Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Blackstone Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackstone]

My Lords, I will make general and specific comments on this bad Bill. The sweeping powers contained in what amounts to a Henry VIII clause should raise profound concerns of general principle for your Lordships, not least in terms of increasing further the authority of the Executive over the legislature. My specific comments relate to Clause 11 of the Bill, and to Schedule 7—the list of bodies subject to the power to add to other schedules.

I declare an interest as chairman of the British Library, because the British Library Board is included in the schedule. The considerable disquiet felt by the British Library is clearly shared by many other bodies listed in Schedule 7. As others have said, the Bill grants extensive powers to Ministers to abolish, merge, modify the constitutional arrangements of, modify the funding arrangements of, modify or transfer the functions of, or authorise delegation in respect of, many public bodies listed in its schedules. The Government have simply not made a case for why the vast range of statutory bodies affected by the Bill should be abolished, merged or modified by force only of ministerial order, rather than by ordinary legislative amendment and debate in Parliament.

Other noble Lords have already referred to the report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee. The committee noted that most of the public bodies to which the Bill applies were created by statute or royal charter. The committee stated that the Bill vastly extends Ministers’ powers to amend primary legislation by order, and that such Henry VIII powers need to be clearly limited, exercisable only for specific purposes and subject to proper parliamentary oversight. The committee went on:

“Departures from constitutional principle should be contemplated only where a full and clear explanation and justification is provided”.

Furthermore, many of the bodies for which the Bill was designed have been the,

“product of extensive parliamentary debate and deliberation”,

and, as such, the committee could not see,

“why such parliamentary debate and deliberation should be denied to proposals now to abolish or to redesign such bodies”—

an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.

The Institute for Government has also raised serious concerns of principle about what it calls the crucial catch-all provision included in Clause 11, where any body named in the comprehensive list of organisations set out in Schedule 7 can, by ministerial order, be moved into a schedule to be abolished, merged or modified. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the institute notes that the schedule includes bodies with quite delicate public functions which require them to act, and be seen to act, independently of government with self-confidence. To quote the institute:

“The worrying feature of this clause is how it is likely to affect the dynamic of the relationship between the government and those bodies which have been established to be at some distance from Ministers, because they need to be able to perform their functions in a way that puts them beyond suspicion of Ministerial interference ... The danger is that these bodies will become more circumspect in exercising their duties”,

and that is a very serious danger. The House will, I think, readily recognise that the granting of such wide-ranging powers carries inherent and profound dangers. Perhaps the Minister will now take this opportunity to provide the House with a clear and convincing justification for such sweeping powers. I do not believe that he gave that justification in his opening speech.

I turn to my specific comments. If the Bill were enacted, it would, in extremis, grant Ministers the powers, at the stroke of a pen and without parliamentary scrutiny, to abolish the British Library and other bodies listed in Schedule 7. Noble Lords who are familiar with the British Library—and I am sure that many are—will know that it was established as the national library for the United Kingdom by Act of Parliament in 1972 following the White Paper of 1971 and in response to the recommendations of the 1969 report of the National Libraries Committee, and that it brought together a number of national institutions, including perhaps most notably the library of the British Museum, which itself was founded by Act of Parliament in June 1753. To grant Ministers powers potentially to abolish by order an institution created by statute with such a very long and illustrious history would, ipso facto, damage the sovereignty of Parliament. Although I am sure that this is not the current intention behind the powers proposed in this Bill—and I am sure that the Minister will tell us that in his closing speech—it cannot be sensible to open up such a possibility.

I now turn to the criteria for the inclusion of the bodies in Schedule 7, and I urge the Minister to take this opportunity to set out, in the interests of transparency, what those criteria are. They are completely opaque. Again, I declare my interest as the chairman of the British Library Board. Noble Lords will be aware that in the statement of the Minister for the Cabinet Office of 14 October, the British Library was identified as a public body to be retained on grounds of,

“performing a technical function which should remain independent from Government”.

It is, I believe, of some interest that the national museums and galleries were similarly designated by the Minister for the Cabinet Office in that statement, yet the British Library is included in Schedule 7 to the Bill on grounds not stated, whereas the museums and galleries are not.

The British Library is one of the UK’s national collections and in most important respects it stands alongside the other national collections. This is reflected in statutory terms in the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 and, in its drafting, the British Library Act reflects elements of the British Museum Act as a result of the incorporation into the British Library of the unique riches of the collection of the BM library. Taken together, that serves further to underline the inconsistency in the application of criteria for inclusion in Schedule 7. I would also be grateful if the Minister could explain why the Arts and Humanities Research Council is included in Schedule 7 but the other research councils are not. Again, it seems inconsistent.

To conclude, I urge the Government to reconsider Clause 11 of, and Schedule 7 to, the Bill. There are very powerful arguments against the wisdom and parliamentary propriety of granting such sweeping powers.