Lord Maude of Horsham:

Moved by Lord Maude of Horsham

8: Schedule 2, page 85, line 12, at end insert—“3A “(1) The Secretary of State is to nominate a person (“the nominated person”) to be the chair.(2) The nominated person must appear before a relevant Parliamentary Committee if invited to do so.(3) The Secretary of State may not proceed with the appointment of the nominated person unless the relevant Parliamentary Committee has held a confirmatory vote if the Committee wishes to do so.(4) Where the relevant Parliamentary Committee has expressed a negative opinion on the appointment of the nominated person, the Secretary of State may not proceed with the appointment of the nominated person.(5) Where the relevant Parliamentary Committee has expressed a positive opinion on the appointment of the nominated person, the Secretary of State may proceed with the appointment of the nominated person.(6) A relevant Parliamentary Committee is any Committee of the House of Commons, or House of Lords, or of both Houses, which has notified the Secretary of State, in writing, that they have assumed the function of scrutiny of football regulation.”Member’s explanatory statementThis amendment provides that the chair may undergo pre-appointment scrutiny and be approved by a select committee of Parliament.

My Lords, Amendment 8 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe. I do not need to detain your Lordships for long on this.

The amendment puts into the Bill what the Minister has already committed to in her letter to my noble friend Lord Moynihan on 13 January, in which she said that the chair of the independent football regulator will be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by the DCMS Select Committee. We welcome that commitment. It is a good commitment. Of course, her word is her bond. But her word is not necessarily the bond of future Ministers, and it is important that this commitment is in the Bill. It is very hard to see why there could be any objection to that.

I am not wedded to the wording of the amendment. If the Minister is inclined to say that she will bring back at Third Reading an improved version which gives effect in substance to what is contained in my amendment, I will be content not to press this amendment to a Division.

However, it is important to reflect on why it matters that this appointment, which will happen if this all goes through, will happen on a regular basis. New chairs will be appointed. The nature of the debates that we have been having in your Lordships’ Chamber today illustrates how important it is. It remains the case that what is being introduced for the first time is a regulator of a sport which includes the most successful sporting league in the world of any kind. English football is a huge success. We take risks with its success at our peril but also at the political peril of the Government of the day, who, if things go wrong, will rightly be blamed for setting this up in a way that has created that peril.

I know from my own experience that subjecting the chair of an important public appointment to scrutiny by a Select Committee can be hazardous. I remember an appointment that I made as a Minister was subjected to that scrutiny. The candidate whom we had selected did not measure up under the examination of the Select Committee. We had to re-run the process. That candidate had not shown themselves to be across the issues and the sensitivities, and that was an appointment which required strength and the ability to stand up to the Government and resist the blandishments of the Government, whoever the Government were—and it was the Government that I was a member of. The Select Committee was right. So it is important, given how the actions of this regulator can damage something which is important economically for the country but also very dear to the hearts of billions of people across the world. It gives pleasure and, periodically, as we all know, pain, to many of us. It is very important that the person carrying these awesome responsibilities is fully tested before they take up their role.

While we welcome the commitment that the Minister has made, that this appointment will be subject to scrutiny by the relevant Select Committee, I urge the House to support the idea that this commitment should be in the Bill, for other Ministers in the future who may not have the same good intentions that she has. Therefore, I urge the House to support this amendment, unless she is willing to commit that she will come back at Third Reading with something giving substantive effect to what this amendment would introduce. I beg to move.

My Lords, to respond briefly to the noble Lord’s comments, I quite understand where he is coming from in ensuring a proper and effective process in securing good-quality public appointments. His reflections on his experience were very interesting.

However, this amendment possibly goes a bit too far. I am not sure the noble Lord would have approved of giving Parliament the effective veto that his amendment, looking at the detail, clearly does. I am sure my noble friend the Minister has made an offer in good faith to ensure that there can be pre-appointment scrutiny of the post of chair of the regulator. I hear what the noble Lord says but, tempting though it is, it would lead us down a path which is not common in our jurisdiction. I know that in the States, there are public appointment processes in which, effectively, Congress can veto an appointment, but I do not think that is the road that we want to go down.

Of course, it is right that it is usual for an adverse vote in a Select Committee where there is pre-appointment scrutiny to be only advisory. I cannot remember, but there may even have been an example of a Government ignoring that, and it has not been binding. If the Government want to come back with an alternative version which reflects the comments the noble Lord is making, I would be willing to withdraw the amendment in favour of that. But the reality, of course, is that whether in the Bill it is a binding vote of the Select Committee or an advisory vote, the effect is pretty much the same.

Paragraph (4) of the noble Lord’s amendment says the following:

“Where the relevant Parliamentary Committee has expressed a negative opinion on the appointment of the nominated person, the Secretary of State may not proceed with the appointment of the nominated person”.

According to my interpretation, that is clearly a veto. I am sure the Minister will reflect on the noble Lord’s words.

The other amendments in the group which the Minister has tabled today, and which my noble friend Lady Taylor and I have signed up to, are pretty straightforward and I am sure the House will support them. They simply make sure that there is a proper process to ensure declaration and registration of members of the regulatory board and the expert panel, and I commend the Minister for bringing those forward.

My Lords, in the debate on the sunset clause in Committee, it was evident that the Committee felt strongly that there should be greater post-legislative scrutiny. The Committee was clearly agreed on the end, if not necessarily the means. I am glad that since that was moved, the Minister has tabled amendments which are extremely helpful in that regard. I ask her, in that spirit of helpfulness, to respond to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham and me. Its effect is certainly capable of being interpreted in the way the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has just described. It may be that the Minister has some alternative to offer at Third Reading, as my noble friend suggested, and we await with interest what she has to say.

My Lords, I am sorry to intervene. I entirely agree with the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, but I just want to describe my experience. In 2009, I went before the Health Select Committee as a candidate for appointment to the chair of the Food Standards Agency. The record will show that the vast majority of questions I was asked were to do with my previous role as the Housing and Regeneration Minister, working for Lord Prescott. Three of the Members I was facing lived in areas where they did not want any development, which I had approved. They were not at all interested in the appointment that I was up for and being scrutinised on, and they went back to the past, so we have to be careful about that.

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham, and I have to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. Given that, to be fair, noble Lords on both sides of the House have consistently advocated proper scrutiny and oversight of this new regulator, which, after all, has unprecedented sweeping powers, it is appropriate and reasonable for us to seek to test the personal manifesto, vision and leadership of someone who assumes the chairmanship.

We are told that there are some interesting names in the frame: Sanjay Bhandari, for instance, the Kick It Out chairman, has been mooted as a potential leader of the new regulator. Whether that happens is another issue, but the Minister will know that the civil service public appointments process can sometimes be criticised for its secretiveness: it is not that transparent until right at the end, when the basket of appointables is placed in front of the Minister. With that in mind, the case for opportunities for new candidates to put their arguments to parliamentarians for pre-legislative scrutiny is quite compelling.

Having served for four years on the Public Accounts Committee in the other place, I know from experience that, yes, it was make or break. Senior civil servants and Permanent Secretaries did sometimes drop a clanger at those meetings; equally, they often rose to the occasion. There was inherent value in them having the opportunity to put their case.

Finally, there is a precedent. Senior appointments to the Financial Conduct Authority routinely go before the Treasury Select Committee, and there are other Committees that interrogate the candidates put forward. Just because it has not been done before does not mean it should not be tried on this occasion, given that we have a brand-new body with wide-ranging powers.

I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically on this amendment, which does not undermine the Bill. Even though I am very much a Football Governance Bill sceptic, I know it is going to happen, so I want to improve it. Irrespective of party affiliation, we will improve it by testing the mettle of candidates for senior leadership roles. For those reasons, I implore the Minister to look at this amendment benignly and perhaps support it, if not tonight, certainly in the form of a new amendment along these lines at Third Reading.

My Lords, as the debate has progressed, I have become a little more concerned about this. There is clearly the idea that this independent body is going to be a political football—pardon the pun—kicked around at the beginning, in the form of the question of who is acceptable. We have to trust independence a little more, I am afraid. None of us will be happy with everybody all the time, but I think we have to have it.

My Lords, I rise to speak to my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s Amendment 10 and to support the other amendments in this group. Our amendment is quite modest and uncontroversial, in that we seek to limit the number of individuals appointed to the expert panel to 20. I think we would all agree that 20 is actually quite a large number. It is the figure that was in the Conservative version of the Bill, which for some reason the Government removed. I must be honest, 20 sounds like a lot to me, so to enable that figure to be higher probably leaves us open to jokes such as, “How many regulators does it take to change a light bulb?” Twenty will definitely do it, and I hope the Government will be happy to bear that in mind. There is a serious point here. We talk about wanting a light touch and to remove red tape, but a body of more than 20 would definitely be unwieldy.

I support the amendments tabled by the Minister and others. I welcome transparency being at the heart of the regulator’s work, and it is entirely correct that any potential conflicts should be openly declared.

Finally, there is a consensus that Amendment 8 from my noble friend Lord Maude is a sensible move. As my noble friend said, we are perfectly happy to accept the assurances the Minister gave about subsequent chairs. She is happy for this to happen for the first chair, so the precedent has been set. I therefore hope that it is not a big ask that some assurances are made for future ones, and that there is flexibility in respect of the format.

I will also take the opportunity, given that there has been quite a bit of press speculation, to ask whether there is any update on the timing for announcing the potential candidates and when we might see them in place.

I hope the Minister will either accept this amendment or give an undertaking for Third Reading. If not, my noble friend will have our full support if he wishes to test the opinion of the House.

It was slightly disingenuous of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, when we are talking about pre-scrutiny of approval, to name a proposed candidate when, apparently, there are two proposed candidates. If he knows the other candidate, perhaps it might be helpful if he named him or her as well.

I was merely reporting what had been published on Sky News, and I think thousands of football fans would have considered it. I hope to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, that no disingenuousness was intended.

Only one name was mentioned on Sky?

Yes.

Okay.

I thank noble Lords for their amendments. On Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Maude, I understand the desire for the scrutiny of the appointment of the regulator’s chair and I am grateful for the thoughtful speech he made outlining the reasons behind the amendment. Getting the chair right, both now and in the future, will be pivotal for the success of the new regulator. I will not go into names or press speculation. I understand that progress is being made on the appointment. I am not involved in that, so I will not comment further.

The chair, as the public leader of the regulator, must be a competent and strong individual, free from any vested interests. I assure noble Lords from across the House that the existing public appointments process is robust, run in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, and one that Parliament can and should have faith in.

As per Cabinet Office guidance, parliamentary Select Committees can already carry out pre-appointment scrutiny hearings and offer their views to the Secretary of State. The chair of the regulator is subject to that scrutiny. The Secretary of State will, of course, weigh any committee’s views carefully, as the Cabinet Office guidance already sets out; this will be the case for the future.

However, the Governance Code on Public Appointments sets out that Ministers have the ultimate responsibility for appointment decisions for which they are accountable to Parliament. It is not common for Parliament to hold a statutory right of veto over such public appointments and we cannot see a reason to set that precedent with this regulator. In response to my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton, our view is that this amendment would represent a veto.

Amendment 10, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, seeks to place a cap on the number of members of the regulator’s expert panel. The regulator’s independent expert panel will play a vital role in making various important decisions across the regulator’s regime, when and where it is appropriate. It is essential that the panel has a range of relevant expertise and experience to reflect the diversity and complexity of decisions that may come before it.

The number of members of the expert panel is to be determined by the chief executive officer in response to the operational need. The Government do not want to fetter the effectiveness of the expert panel by introducing a cap on the maximum number of members of the panel as this amendment seeks to do, however sensible that level may appear to noble Lords. The regulator needs the flexibility to react in the event of high workload for the panel. The regulator will be required to deliver value for money and has a regulatory principle underpinning this. We do not believe that the CEO would appoint and maintain an unnecessarily bloated panel.

Finally, I turn to government Amendments 9 and 11. In Committee, my noble friends Lady Taylor of Bolton and Lord Bassam of Brighton, among others, emphasised the real importance of protecting the regulator from conflicts of interest. The Government are in complete agreement that the independence of the regulator must be protected, including against vested interests. Although the Bill already makes provision for managing such conflicts of interest, we have tabled government amendments to strengthen these protections even further and beyond any doubt.

The amendments require the regulator to establish and maintain a system whereby the members of the regulator’s board and its expert panel must declare their relevant interests, and a record of these interests must be kept and maintained. This will ensure that all board and expert panel members declare relevant interests from the outset of their appointment and on an ongoing basis. This is good practice not only for transparency but to help the regulator manage any conflicts and to insulate its decisions from potential vested or competing interests.

I hope that those reasons have reassured your Lordships’ House and that noble Lords will not press their amendments. I will move government Amendments 9 and 11 in due course.

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. On the comments made at the outset by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, I am open-minded about whether the Bill should contain what is effectively a veto or whether it should accord with the more usual practice. As I said, if the Minister were to give an undertaking that she would come back with an amendment framed in those terms at Third Reading, I would be willing not to press this amendment to a Division, but I have not heard that commitment from her, which is a disappointment.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is obviously scarred by his personal experience. I simply remind him that hard cases make bad law, and his sounds like a particularly hard case, for which he has my sympathy.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, seemed to be recommending—arguing, really—that there should be no pre-appointment scrutiny at all, let alone whether it should be in the Bill. Therefore, he is presumably urging the Minister to withdraw the commitment she has made that there should be pre-appointment scrutiny. On the substantive point he made in arguing that scrutiny would turn the regulator into a political football, the reverse is actually the case. It is important that the regulator should be genuinely independent, and my experience of observing these scrutiny procedures is that Select Committees are particularly concerned to test the capability of the nominee to exercise genuine, robust independence. Rather than turning the nominee into someone who is overly influenced by the scrutiny, it is to test whether they are capable of withstanding it. That is the consideration.

I am grateful for all contributions, but in the absence of the quite modest commitment I have requested the Minister to make, I want to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 8.

Ayes 181, Noes 234.

Amendment 8 disagreed.