Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayter, specifically Amendment 62. I do not want to dissociate myself from the general praise for the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor; he has been the most flexible of Ministers that we have yet seen in this coalition Government, and we are all extremely grateful to him, not least for his Amendment 60A. However, it is still slightly lacking; if the Minister is now the Lincolnshire poacher, where does that leave the gamekeeper? Parliament is the gamekeeper, but with the whole of the Bill Parliament is letting go the central principle that primary legislation can be amended only by other primary legislation. If we are to do so—and I understand the logic and the safeguards that are beginning to be built into the Bill—then we need to be quite explicit about how we are letting it go. My noble friend Lady Hayter’s amendments make it clear that, when the aims and objectives of a particular body are specified in existing primary legislation and when any Minister wants to activate one of these mergers, abolitions or changes in function, then as part of the process the Minister must go specifically through those aims and objectives and explain how they will be achieved in the absence of the body or after the proposed changes to the nature of the body have been made. In the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that means a bit more discipline. It requires Ministers to put before this House what the original primary legislation required of the body and how that will now be carried out. If that is to be transferred, that needs to be explicit; if that is to be merged with the requirements of another body, that needs to be explicit; if that is to be transferred to a private body, that needs to be explicit, with the other complications that arise from that; if that is to revert to the Minister, that needs to be explicit; or, if that is to disappear into the ether, Parliament needs to be clear what is happening. When we agree to these safeguards—and the Constitution Committee has now accepted that, broadly speaking, these safeguards meet the criteria—we need to ensure that the process runs through a check of what was set out in the original legislation. My noble friend’s amendment would take us a significant way towards achieving that and exerting that degree of discipline on the future use of this legislation by Ministers.