My Lords, I hope the Committee will allow me to speak. I apologise for arriving late. My excuse is that the document issued by
the government Whips’ Office informed us that business was to begin at 3.45. I am obviously lagging behind everyone else. I apologise particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for missing the beginning of his remarks.
Obviously what the Minister has told us is strongly encouraging. It points us in the direction we all want to go—and certainly in the direction that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee wants the Government to go—and the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, was quite right to quote from that paragraph. As he says, it is very powerful on this point.
I am sure that Parliament will welcome it if the Government decide that this scheme is after all to be introduced under a statutory instrument. We received this morning the draft rules of the new scheme and while I congratulate the Minister on enabling us to have them, as he undertook to do, by the time we reached Committee, at the same time I grumble a little that we only had them during the course of this morning. We will want time to study them and no doubt revert to the issues contained within the draft proposals.
3.45 pm
After having taken only a brief glance at the draft rules, I believe that they are well capable of being embodied in a statutory instrument and achieving the force of law on that basis. That must be right because the authority to create the scheme is vested in the Secretary of State by statute. Parliament will have a continuing close concern as to the way the scheme operates and Members of Parliament in another place, in particular, will want to be able to hold the Government to account on the specifics of the scheme in the interests of those of their constituents who, most unhappily, have contracted this disease or are dependants of people who have contracted mesothelioma. We are happy that the Minister should negotiate the scheme, but the Secretary of State will take responsibility and Parliament needs to be satisfied as to the specifics. All of this is hugely important to mesothelioma victims.
As the Bill is drafted it is curiously inconsistent; it dips in and out. At a number of points it stipulates that the details of the scheme are to be determined by statutory instruments but in other important respects it does not. The rules of the scheme at the moment, and the manner in which the technical committee is to be established, are also to be made by so-called arrangements. Yet these arrangements would create a jurisdiction, in the language of the Bill, and it cannot be satisfactory that matters of this importance should be established under either negotiation or so-called arrangements. Accountability to Parliament, by way of statutory instruments, is weak enough, and it would evaporate entirely if these matters were established merely on the basis of arrangements.
Amendment 3 says that in the absence of a requirement for a procedure by way of statutory instruments, the Secretary of State should at least publish his proposals for a scheme and arrangements, together with a rationale and statement. However, we now have the draft rules, so he seems to have started on that process and I draw some encouragement from that.
Amendment 6 is a little different because it does not say anything about statutory instruments or parliamentary procedure. It requires that the Secretary of State should publish an annual report about the performance and progress of the scheme. The reason why I thought that it was appropriate to put it in this scheme is that it is another device to achieve accountability to Parliament. This would be ex post facto accountability; it would not remedy a failure to enable Parliament to scrutinise the details of the proposals in advance and to make a decision as to whether to accept, amend or reject them, but it would enable Parliament to review the scheme annually.
The format in which an annual report should be published and the procedures whereby Parliament would examine that annual report and hold the Government to account on it are for consideration. However, I would suggest that its content should include details on the body that is administering the scheme, the levy, the volume of cases, the proportion of mesothelioma sufferers who are assisted by way of this scheme, the speed and ease of the procedures for claimants, information on how the portal is working, the activities of the technical committee, how many cases have gone to arbitration, the range of payments that are made under the scheme and their relation to court awards, what the legal outlays for the scheme have been, the number of appeals and of cases that go to the tribunal, the amounts recovered by the Department for Work and Pensions in different categories, the administrative costs of the scheme, and any modifications or reforms that the Secretary of State might be minded to propose. No doubt there are other matters that could usefully be included. I hope that Parliament would also make it a practice to debate the annual report each year.