Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodhart]

My Lords, I support what my noble friend Lord Norton said. The independence of the judiciary is a central and essential part of the constitution. In particular, the provision that would have enabled the Government to get rid of the Judicial Appointments Commission was plainly unconstitutional and could only have been dealt with by primary legislation.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel, which is part of the Legal Services Board and thus funded indirectly by lawyers, although technically appointed by the Secretary of State. Although we are about to see the LSB dropped from the Bill, I will raise some issues. It will become clear as I speak why I need to do that.

The UK has a long and proud record of an independent Bar, and of independent solicitors. This is important for its own sake, but also because the Bar is the pool from which our judiciary is drawn. They are thus already known for their robustness and independence from political influence by the time they don their judicial wigs. Even before that, lawyers can freely represent clients who are prosecuted by the state or even represent clients taking action against the state safe in the knowledge that their licence and freedom to practise cannot be removed by the state, as it was given by the Bar Council or the Law Society, over which the state has no control.

It is that security that enables lawyers to feel quite free to represent clients without looking over their shoulder to see whether they will be jeopardising their future livelihood. It is very hard to emphasise how important this tradition has been both here and abroad. There were therefore concerns when it was decided that the role of the Bar Council and the Law Society in authorising and disciplining lawyers was to be overseen, and indeed authorised, by the Legal Services Board, which was set up by statute with its members appointed by an elected politician, or at least a member of the legislature—the Secretary of State.

Although they accepted that the era of full self-regulation was past and that some independent membership of relevant boards was required, lawyers here and abroad were wary of the Government taking over ultimate responsibility for effectively granting or removing the licence to practise, with the implication of the regulation of lawyers coming under government control. Nevertheless, when the LSB was set up, albeit funded by lawyers, there were many—I am sure sincere—assurances as to the independence of the Legal Services Board from political interference. Lawyers both here and abroad—because of course many are trained here—were assured that government Ministers would not remove a lawyer who could upset or challenge them. It is very much for that reason that I am delighted about the loss of Clause 11 and Schedule 7, which of course list the LSB. However, in the mean time, another part of government has taken a quite serious swipe at the LSB, as well as my own Legal Services Consumer Panel, and at the new Legal Services Ombudsman set up under the same 2007 Act.

On 8 October last year, just days before the 14 October announcement of the bodies to be abolished or amended by this Bill, all three bodies received letters from the Ministry of Justice saying that the Secretary of State had received a letter from Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, telling us that our three independent, stand-alone websites “will have to be closed” and that we would need to use “an approved government website”—in other words, a .gov.uk domain. It will not come as any surprise that all three bodies protested most strongly that, being independent of government, we would not be treated in that way. Elizabeth France, the chair of the Legal Ombudsman, wrote to the Minister of Justice on 25 October saying that there was no justification for an ombudsman, set up to demonstrate independence from government regulation and the profession and spending no government money, having a .gov address. As she stressed, other ombudsmen, whether it be the Local Government Ombudsman, the Pensions Ombudsman or the Financial Ombudsman, all have .org.uk URLs, signifying their independence from the sectors on which they adjudicate and their independence from government. Our three websites cost nothing to the public purse as they are funded by lawyers, so there is no public expenditure rationale for this. However, it raises serious constitutional issues about the independence of the governance of those bodies—something to which the Government seem a little deaf.

On 28 February, we had confirmation of the very welcome decision to drop Clause 11 and Schedule 7, as reported at col. 799 of Hansard, and indeed had the Minister’s declaration that:

“The Government absolutely recognise that some public functions need to be carried out independently of Ministers”.—[Official Report, 28/2/11; col. 798.]

Just days after that, on 2 March, guess what? We received another e-mail from the Ministry of Justice telling us, “You will need to close your website by 31 March 2011”. To my knowledge there is no legal basis for such diktat from the Cabinet Office and there is, of course, no saving of public money.

Food: Regulation and Guidance

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and congratulate my noble friend on having made it available for us today. I also pay tribute to his work. I had the great privilege of serving under his chairmanship of the National Consumer Council, and since then I have watched him develop that organisation into what has become the very successful Consumer Focus—a body which, as he said, works in this and a number of other areas. Its great success is a testament to his work in the very many areas in which he has been involved.

It is fairly obvious that nutrition is very good for individuals, but it is also very good for society. A healthy population learns better at school, it works better and it plays better. That is good for our economy and it is good for individuals. The public expenditure saving, particularly in the health service, is one which I should hope the Government are taking an interest in and, therefore, doing more to promote.

We have seen in this country a long-term interest in the quality of what we eat and drink, which includes the Fabians’ early work on cleaner water. Safe food was perhaps regulated much earlier than other areas of our lives, and more recently there has been regulation on the labelling and promotion of healthy options. However, all of that works only if it has the confidence of all the parties concerned, including the Government, the producers of food, the distributers of food, the doctors and public health specialists and, above all, the consumers. That brings us to the key question of how food standards and nutrition are to be regulated such that the consumer is absolutely sure that the consumer interest is at the heart of regulation. As my noble friend mentioned, we have already learned the lessons of what happened when the beef farmers denied any problem with their stock and when the Government sought to reassure or advise the public—it did not work. Parents want to know that their child’s health does not depend on a politician with many other interests to balance deciding the content of the dinner plate. Nor will parents necessarily believe the advice given out by politicians—sad though that may be to believe. Parents want guidance and rules to be determined in a way that puts child health and welfare above any other consideration.

That point is fundamental to all types of regulation, whether in financial services, in medicine, in legal services—I must declare an interest as chair of the Legal Services Consumer Panel—or in the regulation of actuarial work, on which I must also declare an interest as a member of the Board for Actuarial Standards. The great success of good regulation—what is admired by other countries that look at our UK regulation—comes where the end-user is at the heart of regulation. It is never in the consumer’s interest to regulate unnecessarily, but where market failures arise due to the lack either of information or of opportunities to shop around or, as perhaps in this case, because there is too long a production chain so that the consumer cannot influence the market, regulation is needed to protect the consumer and to give advice and guidance. That is as much the case in food as in financial or legal services. I hope that the Minister will reassure the House that consumer protection will remain the Government’s watchword as they take over responsibility for nutrition from the FSA and, indeed, elsewhere in their regulatory role. We want to hear from the Government that consumers will be part of the dialogue on policy development and that consumer trust in our food—both in the quality of the food and in its nutritional value—can, therefore, continue and, indeed, increase.

In closing these very short remarks, I will take up my noble friend’s comments about our having come to the end of the era of cheap food. I take his word on that point. That being the case, let me end by asking the Minister about the impact on, for example, a widow with six children, given the Government’s proposed cap of £500 a week on her income. What impact will that have on the nutritional standards and thus the health of her six children?