Public Bodies Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 2)

This is a long list of amendments, but I hope we can deal with it quickly, as I sense that the mood of the House is in favour of moving on swiftly to what might well be more contentious issues. First however, it would be wrong of me not to join the Deputy Leader of the House in thanking the members of what was a very good Committee for their work and the spirit in which they undertook it. This group of Government amendments relates to four aspects of the Bill, and to matters which I hope the House will agree are sensible and uncontentious. New clauses 3 and 4 and amendments 25 to 29 will provide powers to enable certain bodies carrying out public functions—specifically the Environment Agency, Natural England and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as well as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Marine Management Organisation and internal drainage boards—to share back-office functions with other bodies. The powers also apply to other bodies carrying out Welsh environmental functions. New clauses 1 and 2 and amendments 12 and 16 to 20 will provide powers to enable the Environment Agency to delegate non-devolved functions to Welsh environmental bodies. They also incorporate provisions currently in clause 16 relating to delegation of Welsh environmental functions. Amendments 5 and 8 to 11 will extend the definition of ““eligible persons”” in clause 1(3) to include co-operative and community benefit societies and charitable incorporated organisations. Finally, amendments 6, 7, 13 to 15 and 21 to 24 are minor and technical drafting amendments. Turning first—and briefly—to the issue of shared services, there is a move across government to reduce the cost of back-office functions such as human resources, IT and payment processing. Freeing up bodies to share back-office services is an important way of rationalising and delivering economies of scale. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has some large non-departmental public bodies, such as the Environment Agency, which could serve as centres for delivering back-office services to other bodies in its network. However, these bodies do not currently have clear legal powers to be able to provide such services. That is because providing these back-office services to others is not always incidental or related to their main or primary purpose. The aim of these amendments is to provide a clear power so that, for example, the Environment Agency could provide back-office services such as accounting services to a body such as Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, or operate contracts for vehicles for the DEFRA network. That would be beneficial in efficiency and economic terms, and there are likely to be many more such examples as sharing of services becomes more common.