Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, in the 10 years that I have been a Member of this House I have been used to seeing Bills, some of them good, some of them bad and quite a few of them what I call curate's egg Bills. I wish that this was a curate’s egg Bill. It seems to me to be at the very end of the spectrum, and it is not the good end. Like my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, I support the Bill's aims in many cases. I am not a fan of quangos. Where they are needed, they should be as lean as possible, and they should be kept to areas where they are necessary But the way in which this Bill proposes to deal with quangos is undemocratic and entirely unacceptable. It requires very substantial changes if it is to go through its parliamentary process.

It now seems quite a long time ago that the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Blackstone, questioned why some organisations are in the Bill while others are out. In many areas it does seem to be quite arbitrary. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, pointed out that the Audit Commission—which has been told that it will be abolished with great alarums, which I support, unlike the noble Lord—is not mentioned in the Bill. I have been through the Bill time and again looking for it; I am astonished—it is not there. I can only assume that that is because there is primary legislation coming along, in the form of the localism and decentralisation Bill that we are expecting in Parliament soon, in which it can be included. So it seems that the question of which of these organisations will be subject to proper democratic parliamentary scrutiny, as will be possible in that case, and which will not—as it stands at the moment, these will be plonked into Parliament in an entirely unsatisfactory and unamendable way—is arbitrary and random.

I was interested in the amendment to be moved by the Labour Party about sending the Bill to a Select Committee. Again, in the 10 years that I have been here, I have not come across a Public Bill Select Committee, although there have been one or two, so I looked in the Companion to see what it says. Paragraph 8.119 reads:

“A public bill … may be committed to a select committee … when detailed investigation is considered desirable or when the hearing of evidence is considered necessary".

There is a strong case to be made as far as this Bill is concerned, particularly in view of the reaction all around the House that this might be a good idea. Paragraph 8.121 reads:

“When the committee has completed its deliberations, it makes a report to the House on the provisions of the bill, recommending whether or not it should proceed … If it considers that the bill should proceed, the committee reports it with such amendments as it thinks fit, and the bill is then recommitted to a Committee of the whole House in the form in which it has been reported”.

The suggestion made by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill that such a committee might confine itself to the constitutional and procedural aspects rather than going into every detail of every organisation listed would be a way forward because, even if it did that, I believe, unlike my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, that there is no way in which a great deal of debate on a lot of the organisations can be avoided when it comes to this House because this will be our last chance to debate them properly if they then go through into this Bill.

If the Bill goes to a Select Committee, it will provide a period of time before it comes back to this House—not too long, one hopes—which will give the Government a chance to explain and, as some noble Lords have suggested, to set out in the case of each of these organisations, what they believe ought to be done about it, what they intend to do if the Bill is passed and why that is necessary. That has not been done, and if it is not set out in this way by the Government, I can see the Committee stage in this House taking many weeks because people will naturally want to consider in great detail what might happen to national parks, for example, or to Natural England or the proposals for British Waterways, which are interesting and, in my view, desirable, and deserve debate. I remember many hours in this House debating the Home and Communities Agency when we set it up not very long ago. There is also the Environment Agency. These are not piddling little organisations that can just be changed, modified, merged or closed down at the whim of a government Minister; they are major parts of the governance of this country that demand proper debate and proper scrutiny. We also require the ability to make amendments and, at the very least, to ask the House of Commons to consider them.

It has been suggested that the super-affirmative procedure might be a way forward. It is a rare procedure and I think that, so far, it has been used only in the case of one Act, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, said we should build on it. The opportunity, certainly in the case of organisations such as the ones I have listed and many others, to consider amendments to what the Government are proposing, which will inevitably be complex and complicated in some cases, is absolutely necessary. It seems to me that some hard thinking needs to be done to look at the super-affirmative procedure as it exists in one case to see how it might be amended if it is to be used in the case of the proposals in the Bill, including the opportunity for this House to amend it. We need something between the present procedure for affirmative resolutions and the present procedure for Bills, perhaps a one-level system in which amendments can be moved and where true scrutiny and true changes in Bills can take place. It seems to me that this is not something that should be left to the Government. Again, I take the view of my noble friend Lady Scott that, in many ways, this is an issue of Parliament as opposed to government and who has the right to decide parliamentary procedure. Perhaps this matter might be sensibly considered by the Procedure Committee of the House in parallel to whatever other discussions and changes are taking place.

I am particularly concerned about several of these organisations. There is not time to detain the House any longer, except to say that I agree entirely, I think, with what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said about national parks. From memory, the only proposal in the coalition agreement in relation to national parks is to make them more democratic and to have elections. I should say that the national park authorities— national parks are extremely democratic organisations—should be made more democratic by direct elections of the, at the moment, indirect council representatives. If that is a serious government proposal, it can be put in the localism and decentralisation Bill. It might be there for all that I know. But the rest is very worrying.

I substantially agree with the comments about forestry made by the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere. It is very odd that there is a separate section in the Bill just about forestry. It is not clear why that is there. When one reads it, it is also not clear what it means in terms of outcomes. No one who has been trying to find out what it means seems to know either. As regards forestry and Henry VIII, Henry VIII was pretty good at setting up royal hunting forests. It would be sad if Henry VIII powers were used now to do away with some of the national forests.

In relation to regional development authorities, it is absolutely right that there should be a proper debate. I agree substantially with the narrow points made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, about RDAs in the north of England where what is happening is seriously worrying. The other area about which I am quite concerned is the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, a very important body in protecting the conditions and wages of agricultural workers. If that happened, simply relying on the national minimum wage would result in many agricultural workers’ wages going down. There will be plenty of time to discuss these matters as the Bill progresses, however it progresses.

If my noble friend puts his amendment to the vote, I shall certainly support him. It seems to me that whatever view you take on the Labour amendment, it is a sensible safeguard to add to it before the vote takes place. I have never in my 40 years on public authorities voted against instructions from my party, not least—but not always—when I have been giving the instructions. I have never done that. I am minded to vote for the Labour amendment because it is common sense. I do not regard it as being disloyal to the coalition Government. Sometimes Governments have to be rescued from their own lack of common sense. In being minded to vote for that amendment, I hope that some members of my party will join me in doing so.