Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which will meet tomorrow to consider the Bill. However, I wish to make it clear that I am speaking for myself tonight. I think the Minister will have already realised that the structure of the Bill is not wildly popular on either side of the House, and that he may have some difficulty with it. Yet it is odd that there is widespread agreement on the need to reform and review from time to time the functions of quangos. That widespread agreement applies in this House and in the House of Commons. We know that we need quangos, but we also know that from time to time we need to review them and sometimes wind them up. Indeed, the previous Labour Government had a very impressive record on winding up quangos. This Government will be hard put to live up to that record, despite this overwhelming attempt to do so.

I do not wish to repeat all the arguments that many noble Lords have made so well, but it is clearly wrong to use powers of this nature. The first six clauses start with the words,

“A Minister may by order”.

When you see those little words grouped together in an Act of Parliament, you need to say, “And what comes next?”. All six clauses spell out Minister’s powers to wind up, change, change the constitution, and change the staff and personnel of the many quangos listed in the Bill. As has been pointed out ably, including in the previous speech, he can do that despite the fact that these bodies were set up by primary legislation.

That brings us to the deadly issue of the Henry VIII powers, which we look at from time to time on the Delegated Legislation and Regulatory Reform Committee. If you have Henry VIII powers—and I am one of those who take the view that in recent times we have probably used them more than we should—we need to look at them very carefully. The Bill takes the situation way beyond that. It is as though Henry VIII has risen from the grave disguised as a parliamentary draftsman. It is a Henry VIII Bill. He would have been very happy with it. He did not want to be a total and absolute dictator; he would have been quite happy to hear the debate, as long as it ended up with the position he wanted. That is what the Bill is doing and is why the Minister has so much trouble on it. It will go on being trouble for him, because it cannot possibly go through in its present form.

The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said that we could introduce some ways of softening it with a super-affirmative resolution procedure. I am inclined to say that, given the agreement across the parties in both Houses on the need to look at the way we run quangos and how we adjust them over time, we might look at something more adventurous which enables us to review their work over time. What better role for this House? It could be rather good at that, and we ought to be considering things of that nature.

At the end of the day, as has been ably said, what is so troubling about the Bill is that the Executive are giving themselves enormous powers over parliamentary procedure. That is what we are rebelling against—all of us, I think, on both sides. We are saying that this is a dangerous encroachment on parliamentary procedure by the Government. It cannot be allowed to go on like that. All of us are saying that, with a couple of exceptions. About three people so far have given outright support to the Minister. He has three strong friends there, but if I were him I would not be listening to them too carefully. They may not represent the majority. It would be worth while him taking that on board.

I want to end with a question, which has run through several of the speeches and is referred to in paragraph 13 of the report of Select Committee on the Constitution. How can this House, whose primary role is as a revising Chamber, possibly revise if the Bill goes through in its present form? It cannot do so, as far as I can see. If the Minister has something up his sleeve which will enable us to revise and review this work after the Bill is passed, he has a duty to tell us tonight. If, as I suspect, the Government have not really thought this through, it would be better if they took it away and tried to get some cross-party agreement on a need for some form of constant review of quangos, which looks at what they do, how they do it, and how they are structured and funded. This reinvention of Henry VIII powers as a Bill is profoundly unhealthy to parliamentary democracy. I say to the Minister, please take the Bill away, if only for the sake of his own Back-Benchers, who look increasingly uncomfortable with it.