Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

This has been a very frustrating debate. Whenever the Minister has been asked whether a certain body is part of the civil service, she has asserted with absolute certainty that she knows the answer, and has given an answer. If the answer were as clear as that, the Government would surely be in a position to provide a definition, so why have they not done so? The Minister has said that anyone appointed by the Queen is not a civil servant. That is a good start, but why? She has said, although I was not too sure about this, that everyone who is employed by a non-departmental public body is not a civil servant—or was it every member of one? Again, I was not too sure. Why? Perhaps the members are appointed by the Queen, but obviously the employees are not. I am not sure why that is so clearly the case. Either the Government have at the back of their mind a definition that they are not revealing to us, or they do not have one and are simply trying to look certain about something of which they are not really certain. This has been an interesting debate. Many points were raised about the general principle of the Bill, which I support for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie). The most important part of the debate on this amendment and new clause, however, was initiated by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), who asked what would happen if it was not clear, in a particular case, whether the Civil Service Commission should act or not. If a person complained to the commission that activity within Government was in breach of the code, would the commission have jurisdiction or not? In the first instance, that is an important question for the commission, but what happens if the applicant disagrees with the commission's decision and goes to court? Are the Government saying that they are giving up on the question of what counts as a civil servant and that they will leave it up to the courts, and are doing so in circumstances where, if one were looking for parliamentary intention, it is not possible to tell what that is, because we in this Committee do not know what it is? The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) gave the FSA example. The FSA was included in the 2004 draft Bill, but the other FSA—the Financial Services Authority—was not, so the question is this: which FSA are we talking about? The answer to that is unclear.