Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Main Page: Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Labour - Life peer)Public Bodies Bill [HL]
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts
Lord Deben
My Lords, perhaps I may, on the second occasion on which I have addressed your Lordships’ House, start with a compliment on the procedures of this House compared with those of the House in which I sat for 35 years. I very much approve of the way in which this House deals with legislation and enables all its Members to play a proper part. That is why, when I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, introducing this matter, I had a wry smile, because at no time in the history of Parliament has there been such curtailment of speech, of discussion or of argument, than in the past 11 years in the other place. Very few Bills were ever discussed in their fullness and very few clauses were ever fully covered.
As a Member of Parliament, I found it increasingly difficult to explain to constituents that the reason why such-and-such a clause was so bad was because no one had discussed it. It had merely been pushed through. I found it difficult to hear the arguments put forward from that side of the House. But I agree with the noble Baroness that there is an important distinction, which I thought was most clearly put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, between aim and means. Although I had to start by reminding the noble Baroness that no one on that side is in any position to talk about constitutional propriety after the experience of these years, there is an important point here which we must not forget.
It would be a pity if we missed the importance of the content of this Bill by not being able to come to an understanding about two mechanism issues that most of us see as important. One issue is to ensure that the simple method of affirmative resolution is given some substance, perhaps of a new kind, to enable proper discussion to take place and for a good deal of consultation to be gone through. It seems to me that that is not beyond the wit of those on the Front Bench to discern and put forward.
On the second issue, I take up the comment made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. If one goes through this list of bodies, one sees that most of them hang together but some of them clearly hang separately. If that is the case, there must be a mechanism for being able to say about those bodies that something different happened. Indeed, my noble friend mentioned that when he talked about Channel 4. If that is true, I hope we will not miss the importance of this Bill.
There has become a real feeling in Britain that the ordinary people of the country are subject to the almost whims of a large number of bodies that are unelected and very often rather curiously chosen. I have some sympathy with the noble Lord who asked about the east and west ends of Glasgow. It is true that many people in the list appear to be sequential offenders. Some people seem to have spent the past 20 years sitting on different quangos. I find it difficult to understand how the qualities of a single woman should make her suitable for the organisation that looks after consumer interests. To be a deputy head of the Financial Services Authority, to run the Food Standards Agency and now to run the Civil Aviation Authority, she must be a remarkable person, for the choice has been continuous for what appears to be 20 years. I am not sure that the public quite understand that and I am not sure that I quite understand it.
Secondly, one has to face the fact of the outrageous behaviour of some of these quangos. I mention to noble Lords on both sides of the House a letter I received from an organisation that, at the time, looked after the supervision of boarding schools—a task that has now been passed on to Ofsted, another quango. This particular one wrote to me enclosing a stamped addressed envelope in case I wished to say something secretly to it about the school at which my daughter was head girl. I wrote back and said that if I wished to say anything about the school I would go to the headmistress and say it to her; that if she did not satisfy me on the matter I had the privilege of being able to take my daughter away from the school—a privilege that is accorded to those who are lucky enough, or who choose, to pay for their children’s education; and that I had not asked that quango to look after the education of my children. I had specifically chosen not to do that. I then wrote to the headmistress to point out that I had asked her to look after the education of my daughter and that if she took any notice of what the quango said I would decide whether I wanted to remain a parent at that school because I had not chosen the quango.
I wanted that part of the quango to go, but it has not: rather, it was transferred to Ofsted, which said that it would carry out investigations at the same time as the voluntary investigations of the Independent Schools Council or the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. Why is it doing it at all? Are we really saying that we have to have inspections of boarding schools when they have their own system and when the parents concerned are in a strong position to decide whether a particular school is properly run?
The Architects Registration Board is a body of no use and a great deal of interference. There is no reason why its responsibilities should not have been taken on by the RIBA—of which, I declare an interest, I am an honorary fellow—and for a special part of that to be made independent for the small number of architects who are not members of the RIBA. How have we left Natural England, with all its failings, in almost the same position as it was before? I have some problems about the substance of this because I do not think we have gone far enough.
However, there are some good things in the Bill that I would not like to lose. The suggestion that British Waterways should become a kind of third-sector body is extremely good and I hope that the Government will not destroy that by refusing to accept that the contract between it and the Government must be properly financed. I hope, too, that it will be able to overcome the reluctance of the Environment Agency to hand over its navigation role to British Waterways, where it is much more suitably placed.
Some independent non-governmental bodies ought to be seriously praised for the changes they have made, one of which is the Environment Agency. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, has done remarkably well in helping to show how a body that was increasingly thoroughly disliked in the countryside can be moved to one that is seen much more as an enabling body. Even given the tough line I take on this matter, none of us should ignore that fact.
The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred to the Forestry Commission. I was a Minister responsible for the Forestry Commission, which was the most difficult organisation I have ever dealt with in trying to move it in the right direction. I was desperate to make it more concerned with the environment but it has moved terribly slowly over many years. I object to those who say that within a proper legislative package private people cannot be just as good as nationalised bodies in looking after the environment. Indeed, the best examples of environmental protection come from private people.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Given his attack on Dame Deirdre Hutton, does the noble Lord accept that her advice when she chaired the Food Standards Agency was better than the Minister of Agriculture’s advice to his daughter about what she should eat?
Lord Deben
I rather purposefully did not mention the name of the person concerned as I did not want to make it personal. I merely suggested that she was a remarkable personage to have done so many things, and I made no comment about the advice that she gave in any of those circumstances, although, if I were choosing a head of the Food Standards Agency, I must say that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was absolutely exemplary in the role.
On the Forestry Commission, I believe that much of the best conservation in this country is done by private people over private land which they care about because they want it to continue to exist and improve. Why can the noble Baroness not conceive of parts of the Forestry Commission being better run by different people instead of it all being run by the same people?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, reticent as I am to depart from the conclusions of the Constitution Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, which first considered this Bill akin to Henry VIII powers, I respectfully suggest that at least the dissolution of the monasteries brought much needed finance to the Crown’s coffers, whereas this Bill fails lamentably to achieve even that. In all other respects, I concur with their conclusions.
I have three points—first, on the lack of public and parliamentary scrutiny; secondly, on the potential move of functions from independent to political control, with the exclusion of any lay, consumer or user voice in decision-making; and, thirdly, to point to some examples of the dangers in the Bill, primarily in Schedule 7.
First, this Bill gives legislative powers to Ministers, including powers to merge or abolish bodies, without the rigours of parliamentary scrutiny let alone public debate. It gives Secretaries of State powers to change organisations simply by secondary legislation. Parliament plays a vital role in safeguarding rights and freedoms, and it is parliamentary scrutiny that allows Bills to be amended and gives interested parties, the public and the press time to consider the implications of proposed laws.
Many bodies in the Bill were the product of extensive parliamentary debate, as has been said, yet such parliamentary deliberation would be denied to proposals to abolish or to redesign such bodies. Clause 11 is a particularly pernicious clause, giving Ministers powers to add any of the 150 Schedule 7 bodies to the schedules permitting their abolition, merger or modification, simply by statutory instrument, as outlined by several noble Lords. The Bill effectively renders these bodies liable to abolition or restructuring at the behest of the Executive. The Bill fails to allow Parliament to consider the suitability of the Schedule 7 groups to be moved into a list of organisations which are then subject to such wide powers. As the Constitution Committee emphasised, many of those bodies, as has been said earlier, were created by primary legislation and therefore by the will of Parliament. It is entirely inappropriate for such bodies to be scrapped or fundamentally reformed at the imperative of a Minister without due regard to parliamentary process.
Secondly, the Government have made it clear that they expect Ministers to take responsibility for what is done in the name of us all, and not leave it to unelected bodies. Yet there are many decisions taken on behalf of civil society which should not rest in the hands of elected politicians but be taken with a degree of detachment and independence, balancing competing and, often, individual interests for the good of the whole. Just as we would all flinch at the idea of electing our judges, so we should flinch at measures which potentially interfere with decisions on the rule of law, ethical decisions and other legal, personal and intimate social matters.
The Government’s presumption is that any state activity should be undertaken by democratically accountable bodies, with a quango existing only if it meets one of the three tests already alluded to—including whether its activities require political impartiality. The Minister used “impartiality” in opening this debate. Yet the very purpose of most quangos is to take issues out of politics; thus, they do not come under direct ministerial control but operate at arm’s length from Ministers. That, surely, is their very strength.
As your Lordships know, many of the affected bodies have a mandate to provide not just impartial but independent oversight of vital areas of public sector activity. The wide-ranging powers in the Bill may lead to the abolition of organisations and offices which play a vital role in holding public bodies or central government to account, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and other speakers. The Bill makes no provision for safeguarding the continued independence of such bodies, as emphasised by my noble friend Lady Whitaker. There is a big difference between independence and impartiality: it is the independence to be able to say, without fear or favour, what decision you have reached.
Thirdly, therefore, I turn briefly to some examples of the bodies over which the axe will not fall but, perhaps even worse, potentially hover for years. There is the Homes and Communities Agency. As the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, of the Local Government Association said elsewhere, the acid test will be whether Ministers allow decisions to be taken at the front line by locally elected people who know their neighbourhoods or simply replace unaccountable quangos with unelected civil servants in Whitehall. There is Ofsted, a non-ministerial government department reporting directly to Parliament. That constitutional basis protects the role of the chief inspector, whom neither the board nor the Secretary of State can remove, thus ensuring that her reports and actions are protected from accusations of undue influence. Ofsted’s remit includes advising the Secretary of State, such advice being provided without fear or favour exactly because of the organisation’s constitutional position. Given that Ofsted’s actions can have serious consequences, its protection from allegations of undue influence is vital. Ofsted inspection has a key role for schools operating with greater autonomy, where independent inspection becomes central to enabling services to be accountable.
I turn to NEST, which is a pension scheme established under the Pensions Act 2008. Its trustee board—I declare a recent interest, as until last month I was a member of it—has a fiduciary duty to its pension members, whose money it holds on trust, not to the Government, save in regard to any loan from government. Yet the Bill would enable the Government, with two clicks, to abolish, merge or alter this pension scheme without so much as new legislation, consultation or proper parliamentary scrutiny. Its resources belong to its members, not the state, yet the members would have no say in any such move.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, mentioned the Legal Services Board; here I declare another interest as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, which that board funds. The Legal Services Board is, of course, funded not by the Government but by lawyers. The board’s creation in the Legal Services Act 2007 was the product of extensive parliamentary debate. Your Lordships will recall the importance given to the independence of the Legal Services Board—independent from government—in the passage of the Bill. That was particularly emphasised in the Joint Committee examining the Bill that was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. The independence of the regulator overseeing barristers and other lawyers is key to their reputation, both here and abroad, for independence before the courts, to the rule of law and to its separation from government. Yet with a couple of statutory instruments this robust, independent board could be swept away.
There are many worrying powers in the Bill that fly in the face of normal lawmaking. “Think again, Government”, is the best advice I can proffer.