Clause 40 - Payment of inquiry expenses by Minister
Inquiries Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
The Bill, particularly in clause 40, places a welcome new statutory obligation on the Minister to fund an inquiry, which does not exist in current legislation. I know that the Opposition tend to look at the glass as half empty, but it is a positive step forward to enshrine the obligation in the Bill, and I would have thought that they would welcome that. Of course, any obligation must be properly defined and its limits set out. The extent and the shape of those limits are the point of contention here.
It is highly unlikely that the power to withdraw funding would ever be needed, but it has to be included as an emergency safeguard. We would not be doing our job in safeguarding public money if the Bill did not provide some mechanism to prevent expenditure on matters wholly outside the terms of reference of an inquiry. If the amendment were agreed, it could have the effect of giving an inquiry a blank cheque to spend money on anything it wanted to. The Minister would then, in theory, be obliged to fund that. Obviously, ministerial accountability to Parliament, and ultimately to the taxpayer for their money, requires that the Minister has some control over that money. That is one of the reasons why I do not want to see the Committee accept the amendment.
There are strict conditions on the withdrawal of inquiry expenses by a Minister. The withdrawal of funding would be a temporary measure used as a last resort in relation to a particular activity. Funding could never be withdrawn retrospectively. Clause 40 requires the Minister to give the chairman a formal notice. That is the communication process in extremis. Costs arising from the period before the notice is given would have to be met. In practice, a formal notice would be the end of a dialogue between the Minister and the chairman. To answer the point raised by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), that dialogue would be ongoing before the formal notice stage. Once the inquiry returned to performing the task set out in its terms of reference, funding could be reinstated.