Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention, and I accept the point about all-party support, but the point is the knee-jerk reaction of the Prime Minister of the day, who took the decision without providing for appropriate scrutiny. The proposal was rushed through the House without the then Opposition having an opportunity to make their case. I need to make progress, because of the time. I want to come on to some of the points made earlier. A word of caution: merely merging individual bodies with a Government Department is not necessarily the right thing to do. There must be reform and enhancement. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General for talking about the need for reform when he opened the debate. I speak from experience of the so-called bonfire of the quangos in Wales some years ago. For purely political reasons, the Welsh Assembly Government abolished the Welsh Development Agency and the Wales Tourist Board, among many other organisations. That was welcomed by Labour, Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrat politicians at the time. The claim was that there would be better democratic accountability, but the reality was very different. Simply merging the organisations without reform meant that agency staff became civil servants, and the expertise gained over many years was stifled by the bureaucracy of the civil service. Those events started almost seven years ago to this day, and those very people who were the strongest cheerleaders for the winding up of those bodies are now calling for their re-establishment. I am certainly not opposed to the lists in the schedules, or to the need for Ministers to reform and reorganise. I strongly agree with the objectives of the legislation, but caution against winding up for winding up's sake. I would also underline the need to make reform part of the process. There must be a wider reforming agenda to improve services. In the final couple of minutes available to me, I want to talk about S4C. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) made a pretty disingenuous contribution. To talk about a 96% cut to funding certainly is not accurate. S4C will receive a 6% funding cut per annum over the next four years. That is very different from the sort of figures that she talked about. Furthermore, all the demands made by supporters of S4C have been met by the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. I shall go through the primary ones in turn. The first was about the importance of long-term funding. I was delighted that in the written ministerial statement published on Monday, the Government said:"““The Government are committed to ensuring that S4C will be funded at a level sufficient to ensure that it can fulfil its statutory remit and we intend to put this expectation on the statute book so that it is a legal requirement.””—[Official Report, 11 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 2-3 WS.]" Certainly, that issue has been resolved. Secondly, the need for independence, both operational and editorial, has been accepted by the Secretary of State for Wales. Thirdly, on the issue of the arrangements with the BBC, of course the provisions have to be in the Bill to secure the very independence that we have been talking about, and the long-term funding arrangements for which everyone has called. Those who are critical on the subject of S4C, and the strongest champions of the channel, are not equally critical when it comes to Radio Cymru, for which the BBC is also responsible, so there is significant inconsistency in the argument that is made. Finally, it is ironic that the retail prices index link was part of the fault. Many S4C Authority members have shown arrogance over the past year; they felt that they had the right to do things irrespective of the attitude of viewers, whose numbers have been falling for the past five years or more. It is time to act, and I am delighted that the Government are doing so.