Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Williams of Elvel Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

This has been an extraordinary event. It is the first of this nature that I have witnessed or been involved in. It is actually exactly the same process that brought people on to Tahrir Square in Egypt. That related to an altogether different issue, and this one is perhaps less momentous. However, it involved the same kind of communication, process and campaigning by use of the internet and the involvement of many local groups. This may be the pattern for the future or it may be a one-off, but whatever it is it is quite extraordinary. I congratulate the Government on withdrawing their proposals, but we now want constructive involvement and inclusion of people in the process that is going ahead.

[Lord Williams of Elvel]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain your Lordships with other matters, but I should like to ask the Minister about my noble friend Lord Clark’s question on the cumulative 15 per cent, which was followed up by my noble friend Lord Judd. My understanding of the Minister’s reply was that it was a question of the interpretation of the Forestry Act. I have always assumed that the Government, who are responsible for the administration of the Act, have some idea of what it actually means. Will the Minister be kind enough to write to my noble friend Lord Clark explaining what the Government think the Forestry Act actually means in that respect?

[The Lord Bishop of Guildford]

My Lords, I am enormously grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Henley, for their interventions this afternoon, and for the Secretary of State’s intervention in another place some time ago. I speak as one who would have supported the amendment in the name of my colleague the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, had the question been put.

Your Lordships’ House will be anxious to move on fairly quickly now, so I make one simple point as someone who has taken a close interest in the Forest of Dean in particular and in the general debate about forestry. I refer to the process of preparing Bills. We have heard about the huge public response to the proposals as they have been understood, or even misunderstood. Had the section on forestry been researched with close attention to the debates in your Lordships’ House in 1981 and in another place, almost all the issues that have been in the public domain and which have been debated so fiercely and strongly—although, I agree, not always accurately—would have put an amber light in the preparation of the Bill. Therefore, to save further embarrassment in government and policy, I gently propose that looking at what Parliament did on the previous occasion on an issue such as this would help in the construction of Bills.