Member

What about other arm’s-length bodies? The Cabinet Office’s Public Bodies Handbook—Part 1, with which I am sure the Minister is intimately acquainted, entitled Classification of Public Bodies: Guidance for Departments, states that a non-departmental public body has its own “separate legal personality” outside the Crown. It is headed by a chief executive, not a Minister of the Crown—this is a similar position to non-ministerial departments. All this means that key public functions which directly relate to specified matters in Clause 2 will not be included within the scope of the covenant. By my estimation, these could include HMRC, the National Crime Agency, the Care Quality Commission, HM Prison and Probation Service and Homes England, to name but a few. It also means, bizarrely, that the covenant would not seem to apply to the new defence housing service, even though the entire purpose of that new body is to improve the standard of living for service families. That does not square with the Government’s belief that personal taxation and criminal issues are matters to which the covenant legal duty should apply, but that HMRC, the courts and the Prison and Probation Service should be excluded from being within scope.