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Orders of the Day
Statutory Instruments (Production and Sale) Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
I have to inform the House that Madam Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
4.3 pm
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Roger Freeman): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a short Bill, for the simple reason that its sole purpose is to correct an anomaly in existing legislation, whereby Her Majesty's Stationery Office is permitted to contract out the printing of all legislative and official material, with the single exception of statutory instruments. The Bill amends the Statutory Instruments Act 1946 to bring statute in that area into line with all other classes of material. It also confirms retrospectively the status of existing statutory instruments printed other than by HMSO, but it has no other purpose.
I begin by outlining some of the general considerations that apply to HMSO in its role as printer to the Government. Printing plant of all types is expensive to acquire, maintain and operate, and all printers must be sure of maximum usage of the plant they own. When demand is variable or unpredictable, it is commonplace in the printing industry to own only so much capacity as is likely to be heavily used, and to sub-contract to others at times of peak demand or for jobs in which additional technical expertise is needed.
HMSO is in precisely that position. Its work load depends on the weight of the legislative programme, the parliamentary cycle, new initiatives by Departments and similar factors that--as hon. Members will appreciate--are notoriously difficult to predict.
If HMSO were to acquire sufficient capacity of its own to meet the peaks in demand for its services, there would necessarily be long periods of less than peak demand during which that capacity was under-used or completely idle. No reasonable person could countenance the impact that that would have on costs. For HMSO, such capacity would mean a very substantial increase in the cover prices of its publications, with obvious consequences for the affordability to the general public of official information.
HMSO must therefore sub-contract printing work if it is to operate efficiently and if access to official documents is to be maximised. It has done so for very many years and, in the vast majority of cases, it is perfectly lawful for it to do so. In particular, the Documentary Evidence Act 1882, which is still in force, permits legislation and other legal documents to be printed by third parties under the superintendence and authority of HMSO, as well as directly by it.
The House may be interested to know that that Act--as with many Acts since 1882--was itself printed by the private sector. There is, of course, no reason why private sector printers should not be at least as capable as HMSO
of performing what are, in many cases, technically very simple print jobs. Overall, the results of contracting out have been entirely satisfactory.
HMSO, its customers and the users of its information have therefore benefited for a long time from a regime that allows costs and cover prices to be kept as low as possible.
The sale prices of statutory instruments have not changed for more than three years. There is only a single, anomalous exception to this regime, which relates to the printing of statutory instruments. That is the subject of this Bill.
The Statutory Instruments Act 1946, as it currently stands, imposes directly on HMSO or its ex officio head, the Queen's printer, the duties of printing, issuing and selling statutory instruments. It does not contain the "superintendence and authority" provisions of the 1882 Act. Instead, the 1946 Act followed the pattern of its predecessor, the Rules Publication Act 1893--but those conditions are no longer suitable for modern conditions, even if they were at the time.
Notwithstanding the provisions of the 1946 Act, HMSO has in fact contracted out the printing of statutory instruments for some time. It is hard to determine the exact date on which it began doing so, but records show that the practice dates from at least 1965, and probably earlier.
Mr. Jim Marshall (Leicester, South):
I have listened to the Minister with mounting interest. First, no one would disagree with his reasonable statements about variations in work loads for printers. However, if the 1946 Act specifically forbade the contracting out of statutory instruments, how did the practice begin? How has the practice developed if it is illegal?
My second point is perhaps of greater interest in the current climate. HMSO has been the subject of many reviews in Government circles in the past five or six years, particularly with the prospect of privatisation. Why has this illegality come to light only now, and not during one of those reviews?
Mr. Freeman:
We discovered what has now become the custom and practice--for many years, under Labour and Conservative Governments--of HMSO contracting out a portion of the work of printing statutory instruments because of detailed preparations for privatisation. Privatisation, however, is not contingent on this Bill, as I shall explain in a minute, because we would correct the anomaly. The purpose of the Bill--
Mr. Freeman:
I am still trying to deal with the hon. Gentleman's point, but I shall certainly give way in a moment.
The purpose of the Bill is to correct what is undoubtedly a technical deficiency. I do not have the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question, because the practice goes back at least to 1965. My guess is that, because it was lawful to print not only Acts of Parliament but all other public sector documents through
sub-contracting, the management of HMSO assumed, not unreasonably, that they had the legislative authority not only to print SIs themselves but to sub-contract them.
Mr. Marshall:
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I realise that it is only a short Bill, and that he wants to make progress. He said that the practice goes back at least to 1965, if I remember his written answer correctly. That date is very convenient for him, because it implicates both our parties. Why are we not dealing with the period from 1946 to 1965? Why stop at 1965? If people had been obeying the law of the land from 1946 to 1965, why did the practice suddenly alter? It is not an anomaly, but an illegality.
Mr. Freeman:
The reason for citing 1965 is that 30 years is as far back as HMSO officials could go. My assumption is that, were they able to go back further--looking at the management decisions of HMSO or ministerial decisions in the record of government or in parliamentary answers--they could probably trace the practice back to 1946.
Contracting out may well technically be a breach of the 1946 Act, but HMSO thought that it had good reason for acting in this way. First, it was merely following long-established practice for other official material. Secondly, and more important, demand for SI printing is, if anything, even more volatile than for other documents. Large volumes of important instruments may be required at very short notice. If HMSO had attempted to produce all of them itself to the tight time scales required, its costs, and therefore the cover price of SIs, would have had to increase.
The result of HMSO's actions is, however, that there are in existence very many copies of SIs which have not been produced in strict conformity with the 1946 Act. I must stress that there is no question of the SI itself not being valid, or of past convictions for breaches of an SI being unsound. Secondary legislation becomes law from the moment it is made, or within a short period thereafter, and can be proved if necessary by production to the court of the original signed copy or a certified copy. However, individual printed copies might possibly be contested by those charged under them, and it is possible that courts would be burdened with arguments as to their validity.
Mr. Simon Hughes (Southwark and Bermondsey):
I shall make just two brief points. First, does the Minister accept that it is ironic that the one bit of the system that appears to have been acting illegally, at least in a technical sense, for the past 30 years is the bit that has most to do with examining the small print, or secondary legislation?
Secondly, and more important, this is the second Bill to be introduced this Session because the Government have been doing something that they should not have been doing, and have had to say that the law needs to be amended. The other was the National Health Service (Residual Liabilities) Act 1996, and, of course, the Minister was at one time a Health Minister.
If the Minister's Department is meant to be co-ordinating Government action, will it undertake, before the end of this Parliament, at least to co-ordinate matters so that we no longer have legislative or procedural practice that appears to be illegal and in need of amendment with no one knowing why things have been proceeding as they have for the past 30 years?
Mr. Freeman:
As soon as the Government discovered that there was a problem, and following collective
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