Sepuloni CarmelPARLIAMENTARY AGENCIES DELEGATIONS LEGISLATION BILLSecond ReadingHon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development) on behalf of the Leader of the House: I move That the Parliamentary Agencies Delegations Legislation Bill be now read a second time.The Parliamentary Agencies Delegations Legislation Bill makes a small but significant adjustment to the law to allow the two organisations on which this House depends Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives to work together more closely by each being able to delegate responsibilities to employees of the other. They will be able to share corporate services such as human resources engagement and records management reducing costs but also providing better services for members of Parliament and everybody else who makes this place function. It is an omnibus bill that amends both the Clerk of the House of Representatives Act 1988 and the Parliamentary Service Act 2000.Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk have been working more closely for some time. For many years the office's legal team has provided advice to the Parliamentary Service. There is common provision for IT services through Parliamentary Service's contract with Datacom. The creation of a single parliamentary engagement team to manage education public engagement interparliamentary relations school visits communications and website management has recently shown the value of a more integrated approach.The bill has been considered by the Governance and Administration Committee and I thank committee members and chairperson Dr Jian Yang for their work. They were given the full six months for the select committee process but reported the bill to the House in under three months—an excellent and efficient committee. There were three submissions including one from the Public Service Association that made the point that the people who work for the two organisations are passionate about their work and raised good questions about the ongoing arrangements around negotiating processes for people working together by means of delegation but being employed under separate agreements. I trust that the two organisations will address this issue as the reformed practices come into effect. It also raised the possibility of allowing delegation to other agencies in the wider Public Service. This would potentially compromise the status of these two agencies as being distinct from agencies associated with the executive.I thank Tipene Apatu and Max Banner for taking the trouble to make a submission. A technical amendment will be necessary and I will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper at the committee of the whole House stage next week. It is important to underline that the role of the Office of the Clerk is to be a completely independent source of advice and knowledge on parliamentary law practice and procedure and is the administrator of parliamentary processes. We should remind ourselves again of the words of the former Clerk of the House Mary Harris who has said that the independence of the Clerk would be difficult to maintain if a Clerk was located in the Parliamentary Service and that the current division of responsibilities allows the Clerk to give free and frank advice fearlessly. The Governance and Administration Committee heard from the present Clerk that he did not see the bill as a first step in merging the two agencies. The committee supported his view and was correct to say that the intent of the bill is to minimise duplication not to join the two organisations together. It is the Government's view that protecting and maintaining the independence of the office is absolutely essential to sustain the high reputation that the New Zealand Parliament has among the community of Westminster Parliaments.The Francis Review has provided added context to these changes. The unifying of the human resources capability was a proposal that arose from the review so it is important that this be put in place as soon as possible. This is a small bill but it will make a contribution to the evolution of the services provided to this House and to New Zealand by the key organisations that serve it. I commend the bill to the House.