Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 3: 3: Schedule 1, page 148, line 13, leave out paragraph (b) The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 3 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 4, 5, 10 and 11. This group of amendments takes us, I hope fairly briefly, to some matters of governance of the new agency, particularly the question of declarations of interests. The first amendment would take out the provision that the Secretary of State must be satisfied that a prospective appointee to the board has no, "““financial or other interest likely to affect prejudicially the exercise of the person's functions as a member””," and seeks to probe what interests the Government have in mind. I hope the provision is not meant to exclude everyone who has experience, or indeed capacity. It cannot be; that would not make sense. However, is it not part of the Nolan approach to appointments that one does not appoint someone who has a major interest? I do not know. That is why I ask the question. The issue of interests is important but I do not know why it needs saying. The Secretary of State will have to satisfy himself—herself, at the moment—over a range of matters regarding candidates’ qualifications. Are we talking about a current interest or, as is often the case in other contexts, about an interest that applied over the previous three or five years? I am also interested—this takes me on to subsequent amendments—in how this lies with paragraph 9 of the schedule, which also deals with interests. Next in sequence is paragraph 1(4), which states that the Secretary of State may require a candidate to provide information. The Minister said on the previous set of amendments that it was necessary to test provisions to destruction. I am not convinced of the necessity for this. How much do we have to put into primary legislation? Is it necessary to state that in an appointment process the Secretary of State can ask for information from a candidate? Frankly, if a candidate did not give the information the Secretary of State would think that there was something odd and the application would probably go in the bin. That is my testing to destruction. Amendment No. 5 would insert a new, slightly different paragraph. On balance—or more than on balance—I would really not like to exclude candidates who have good qualifications for membership of this new agency. The other amendments suggest that the arrangement that works in local government is really not a bad one and is better and perhaps less degrading than is suggested in the Bill. In local government, an individual member, not being fingered by his colleagues—which is what is proposed here—makes a declaration and, if it is prejudicial, that member will take himself out of the decision-making environment. He will actually leave the meeting, rather than being removed as is proposed in the schedule. That is the thrust of my Amendments Nos. 10 and 11. It has been a shorter debate than on the previous group of amendments, but these amendments are important in a different way. I beg to move.