Lord Fox (LD)

My Lords, this is another one of those divided-off groups. I am going to speak to impact assessments and reserve what I say on tribunals for the next group. There is a danger when talking about the existence of and the need for impact assessments that we start providing our own impact assessments. I am afraid that many of your Lordships fell into that trap. I will try to avoid it, so I will not be commenting on what should be in an impact assessment; I will be commenting on why we need improved impact assessments. Some of the Government’s amendments have already been debated. I was not able to be here during that part of the process, but, on reading the debate, I saw that it further illustrated that, with each layer of new amendments, changes are coming to the Bill and complications and reflections are being added. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, before he gave us his impact assessment, made I think his most important point, which was to bring up the findings of the RPC on the existing impact assessment. That is before all the changes that have come and before the Bill changed substantially between the Commons and your Lordships’ House, and therefore, unscrutinised to this point. I am very much in the camp of the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough: if we are going to redo an impact assessment, we should do it properly. We should go back and produce one that is meaningful, that the RPC can endorse and that we can use meaningfully in the next stages of this Bill. I am not sure how many of your Lordships worked on the then Professional Qualifications Bill. I suspect that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, may at least be one. Sometimes the then public procurement Bill is used as an example of Bills that come half-baked—or, in that case, not even in the cooker—but actually the best example is the Professional Qualifications Bill. That Bill differed from this one in that it started in your Lordships’ House, but it came to your Lordships’ House full of things that needed to change, full of drafting points and full of extensions and amendments, and the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, who was the Minister, stood where the Minister is today and said, when we came to the end of Committee, “Well, my Lords, it is clear that we have to take this Bill on a holiday”. And that is what he did. He took it away for four months and came back with a Bill that was properly drafted. The “i”s had been dotted and the “t”s crossed and we were able to make a reasonable piece of legislation to pass to the Commons for its work. We have some time. This is a flagship Bill. It had to be introduced within 100 days because that is what the Government told the world. I understand that. But it is very important that we get this right. The Minister should start thinking about vacation plans for the Bill between Committee and Report, so that things such as the impact assessment can be delivered to your Lordships’ House. Those of us who want the Bill to succeed will then be sure that it has a chance to succeed.