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Concessionary Parking Scheme (Extension)

Mr. Christopher Fraser accordingly presented a Bill to require local authorities to extend concessionary parking arrangements available to disabled people to health and social services professionals on duty: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 12 May, and to be printed [Bill 117].

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Orders of the Day

Utilities Bill

As amended in the Standing Committee, considered.

3.43 pm

Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I do not want to delay matters, but I wonder whether I could seek your guidance on a matter of record and on how the House is supposed to follow proceedings when the Government keep chopping and changing a particular Bill.

At column 730 of the 11 April report of the Standing Committee, a new clause that I drafted to consolidate the Bill is clearly marked as having been agreed to by a vote of nine to three. However, I am reliably informed by colleagues who were there that it was withdrawn. The problem is not that, after great running around, I have been able to get to the bottom of that; it is simply that people outside this place have the greatest difficulty following the Bill.

The matter is particularly relevant to today's recommittal motion, which I hope the Government will accept. The Bill has been a mess from start to finish, and the poor people outside the House who will be affected by its provisions have not had a chance to keep us informed of what they want us to do.

Madam Speaker: I shall not comment on the Bill's contents, as that is, of course, not my role. However, if it helps the hon. Gentleman, and particularly those of whom he speaks, I can make it clear that, as he said, there was--I can put it no higher or lower--a considerable printing muddle in parts of the Hansard to which he referred. I make it clear to him and to those whom he mentioned that that does not affect today's passage of the Bill.

3.45 pm

Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton): I beg to move,

That the Bill be re-committed to the former Committee.

The Utilities Bill has been unprecedented in Department of Trade and Industry Ministers' failure to know what is going on in other Departments, and it is unprecedented in the way in which the Government have handled its passage through Parliament. From the very beginning, it was clear that the Bill was poorly and hastily drafted--consultation was still taking place on the policy underlying the Bill. The press reported that 900 Government amendments were still required to the 134-clause Bill. The explanatory notes admitted that

the Government intends to bring forward amendments later in the passage of the Bill

to give effect to a long list of measures that the Government still intended to include in the Bill, the clauses for which had not been drafted.

The Utilities Bill is not an insignificant Bill. Initially, it was intended to provide a new regulatory framework for all four main utilities--gas, electricity, water and telecommunications. The new framework would impose new duties and liabilities on the utilities sectors that would increase the regulatory risk to those capital-intensive companies. It would provide for a new £0.75 billion

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electricity trading arrangement and for separation of the licences for electricity distribution and supply. It is a framework that would provide for limitless fines. This is no insignificant Bill.

The Bill was heralded as a flagship Bill of this Session, and it will provide the regulatory framework for many years to come. However, despite its importance, from the very start it has been handled with amateurish incompetence. The Bill that we are considering today bears very little resemblance to the Bill that left the Chamber after Second Reading at the end of January.

In Committee, the Government tabled 359 amendments to the Bill. Many of them were tabled on a just-in-time basis, with the ink barely dry. The Government have tabled an additional 22 amendments for today's debate. We understand that they plan to table yet more amendments when the Bill is considered in another place. Despite that, the Government have still not sought to legislate on categories mentioned in the explanatory notes. We had the Committee's notorious ninth sitting on 2 March, when the Government announced that they were removing from the Bill all clauses dealing with the water and telecommunications sectors.

Water was removed from the Bill because of a turf war between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions over policy, and the fact that DETR would be introducing its own water Bill later in the year. Telecommunications was removed because of the industry's outcry that a change in the regulatory structure would be imposed on it within two years of a further major upheaval after the telecommunications White Paper is published in the autumn. It beggars belief that a Government who claim to be up to speed with dot.com should have treated telecommunications like a sitcom. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the shambles at the heart of Government policy than their handling of utilities regulation.

As a result of the removal of those clauses, the so-called Utilities Bill was confined to dealing with gas and electricity. However, by the ninth sitting, clauses relating to telecommunications had already been passed. Those clauses--now clauses 101 to 105--remain in the Bill, despite the fact that telecommunications are no longer part of the legislation. The Government are seeking to delete those clauses today.

The Bill had half of its major provisions removed and some 359 Government amendments were tabled--of which some 260 were accepted--yet it still requires further amendment by the Government today and at later stages. It bears no resemblance to the measure that was originally drafted. To make matters worse, a number of the more substantial clauses were tabled by the Government in a way that prevented members of the Standing Committee from scrutinising them properly and from tabling amendments to them.

For example, 56 Government amendments were tabled late on Friday 31 March. The first that Committee members knew of those amendments was on Monday 3 April, by which time it was too late to table further amendments as the clauses were being debated on the following day, Tuesday 4 April. Even more seriously, that

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gave the interested public no time to examine the amendments and feed in their views to right hon. and hon. Members serving on the Standing Committee.

The Bill is a travesty in terms of democratic representation. Even if the 56 amendments had been tabled on the Thursday, which would have given hon. Members enough time to table amendments, it still would not have been a satisfactory way in which to scrutinise such important legislation. Our procedures have not evolved to deal with substantial re-writes of legislation in Committee without significant notice being given. By convention, there is always a week or more between the Second Reading of a Bill and its consideration in Committee. That enables the public to make representations to Members of Parliament. That convention should also apply to major Government amendments to Bills in Committee, but in this case that convention has been flouted.

Despite an apology from the Government Whip, the same thing happened again with 14 Government new clauses being tabled late on Thursday 6 April for debate on Tuesday 11 April. Once again, they were not available to Committee members until the Friday. Therefore, although it was technically possible to table amendments, in practice there was far too little time for effective consultation or to receive representations. The Electricity Association said:

We do not have any comments on the new clauses and schedules at this stage other than to say that it is completely unsatisfactory to have significant amendments with far-reaching implications being laid at this stage in the parliamentary process. We will be working up our position on these amendments during the coming week.

British Gas plc said of the new clauses:

They have been brought forward in a piecemeal way and have not been the subject of any industry consultation.

Yet the Government claim that they listen to business.

During the 22nd sitting of the Standing Committee, the Minister for Energy and Competitiveness in Europe, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) about how many more Government amendments the Minister intended to table, said:

I will undertake during the Committee's deliberations to have a check made on the number of amendments that are likely to be tabled and on what issues.--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, Tuesday 4 April 2000; c. 667.]

In other words, it was a matter not for the Minister, but for her civil servants. It was been clear throughout the Standing Committee that Ministers were not properly engaged in the detail of the Bill and that it was very much a case of reading from prepared briefs.

It is clear that the Government have handled the Bill poorly. It is riddled with errors, poor drafting and policy confusion. The Government's handling of the Bill has resulted in many of its amendments being subject to minimal scrutiny by the Standing Committee. Today we are considering a completely different Bill from that which went into Committee. It is our view that the Bill needs to be scrutinised again in Committee before it comes back to the House on Report and Third Reading.

We would add that we are keen to ensure that what is now clause 66 is put on the statute book at the earliest opportunity, to enable the new electricity trading arrangements to start in October this year. Therefore, if the recommittal motion is passed today, we will support the Government if they wish to fast track clause 66 on to the statute book through a separate Bill.

19 Apr 2000 : Column 989

Parliamentary scrutiny is vital in protecting people's freedom from the ever-growing power of the state. That scrutiny has been undermined by the Government during the passage of this important Bill to re-regulate the gas and electricity industries. I urge the House to support the motion to give the Bill the extra scrutiny it requires and to recommit it to Committee.

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