Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. It seems almost unseemly to move a Second Reading in the wake of the august tributes to the retiring Clerk of the House. It is actually quite appropriate, because many of the tributes to Sir Malcolm, which I heartily endorse, talked about his understanding of and commitment to the powers of this House. Central to those powers is the House's power and right to hold the Executive to account. That is essentially what the Bill is about. It will enlarge the scope of the state—the public realm—which this House and Parliament can hold to account, and reduce the scope of quangos and non-departmental public bodies and the range of public state entities that are not accountable to a democratic authority. That is long overdue. The Bill will put in place a mechanism that will enable this Government and future Governments to change the landscape of those bodies without the need for separate primary legislation whenever anything is sought to be done. The public are right to expect a system in which Ministers are accountable for what the Government do and for how taxpayers' money is spent. For too long, there has been the proliferation of a complex network of public bodies, which has worked against that expectation by blurring the lines of accountability and disguising inefficiency and duplication in the delivery of public services. It is for that reason that last summer the Government conducted an intensive review of public bodies, which was stimulated and led by the Cabinet Office but conducted by the relevant Departments across Whitehall. It was the most comprehensive interrogation of the role of such bodies for decades. We subjected each body to four tests. The first was existential and asked whether the body needed to exist and whether its functions needed to be carried out.