Lord Balfe
Main Page: Lord Balfe (Conservative - Life peer)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes) (Con)
My Lords, I point out that if Amendment 81 were to be agreed, I could not call Amendments 82 to 82B inclusive by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Balfe (Con)
I, too, think that we need a slightly better definition of what is a body that is not a public authority that is “wholly or partly” publicly funded. The example that comes to mind is my local Tesco, which includes a pharmacy and a post office, both of which are of course in receipt of some public money. I wonder whether my noble friend will be revisiting her past by asking the local Tesco to conform. Seriously, this is a reach beyond where I think we should be going. It is becoming all encompassing, and I would like us to row back from going quite as far as the clause appears to be taking us.
Lord Tyler (LD)
I speak as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. This is precisely the sort of area which is inappropriate to be left to regulation, at least without clear guidance to your Lordships’ House at this stage.
Does the Minister appreciate that she is establishing a precedent here if she allows this sort of public authority creep to extend this far? The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, mentioned transparency. I am particularly concerned at present at the way in which the Government are rowing back on freedom of information. If the Government are not to be totally inconsistent in this area, they will have to extend freedom of information to these organisations.
You cannot treat an organisation that happens to be taking public money as automatically becoming a public authority in the terms of new subsection (9) without recognising the implications. If you are asking it in one respect to be treated as a public authority in terms of facility time, why not in terms of freedom of information? I beg the Minister to recognise the point that has just been made from behind her that this is a dangerous area to leave to secondary legislation. We are already in some difficulty with the relationship between primary and secondary legislation; this is precisely the sort of area which should not be left to secondary legislation. I hope very much that she will be able to give your Lordships a clear assurance that new subsection (9) is to be reviewed in toto, not just tweaked, otherwise it establishes a considerable new extension of the designation of public authority. If they are not prepared to do that, I warn the Government that, on many sides of this House, we will see this as an opportunity to extend the requirements of freedom of information legislation.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, it is getting late in the evening and I do not know whether we will get anywhere near the debate on check-off, but there are some similarities and some dissimilarities from this sort of question in a later clause. The Minister sent us a very courteous letter today about listing the bodies which will definitely be classed as within the public-sector umbrella on check-off. We have two timescales in which to give more thought to this; one is the longer-term timescale, naturally, between now and Report. Between now and Thursday, the go-ahead for some standardisation of which body is in which category in the public sector raises the question of terminology. The point has been made already, but I would like to put it slightly differently —that this is a game not of definitions but of looking at the Government’s criteria for their own judgment of which bodies they want to fall within scope.
Lord Balfe
The noble Lord mentioned a letter, and I understand that a letter has been placed in the Library. Could the Minister follow the good example of the noble Lord, Lord Bates? When he circulated letters, he did so directly to all the people who were involved in the debate on the Immigration Bill. When I discover that letters are in the Library, it is not exactly much help. But I thank the noble Lord for mentioning it.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I suspect that I got one because I have an amendment down in the group on check-off—I do not know. These procedural points arise, and I suspect that the problem of reaching beyond the public sector is one that really cannot be looked at without any crossover, with regard to facilities. On the other hand, it would be much better to have the debate on check-off on Thursday; then we can all have time to think about the jigsaw between them.
Lord Balfe
May I add to the general misery of the Minister? This clause really is far too sweeping. Whatever Bill it appears in, to my mind it extends the power of Ministers against the parliamentary officials by a far wider margin than can possibly be justified. The clause contains the words:
“If a Minister of the Crown considers it appropriate to do so”.
You can consider all sorts of things “appropriate” and then produce an SI that cannot be voted down in this House. It gives far too much power.
We already gave, in the previous clause, quite extensive powers of publication—probably more than many people would say were necessary, but there are certainly wide powers. The meaning of the clause is now, “If the Minister doesn’t like the information they’ve got, they can then proceed in detail to intervene in any public body”. That is just not good and acceptable public administration. I am not speaking now about localism or anything: it is not the way you should run a public administration.
The way the clause develops gives the Minister carte blanche to do virtually anything. They can ensure that,
“in each period specified by the regulations, the percentage of the working time of any relevant union official”—
they can say, “Let’s have a list of your union officials”; which ones are relevant?—
“of an employer that is taken as paid facility time does not exceed a percentage”.
Is the decision made in Whitehall? The noble Lord has already made the point about Newcastle and the parks department. This intervention is way beyond what is appropriate, acceptable or sensible. If you try to implement the regulations, you will immediately find that there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances. Given the need for publication, public bodies will not just sit down and roll over when the Government come along and say that elected or appointed officials in the health service or in local government cannot run a single unit of staff. This really goes far further than is sensible. I seriously urge the Minister to talk to her friends about withdrawing this unnecessary and, frankly, provocative clause.
Lord Oates (LD)
My Lords, I fully agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said. On reading Clause 13, I became worried about the Conservative Party—probably for the first time in my life—and about what has happened to the people in the Conservative Party, certainly since we were in coalition with them. I remember that they then believed that regulations were in general anathema and they decried state interest. Indeed, they believed in that to such an extent that at an early point in the coalition I remember that Conservative special advisers insisted that we removed a regulation relating to a requirement for children’s nightwear to be fire resistant, so appalled were they by the burden of state regulation that that put upon manufacturers. What has happened to that stance and to the belief in localism and pushing power from Whitehall down to towns, cities, schools and hospitals? With every clause in the Bill that we discuss, we see regulation upon regulation and overburdensome bureaucracy upon bureaucracy.
This clause is most extraordinary. The Government’s arrogance is breath-taking—a Government who, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, pointed out, would assume to themselves the power to determine these matters in relation to the parks department in Newcastle and to local authorities up and down the land. It is extraordinary that a Minister of the Crown can, according to new subsection (2)(b), make regulations,
“containing any provision that the Minister considers appropriate for one or both of the following purposes”.
This includes determining that,
“the working time of any relevant union official of an employer that is taken as paid facility time does not exceed a percentage that is so specified”.
It is simply extraordinary that any Government should suggest doing such a thing.
In our previous discussion on Clause 12, the Minister said that the intention of gathering all this information on facility time was not at all in order to use the reserve powers in Clause 13 to cap and restrict it. I have no reason to doubt the Minister’s sincerity but I am afraid that the political architects of this Bill in the Treasury—because that is where they are—have no such reticence. That is exactly why this clause is in the Bill, because the whole purpose of the Bill is to stamp down on trade unions and the opposition Labour Party. That is what it is all about. We know that from our time in the coalition because they tried to push this on us at least two or three times at that point.
This sort of clause should be the dream of every bureaucrat and state centralist and the nightmare of every Conservative and democrat. I hope that the Minister and the Government will think again.