Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. In some senses, this debate has proved to be exactly what we had hoped that it would when we put down the amendments. We did so in a spirit of discussion and debate, which I hope has not been misconstrued on the other side. It is clearly a probing amendment. You cannot reinstate that which should not be instated in the first place and you certainly cannot abolish it subsequently since it has already been abolished. So we were in somewhat of an Alice in Wonderland world. We expected to be caught out and indeed we were. However, in so doing, the debate has been exactly as we had hoped it would be. There have been contributions from all around the House, which have covered all aspects of what we thought was an important issue. We have made the point that this is something that will not wait simply on some arbitrary definition of what is a statutory body and what is not. I said at the very beginning of my remarks—I am sorry that the Minister did not come back to this—that if the general point being made in this Bill is that bodies devolved from government to bodies whether statutory or not is an important feature of our constitutional hardwiring, why is it that we are not able to work into our system a method under which those bodies can be asked to report back to Parliament so that we can have the sort of discussion which we so patently have had today? That is a question which the noble Baroness might like to take back and think about as we move towards the Third Reading of the Bill. Several extremely valuable points were made during the debate. I particularly enjoyed those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which she has made to me on many occasions when I was in a position to do something about them. I suffered then and I think we have all suffered again today as we realise how bad we are about the diversity issues to which she drew our attention, and how much neglect there is in our overall concern about culture if we do not nurture our children. I wish the noble Baroness all the best in carrying on with putting these points forward. It may not be the case that the Danish model is the right one, but it is certainly something that we should be looking at, and I hope that the BFI will take it forward. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, was too modest when talking about his family’s experiences. I think that there is an Oscar lurking in there somewhere, along with other prizes, and we should celebrate that with him. He made the point exactly as one would expect: when we have something successful in the country—we had the Crown Film Unit that did fantastic work which is now being restored and reissued to audiences—when it is doing particularly well, we tend to chop it down on the grounds of cost. My noble friend Lady McIntosh said that we always have to think about how to get started in the industry. It is not a traditional industry in the sense that you can join at the bottom and work your way up; rather it is one that is feast or famine. If you have a success you are able to build on that, or you may have a series of failures. What you have to do is create a context within which work can be supported and nurtured and in which new people can always be brought forward. Creativity lies in the innovation of the young, not in the successes of the old, and we have to make sure that we get that right. My noble friend Lord Judd drew attention to the imaginative drive that permeates throughout many ministerial Statements these days. Why on earth can we not recognise that the creative economy is one of the places that we will get the returns we need? It must be backed with really sensible proposals that will take it forward and thus out of the traditional modes with which we have been trying to support it. My noble friend Lord Triesman made the important point that IP is the key to a lot of future creative activity and that those who try to abuse it are often linked into other criminal behaviour. We are going to be in serious trouble if we cannot think through how the rights to creative activities are being taken away from the creators up to the point where sometimes they will not invest in order to achieve the benefits that we would like from them. All in all, we have had a particular debate. I felt that the Minister did not really pick up on what the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Wills was about. My noble friend tried to say that while we are supportive of where we are, because we are going to have a merger between the UK Film Council and the BFI whether we like it or not, there are some good things to say about it. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, drew attention to the problems that can arise where a cultural body takes on a commercial wing. But the BFI has done production before and, I think, can rise to the challenge going forward. However, as my noble friend Lord Wills said, we now have a benchmark. We know what success means in this world. I recommend to Ministers that they should think carefully about where the UK Film Council took our film industry so that, when we are able to debate this issue again, we can think again about the benchmark and consider whether the changes that are being brought forward now are sufficient and can succeed in achieving a sustainable British film industry, something that all noble Lords will join me in saying that they want. As I said, this is a probing amendment and I do not intend in any sense to embarrass either my own or any side by taking it to a vote. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 65A withdrawn. Committee to begin again not before 8.45 pm. House resumed. Schedule 2 : Power to merge: bodies and offices Amendment 66 Moved by