Member

Therefore, the covenant legal duty will apply to individual Ministers and to the government departments they lead, as well as departments of the devolved Administrations. But this definition does not include all categories of public bodies, specifically those bodies that are legally distinct and operationally independent from central government: departments such as NDPBs—a phrase noble Lords will hear me talking about in subsequent debates in Committee—publicly owned companies, the courts and non-ministerial departments. The reason I do not believe that these bodies are captured by the definition the Government have used in the Bill is as follows.