Amendment 18 relates to the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances and the Advisory Committee on Pesticides. Essentially, this is a probing amendment, but it raises some rather wider issues. I am very grateful to see the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on the Front Bench. I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is quite pleased to see him on the Front Bench as well, because clearly, these matters are in the Defra area but, as I said, raise wider issues. Those wider issues are: why are those two committees being abolished when many other similar committees are not being touched; and in what way will they be abolished?

I must apologise to the Committee, because I was not here earlier today to speak to an amendment in my name, but my noble friend Lady Henig moved it ably. She pointed out that the list in Schedule 1 includes apples and pears-this is not a horticultural question but because they are not like with like. The Government propose that some of those bodies in Schedule 1 be abolished; that some of them revert to Ministers; and that some have their powers and functions moved to other bodies, public and private. It is not clear what will happen to the independent advisory capacity of the Advisory Committee on Pesticides and the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances. If they are to be abolished, full stop, that raises a serious issue.

I declare a current interest as a member of the Environment Agency board, which has relations with both those committees, but, more particularly, because I am a former Minister dealing with much of the Minister's current portfolio, and specifically with the Advisory Committee on Pesticides. It was always important to have independent advice. Pesticides have always been a controversial area. If the powers revert to the Minister, the Minister will be seriously-if he will excuse the expression-exposed in this area. It is very important also that advice is independent and is seen to be independent. Of course, the Minister does not have to accept any advisory committee's advice. When I was in the noble Lord's position, there were times when I did not accept the advice of the pesticides committee and indeed referred the issue of bystanders and their vulnerability to pesticide exposure to what I felt was the higher authority of the Royal Society. That is a matter for the Minister to decide.

If we abolish these committees and all assessment reverts to the Minister and his civil servants then you lose that independent advice, or do the Government intend to transfer the responsibilities of these committees elsewhere, to other bodies? For example the Environment Agency and the HSE have some responsibilities in this area. Alternatively, the Minister could, I guess, invent a non-statutory body of experts to advise. That has slightly less of an independent air than these two bodies.

I think it would be somewhat dangerous if Ministers decided they were going to go for a more informal arrangement in relation to the whole array of scientific advisory bodies, which exist right across departments and certainly very substantially in Defra. It is dangerous for Ministers as well. The Committtee on Hazardous Substances advises Ministers on dangerous chemicals in air, water and the soil, and on nanomaterials, which have a significant element of controversy, in relation to policy and science and the effect of some of these substances.

Pesticides are also a crucial area because there is a conflict of interests here. There is conflict between the farmers and the agriculturalists and the horticulturalists on one side and local residents and those pursuing other pursuits, and environmentalists and environmental bodies concerned with air and water quality and food standards, food quality and the effect on biodiversity and so forth.

The Minister has to balance the different interests in this area and it is helpful if he has advice which is independent and statutorily-based as one part of his decision-making process. The Minister also has a significant Civil Service element. The pesticides safety division in Defra is a very effective body. However, it looks at systems and monitoring and what is happening in regulations. Of course regulations in this context are quite often European regulations. Some of the most controversial proposals in the pesticides field are in European regulations that are coming on stream. Some elements of the agricultural industry think they will eliminate pesticides in particular specialist areas, so there is quite a delicate political balance in that respect.

It is not just farmers who are affected by this. Quite a lot of pesticides are used in parks and gardens, so there is a big public sector element that has to follow the advice. It would be better if the Minister, when making the regulations, was basing them on the advice of a publicly defensible independent body. All of us who are occasional gardeners are affected by this as well. In some ways the most dangerous area is in people's own gardens. While the pesticides advisory committee and the PSD will have a whole list of pesticides you are no longer expected to use, I am pretty confident that at least one of my neighbours has a shed load of pesticides that are probably banned by the Geneva Convention, never mind the pesticide regulations. Enforcing it in these areas is quite an important role, so that the public are informed as well as those who have an interest in horticulture and agriculture.

There is a very good and very specific reason why the pesticides advisory committee should remain independent, should remain statutorily-based and should give protection to the Minister and his colleagues. It is also slightly odd that these two committees are the only advisory committees in the Defra family scheduled for abolition. Yet Defra has, I think, 20-odd committees, including the Food Standards Agency and about another dozen of a similar status to these two committees.

These two committees are not quite the first two on the list alphabetically, but the Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances is the first. I just wonder if, in this less than totally objective assessment of which quangos to get rid of, Defra officials looked at the list and decided that we could quite easily do without two in the first four as compared with the others. But there are other important expert panels and advisory committees on air quality and farm welfare. There is another one on pesticides, the Pesticides Residues Committee, and others on particular diseases. All those are apparently untouched, as are the advisory committees in most other government departments with one or two exceptions-they are not being abolished, modified, transferred or merged.

Going back to my more general point, in a sense, I would have thought that it would be useful if the Government, before this Bill passes much further, were able to give an indication of their overall attitude to statutorily-based advisory committees, particularly scientific ones. Picking off a couple does not seem a very rational approach. It may be that there is some rationality behind it, but I have not yet seen it. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us in a moment. It is important that this House is convinced that those bodies on the list, particularly the list for total abolition, should be there for a reason. We would like to be reassured that the Government are still committed to independent statutorily-based advice across the board. That involves not only the Defra committees and the food standards committees, but all departments.

I hope that the Minister will give us more of an explanation tonight, but I also think that it would help him and his colleagues if we were to receive at some point during these proceedings-obviously, had we gone to a Select Committee it would have been much easier to do-an indication of the Government's total approach to independent scientific advice. Is their objection to these committees based on them being statutory and independent or do they think that they genuinely no longer have a positive role?

I shall raise just one other point. The way in which this is listed suggests that the equivalent advisory committee for Northern Ireland is also abolished in the same paragraph. Both agriculture and environment are devolved matters in Northern Ireland. I do not quite understand why they are therefore on the agenda for abolition in the Westminster Parliament when the Northern Ireland Assembly is surely the body which should decide whether that body should continue to exist or otherwise. That is a relatively minor point, but it is important for the farming community of Northern Ireland. I hope that the noble Lord will give us an indication of why we are dealing with that committee here. I beg to move.