Education and Adoption Bill (Third sitting)

James Berry Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Steve McCabe]

I cannot believe that any of us would want unreasonable delay or the incurring of unreasonable expense. We want to be sure that the powers secured by the Minister are fair, reasonable and adequate for the required purpose, but also subject to sufficient scrutiny, so that they are not open to misuse or abuse.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

On the previous point, will the hon. Gentleman explain why parliamentary scrutiny would make anything quicker when the judicial review avenue would still be open, notwithstanding parliamentary scrutiny?

[Steve McCabe]

I believe that the hon. Gentleman is one of several legal practitioners on the Committee. In fact, I think that is also your background, Mr Chope. I might not be able to rely on all the civil service support that the Minister has, but I see that there will be no shortage of advice available to me today.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton is right to acknowledge that judicial review would still be an option. I am not surprised that he, as a lawyer, spotted that; I suppose it is in his DNA. However, my point was that it would be possible, through parliamentary scrutiny, to judge at a much earlier stage whether, on balance, Parliament thought this a fair and reasonable proposition. Presumably, an application for judicial review would take into account whether the decision that Parliament had arrived at could be judged as reasonable. I do not know if the hon. Gentleman wants to give me the benefit of his legal opinion, but that seems a reasonable conclusion for a layman to draw.

When I put it to the Minister during the evidence session that he might choose to follow the procedure recommended by his noble Friend when challenged on a similar point, the Minister relied on telling us that it would be a “transparent process”. When he responds, will he say a little more about that transparent process? How does he envisage implementing the powers if Parliament decides to grant them?

Since the purpose of the legislation is to give the Minister a back-up that he has virtually no intention of using, I cannot see why he would resist such an obviously sensible back-up from the Opposition. The amendment merely adds a little parliamentary insurance to the proposals before us today.

Amendments 2, 3, 4 and 5 are consequential and there is no real purpose in my spending further time on them. Amendment 6 requires that the order made under subsection (1) should be subject to an affirmative resolution. Again, were the Committee to find in favour of what the Opposition are suggesting today, it would be logical to find in favour of amendment 6 as well.

The amendment is simple and straightforward. I am challenging the necessity for the Minister to have powers of direction. If it is essential that he has such enormous powers, I suggest that it would be much better for Parliament to be the final decision maker. Were we to find ourselves in that position, it would make sense for any order to be subject to an affirmative resolution.