European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-03-07
Topic: Government Operations
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I think the good news is that we heard a hint earlier that this might be one of the areas where we are going to hear a bit of movement tonight. If the Chief Whip will allow us to go home after this group, we will be sent home in a very happy mood My name is also on these two amendments and I will not make the case again, because the noble Lord, Lord Newby, made the clearest of cases against the use of secondary powers to create new quangos, with others adding similar reasons for why this is not just a power too far but is in breach of government guidelines I will add only two points. First—this is a slight gripe, I am afraid—in answer to my Written Question as to whether there were other examples of NGOs established by secondary legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said that it was not possible to answer other than "at disproportionate cost". But the Government must have known why I was asking this Question—they have a brain—and I would have thought that if there were some public bodies set up by secondary legislation they could have found a few examples. This was some time ago. Unfortunately it is an undated letter—like many I get from the Government —but it is HL1651, so I think it was probably last year that I asked it My second point—and in a sense it is really the point touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Beith—arises from my experience both as a consumer representative and as a former member of various regulatory bodies set up always by statute. It is simply to say that the very way we establish those bodies—whether it is the Charity Commission, the Competition Commission, the Legal Services Board or the National Consumer Council of which my noble friend Lord Whitty was such an eminent chair until the Public Bodies Act abolished it—affects how they do their job. The founding statute will spell out their task and set out the "have regards to" that influence how they set about their work. It will also define who sits on their boards, how they are appointed, to whom they report and whether, for example, they have a duty to heed consumers in the relevant industry, the regulated industry itself, the employees, the wider social considerations such as the environment or things like that—and indeed their degree of independence from the Government. It is a crucial part of the function of many public bodies Such limitations on the powers of those public bodies, and the requirements for how they operate, are written in primary legislation. They can be discussed carefully, they can be amended—as we did before with others, as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said—they can be debated in this Chamber or in the other place, and they could have pre-legislative scrutiny. For example, setting up a new public ombudsman—as the Member in the other place Mr Jenkins has been recommending—could come by a Bill and could be amended after consultation with the relevant interested parties. That is the way that we should set up public bodies. Instead, this Bill says to a Minister, "Well, you decide. You decide how to set it up; you decide how its board will be established; you decide who to appoint it—probably you could decide to appoint your friends to it"—and Parliament will nod it through. That is not good enough and this power must be dispensed with.