Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I make it clear that, although I have been a member of and have chaired a considerable number of public bodies in my time, I am speaking without prejudice in this debate. Perhaps I may offer in evidence the fact that I currently chair two public bodies, neither of which is the subject of this Bill. One is to be wound up in March 2011, while the other is to be renamed, reformed, funded differently and given extended powers.

My role as chair in both cases is the same. I will work in a professional, consultative and considered way to deliver the outcome that the Government are aiming for as effectively and efficiently as I can—in one case, to wind the organisation up and, in the other, to deliver what will in essence be a new organisation. I hope that this illustrates that I am not in any way opposed in principle to the reform of public bodies. As further evidence, in my time I have participated in the merger of two public bodies and have closed another down. It is entirely right that review and reform should happen on a regular basis and for rational reasons.

As the Institute for Government reminds us in its report, Governments must seek to achieve a clear and sensible division between arm’s-length bodies, their sponsor departments and the public. However, I remain to be convinced that there are any rational reasons for some of the proposals in this Bill. There is no vision, no narrative and very little logic to suggest that this Bill represents forward movement or planned progression. On the contrary, the phrase that most readily springs to mind as I contemplate it is, “The urgent drives out the important”.

There is a desire to be seen leading the cull of quangos, which is promised by most incoming Governments, to simplify what by its very nature is the messy middle, as the Institute for Government terms it, between Whitehall and citizens. Also, of course, there is an urgency at this time to cut costs, if that was the aim, although we have heard from several noble Lords that this simply will not be achieved. For me, two important factors, which I thought were central to the coalition Government’s agenda and to how they intended to proceed, have been driven out by this rush to be seen to be culling public bodies.

The first is localisation. Is it not essential to the concept of the big society that power should be decentralised and devolved to the most local level possible and be free of political interference? How does that accord with taking so much power back into Whitehall through the abolition of arm’s-length bodies and with taking so much power back into government itself? Quangos were almost always set up with the aim of being clear about divisions of responsibility and making clear to voters where accountability lay.

The other principle that seems to have been abandoned is that of ensuring that the voice of the consumer, the user or the patient is strong in the development and implementation of government policy. I quote from the Cabinet Office paper, Building a Stronger Civil Society. One of the core components of the big society agenda is said to be,

“encouraging and enabling people from all walks of life to play a more active part in society”.

Almost all quangos in the list have lay representation on their boards—indeed, many have lay majorities—and were set up precisely to provide that strong consumer voice to which the Government say that they are committed. The lay representation provides not only a counter to professional interests but also strong grass-roots opinions about how policies work for those who are subject to them, as opposed to how a policy wonk in Whitehall or a parliamentary draftsman might expect them to work. Moreover, when people in charge of institutions and departments of state change so frequently, the lay representatives are often the longest-serving members of any body and provide the institutional memory. That memory is important, because those who do not observe history are doomed to repeat it.

I hope that the Minister will be explicit in his reply about how my two concerns are to be addressed: first, the commitment to localism versus the centralisation of power implicit in the Bill; and, secondly, the Government’s commitment to the consumer versus the threat to lay representation.

Like other noble Lords, I have two more serious concerns—the manner of introducing this legislation and the nature of the legislation itself. Even if the proposals in the Bill were sound, which I dispute, the manner of its introduction—with no consultation to speak of, with staff finding out via leaks and newspaper reports that their organisation was to be abolished, with chairs being given 10 minutes’ notice of the changes and so on—is absolutely insupportable. Staff in public bodies are not luddites, whatever the Minister thinks; they are devoted, skilled and committed people who want to do their best. You do not motivate staff or boards to co-operate by behaving in this way and I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity today to apologise to those staff and boards who have been so offended and distressed. In these troubled times, we are all dependent on the morale of staff in public bodies. Have the Government begun to consider the effect that the way in which this has been handled has had on that morale?

I must also mention, as others have, the draconian nature of parts of the Bill. It is no less than abuse of power and I know that noble Lords on all sides of the House will do their utmost to amend its more outrageous parts as the Bill passes through your Lordships’ House.