Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Newton of Braintree Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that I was not able to be here to hear his speech. I was upstairs in the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which has authorised me to ask the Minister whether, as we were given to understand, we will receive the human rights memorandum from the Cabinet Office so that our committee can do its job properly. That memorandum has still not been received and we want to finalise our report by next Tuesday. I hope that the Minister can tell us in his reply that what was promised many weeks ago will happen.

My second point in general support of the amendments is that, although it is admirable that some bodies of a judicial nature may be removed from the schedules by other amendments, if Amendment 175 in my name and in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—a paving amendment for which was approved by the House on the first day in Committee—is accepted by the Government and not sought to be reversed in the other place, the provisions in Amendment 175 will be relevant to our discussions today and hereafter. It is unsatisfactory that we are having this debate without knowing whether Amendment 175 will stand. Importantly, Amendment 175 would apply not only to courts but to any body—whether a court or not—that performs a judicial function and it would deal with the issue of independence raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

In a sense, we are putting the cart before the horse because a failure to insert into the Bill the criteria against which all these decisions can be measured means that we are having to proceed piecemeal, body by body, at enormous and appalling length in the Committee process. I respectfully urge the Government to accept these amendments for all the reasons that have been given so far but to deal with the system of the Bill as a whole by indicating at an early stage that Amendment 175 or a similar provision will bind Ministers when they exercise their delegated powers. That is the price that Ministers must pay if they are not to proceed by way of primary legislation. There need to be constitutional limits on the powers exercised by Ministers, as Committees of this House have indicated in the past.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot claim, like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, not to have taken part recently in proceedings on this Bill, because I have been a persistent defender of my Front Bench, nor do I intend to stop being so today.

However, I want to associate myself in two respects with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. First, I think that the Bill leaves—to put it mildly—a lot to be desired. Secondly, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, is to be congratulated on the way he has dealt with this poisoned chalice. I am glad to see that, if I have read the runes aright, the person speaking to the proposals today will be a Minister from the Ministry of Justice, which is where the proposals originated from and where any blame for them, if blame is justified, should lie.

By way of other brief preliminary, I should say that when I first saw the schedule of headline decisions that was published in early October—this picks up a point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Lester—I could find no intellectual coherence at all in the Ministry of Justice’s proposals, which seemed to be piecemeal suggestions with no connection between them whatever. I hope, therefore, that at least we may have some coherent explanation about the pattern of these proposals and decisions for procedure rule committees, justice councils and other bodies, including CAFCASS, that are scattered about, most of which are now to be withdrawn from Schedule 7 by the amendments that have been helpfully tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach.

However—I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, has spotted this—unless my eyes have deceived me the Civil Justice Council will potentially remain on the list of bodies in Schedule 7. If I have that wrong, I would be glad to be told. That links with my own frequently expressed concern about the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council—in which I have declared an historical interest—which has been separated out and put down for the chop in Schedule 1. There is no intellectual coherence at all to the proposals. I would like to hear some coherence this afternoon.

I will make three other points. First, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked some good questions. My answers might not necessarily be the same as his in all cases, but those questions need answering. Secondly, I share almost completely the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. We are getting rid of too much independent outside inspection or oversight of bodies and are being told, in effect, that the Ministry of Justice can take care of itself and does not want these bodies breathing down its neck. That does not correspond with my views about how government in this kind of society should work or how it works best. Thirdly, I echo the concerns expressed by other noble Lords about the way in which the proposals have been handled. I reiterate what I said at the beginning because, as a House, we need some reassurance that, frankly, the Government know what they are doing.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, we have to keep it in mind that, at this stage, the Bill seeks to confer powers and does not provide the final decision on any of these matters. I respectfully agree with my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill that Amendment 175 needs to be taken into account in this connection. From the point of view of propriety in this House, one considers the Bill on the basis that Amendment 175 has been accepted. Therefore, from my point of view, we approach the Bill at this stage following a decision by this House that has accepted that amendment—an extremely important amendment—which very much restricts the powers that the Bill provides.

In connection with reviewing the work of these quangos, as they have been called, the position has to be that, if such a review is to take place on a fairly large scale, there is a need for an all-embracing Bill that provides the powers, with the detailed consideration following at a later stage of whether, and how, it is appropriate to exercise those powers in any particular case. For example, Schedule 1 provides a power to amalgamate or hand over a body’s power, principally to another body.

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[Lord McNally]

My Lords, one of the advantages of having Hansard and of having my noble friend Lord Taylor sitting next to me is that he will have heard that exchange, will read it carefully in the morning and respond to it appropriately.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, as the troublemaker, or one of them, it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge that I thought that was a pretty reasonable reply overall. If it were my amendment, I would be minded to withdraw it while reflecting on some of the points that have been made, particularly about inspectorates.

[Lord McNally]

That now puts me 3:2 up as regards interventions by the noble Lord, Lord Newton—by that I mean that he has supported me three times and has caused trouble twice—so I think I shall quit while I am ahead.

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[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, I had not thought of declaring my disability as an interest but, in view of what the noble Baroness has said, perhaps I had better. I certainly sympathise with some of the points that she has made.

However, I had been going to declare two other interests in a speech which I do not think will count on the McNally scorecard, partly because it is not related to his department and partly because it will be as neutral as I can possibly make it. One interest is that I must have been the Minister responsible for disabled people at the time when DPTAC was established—albeit not by what was then the DHSS, or the DSS; I have forgotten which. I was certainly the Minister responsible, as Secretary of State, for creating the disability living allowance in its current form and therefore for establishing the advisory committee. I do not regard either of those points as an argument for me to defend the status quo without regard to what has happened in the intervening period, but it clearly gives me an interest in the matter.

I am bound to express some caution, particularly in respect of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board, when I am told that one reason why it is thought to be no longer needed is that its function is to give advice only when asked for by the Secretary of State, so that when the Secretary of State decides that he does not want the advice—which may well be because he knows what he is going to get but he does not want it—it should become redundant. There appears to be a certain amount of circularity about that argument, which I hope that my noble friend from the DWP will be able to deal with.

As to DPTAC, I understand that some alternative arrangement is to be made, but no one knows what that will be. I hope that we can be told today but, if not, we are back in the situation of the previous debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, all of this would be much easier if the Government came clean and said, “We need something. It isn’t this, but this is what it is”. What we are being told time after time is, “We don’t need this. We know we need something, but we don’t know what it is”. That is very unsatisfactory indeed.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

I support the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord McKenzie. There is not much that I want to add to the excellent case made by my noble friend. In some ways, I want to echo the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton. These are two advisory bodies affecting disabled people and there are some fairly standard questions about both of them that it would be useful for the Minister to answer. How are the bodies being replaced? How much money, if any, is being saved by their abolition? Given that these are advisory committees made up of people with disability, rather than people who might describe themselves as experts in matters of disability, how will the Minister ensure that the voices of people such as my noble friend Lady Turner, who spoke of her own experience of being disabled, are heard and that people’s experiences of the transport system in relation to the disability living allowance are properly heard by Ministers as they make their decisions?

More specifically, I note that the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee has as its aim that,

“disabled people should have the same access to transport as everybody else”.

On its website, it says:

“We want this to happen by 2020”.

Why not let it run on until 2020, when it thinks that it might have achieved its aim? Why not give it that target and that very clear end date? The chair of the committee, Dai Powell, in response to the announcement by the Government that, under the Bill, DPTAC would be abolished, said:

“I and the Committee consider there is still so much to be done, the transport system is still inaccessible to many people, and we have more work to do with our stakeholders (not least the Olympic Delivery Authority)”.

If the Minister is not willing to be as generous as 2020, would it not be sensible at least to be clear, here and now, that he will not use the powers that he is seeking in the Bill to abolish DPTAC until after the Olympics? Then at least it could continue the good work that it is doing with the ODA to ensure that the Games and the Paralympic Games are successful and accessible for people with disabilities.

Finally, in respect of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board, clearly the Minister shares our concerns that consultation is important and has been consulting over the changes to disability living allowance to create the new personal independence payment. However, is the normal, statutory consultation process enough? Is he getting consistent expert advice from people with disability, given how regularly problems around DLA are in the news? Within the last month we have had the Public Accounts Committee report on 16 December, which said that the appeals procedure needs improvement. Already this month we have had reports that the new payment may be in breach of people’s human rights. Clearly, as we move from one system to another, there are going to be sticking points and difficulties. It would seem sensible for the Minister to seek advice from the advisory board that he has at his disposal to try to iron out some of those difficulties as we move from one system to another. If, after that, he thinks that he can make a good case for getting rid of the board, perhaps he should seek to do so at that point.

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[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Before the noble Lord responds, I do not want to make too much trouble, but I must say that I did not find that terribly persuasive. I can well understand that the Secretary of State did not wish to seek the advice of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board on the proposals that have just been put forward because he would have got a major flea in his ear. I do not want to enter into that argument, which is not for today, but there is serious concern of the kind that various noble Lords have alluded to in the debate and that would have been reflected. The easiest way of not having that reflected is to say that you do not need the body that gives you that type of advice. Having been a Minister myself, I have to say that I have an unduly cynical view of what the real motivation may be, but it is very unreasonable of me to say that.

On DPTAC and the two bodies taken together, if I hear the Minister right, he is a very self-sacrificial man. He is saying that these bodies cost nothing, do no harm and we are going to have to spend money to get advice somewhere else, presumably also at nil cost. I am bound to say that if I were one of his ministerial colleagues, certainly in the Government in which I served, I would have said, “Why do you want to stir up all this trouble? Why put off all these people who have been giving their services pro bono in order to spend time and trouble consulting about how to replace their efforts? It does not make sense”. I rest my case.