My Lords, I was pleased to put my name to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Parminter. It seems obvious, as many noble Lords have said, that for the OEP to have the stature that the Government want it should be able to
give advice as it sees fit without constraint. Clearly, it will be constrained anyway in terms of its budget, its resources and its capacity so, like any similar authority, it is going to be careful about what it concentrates its resources and time on. That is quite a sufficient constraint on the OEP’s work and what it does. As the legislation says, if the Minister or the Secretary of State want advice in certain areas, it can give it, whatever that area is, yet it is strongly constrained in terms of reports on its own initiative. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, laid out that long list of areas where it would invaluable for the OEP on occasion to give its own opinion unprompted by the Secretary of State. As we have said many times before, the Climate Change Committee, which is respected nationally and internationally, is able to do that, and it uses that power well, responsibly and to effect. I see no reason why the OEP should not be able to do that as well.
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On my noble friend’s second amendment, it seems to be one of those cut-and-paste exercises by civil servants and government, where they think, “What clause do we put in to constrain power here?”, so the Treasury, the Armed Forces and the other areas are pasted into the legislation. I see no reason for this. If it was a matter of national security, I guess that we would all immediately agree but it is not. These are important areas, not least “allocation of resources”—that is everything in government, for goodness’ sake; that is what government is about. For it to be excluded is wrong and, again, it demotes the OEP to something that is not independent. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is absolutely right: this is another litmus test of that independence.
I was very interested by the explanation given by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, of her amendment. I must admit that I had rather lazily assumed that, in terms of rollover of EU legislation, this sort of information still had to be given. I am very pleased that she has put me right on that and I would be keen to hear from the Minister how he sees it. Clearly, such information should be reported into the OEP. It needs to be a body that has the respect not just of Ministers and of this Parliament but of the public and institutions such as the Environment Agency, the police, local authorities, Natural England and the MMO—all those organisations that have to enforce environmental law and need to be checked out by the OEP.
As I said, this is another litmus test for the independence of the OEP, for how it will be perceived internationally and for its stature in how it interacts with government and this Parliament.