Ninth Standing Committee
on Delegated Legislation
Thursday 8 July 2004
[Mr. Nigel Beard in the Chair]
Draft Northern Ireland Act 1998
(Designation of Public Authorities)
Order 2004
8.55 am
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. John Spellar): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Northern Ireland Act 1998 (Designation of Public Authorities) Order 2004.
Copies of the order have been laid before the House. The order is made under section 75(3) of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, and its purpose is to make the bodies listed in it public authorities for the purpose of section 75. They are the Electoral Commission, the Northern Ireland Legal Services Commission, the Office of Communications, Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company, the social fund commissioner and the Ilex Urban Regeneration Company Ltd.
Those public authorities will be subject to the statutory duties set out in section 75(1) and (2) of the Act, which will require them to act with due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity and to promoting good relations between different groups.
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann) (UUP): I thank the Minister for identifying the six public authorities that are being added under the order. Will he please comment on the authorities that were considered for inclusion but were not included? I am thinking in particular of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
Mr. Spellar: I will come to the right hon. Gentleman's point later.
Section 75(1) of the 1998 Act requires all public authorities to
''have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity—
(a) between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation;
(b) between men and women generally;
(c) between persons with a disability and persons without; and
(d) between persons with dependants and persons without.''
In addition, without prejudice to those obligations, public authorities are required, under section 97(2), to
''have regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between persons of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group.''
To demonstrate its commitment, each public authority is required to produce an equality scheme that sets out how it will fulfil those duties. The scheme will cover the full range of the organisations' functions in Northern Ireland. As required by the guidelines approved by the Secretary of State, each will include arrangements for policy appraisal, public consultation, public access to information and services, monitoring and timetable schemes, which are to be submitted to the Equality Commission for approval. The Equality
Column Number: 004
Commission will advise on preparation, validate and monitor the section 75 statutory obligations, and investigate complaints of default.
Section 75(3)(b) and (c) automatically brought the vast majority of public authorities in Northern Ireland—around 120 of them—within the scope of the statutory equality duty. However, the Act also provides for the Secretary of State to designate other organisations as public authorities for the purpose of section 75. Three designation orders have been made under that power. An order designating 16 bodies, including the Northern Ireland Office and the Northern Ireland Court Service was made in July 2000. The second order, made in April 2001, concentrated chiefly on higher education authorities. The third, in January 2003, designated a further five bodies.
The Government intend that, in time, the statutory duty will embrace as many bodies as possible, and non-designation will be the exception, not the rule. Since the making of the last order, we have continued our consultation with the Equality Commission to consider which other bodies might need to be designated. In that context, I say to the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) that we are working to resolve issues such as freedom to broadcast and the BBC's charter obligations. We remain open to views, but did not want to delay this order further while that was being considered.
8.59 am
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West) (Con): The Minister has rightly stated that this is the third such order after the initial designation of 120 public bodies, so there must by now be significant experience on which Ministers and others can draw. Given that, will the Minister expand on the rather limited explanation in the explanatory notes? We are told, under the heading ''Financial and Regulatory impact'', that
''There are no identifiable costs to the public or the Exchequer''—
I am sure that that is true—and that
''The Order has no regulatory impact.''
However, it is not for nothing that these orders are passed, and clearly there is an impact on designated public bodies. Will the Minister give us a clue as to the impact in terms of cost and of the regulatory regime? How will that be policed and enforced? I understand—perhaps he will confirm this—that the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company objected to being designated. Will he explain its objection and why he has chosen to overrule it and to proceed with designation?
That brings us to the question regarding the BBC asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann. I infer from the Minister's answer that at one stage it was anticipated that the BBC might be designated under the order, but because of the outstanding issues to which he referred, he decided to proceed and to review the matter once those issues had been cleared up. Can he give us any indication of when that might be and what precisely are the outstanding issues causing difficulty?
Column Number: 005
9.1 am
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): The designation of public authorities seems to be the closest that we can get to nationalisation from this Government. That may be a shame, but we have to be grateful for small mercies. The Home Secretary has made rather dramatic plans to introduce legislation that could, in my judgment, limit free speech. It seems to be intended to achieve roughly the same sort of outcomes as this legislation aims for in Northern Ireland. However, it is more appropriate to take this positive approach to promote tolerance, rather than to limit freedom of expression. To that extent, perhaps the Home Office could learn something from this approach.
9.2 am
Mr. Trimble: I will start by taking up the point regarding the BBC that I raised in an intervention. Of course, I am thinking primarily of BBC Northern Ireland. The Minister referred to freedom to broadcast and charter obligations, and I presume that those are the obligations in the BBC charter on acting impartially and so on. No one would want to create a situation through designation that in any way put pressure on the BBC to operate in a partial way in respect of broadcasting. One would not want to undermine the corporation's duty to be impartial in its broadcasting, which is hugely important.
However, that is the reason for my disappointment at the failure to designate; there is a clear lack of impartiality in the operations of Broadcasting house in Belfast. Designation, particularly by referring to section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and equality of opportunity, would be appropriate. Broadcasting house operates a blacklist of journalists that it does not use whatever the circumstances. It might be reasonable for broadcasters to say that they will not use a particular journalist because they do not think that he is of sufficient basic journalistic ability or because he is too close to certain groupings or organisations. It may be appropriate not to use a person for that reason.
However, I am thinking of a journalist who, although strictly freelance, is published weekly by one Sunday newspaper in Belfast and by another in Dublin and operates as a Northern Ireland stringer for at least two national newspapers, but, almost uniquely among journalists at that level in Northern Ireland, is never used by the BBC.
A rather fraught meeting with the BBC's head of current affairs in Belfast was organised to deal with the numerous cases of lack of impartiality in its conduct during the recent Assembly elections and particularly those aspects that irritated us as a political party. I concluded the meeting by saying that that journalist would be upset if I did not mention his name, whereupon the senior BBC executive turned to me with a startled expression to say, ''And why are you mentioning his name?''
The Committee will note that I am not going to the point of mentioning names, but those who are familiar with the situation will know to whom I am referring, so it is not necessary to do so. I mention that example
Column Number: 006
to the Minister to show that although the BBC is superficially objective in terms of its charter obligations and although the idea of trying to persuade the Government not to infringe on freedom of broadcasting may seem attractive, there may be more to the story. That is why I have taken the time to make the point.
The hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) referred to costs, and the same factor was in my mind. I looked up the debate on the previous order on this matter, and I noticed that when the question of costs was raised, the then Minister explained why the explanatory memorandum said that there would be no cost implications by saying:
''Where the costs of equality schemes are held to be de minimis, they are designed in the fashion set out in the explanatory memorandum. My Department's view on all the designated organisations is that the costs are de minimis.''—[Official Report, Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation, 20 November 2002; c. 16.]
That may be true under one interpretation, as the measure may not involve any additional cost to the organisation, but there are significant costs within the organisation.
As I am sure that the Minister knows from experience of his Department, drawing up equality schemes is a bureaucratic paradise. Lots of time can be spent producing huge documents, which then go through various drafts and are discussed with the Equality Commission. Officials can spend many happy hours working on equality schemes, and after the schemes are drawn up, they tend to sit on a shelf and not do very much. All that happens is that a considerable of official effort, which could have been spent on other things, is diverted. There are no specific additional costs—they may be described as de minimis—but there is a cost to the quality of the public service.
That prompts the question; what are the outcomes? The Minister knows that that is one area in which the public service is weak, as it is not good at thinking of outcomes, how to measure them and seeing what happens as a result. I hope that in his dealings with the Equality Commission, the Minister will consider what is actually happening and the consequences.
In particular, bearing in mind the terms of section 75, he should focus on whether the commission's schemes and activities have improved equality of opportunity. The two most important words there are the two last ones. There is a terrible tendency in official circles and the Equality Commission to think that we are dealing with equality; that the Equality Commission has equality schemes, so we are producing equality. We are not. We are producing equality of opportunity because we know that, considering the differing circumstances of different people, outcomes will not be equal. That is a fact of life. The statutory duty is to promote equality of opportunity, and I hope that the Minister will keep that in the forefront of his mind. If he is not vigilant to ensure that the operation of the legislation is strictly in accordance with its terms, then by slipping from equality of opportunity to crude equality, we will be
Column Number: 007
constructing an engine of oppression rather than something that is beneficial.
The Minister also referred to the duty in section 75(2) of promoting good relations. That has been the Cinderella provision in the legislation. As far as I am aware, very little has been done on that and very little thought has been given to what is meant by the desirability of promoting good relations. I hope that the Minister will keep that in his mind, too.
9.10 am
| 
