Schedule 2 - New Schedule 4A to the National Lottery etc. Act 1993
National Lottery Bill
5:45 pm
Hugo Swire (Shadow Minister (the Arts), The Family & Culture, Media & Sport; East Devon, Conservative)
I stand corrected, Mr. Gale.
The real problem here, if we do not press the amendment to a Division, is what we will allow to slip through under the net. We would effectively give the Secretary of State total control over the appointment of the board and the ability to remove people as and when she saw fit. We would give her the power to expand the board if those left were still unwilling. If she had sacked so many of them that they had be given a vestige of independence, she could pack it full with placemen. According to the Minister, the Secretary of State will rely on feedback. If the chairman is not up to standard, the board will rely on feedback and the Secretary of State will presumably deliberate and pronounce sentence on the wretched chairman.
I am not a lawyer, but I do not know that the highest court of appeal in the land can be the Secretary of State who has originally nodded through the appointment and then made a decision based on feedback. What rights will this poor fed-back chairman have? No doubt, like most of my constituents who reach the end of the road in their cases, he would scoot off to the European Court of Human Rights. Undoubtedly his rights would have been infringed. I hope that the Minister will answer those 10 points. That was a joke. That is what we will be nodding through. The Secretary of State will be the highest appeal for this poor fed-back chairman and so it goes on.