Public Bodies Bill [HL]

I shall respond to one particularly lengthy speech from my fellow Cumbrian, the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, who spoke at some length, allegedly about the Home Grown Timber Advisory Committee, although most of his remarks related to debates that we will have later on the Forestry Commission. Those debates will, fortunately, not be tonight and I will respond to those remarks on that occasion. With these amendments, those noble Lords who can remember their Monty Python were dealing with dead parrots. Amendment 29, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, relates to the Committee on Agricultural Valuation, which, as he said, has not met for something like 10 years. From a sedentary position I said, on two or three occasions, ““19 years””. Is there any purpose in keeping such a body going? It has withered on the vine; it is a dead parrot. Moving on to Food From Britain, as I think others have said, FFB ceased its activities in 2009 following a decision by the previous Administration to reduce its grant in aid—one of those rare occasions on which the previous Government did something to reduce expenditure. It is another dead parrot. Coming to the Home Grown Timber Advisory Committee, we will address during later debates the matters relating to the Forestry Commission that the noble Lord, Lord Clark, regaled us with at some length, but he was kind enough to remind us that, under his chairmanship of the Forestry Commission, that body last met in, I think he said, September 2005. Yet again, it is another dead parrot, which I do not think it is necessary to keep going. The noble Lord said that abolishing the advisory committee is not going to save any money and he carefully quoted from, I think, my Written Answer that it had cost something like £625 in total since 2005. He reckoned, quite rightly, that most of that money was probably in the earlier years—there were very little savings. However, I do not think that we should keep bodies going merely because they are costing nothing. If they are not doing anything, why not wind them up? This is a very useful tidying-up operation.