Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I have particular concerns about two bodies that were taken out of the Bill by the House of Lords but that the Government intend, as the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General has suggested this afternoon, to put back into the Bill in Committee. I remain hopeful that Ministers are still listening and are prepared to change their minds.

The Youth Justice Board has brought leadership and coherence to a system that was deeply fragmented. The creation of youth offending teams has been very impressive, as has the reduction in the number of young people going into custody: a 30% reduction over the lifetime of the board. I would expect the Government to be interested in that if for no other reason than because it represents a saving, in relation to the places that have now been decommissioned, of £38 million a year. If the Youth Justice Board is abolished, that might lead to a saving of a few hundred thousand pounds, but if the Government lose their grip on the youth offending system, and particularly of youth custody, because the board is not in place to grip it, that could produce incredibly high costs in future.

I am also deeply worried about the Government’s intention to dilute the office of the chief coroner. I hope that the House will forgive me for setting out the history so that Members and Ministers can appreciate the depth of betrayal that many individuals, families and organisations are feeling. In 2003, I was given ministerial responsibility for death certification and coroners’ services. One of the first things I did in that role was to receive the report of the independent review of coroner services led by Tom Luce. He found that the system was outdated, inconsistent and unsympathetic to families, and he proposed fundamental reform. A little time later, the then Home Secretary and I received the third report of the Shipman inquiry, which was the product of painstaking work by Dame Janet Smith into the failure of the death certification system to identify and stop the murderous activities of Harold Shipman. Dame Janet concluded that coroners and the coroner service must be independent of Government and that it was simply unacceptable for the coroner service to be administered from within a Government Department. That conclusion is hugely relevant given what the Government now propose.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that quite frequently the Government may be judged as culpable in contributing to a death and that it is therefore bizarre that a member of the Cabinet—the Lord Chancellor—should have some responsibility for the coronial service?

[Paul Goggins]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. In December, when this matter was debated in the other place, Lord Lester made the important point that unless there is a properly independent system of investigation of deaths, the Government cannot be confident about satisfying their article 2 obligations on the investigation of deaths. That is particularly relevant in relation to deaths in prison and police custody.

In March 2004, I set out proposals for reform in which the bereaved and their families were to be placed at the heart of the system. Ministers should be reminded of the importance of putting those people at the heart of the system. Under the proposals, a chief coroner was to be appointed with complete judicial independence to lead a streamlined and modernised service, to ensure training and high standards and to carry responsibility for undertaking appeals and presiding over more complex inquests. Eventually, the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 enacted those proposals. I pay tribute to Bridget Prentice—a good friend and very able Minister—who with characteristic energy and determination turned the countless words of the public inquiries, reviews and consultations into legislation, which was passed with the support of all parties in the House, including those that now turn their backs on it.

The need for a chief coroner is even greater now, with inquests becoming ever more complex and high profile. Only recently, we have had the Tomlinson and 7/7 inquests—cases in point. Another change since 2003, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) referred to in his very powerful speech, has been the experience of bereaved families of the servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their experience screams out for a system that is sympathetic, that understands the circumstances they face and that has their confidence.

The Government’s arguments about costs do not hold water and cannot be justified. Ministers should not simply accept the figures in the impact assessment but should challenge them. There is not one Member of this House who does not believe that the set-up and running costs of the office of the chief coroner could not be reduced. It is the business of Ministers to get those costs down, not to hide behind what was in the impact assessment. Of course, they are not counting the costs of failing to implement the reforms that were agreed in the last Parliament, such as the £500,000 or more that is spent every year on judicial reviews—not to mention the costs that will be incurred by transferring some of the functions of the office of the chief coroner to the Lord Chief Justice. Those matters will still need to be overseen by judges, and judges do not come for nothing—they cost money. Those costs still are not being counted.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I want briefly to make two simple but related points. Elected Governments—even unelected coalitions—have the right to determine the administrative arrangements they consider best suited to implementing their policies. However, there is such a thing as good governance. As the Public Administration Committee’s original report set out, good governance involves undertaking a proper review of structures, consulting the organisations and individuals involved, clarifying objectives and then having good, clear drafting of the legislation.

The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) is not in his place, but I think that he hid his light behind a bushel, because last December’s PAC report was one of the most hard-hitting reports that I have ever seen in this House. It referred to the review process as “poorly managed”, and said that “no meaningful consultation” had been undertaken, that the criteria and tests set for the reform were “not clearly defined” and that the Bill was “badly drafted”, so it is no wonder it received a mauling in the House of Lords. In addition, the Committee said—I have never seen this sentence in a Select Committee report before—that the Government had

“failed to recognise the realities of the modern world.”

One element of that was the need for thorough consultation, a point that I want to discuss in relation to the staff.

Whatever the structures of government, whatever they determine those structures should be and whatever reforms to those structures they want to undertake, any Government will need an essential ingredient: well trained, professionally competent and motivated staff. However, in this Bill the staff are barely mentioned or considered, if at all. I chair the PCS trade union group, which involves Members of all parties in this House. The PCS has 30,000 members in non-departmental bodies, many thousands of whom are affected by this Bill. Many of those staff are facing compulsory redundancy, forced relocation, a deleterious impact on their terms and conditions and their pensions, an almost certain increase in their work loads and the end of job security—all in a situation of absolute uncertainty. The most common thing that I have heard from members of staff whom I have met in those bodies is that they are completely in the dark about their futures. There is a complete lack of clarity about what role their organisations and they as individual professionals will be playing, and they are worried about the future of the services that they deliver.

[Jon Trickett]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that redundancies are taking place now, before the Government have even taken these legal powers, which is damaging the capacity of those bodies to perform what continue to be their statutory duties?

[John McDonnell]

I can confirm that. Redundancies are taking place, and there is near chaos in some organisations, not only because of jobs being lost and redundancies being forced on people, but in the organisation of the services that they deliver. A number of staff are worried about the impact that the proposals will have on the users of their services. I refer in particular to those who manage the independent living fund and the 300 workers involved with the Youth Justice Board, whose jobs are likely to go. Morale is understandably at rock bottom in those services, so the important thing is consultation. However, I see that consultation with staff unions is not even listed in the Bill.

Also, there is an agreement stemming from the last Government—an agreement that I thought this Government had signed up to—on TUPE. The Cabinet Office statement of protocols adopted by the last Government and inherited by this Government, which I thought this Government had also signed up to, states that where TUPE does not apply—for example, in the transfer of staff into the public sector, which includes most of the bodies in this Bill—an explicit reference should be added to the Bill. That is the agreement that was signed up to, but all that this Bill contains is a reference in clause 24 to transferring people on conditions similar to TUPE. The legal advice provided to the union is blindingly obvious: conditions that are similar to TUPE are not TUPE. Therefore, a whole range of conditions of service and protections that staff now enjoy will be put at risk. I believe that this is an act of bad faith on the part of the Government. The least that they could do now is add TUPE to the Bill. It was included by the last Government in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and by this Government in the Localism Bill. In that way, staff gained some security for their futures.

Let me conclude. There is a view in many of those bodies that there is near chaos when it comes to what the future will hold for the staff and what the implications for delivering the service will be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

This has been an interesting debate, but at certain times Members walking into the Chamber might have wondered whether they had accidentally walked into a discussion on Welsh affairs, because so much of the debate focused on S4C—a mystery to me, as an MP representing a Yorkshire constituency, until I was allocated to this Bill. I can assure the House that by the time we reach Committee stage, I will be as expert as everybody else. However, the real reason for the contributions from so many Welsh Members might be a certain boundary review that will be taking place in Wales in due course, but perhaps that is idle speculation.

The sub-debate about S4C was ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones). Other contributions were made by the hon. Members for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) and for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). They all made interesting speeches, although it seemed to me that some of the points made by Government Members were hardly supportive of the Government’s position on S4C. The Opposition can assure the House that this matter will be explored in great detail in Committee.

Many other matters were raised, often with great authority, including the Government proposal to transform the chief coroner post. Very significant contributions were made on that matter by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). There is a significant problem with the Government’s proposals, which suggest that the coronial service, in part at least, should be made responsible to the Lord Chancellor, who, as we know, is a member of the Government. From time to time, a death that has been examined by a coroner may have been caused, in part at least, by the Government’s actions—we can all think of examples where a Government failure contributed to the death of a fallen hero in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on. If the coroner has to report to the Lord Chancellor, would that not immediately raise questions about the independence of the coronial service in investigating the deaths? Deaths at war are as tragic as any other, and they obviously involve people who were fighting for our country. Those people are entitled to an independent coronial service, and I do not believe that the Government’s proposals give us that independence.

Powerful points were also made strongly on behalf of rural communities by my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). They discussed not only the beauty of our rural countryside, but the need for fairness. The Government are proposing to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales, and that retrograde step, again, needs to be debated very carefully in Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East also spoke about youth justice, on the basis of his great experience, and the House listened carefully to the point he made.

What was striking about the debate was the fact that few Government Members were wholly in favour of the Bill and that they did not make the case for the Bill in the terms used by the Minister for the Cabinet Office. He made a case on the basis of democratic accountability—I shall address that in a moment—but his right hon. and hon. Friends largely chose to make an argument on financial grounds. They said that we should simply be taking an axe and making financial cuts to the service, irrespective of whether the service being provided is good or bad. For example, the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) referred to the financial imperative to cut services. We accept that there is a degree of financial imperative, particularly in relation to waste, where that is identified. However, I do not believe that the argument made by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) that we should abolish any quango where even a small amount of waste has been established necessarily provides the correct answer. Notably, the Minister for the Cabinet Office did not make that case.

The hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) gave an extraordinary motive for cutting quangos, basing her argument on inequality of pay. Those of us on the left, who have long argued for greater equality, welcome her as a recruit, but her case was that we should abolish quangos on the basis of the size of the chief executive’s salary, and that is a bizarre argument. The hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) was the star of the show. He began his speech by saying that he had no experience whatsoever of any quango, ever. He felt that that gave him the basis for making a speech to say that quangos should immediately be reformed, abolished and so on.

The Government rested their case on the need for greater democratic accountability, and we agree that the quango state should be tackled on those grounds. However, they would be well advised to listen carefully to the case made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who chairs the Public Administration Committee. He pointed out that in a modern society accountability takes many forms. I have just discussed the coronial service and it may be that rather than the coroners being made accountable to the Lord Chancellor, as the Government would have it, they should be accountable to the relatives of the dead. In that sense, I agree entirely with the point made by the Public Administration Committee.

Considering that it dealt with such important bodies, the process the Government entered into was incredibly rushed. There was little or no consultation in advance with the interested parties, with the bodies themselves or even with Parliament. The reform of these bodies through proper legislative processes is clearly one thing that the Government are entitled to do, but instead, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), they are already proceeding effectively to abolish or at least to weaken through underhand administrative methods those very organisations that the Bill is intended to reform, even before it has gone through Parliament. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, for example, has already had its budget cut by 68%, yet it still exists in law. The staff numbers have been cut by 66%. Only one in three staff remain in the EHRC yet it still has statutory duties imposed on it by Parliament until this Bill becomes law. That is no way for a Government to proceed. It completely ignores the need for parliamentary assent and is once again reflective of a Government who are unwilling to listen or consult.

What we have here is a Government who are simply not listening, so much so that that they are not allowing witnesses to appear before the Public Bill Committee as part of the Bill’s scrutiny. We were told that this would be a listening Government. Why then will they not allow witnesses to appear before the Public Bill Committee when the Bill goes upstairs? The Government do not want to hear the voices of the Royal British Legion, who will defend the rights of fallen heroes to a proper inquest. They do not want to hear the voices of low paid workers in the agricultural industry who will be affected by the changes to the Agricultural Wages Board. They will not allow the voices of witnesses from the disabled community, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz), to be heard on the EHRC or the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, which is to be abolished. We will therefore oppose what we regard as a gross misuse of Government authority in seeking to prevent witnesses appearing before the Committee. I therefore urge the House to reject the programme motion, which does that.

On top of all those things, the Bill fundamentally alters ministerial powers to control quangos. It will concentrate far more authority in the hands of the relevant Ministers, who could merge bodies, transfer bodies or even abolish them without proper reference to Parliament and without listening to witness statements. The costings on which the Bill relies are also riddled with incompetence. The Minister for the Cabinet Office has made outlandish claims in The Sun newspaper that are totally unfounded. We have tabled freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions that show that rather than the £30 billion he claimed, the actual savings will be a fraction of that: £2.6 billion at most. When we considered individual Departments, we found the Government’s claim was often twice as high as the savings that they will make. Our research, for example, demonstrated that although the Government claimed that they would save £18 million from the Department for Work and Pensions, they will save less than £500,000.

Finally, the proposals will have a human cost both to the millions of people who receive services from the quangos and to thousands of employees, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington referred. Let me ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, a straightforward question, which I would like him to answer in his reply. What will happen to those whose jobs may be transferred into the private sector, the voluntary sector and elsewhere in the public service? What will happen to their rights? Does he envisage that their rights under TUPE will be properly protected, as they ought to be?

Hon. Members’ contributions today have revealed that the Government have not considered staff, have not listened to the users of services, have not produced proper costings and certainly have not listened to the millions of vulnerable people who will be affected by the Government’s actions if this Bill is passed. The Government do not realise that when they are taking decisions, they need to see the big picture—on which we can agree: that quangos should be reduced—but equally the detail. Government is about making decisions but it is also about listening and the Government simply do not have the humility to listen, the patience to debate or the ability to implement the detail properly. We will be voting for the reasoned amendment and fighting the Bill line by line in Committee, and we reserve the right to vote against the Bill on Third Reading unless there are substantial improvements to it.