, because the normal form of so doing will not be adequate for many of these changes.