Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, my Amendment 69AA is the second amendment in this group. I think that there has been some inadvertent misgrouping in this complicated Bill and I suspect that this amendment would have appeared more happily in the first group of amendments, alongside government Amendment 69A. However, with your Lordships’ indulgence, and since I have no intention of putting this to the vote, I will proceed to seek to persuade the House that this small amendment would serve a large purpose. In the first group of amendments, the Minister laid great stress on the fact that no order can be made unless there is an Explanatory Memorandum produced so that Parliament can judge what is going on with regard to the order. Earlier today, the Government got through this House with approbation Amendment 60A, which changes Clause 8 and introduces various specific qualities that must be met by any order before it can be enacted: effectiveness, efficiency, economy and securing appropriate accountability to Ministers. Those are quite expressly, by the provisions of Clause 11, to be included in the Explanatory Memorandum. Not included in the Explanatory Memorandum, but a fundamentally important aspect of the protections in this Bill, are the provisions of Clause 16(3). I will read it because it is quite short. It simply says: "““Provision made by an order under the preceding provisions of this Act must be proportionate to the reasons for the order””." I do not think that anybody sitting here tonight will need convincing that proportionality is one of the most important pillars on which good legislation is built, but there is no reference to proportionality in the provisions of the Bill dealing with the Explanatory Memorandum. That is still the case after the amendments have been read into Clause 11. Clause 11 as amended requires the explanatory document to introduce and give reasons for the order. The first of those in the earlier government amendment is that, "““the order serves the purpose in section 8(1)””." There is no reference to Clause 16(3). In simple terms—I do not think that this is contentious; indeed, it seems to me to be an improvement in the Bill, whichever way one looks at it—I want a requirement that the Explanatory Memorandum must also include the Minister’s justifications in terms of proportionality for introducing the order, so that that can be considered along with efficiency, effectiveness, economy and accountability. Whichever way that plays out in the Bill as it will emerge tonight, I hope that my noble friend will accept the amendment in principle so that it can be brought back at Third Reading in the proper place.