Contribution
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s intervention. I had not yet started dealing with his amendment in detail—I was dealing with my noble friend Lord Moylan’s—but I listened carefully to what he said and will deal with it when I get to his amendment.
I am not sure that I agree with my noble friend Lord Moylan, although I understand that his amendment is probing. I would not want to tie the hands of Ministers in the way that he set out. I understand that it is of course desirable not to change funding for any public service once it has been set—one does not do that if one can avoid it—but there are occasions when that is necessary. If we are looking for the appropriate people to make those decisions, they should be Ministers.
The problem with ring-fencing certain parts of expenditure to make it more difficult to make changes is that, in effect, you are deciding that any changes to public expenditure have to fall in other areas. Those decisions should properly be taken by Ministers at the time that those changes are made, because they have to balance the consequences of making those expenditure changes and the changes that they will necessitate to public services, and they have to make the case about why they are doing that. Those decisions are properly for Ministers, rather than expenditure being arbitrarily ring-fenced in legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, tabled Amendment 54. I am concerned about this amendment, but I would be very happy if, when I finish my remarks, he comes back to say that I have misunderstood it. He referred to arbitrary changes. “Arbitrary” is a word that people usually use when they do not agree with the changes proposed by somebody else. Ministers may well bring forward changes, and they may be because the overall amount of money available to the Government has had to be changed for some reason or because of some event. It may be that Ministers have decided that expenditure needs to be spent in another area or that the Transport Secretary has decided that there is a higher priority elsewhere. Those are perfectly reasonable decisions that will have to be explained to Parliament, and Ministers will be subject to questioning by Members of both Houses in making those decisions, which are properly for Ministers.
I have a slight problem with this because it involves the Office of Rail and Road. I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, when he was setting it out and he, I think, suggested that that the Office of Rail and Road could come back with alternative propositions. It could come back by suggesting funding decisions balanced between rail and road, starting from his proposition that rail funding is better than road funding. I think the noble Lord was also talking about decisions on taxation or heavy goods vehicles. I humbly suggest that all those decisions are properly for Ministers.
I accept that the noble Lord was not suggesting that those decisions should be taken by the Office of Rail and Road, but he was suggesting that that office should take some time, produce a report and then make suggestions to Ministers. However, it is not the role of a regulator to get involved in making qualitative opinions about where public money should be spent. Those are not decisions for regulators; they are properly decisions for Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament. Unless I have misunderstood the noble Lord’s amendment, I do not think that getting regulators to come back, second-guess the decisions of Ministers and make alternative public spending propositions is good for the conduct of public policy.
The Bill is currently structured such that Ministers have to notify the ORR if they are going to make funding decisions, so that there are right and proper levels of transparency and people know what is going on. There is quite an important principle to maintain, which is that there are certain things that regulators should do and certain decisions that are properly for Ministers. I do not like to criticise the noble Lord, who I know takes a great interest in this area of policy, but I cannot support his amendment because it has those effects, which I think would be deleterious to public policy-making.
In the spirit of balance, the noble Lord will have noticed that I was also not entirely enthusiastic about the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan, which I know is a probing amendment. So I think that I have been quite even-handed in my non-approval of both amendments, which have a similar fault: tying the hands of Ministers in making public spending prioritisation decisions.