Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 1 to 46.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this Bill has already been on a long journey, and has changed a great deal during that journey. Since its Second Reading in this House in November last year, it has been subjected to rigorous challenge and scrutiny through Committee and Report before being sent to the Commons.

The Government listened carefully and adjusted the proposals in the Bill. We continued to consult, listen and adjust as it moved through the Commons. Most of the amendments to which I am speaking were introduced by the Government in the Commons as part of the continuing process of scrutiny and modification. It is a pleasure to follow in the footsteps of my noble friend Lord Taylor, who did such an excellent and widely praised job of negotiating this Bill through its earlier stages in this House.

The Public Bodies Bill was notable during its time in this House not least for such contentious issues as Schedule 7 and the provisions on forests. However, it can and should be remembered as an outstanding example of the way in which the breadth and depth of experience in your Lordships’ House was used to improve a piece of legislation. I appreciate that this is a large group of amendments and that many noble Lords will be keen to move on to debate other issues in the Bill, and I will therefore set out as succinctly as I can the issues in these 46 amendments.

Amendments 1, 30, 31, 35 add co-operative and community benefit societies, as well as charitable incorporated organisations, to the definition of “eligible person” to which the functions or property of a body or officeholder can be transferred under the general order-making powers of the Bill. These amendments were welcomed by all sides in the Commons. I hope that they will also be welcomed here.

Amendments 2 and 3 require Ministers to secure Treasury consent before making an order that modifies an existing funding arrangement. This is in accordance with normal practice across the whole range of government.

Amendments 5 and 14 provide for there to be no requirement for a Minister or Welsh Minister to consult a body or office that is defunct. This does not exempt the Government from the need to consult—that is, to consult persons whom the Minister considers to be substantially affected and persons deemed to be appropriate—because the rest of the provisions in Clause 10 and 19 continue to apply. These amendments simply allow the Minister to lay a draft order without having to attempt to consult a body that has no members.

Amendment 21 adds stamp duty land tax to the list of relevant taxes in Clause 26. That clause limits the taxes that can be varied under the Bill to a list of relevant taxes. Stamp duty land tax was previously excluded from the list because there is an existing stamp duty tax relief for statutory reorganisations involving public bodies included in Section 66 of the Finance Act 2003. However, this relief does not cater for transfers to a non-statutory body for consideration. Stamp duty land tax should therefore now be included within the list of relevant taxes because there is a possibility that some transfer schemes will include land transactions falling outside the current stamp duty relief.

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[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, could I ask the Minister to explain further the purpose of Amendment 55, which adds Dover Harbour Board to Schedule 5? It is a bit extraordinary to include one port from among 120 or so in this country, most of which are trust ports. I declare an interest as a commissioner of a trust port in Cornwall. Why add one port to a list including the Environment Agency, British Waterways Board and all these other bodies that we have debated, on the basis that the local MP thought that it was a good idea? Is this a precedent for local MPs around the country to come up with ideas for privatisation or mutualisation of their ports, and to come before the Ministers saying “Let us add this to the list and have fun”? As the Minister said, there is a perfectly good route for privatisation of ports in the Ports Act 1991. I would be grateful if he could explain the purpose behind this amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, for her kind words about the way in which the Government have dealt with this Bill. Unavoidably, a commitment to prune the proliferation of public bodies over the last two generations meant that the Bill was very complex. Therefore, I believe that a period of digestion in both Houses was justified. It was a complex Bill and we have done our best to digest the criticism of it.

Anticipating that there would be criticism concerning RDAs, I spent some time last weekend reading up on regional growth theory and a whole range of other things. I am still not entirely sure whether I hold to the spatial equilibrium theory or to the agglomeration growth theory, or whether I think that economics claims to be unduly scientific and sometimes does not entirely understand what is happening on the ground.

I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, that this Government are strongly committed to reducing regional disparities. None of us can be happy that the gap between London and the south-east and, above all, the north and north-west of England, in terms of incomes, house prices and even life expectancy, has widened so much under the successive Governments of different parties over the last 20 to 25 years. The regional policies of the last Government did not reverse that trend. As noble Lords will know, we are now in the process of setting up a regional growth fund and local economic partnerships based on city regions rather than the wider regions. I have to say, looking at the Yorkshire region, that the wider Leeds region is rather different from the wider Hull region, but that is an area that we shall continue to debate as these new measures are put in place. More will be announced in the autumn Financial Statement.

On the question of the European regional development fund, the Government have of course paid attention to it as it is an important part of this. The programmes will now be guided by local management committees which oversee ERDF investment and assess progress. These committees draw their membership from government departments and a wide range of local partners, including local authorities, LEPs, educational institutions, the voluntary sector and members of the business community. So the LEPs will play an active role in the delivery of European regional development funds, both through their membership of the local management committees and as potential applicants for funding. I can assure the noble Baroness that we do not intend to let that pot of money stay unused.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked about Dover Harbour Board. One has to say that Dover is a rather larger and more important harbour than some of those in Cornwall with which he is concerned, so the argument for making an exception of Dover partly rests upon the importance of that port compared to many others. I accept that to some extent this is an anomaly, the result of an extremely powerful and well organised local campaign. We shall see how far this provides an innovation that may spread elsewhere. The noble Lord may think that a Conservative MP supporting a people’s port proposal is slightly counterintuitive. That is the degree of innovation that we are concerned with but, again, we shall see how this develops. There was very powerful feeling within the town, and in a democratic country one should occasionally—perhaps frequently—take the strength of local opinion into account.

Having answered some of the points raised, I beg to move that these amendments be now agreed to.

Motion agreed.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 48.

Motion agreed.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 52.

Motion agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the House do disagree with the Commons in their Amendment 53 but do propose Amendments 53C, 53D and 53E in lieu.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 55.

Motion agreed.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 57 to 62.

Motion agreed.