Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, who makes an excellent tea companion. I am sorry that he came away none the wiser. At this stage in the evening, with most points covered so eloquently, I do not intend to make anything other than a short intervention.

The Minister is viewed with respect and affection in this House, and it is in that spirit that I say to him that he and his Government have definitely bitten off more than they can chew when it comes to this rather unloved and illiberal Bill. It must have looked like a cracking quick win to an incoming Government: “quangos”, so it goes, “equal unpopular, unnecessary bureaucracy”. The Labour Government had already done a good deal of the preparatory work in their Smarter Government report of December 2009, as my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon said, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance had been lobbying for years. The time for a cull had come. It would not cost anything to execute it—it might even gather in a tidy sum for the Exchequer. What could possibly go wrong?

Let me make it clear: I am not interested in the survival of NDPBs or their nearly 19,000 board members just as a general principle. That would be both ridiculous and indeed irresponsible. Any Government would be right to look at how the system could be reformed for the better.

As noble Lords have said, there is also churn—always churn—when it comes to NDPBs, as their usefulness and their relevance waxes and wanes. In fact under the Labour Government of whom I was a member, the total number of NDPBs fell by nearly 8 per cent from a high point in 1996-97. However, given that so much of the machinery and delivery of government services to the public is tied up in the public bodies regime, it is incumbent on government to undertake a proper cost-benefit analysis of the scale and the consequences of such radical dismantling of this regime before the bulldozers are brought in. Accountability is being held up as the prime motivation for the Government’s approach to public bodies, as my noble friend Lord Clark of Windermere said. Mr Francis Maude said:

“Today, the Government have taken decisive action to restore accountability … to public life”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/10/10; col. 505.]

If that is the case, it is for the Government to demonstrate their newfound conversion to accountability and transparency by instigating an open, public process of consultation and dialogue with those public bodies, both advisory and statutory, affected by the Bill. Even at this late stage I would call on the Government to demonstrate their commitment to that accountability and to Parliament.

I wish briefly to address two specific areas before drawing my remarks to a close. The first is the fate, sealed before this Bill was even published, of the Women's National Commission, an advisory NDPB. I had the privilege of chairing that commission between 1999 and 2002, and I pay tribute to the wonderful work of my predecessors from all sides of the House and to my successors in that post, the noble Baronesses, Lady Prosser and Lady Gould of Potternewton. As noble Lords will know, the commission's role began 40 years ago and was to co-ordinate the women’s voluntary sector across the UK and to ensure that the strong, resplendent voice of this sector was heard clearly and independently by government. It is one of the true ironies of the opening months of the coalition Government that the creators of the big society should, without consultation of any meaningful kind, dismantle the very organisation—the Women's National Commission —that is so pivotally placed to assist in the delivery of the big society. For who are the leaders, the workers, the planners, the instigators of voluntary work in this country? It is women, of course. I ask the Minister to say what is to replace the Women’s National Commission and its work and how the Government are going to approach the independence of the dialogue with the women’s voluntary sector in this country. If the Minister feels that he is not well briefed on women—and who can blame him—will he write to me on these points?

The second and last point I wish to make is as president of the Trading Standards Institute, a body supported and respected across this Chamber. Trading standards officers work as local authority officials and keep rogue traders at bay, protect the public from loan sharks and assist local businesses in their legitimate growth. The announcement by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Mr Vince Cable, that trading standards is a crucial front-line service along with Citizens Advice and will be strengthened by the new model set out in his consumer landscape review is, of course, to be welcomed but, and it is a very big but, handing over highly significant consumer and competition responsibilities through the Bill at a time of austerity-led local authority funding settlements is a move that has to be extremely carefully thought through because consumers—members of the public—must not be left less safe and more vulnerable with less opportunity and far less advice and choice in their lives. There is also the fact that while local government has broad shoulders and no doubt relishes these new challenges, consumers and markets are global as much as local these days and new governance models for trading standards and CABs must reflect those market and consumer demands, whatever the localist versus centralist politics of the day.

The Bill has raised many serious constitutional questions, as we read in the report by the Select Committee on the Constitution. The dreaded Schedule 7 —a quango version of Room 101—is there in front of us placing a cloud of uncertainty over highly significant public bodies, many of them esteemed partners of trading standards, such as the OFT, the Competition Commission, the Health and Safety Executive, the Local Better Regulation Office and many others. Can the Minister explain the necessity for and the reasoning behind Schedule 7? Will he look again at it given the strength of feeling and the rational argument across this Chamber tonight? Reform local bodies by all means, but do not recklessly dismantle them. I urge noble Lords to support the amendment to be moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.