Clause 1
Planning
4:29 pm
John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour)
Those are proper matters for Parliament and the arrangements that we set up for parliamentary consideration. That is an interesting point of debate, which should be explored at the appropriate point of the Bill.
I turn to amendments Nos. 3 and 46, and will try to deal specifically with the points raised by the hon. Lady. I have tried to explain, and hope that I have done so, that the IPC is a part of the system that we regard as essential. The Committee, and Parliament more generally, will have ample opportunity to debate the IPC, as we have done this afternoon and will continue to do, and finally to approve it. Given the level of debate and scrutiny for the proposal, I cannot see the case for arrangements that require Parliament to undertake the process again, through a regulation-making procedure at some later point, in order for the IPC to be set up. In the meantime, if and when the Bill is given Royal Assent, we would be unable to proceed and to set up the IPC formally.
The hon. Lady was concerned that the reporting arrangements would just be accounts, or figures. They will not just be accounts—the annual report would also include details of the commission’s performance and discharge of its responsibilities. It would include details of its use of some of the powers that it may be given, such as the compulsory purchase order, and it would also contain other issues that could be prescribed by the Secretary of State. I am ready to consider the things that members on both sides of the Committee may consider appropriate for the Secretary of State to prescribe in that report, and the Bill gives us the power to do that. Formerly, the Secretary of State would lay the report because that is how we do our business, but the chair of the IPC could and would be held to account by any Select Committee arrangement that the House decided to put in place. That Committee would be able to question the chair directly on the performance and conduct of the IPC and the content of the report.
Hon. Members will remember the interesting point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough during last week’s sitting. He is a member of what was the Education and Skills Committee, and is now a Committee in one of the new Departments. His point was this: the chief inspector from Ofsted reports and accounts directly to that Committee twice a year. That is an interesting model and I have checked it out. It is done by convention rather than legislation, and functions by the determination of that Select Committee. The process may be open, if it wants, for the future Select Committee to examine. However, Ofsted’s formal method of reporting, and the reports laid to Parliament and picked up and scrutinised by the Select Committee are, as I have described, via the Secretary of State, although they are Ofsted’s reports.