Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 101: 101: Clause 83, page 39, line 1, leave out ““3”” and insert ““6”” The noble Viscount said: I feel a bit as though I am coming down to Earth, so I shall start with a short anecdote about public appointments. I was deputy chairman of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It was January, and I was chairing five inquiries under the Fair Trading Act. My appointment was coming up for review at the end of the month, and it was clear that there was no way in which the five inquiries could be completed in time. I went to see the chairman, who said, ““I wouldn’t worry, as long as your salary comes in””. It is therefore appropriate at this stage to look at the drafting. There is no great difference between me and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on the numbers on the board. We have come up with different answers, and I am sure that the final answer does not need to follow my prescription precisely, but three members of a board are, and always would be, too few. You only have to have someone with a bad cough and you are down to two. As to the maximum, I have not sought to change the figure of 10, but I suppose that if I were in a position to choose I would argue for 12. In addition, renewable five-year terms are not as good as renewable three-year terms. I accept that that could be debated and that there would be genuine disagreement, but if you have three-year terms, the best expectation is that a member of the board who is diligent will always get one reappointment, which will mean six years, or two, which will mean nine. In exceptional circumstances, members could serve for 12 years. There is always a problem at the beginning of a new organisation because how do you ensure that, when people retire after three years, the whole board does not have to go because all the members were appointed on the same day? There needs to be some provision, which I have not put into my amendment, to deal with that issue so that you get on to the ““one-third, one-third, one-third”” system without the whole board having to go at once. In this case, however, despite one of the amendments which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, will talk to, I imagine that some people will continue. Indeed, I very much hope that some board members from the organisations that are being merged will continue because in such a merger there is a need to have people who know what has happened and can give the right advice to the new chairman, whose tenure we are all looking forward to. In conclusion, Amendments Nos. 101 and 102 seek a rather more standard approach to board appointments that is consistent with Nolan. In this case, I see no reason not to read across from Nolan, who had views on the private sector as well as the public sector. I also seek to introduce consistency and certainty into how boards are appointed and their length of tenure because, as has been said many times in this Committee, the more consistency and certainty that we can provide to all the people who are interested in such an important organisation as the regulator, the better. I beg to move.