Public Bodies: Reform

Baroness Gould of Potternewton Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gould of Potternewton]

I apologise to my noble friend, but I am the chair of two organisations that have been purged today, so I feel I must express my views. One of the organisations will become an advisory stakeholder group, and we might well be able to work with that. We have had lots of discussion on how that is going to happen. The other organisation, which is the only national body in this country and the whole of the UK responsible for gender, is being abolished with absolutely nothing to say that it will be replaced. It will be abolished full stop, and its work will go into the department. I want to know how the 620 organisations that belonged to the Women’s National Commission will have a voice direct to the Government, and how they will have a voice when they disagree with government. The commission has very often acted as a caveat, being able to co-ordinate the voice of women to government. I have not yet received any answers on that point.

The whole process has been absolutely diabolical. I have not received a single piece of paper until today, when I had an e-mail message from the Secretary of State that told me that we were no longer going to exist. I have had a couple of conversations with the director of the Government Equalities Office, but not one of our commissioners has. There has been no transparency in the process whatever. We have not been told at all why the three points—although it says four in the document—that we were asked to put to the Cabinet Office have not been responded to. They were put through the GEO, but we have had no response as to why it was decided that we did not qualify on any one of those three points. The whole process has been rushed and, quite honestly, if it could be done, might be subject to a judicial review. There has been no stakeholder involvement in the decisions that this Government have taken.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am sorry to have to disagree with the noble Baroness. Some of these decisions have had to be made by government, and we take full responsibility for making them. Consultations were done with each department, and each department was responsible for ascertaining from all these bodies their capacity to meet the tests that have been set. Discussions have thus been taking place within departments and I am quite surprised to hear from the noble Baroness that she has not been aware of the discussions going on in this field, because I know that she is very much involved in these things. Concerning the women’s commission, we are really keen to move away from the idea of having a single body to voice women’s issues. Women should actually be engaged in all public bodies and articulating their views across Government.