Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I will respond to Amendments 31 and 34 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I would like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that there has been no element of his legs having been broken or anything like that. Sadly, my noble friend Lord Greaves is ill. He is not here, so we wish him well and look forward to seeing him back in due course. I will also speak to Amendments 46, 53, 57, 58 and 59. Amendments 58 and 59 are in the name of my noble friend Lord Taylor. Amendments 46, 53 and 57 are in the names of my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Taylor, which gives some indication of where we are coming from on those issues. I agree totally and utterly with the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, about the strength of support on her own Benches for the national parks and the Broads authorities. That is true of all Benches throughout this House, and I reiterate it on behalf of the Government. We had a good debate on this matter in Committee on a similar group of amendments, and on that occasion I explained the Government’s thinking in placing these bodies in Schedules 3, 5 and 6. I shall make things absolutely clear on the scope of Schedule 3 for the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who seemed to imply that the provision could be used in a slightly wider way, with matters from other clauses. We do not think that Schedule 3 could be used to go wider than it is set out, and I hope that I shall be able to cover that matter in due course. We dealt with Amendments 3, 5 and 6, which stemmed from the consultation on the governance arrangements for those bodies, which honoured a commitment in the coalition agreement—our bible—and was run in close co-operation with the national parks and Broads authorities. We asked each authority to make recommendations following consultation on the changes needed for their governance arrangements. We were clear from the start that the objective was to improve the governance arrangements of those bodies and not to remove or replace them. For that reason, they do not appear in other schedules to the Bill—not in Schedules 1 or 2, for example. Our consultation began with these words: "““The Government wishes to retain an independent authority, as currently exists, for each of the National Parks and the Broads. It intends that these authorities should continue to be the local planning authority for their areas””." The paper then went on to raise a number of questions about what modifications or refinements of the current governance arrangements might be desirable. In Committee, your Lordships pressed me on the sort of steps we might want to take and on why those could not be achieved without this Bill, perhaps by using powers which already exist in the Environment Act 1995 or the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. Of course, at that time it was too early for me to be able to give concrete examples, as we were still at an early stage of evaluating the consultation. I have the slightly embarrassing admission to make, because at that stage I announced that we would have the outcome of our consultation by the end of this month. That has slipped a little, because that takes us into the period of local government elections Purdah, and it will not now be until after the elections. At that stage, I still thought that Report stage might be after Easter, but one never knows quite what the Opposition will achieve in delaying government legislation. So there has been a degree of blame on all sides. But we have made significant progress in identifying what might be in our response. As a result, we have come to the conclusion that there is very little likelihood of the powers in Clauses 5 or 6—the powers to transfer functions and authorise delegation—being needed to implement any changes resulting from that consultation. For this reason, I propose to remove the national parks and Broads authorities from the schedules. That is why Schedule 6—because they are the only bodies left in that schedule—will disappear, and Amendments 46, 53, 57 and 58 have that effect. Amendment 59 is a consequential amendment that removes the reference to Clause 6 from Clause 7. Although it is clear that Clauses 5 and 6 are not required to implement necessary changes, the same is not true for Schedule 3, which deals with constitutional arrangements, so I cannot agree to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. It would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt or predict the announcement that we shall make after the May elections. However, purely by way of illustration, the House will see a number of the suggestions which national parks authorities have already made. The proposals are—dare I say it?—largely in the public domain, having featured in various board papers produced by the authorities, and elsewhere. They include, for example, the power to remove the requirement for the Secretary of State formally to appoint the members whom parish councils choose and the power to allow non-councillors to be eligible for the parish seats, or to limit the maximum time that all members may serve on a national parks authority. Any of those points, if accepted, could be delivered through Clause 3. I appreciate that noble Lords might feel that there are other ways of dealing with these things but we think it would actually be easier and better, under the powers in the Bill, to deal with those matters in that way. I therefore hope that your Lordships will agree that it is premature to consider removing Schedule 3 at this stage and that it should continue to stand as part of the Bill. There is no sinister motive behind that; all we are proposing is a power to amend constitutions and all the usual checks and balances are available in the Bill. We want to look at what comes out of that consultation. I have given some hint of that in what has appeared in the public domain but the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will probably know even more—the noble Lord smiles—about what might come from it. I hope that he will accept that this should continue to be part of the Bill. As I said, we are perfectly happy to remove the national parks and Broads authorities from Schedules 5 and 6, which is why we have tabled our amendments. However, it is quite right that they should remain part of Schedule 3 on the power to modify constitutions. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.