Constitutional Reform (Prerogative Powers and Civil Service etc.) Bill [HL]

I want to make it clear that the Government oppose this amendment. The new clause does not allow delegation of the rule-making power by the Secretary of State. Each post would need to be considered on its merits within the terms of Article 39(4) of the EC treaty. As a result of that, it would not be open to Ministers to delegate the power to designate certain posts as reserved or not reserved to officials responsible for the day-to-day running of their organisations, such as the permanent head of department, agency chief executives, or the head of the security and intelligence services, who may be better placed to determine if a post should be reserved. We are also concerned that under proposed new Clause 18(1) restrictions may be imposed only by means of statutory instrument. This may not allow sufficient flexibility to impose or relax the reservation of posts in order to meet emergency situations. Proposed new Clause 18(4) provides that Section 75(5)(b) of the Race Relations Act 1976 applies to the granting or refusal to grant exemptions under the rules. This ensures that the discretion of the Minister of the Crown or personal body on whom the power has been conferred to grant or refuse exemptions falls outside the remit of the Act. However, there is no such provision in relation to Northern Ireland under the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, which in our view may have undesirable consequences. I ought to point out that there are one or two technical problems with the new clause. While subsection (1) refers to regulations, subsection (3)(a) refers to rules. Also subsection (3)(b) allows officers of the Crown as well as Ministers to grant exemptions, notwithstanding that subsection (1) allows only Ministers to impose nationality restrictions. There are technical deficiencies here as well as there being issues of policy with which we cannot agree.