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I have the most northerly residence of any Peer in the United Kingdom. Indeed, my title reflects the Tankerness home where I have lived with my family for more than 24 years. I had the great privilege to represent the people of Orkney and Shetland in another place for 18 years, and to represent my adopted home of Orkney in the Scottish Parliament for eight years. They are very distinctive island communities, proud of their heritage, but ever ready to embrace new challenges. While much legislation affecting the isles now originates in the Scottish Parliament, I hope that from time to time it will be appropriate for me to bring a very northern perspective to your Lordships’ deliberations.

A key reason for wishing to take part in this debate is that two issues in which I have taken a keen interest, in the other place and in the Scottish Parliament, are freedom of information and human rights legislation. Both subjects have topical relevance to the accountability of non-governmental organisations providing public services. Next week, the Ministry of Justice’s consultation on the designation of additional public authorities under Section 5 of the Freedom of Information Act closes. I very much welcome the general approach of the consultation, which starts from the Government’s belief that,

“there are good reasons for reviewing coverage of the Act”.

Many organisations receive large amounts of taxpayers’ money to carry out functions of a public nature, but are not subject to the same level of scrutiny as public authorities to which the Act already applies.

Prima facie there is a very strong case for extending the coverage of the Act. However, having been responsible for taking the Scottish freedom of information legislation through the Scottish Parliament, with a similar Section 5 provision, I am well aware that this is not as straightforward as it may seem. As articulated in the

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consultation paper, there is a balance to be struck between the public interest and whether the burden is proportionate. The noble Lord, Lord Best, reminded us of the importance of housing associations in the delivery of services for the public service, yet we have a great breadth between very small and very large housing associations, which may have to cope in very different ways if freedom of information is extended. But believing that freedom of information is to be celebrated as a contribution to better governance, rather than a burden to be tholed, my preference is for the option that proposes a progressive widening of coverage. I recognise that any decision to extend coverage will require further, more specific, consultation, but I hope that that consultation does not become an excuse for unreasonable delay.

The issue that I want to raise concerns the Human Rights Act 1998 and follows the decision of the House of Lords, sitting in a judicial capacity, in the case of YL v Birmingham City Council, that private care homes, even when publicly funded, are not carrying out public functions and as a result an individual could not sue those care homes for an alleged breach of convention rights. Even before the YL decision, the Joint Committee on Human Rights had raised concerns about the inconsistent judicial interpretation of public authority. That matter was promptly raised in your Lordships' House by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on 27 June, when she asked how the Government sought to protect the human rights of vulnerable people in care homes in the light of that decision. The reply from the now Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, was encouraging; and in fairness the Government have expressed disappointment at the judicial decision.

Notwithstanding that, and assurances given after the decision, there is a continuing concern about the position of private care home residents. There have been suggestions that this issue is best left to a Bill of Rights at some unspecified date, but that is less than satisfactory. Using the Health and Social Care Act to strengthen the regulatory framework may help, but I note that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has questioned the effectiveness of such an approach. Individuals will still not be able to enforce convention rights against private care homes; the proposal will not directly affect the scope of the Human Rights Act to cover care homes; and the new Care Quality Commission will have no power to investigate complaints from individual residents and provide them with remedies. I ask the Minister to respond to these concerns when he winds up. Each of these topics could command a short debate in its own right and I suspect we shall return to them.

4.17 pm

Baroness Pitkeathley: My Lords, I am delighted to have the honour and privilege of congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, on his thoughtful and well delivered maiden speech. I have not had the pleasure of meeting him before now, but I know that the excellence of his maiden address to your Lordships, and the progressive ideas contained

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in it, will come as no surprise to noble Lords who knew him in another place, where I am told that he had a strong, authoritative and much respected voice for more than 18 years. He also played a part in the development of the Scottish Parliament as a member of the steering group leading to its establishment, and he served the Parliament with great distinction as its Deputy First Minister, as well as holding other ministerial offices. I know that we shall hear from him many times in future, as he gives us the benefit of his experience and wide-ranging interests, and we look forward to that. On a personal note, I am to pay my first visit to Orkney this summer and I hope to consult him about my itinerary. I understand that the lochs, and the views from Tankerness, are not to be missed. The noble Lord’s future contributions to this House are likewise not to be missed.

I, too, want to concentrate on the charitable sector, because that is what I understand “NGO” to mean. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for securing this short debate. As somebody who has also spent a long time working with NDPBs, I should perhaps remind him that appointing processes have long been rigorous, open and well prescribed. I know from personal experience that people who work for NDPBs are closely appraised and rigorously monitored.

Anxieties expressed by noble Lords about non-governmental organisations delivering services should be taken seriously, but we must keep a sense of proportion. The vast majority of charities are small, with annual incomes of under £10,000, and do not go anywhere near the delivery of public services, concentrating on helping their client groups. It is only among the bigger charities—those with incomes of more than £500,000 a year—that you find any major involvement in public service delivery, and even then only 60 per cent are major service deliverers. None of this is new. Arguments about short-term contracts, full cost recovery, mission creep, subsidisation and additionality have been around for as long as I can remember—and that, I am afraid, is a long time.

Many charities decide that they will only be campaigning charities and will not go in for service provision. That is a decision that we took when I led the carers movement. However, others take a different view, and for good reasons. Why should we want to get NGOs involved in service provision at all? It is not just because those services are cheaper, although they often are, as noble Lords have pointed out. The best public services are those that are based and have their origins in the needs of the user. No one knows that better than the charitable sector, as the noble Baroness opposite reminded us. Groups that work on the front line, in close touch with disadvantaged groups and individuals whom they represent, know what kind of services best suit their needs. They know what works and what does not. Their creativity, their innovation and their ability to build trust in their client groups have driven improvements in public services. The whole user-involvement, personalisation agenda that is nowadays seen as so vital to the provision of public services has been led by NGOs. That is a great tribute to the work of the third sector.

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In order to make best use of this quality, a new partnership is essential between public and voluntary services. The energy, creativity, commitment and experience of NGOs must be properly recognised and harnessed, as well as constantly monitored, if we are not to fall into the traps that some noble Lords have set out.

I would be the last to claim that the difficulties in this area have all been solved. However, we cannot fail to recognise how much more attention and care the third sector receives from this Government than it has ever known before. I well remember the frustration of working with previous Governments, when you might wait weeks or even months for a meeting with a Minister or officials, and when you got there you might be patronised or even treated with contempt; you were rarely taken seriously. Now it is difficult to keep track of the number of initiatives that are aimed at making the third sector an equal and effective partner in the provision of services.

By any dispassionate measure, this Government have a proud record of co-operation with and respect for the charitable sector. The sector’s representative organisations, such as NCVO and ACEVO, together with many others, have a fine record, too, in ensuring that such co-operation is effective and always developing, so that, when NGOs now sit round a table with government, they have a much more powerful voice. The development of the compact, and now Compact Plus, has also helped. It may not be perfect, but it helps to ensure that contracts are properly negotiated and managed and that they are sustainably funded. We now have an Office of the Third Sector, a Minister for the Third Sector and an action plan for third sector involvement. These initiatives are well monitored and evaluated.

I would like to highlight two areas that have a great impact on the delivery of public services: commissioning and capacity building. The world in which public services are being delivered is changing and many of those who want to commission services from the third sector need to develop their skills, expertise and understanding of the sector. The National Programme for Third Sector Commissioning aims to do just that. I am sure that the training programme currently under way, which includes training not just for commissioners but also for elected members, will have a profound effect, not least on the sector’s bidding capacity.

All my life, I have been sitting round tables talking about the need to develop capacity in the third sector. Through the ChangeUp programme and the establishment of the Capacitybuilders organisation in 2006, we are now finally doing that. Especially welcome are the Capacitybuilders funding programmes that target rural, black and minority ethnic communities. I have also been involved with the Futurebuilders initiative, an investment programme for third sector organisations that want to deliver public services; the initiative has loans, grants and capacity-building programmes. In a recent round of visits to funded projects, my fellow panel members and I have been inspired by the innovative work that is being carried out.

When it comes to the third sector, I am and always have been a glass-more-than-half-full person. In spite of the gloomy scenario that we hear about in some

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areas, I want to conclude on an optimistic note. The Government’s commitment to the third sector extends far beyond their desire to see it as a partner in the provision of public services. It is important that the third sector should also be involved in the development of policy and, of course, fulfil its long-established role as a campaigner on behalf of disadvantaged groups.

4.25 pm

Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, on his excellent speech.

My noble friend Lord Forsyth has today given us the opportunity to discuss the burgeoning number of quangos with their increasing costs. There are many concerns. Local democracy is being crushed by the explosion of quangos, with nine unelected regional assemblies imposed throughout the country, including the north-east in spite of the 78 per cent “no” vote to a North-East Regional Assembly in 2004.

They have vast budgets—£400 million for the London Development Agency alone, under the control of Ken Livingstone, where fraudulent funding of various organisations is now the subject of police inquiries. Why does the regional development in Northern Ireland have offices in 12 foreign cities? The Minister may not have the answer tonight, but can the Government let me know the figures for running these offices compared with the funds that they bring in on an annual basis?

Can the Government deny that there is an emerging pattern between the growing role for quangos, the taxpayer forced to fund them and their declining accountability—which is extremely important—in the accessibility of information?

The Sector Skills Development Agency has 25 sub-quangos, with their own websites, branding and staff premises. Do these not constitute an unfair tax-funded threat to private sector providers? Also, local quangos are wholly or largely self-appointing and very few are subject to ministerial or departmental oversight. Why should flood defences not be the responsibility of local authorities? The Milk Development Council, in 1997, had four officials. It now has 44 staff and spends £700 million taken from dairy farmers plus £5 from you and me. How many quangos have been closed down? There are now 94 different organisations and officials inspecting hospitals. The story grows. On the Olympics, why are there so many departments and agencies that cost £170 billion, which is five times the defence budget? The mind boggles.

On another note, I appreciate that we all want a cleaner environment, but the duplication of the Countryside Agency, Natural England and the Environment Agency creates higher costs, with separate websites, stationery and separate premises. Who decides what quangocrats—an awful word—should earn?

My noble friend Lord Forsyth mentioned Dan Lewis who, over a number of years, has made an in-depth study of quangos, which I have also studied. The list is endless. No doubt I have repeated some of what other speakers have already mentioned, but I feel very strongly that many quangos could be consigned to the dustbin, as I believe Mr Blair promised years ago. No matter who made that promise, perhaps it could now be carried out.

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4.28 pm

Lord Low of Dalston: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on having secured this debate, which is both timely and potentially wide-ranging. The subject is potentially so wide-ranging that I did not know before the debate what angle the noble Lord might approach it from. In the event, it was even more wide-ranging than I had suspected. Like other noble Lords, I was expecting a debate on NGOs, but instead we got quangos. Never mind. At its widest, the debate potentially raises issues about the boundary between the state and civil society, which is something that would be good to have a debate about some time or other. That boundary is increasingly under pressure with changes in pension provision, student funding and healthcare provision, and now we are imminently expecting a Green Paper on social care, which will test the boundary still further. I was proceeding from the assumption that the state was in the process of shrinking in relation to the individual, but the noble Lord has put a valuable extra slant on that by indicating that there are respects in which it is at the same time encroaching on civil society. These issues have theoretical ramifications that are too wide to be traversed in six minutes, so I shall stick to more mundane and practical matters.

A year ago, the Public Administration Select Committee launched an inquiry into commissioning public services from the third sector. It has taken evidence from a wide range of individuals and organisations and we eagerly await the final report. While it is true that since 1997 the Government have increasingly emphasised the role of the third sector in developing and delivering better public services, it is unclear how far this process has actually gone. In all likelihood the volume of work undertaken by the third sector is much smaller than the rhetoric would lead us to believe. Does this matter? Do we want to see significantly more public services being delivered by voluntary and community groups? The answer to this question is complex and dependent on a whole range of additional questions to which the Select Committee is seeking answers. For example, have services taken over by third sector organisations shown improvements in quality? Are they more popular with those who use them? Is there a loss of accountability with contractual arrangements replacing direct political accountability? Is there evidence that the third sector is more likely to innovate in its delivery of public services?

There are no easy answers and often the evidence base is thin, but a number of distinctive roles can be identified where the third or voluntary sector is uniquely qualified to make a contribution. NGOs have a unique store of knowledge that enables them to identify and speak with authority about the problems of those with whom they work. They also often have unique insight into the solutions. A clear example is training for employment. In the field of visual impairment—noble Lords will understand my drawing examples from the field I know best, and I declare my interest up front as chairman of RNIB—state agencies have traditionally shown their lack of understanding both of blind people’s abilities and how to realise them. One can predict that the same might very well turn out to be the case with

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the generic private sector organisations to which these responsibilities are beginning to be subcontracted.

Other examples might include technology and how to make the street environment safer. The state should purchase this expertise through central and local government and the utilities rather than, at best, persisting with dead-hand solutions that do not work. Where NGOs have demonstrated that they have the answers they should be funded by the state to deliver them. When I say “funded”, like other noble Lords I mean funded in full. Contracting to the third sector should not mean service on the cheap. Quality services need to be paid for. In some fields solutions are either unknown as yet or only very partially understood. Research is needed to find what works. This is a major raison d’être of the voluntary sector.

For the rest of my time I should like to focus on innovation—new ways of tackling old problems. Traditionally the third sector has been able to innovate by using unrestricted charitable funds, trying new approaches and, where they can be shown to work, seeking to roll them out more widely. An example of this is the integrated low vision service covering Camden and Islington which the RNIB has developed together with the two social services departments and the local primary care trust. This provides a high-quality person-centred service to people with sight loss. It is truly innovative. However, despite the evidence of success, it has proved extremely difficult to get this model adopted in other parts of the country. The third sector can be innovative, but narrow and restrictive public sector commissioning policies can easily stifle this creativity. That is why the recent contribution to this debate from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Andy Burnham MP, is so welcome. He appeals to the commissioners of local services to innovate and break traditional patterns of local spending, to be more entrepreneurial and move money around if traditional areas of spending are not producing the goods, to be open-minded about who might be best placed to provide services and trust the voluntary sector as a partner, and to trust people to know what services best suit their needs.

Another way in which the third sector can make an innovative contribution to public services is in the development of policy and strategy. This does not have to be undertaken largely or exclusively by government through the traditional report/Green Paper/White Paper/legislation route. As the recent development of a UK vision strategy shows, the process could be much more inclusive. The draft strategy, led by the RNIB on behalf of the Vision 2020 UK coalition, with the support of Guide Dogs, Action for Blind People and the National Association of Local Societies for Visually Impaired People, was developed between April and November 2007, with input from national and local voluntary organisations, professional groups and central and local government. Consultation on the draft took place through to January 2008 and included a series of regional and country-based consultation events. We held a most successful event here at the House of Lords last week to celebrate what a success the whole thing had been. The comments from that process are currently being collated and reviewed, and the final strategy will be launched in April 2008. That is surely a far better way to develop strategy.

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NGOs are not just service providers, research centres and think tanks. They have a crucial role to play in giving a voice to less visible sections of our society that typically lack a voice.

Lord Bach: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but we are into the ninth minute and other noble Lords want to speak. Could the noble Lord bring his contribution to an end?

Lord Low of Dalston: My Lords, I was right at the end.

In this connection I should like to comment on the view that an increased involvement in public service delivery inevitably threatens the sector’s independence and ability to campaign, or that delivering public services and remaining an independent campaigning voice must always be in conflict with one another. It is not clear to me why such a tension should exist.

4.37 pm

Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I begin by expressing the warmest welcome to my noble friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness and congratulating him on a distinguished beginning in this House. He and I were colleagues and friends in another place and neighbours in next-door constituencies. I wryly observe that there has already been a somewhat northerly slant on Scottish affairs in this House, but I shall welcome his championing of such issues in the future.

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