Public Bodies Bill [HL]

We have just heard four very powerful speeches, which I hope will influence the Government. I shall try not to repeat the various points that have been made but I agree with them. My noble friend Lady Hayter made a very good point when she talked about the Legal Services Board and the Legal Services Commission, because these bodies need to be seen to be independent. I am disappointed by the Government’s amendments for two reasons. First, I think that there is very wide agreement, both in this House and indeed in the House of Commons, with what the Government want to achieve. There is no argument about the need to find new and better ways of ending, changing or winding up quangos, and there is a wonderful opportunity here for all-party agreement in both Houses about improving the way in which we set up these bodies and change them. The second reason I am disappointed is that at Second Reading I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who I thought—indeed, I said it to many people—made a very powerful and thoughtful speech. He seemed to have grasped the acute anxiety felt across this House about the extent of the power being given to Ministers over Parliament. That is what triggers so much of the concern and it follows on from the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, which focuses very much on the critical issue of the judiciary. The Government still do not understand that this is a question of how much power a Minister has to override Parliament—that is what it boils down to and I say it deliberately and distinctly. As has already been stated, government Amendments 167, 168 and 108, which I am sure the noble Lord will speak to in due course, require the Minister to consider. That is a very small step forward but it does not address the fact that, once the Minister has considered, he can still go ahead and carry out the actions that he was thinking of taking with or without any changes, regardless of what Parliament may have said or done. Parliament cannot make amendments, as was originally the case when the primary legislation went through. I am a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee which, as the House would expect, gave very careful consideration to this, all the way through. I do not want to go into detail about what the committee said—these views are obviously my own—but concern was expressed, reflecting what was happening in this House, that Ministers were being given excessive powers and that Parliament was being sidelined. That is the core of the issue. It is very difficult to amend the Bill in a way which addresses those points satisfactorily. There were more opportunities than the Government availed themselves of with the amendments that they have tabled to date and that is why I strongly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, as I think it is very important. If the Government take the view that their main aim is to allow Ministers to change, to wind up or whatever, these bodies, they have to ask themselves how on earth they can deal with the independence issue and the fact that primary legislation is being overturned without a vote in Parliament. This is essentially about the power of Parliament versus the power of government. As someone who has experience of many Governments I know that, at times, all Governments get carried away by the power of government but, frankly, most Governments take some years to reach that stage. With this Bill, the Government have reached it at a much earlier stage. Even if I were sitting on the Conservative Benches, I would be worried about an overpowerful Government. That is why some of the Minister’s Back-benchers are worried. I know that is true. They have said it in a debate and in other circumstances. There is genuine concern about this and I do not think it is satisfactory. Perhaps I may quote from the fifth report of the Public Bodies Bill, which is not the report that was in the Public Bill Office today. I get the feeling that the Minister might think that he has met some of the concerns expressed in the fifth report. I can see that he has tried. It is paragraph 35 and subsequent ones. He seems to take the view that if he does some of those things, somehow that makes the Bill all right. Paragraph 42 is the key bit. It also refers to the 2006 Act. I shall quote the whole passage, which is fairly long, so I hope the Committee will bear with me: "““During the passage of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill the government made a commitment””—" I stress ““a commitment””— "““that they would not use the process for highly controversial measures, and would not force through orders in the face of opposition from the parliamentary committees … This Committee””—" the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee— "““has emphasized before that ‘the insertion of a super-affirmative procedure cannot bring a misconceived delegated power within the bounds of acceptability’””." That is a key part of that report. Simply by trying to bring in some of these lesser safeguards, like considering matters or like the super-affirmative procedure, does not alter the fact that to give power to Ministers which marginalises the power of Parliament to alter Acts of Parliament which are reasonably made by primary legislation cannot be right and cannot be desirable. I end where I started. The opportunities for all-party agreement in both Houses are very great. An imaginative approach would be to say that we all want to deal with quangos more effectively than we have been, so let us find that way and there will not be great difficulty on that. I think the Minister would find a lot of people in agreement with him. However, he cannot allow this to go through as it is and threaten the independence, as in the case of Amendment 1 now before us, of the judiciary and other legal bodies, as my noble friend pointed out. We cannot go through with that and allow Ministers to have the extensive power which is taken in this Bill. The powers are excessive and are a threat to the parliamentary sovereignty issue. At the end of the day, Parliament has the right to control government and not the other way around. These are classic Henry VIII powers. It is Henry VIII saying, ““I will listen””, or in the words of the Minister's Amendments 167, 168 and 108, ““I will consider the matter””. Then, of course, he can come back and do exactly what he said he would do anyway. That is the real example of a Henry VIII power. That cannot be allowed and we should not allow that; Parliament comes first, not government.