Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Blackwell Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blackwell]

My Lords, before speaking, I should draw attention to my interests as a non-executive board member of Ofcom and as a former board member of the Office of Fair Trading, although I will speak this evening only about the general principles of the Bill rather than about the specific proposals that will affect those organisations. I am also a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which will discuss the Bill tomorrow, but I stress that my remarks this evening are my personal views at this stage.

Having said that, let me say to the Minister that I am a strong supporter of the Bill, both on the substance of its proposals and on the form in which those have been produced, albeit with the appropriate safeguards that I hope that the Minister will be able to offer to the House in his concluding remarks. I am a strong supporter, because the reality is that there has been an unacceptable and unaffordable progressive rise in the costs and burdens of these kinds of bodies and their impact on the economy. It is easy to set up new bodies as a knee-jerk reaction to the latest concern and, once established, it is very difficult to get rid of them. What is more, the very worthy people who take up roles in these bodies with all the best intent will always find additional things that they can do whereby they can add—they believe—to the social welfare of their fellow citizens. On the margin, they are probably right but, when you add that up collectively, the collective burden becomes unaffordable. We are not talking only of the direct costs—the £38.4 billion that my noble friend mentioned—but of the indirect costs, because every individual sitting in a regulator creates work for four or five people in the private sector who respond to their e-mails, telephone calls and consultation. This becomes, with all the best intentions, a huge burden on the wealth-creating part of the economy.

These bodies should be properly subject to a zero-based challenge on a regular basis; they should be challenged to justify why they are there and whether what they are doing continues to be relevant. The reason we need this Bill is because we have not done that effectively. We have a backlog because no Government have had the courage to address the problem and I applaud this Government for picking up that challenge. Past attempts at deregulation have often failed because Governments have attempted to do them in small steps, step by step, and have run into the barriers of vested interests and long consultation periods, which means that they inevitably run into sand. So we need a bold approach if we are going to deal with this problem. The Government need to get on with it. In the process, some decisions may be imperfect, but I hope that we can minimise those during the passage of the Bill. Delay or indecision would be even more damaging.

I turn briefly to the form of the Bill, which I back in terms of implementing decisions in orders subject to a number of safeguards. When one thinks of the alternative, many man-years of Bill time went into creating these institutions. If we were to introduce primary legislation for every institution to make the amendments considered in this Bill, we would tie up Parliament for a decade. It is just not feasible. This is an exceptional circumstance and we need exceptional measures. Of course, Henry VIII powers should be used sparingly, and I am the first to be hawkish when looking at their abuse when they are inappropriate. However, this is an exceptional scale of reform, and delay and uncertainty are unacceptable, not only because of the cost but because, in many cases, the Government have announced what they intend to do. The longer we drag out that period of uncertainty for the institutions involved and those working for them, the harder we make it for them to continue to do an effective job.

I propose an additional principle that we might adopt when looking at the Henry VIII convention—a presumption in favour of deregulation. In other words, I suggest that we might look more tolerantly at the use of Henry VIII powers when they are used to remove or reduce regulations than when they are used to increase or add new functions or powers. This Bill is about reducing bodies, functions and regulations. On that basis, with appropriate debate in this House through its passage, I believe that delegated powers are acceptable as a practical way in which to achieve the ends. One caveat is that it is unclear from a strict reading of Clause 5, which talks about modifying functions—although I know that the intention of the Bill is deregulatory—whether that explicitly excludes the power to increase functions or create new functions. It would help me if the Minister could confirm that the Bill will be used only to reduce functions or transfer functions that already exist under primary legislation. If the Bill needs amending to clarify that, it might be helpful to do so.

The other point that has been raised repeatedly is on Schedule 7, which implements Clause 11. I share concerns that if economic regulators are in that schedule or bodies exercising judicial functions, uncertainty over those functions is unhelpful for those being regulated and exercising those judicial functions. My noble friend in his opening remarks implied that the powers under Schedule 7 would not be used in those circumstances, but it would help the House if he could confirm that the intent of the schedule would not be applied to the functions that have an economic regulatory function or a judicial function. Again, it might be helpful if the Bill was amended to clarify that.

I turn to the form of debate and the proposed amendment. Most of what is proposed with these bodies has already been set out by the Government in one place or another in the past few weeks. I cannot think of a better place in which to debate those various bodies and the proposals for them than the Floor of this House. If the Bill is passed as amended, individual affirmative Motions would then be brought back on every individual proposal, and I agree with those who have suggested that there may be opportunities to strengthen that affirmative process where it was called for. But nothing has been said in this debate to suggest that the passage of and debate on this Bill would be improved one jot by sending it off the Floor of this House to some small Select Committee. Let us spend more time on the Floor of the House, with the expertise of the House, rather than trying to create some delaying process.

To conclude, this is a bold Bill but I believe that it is an essential and necessary one. If we believe in the importance of removing the costs and bureaucracy that have grown up through excessive regulation, Parliament should not lose its resolve in giving the Government the powers that they need to get on with the job.