Clause 10
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
4:30 pm
Danny Alexander (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 63, in clause 10, page 5, line 8, at end insert ‘and laid before Parliament’.
It is a pleasure, Mr. Taylor, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, but by no means the last—although it will be the last time for several months.
I refer to what the Minister said in his closing remarks on clause 9, which is about parliamentary accountability. A feature of the Committee’s proceedings has been that a number of amendments have been tabled seeking to strengthen parliamentary accountability, in recognition of the fact that the new body is to be further removed from Parliament than the Child Support Agency.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale tabled an amendment that would have required parliamentary approval for the appointment of the chair of the commission, and further amendments were tabled on the subject of Parliament debating the annual report. I am sad to say that a feature of the Government’s response so far has been that, despite the rhetoric of the new Prime Minister about strengthening the role of Parliament and parliamentary accountability, Ministers have chosen to reject the amendments. I hope that we will see a change in that pattern in relation to this amendment, and I look to the Minister for a response.
Clause 10 relates to the link that will continue to exist between the will of the Secretary of State and the activities of the commission, an arm’s length body or a non-departmental public body. The clause quite rightly gives the Secretary of State the power to provide guidance on how the commission should carry out its work, which is not binding, and to issue directions, which are binding as I understand it. In other words, he may give instructions that the commission will have no option but to follow. It is right and proper that he should have those powers because, although it is at arm’s length, the new body is still a Government one.
The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that, when the Secretary of State chooses to exercise the powers, giving guidance or directions to the new body, Parliament should be made aware that he has done so. That relates to several broader matters. It would ensure that the lines of accountability between the Secretary of State and the commission are clear and can be seen clearly. A degree of openness in the relationship would be healthy—many hon. Members are still supporters of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; I certainly am—as it would allow ongoing scrutiny of the exercise of those functions.
The risk, when governmental functions are transferred to arm’s length bodies, is that a mechanism may come about that detaches responsibility somewhat—it is not the Minister’s fault; it is the commission’s. The commission is being given a degree of responsibility and, therefore, it must accept that blame sometimes comes with that.
Ultimately, the commission must be answerable both to Parliament and to the Secretary of State. If that information were laid before Parliament, it would aid the public’s and Parliament’s understanding of the way in which the Secretary of State is exercising his functions in relation to guiding and directing the activity of the commission. I suspect that if this were a private organisation, we would be hearing shouts from defenders of commercial confidentiality on not putting the information before Parliament. However, the body will be a public one, not a private one, so I do not see that that objection should apply. The Minister may wish to respond that at least some of the directions may apply to particular cases and that there may therefore be data protection reasons for objecting to the amendment.
Perhaps the Minister will give a view on how he expects the powers to be used in practice. One suspects that the vast majority of the guidance will be general guidance about the policies and practices of the organisation, and that directions may relate to specific matters. Perhaps they will relate to legislation or to issues that have become live in the public domain, when the Minister sees fit to act in order to show that something has been done or to make a change that is required by public opinion or other reasons. In all those cases, I see no reason why the information should not be made available to Parliament as a matter of course. With those brief words, I hope that the Minister will accept those arguments and see fit to welcome and adopt the amendment.