Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, earlier in our debate noble Lords paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for his conduct of the Bill, which I would certainly echo. He has brought forward some welcome amendments, which have strengthened the effective scrutiny of the Bill. I urge him to go one step further and respond positively to my amendments in this group. There is no doubt that, with Clauses 8 and 16 and the strengthening of Clause 10 on ““Consultation””, there have been welcome additions. Will the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, agree to strengthen the Bill a little more as regards Clause 10? Essentially, what I would like to see is that, when a Minister proposes to make an order under Clauses 1 to 6, under Amendment 65, the public must always be consulted. Under Amendment 66, in relation to Clause 10(1)(a), I am suggesting that the body or the holder of the office to which the proposal relates ought to include staff and trade unions. In this Bill—despite the modifications that the noble Lord has brought, including one or two that we have voted upon—considerable powers still rest with Ministers to deal with the bodies contained in Schedules 1 to 6. In view of that, it is right that there should always be formal public consultation when an order is used under this Bill. We have discussed this matter in Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, took issue with me. He said, at col. 1722, that my amendment, as it would apply, would not be proportionate in relation to any proposed reform and that my approach runs contrary not only to the policy of the current Government but also to the code of practice on coalition, which, he pointed out, the previous Government had brought in June 2008. I fully understand the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is making, but the circumstances have changed. We have a Bill that lists a whole raft of public bodies and, through an order-making power, the Minister can make considerable changes to those bodies. When one reads down the list of organisations and sees those that are to be abolished and those that are going to be merged or have their constitutional arrangements modified—and that means that a Minister can decide to change the constitution of such a body, or to modify their funding arrangements—it does not seem unreasonable to me that there ought always to be public consultation in relation to the use of an order. In respect of the staff of those organisations, I would have thought that, since they are likely in some cases to be very fundamentally affected by the use of an order, it would not be unreasonable for us to put in the Bill that they, too, ought to be consulted. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has been very constructive in his response. I hope he may have been able to reflect a little since Committee stage on this point. I beg to move.