Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The answer I must give in the short term is that it depends a lot on the courts. I will look at housing associations; I know they have come up in other Bills that we have discussed, including how they are treated in government finance. The point about using the Human Rights Act definition is that you get a 25-year history of interpretation.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to the issues of public funding associated with universities and the national debt, and how that is counted. She said that these were marginal amounts of money. The UK university sector is worth £130 billion a year to the economy and employs three-quarters of a million people. Is that truly the definition of marginal? I declare an interest as chancellor of Cardiff University. Secondly, when we are looking at cultural organisations, does lottery money count as public or private money?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The honest answer is that I do not know about the lottery, but I will find out for the noble Baroness and write to her. On universities, of course she is right: very substantial sums of money, rightly, are involved in the education of our children. What I was explaining was that, at the margin of this activity—involving procurement and investment—the sum is relatively small compared with all that is done by universities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I have two questions relating to the issue of what constitutes a public body. My major interest in this Bill is Clauses 12 and 13, about local government pension schemes. It is interesting that it requires a separate section of this Bill to deal with local government pension schemes; that clearly indicates that these organisations are not public bodies. The Government’s commitment was in relation to public bodies and yet the Bill is being extended to these other organisations, which require their own section in the Bill, as they are clearly not covered by the general term “public bodies”. Perhaps the Minister could confirm or explain that particular point.

I have a different point relating to pension schemes. Some of these public bodies that we have been talking about have their own funded pension schemes, which are making investment and procurement decisions. As I understand it, because they are separate trusts, they are not themselves public bodies. But they belong to a public body and they are associated with the public body, so it is possible, within the bounds of trusts law, for those pension scheme trustee bodies to consider a decision that might potentially fall foul of this legislation. Therefore, we have the odd situation that the trustees can discuss these matters, but presumably the sponsoring organisation, which does count as a public body and is covered by the Bill, cannot discuss what the trustees whom they nominate should or should not be doing. There is a certain contradiction here, and again I invite the Minister to explain how that will operate in practice.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly go back to the Government’s own list of public bodies on GOV.UK. Of that list of public bodies, there are 18 listed for the Department for Education, none of which is a university. The Minister referred to overlapping definitions in the Bill. I have been sitting here and thinking about that, and wondering where the University of Buckingham sits in the Government’s concept of where universities lie, because that is a private university but one which is fulfilling exactly the same functions as all the other universities in the UK. Those other universities are, of course, exempt charities and so we are on a whole series of conflicting paths here, with just one aspect of the definition of public bodies that this Bill seems to wish to encompass. I raise these issues so that the Minister can perhaps give us some of her thoughts on these overlapping definitions and where they actually sit within the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, first, we are in the territory of the chilling effect, are we not? If there is a very large number of bodies which are not going to be sure how far they come within the scope of this Bill, they will be very nervous about doing things that they would otherwise do. That is why leaving it so unclear as to how far the definitions of this Bill stretch over the sector, in which public and private institutions, and public and private functions, overlap so closely, is highly undesirable.

Secondly, this clearly will require very substantial subordinate legislation. I think it is the sense of this House that it is a bad thing to pass Bills that need too much subordinate legislation. Yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, whom I regard as an extremely good friend, said to me that the subordinate legislation under the Elections Act, which we passed in 2022, is now approaching 1,000 pages, and that the Electoral Commission is spending a considerable amount of its time providing guidance for local authority electoral registration officers on what this means for them. That is bad legislation; we want to avoid that again here.

Thirdly, there have been occasions, as others are aware, where lists of public bodies have been provided. The Minister will remember the SI on trade union levies being taken, or no longer being taken, automatically from pay scales for particular public bodies. That had a list, at the end, in the schedule, of over 200 bodies, which included some quite interesting ones such as the Scottish salmon council, and various semi-charitable local institutions to do with, as I remember, care homes and nurseries.

Fourthly, to add to the question of universities, what universities are most concerned about is whether or not the student loan book, which is a very large sum, is included in the Treasury’s calculation of national debt. That is not a marginal issue; it is quite important. That is why definitions such as this and how they are used by different parts of government and recognised be the courts are extremely important.