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Liaison Committee

rose to move, That the 2nd Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 142) be agreed to. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the report relates to a proposal for a new, one-off, ad hoc committee on the Barnett formula, a proposal for the continuation for a further Session of the existing ad hoc committee on intergovernmental organisations, and a proposal that the Liaison Committee’s advice restricting the size of sub-committees of the European Union Committee to 11 be withdrawn. We also report to the House the fact that the House of Commons is not in favour of establishing a Joint Committee on the UK Statistics Authority, a proposal which we supported in our previous report. The House will recall that the committee has previously not supported the case for a committee on the Barnett formula for reasons we set out in our report. The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, accordingly came back to us with a revised proposal, narrowing the orders of reference for such a committee and excluding the consideration of political aspects of the devolution settlements or the application of public expenditure within different regions of the United Kingdom. We think that this revised proposal now meets our concerns and we accordingly recommend that an ad hoc committee on the Barnett formula be set up in the new Session with the orders of reference set out in our report. As we suggest in our report, we think that such an inquiry could be relatively short and we suggest that the committee could report by the 2009 Summer Recess. We also considered a proposal by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, that the ad hoc committee on intergovernmental organisations, which the House established at the beginning of this Session, be continued for a further Session. We did not support this suggestion, for two reasons, as set out in the report. First, we consider it very important to uphold the principle that ad hoc committees are appointed for a specific purpose and for a specific and finite length of time. The appointment of an ad hoc committee on an open-ended basis goes against this principle. Secondly, we are not convinced that the mechanism of an ad hoc committee with the terms of reference of the intergovernmental organisations committee is the right way to address the sorts of issue which the noble Lord, Lord Soley, has suggested as potential future subjects of inquiry. If the noble Lord wishes to pursue this, we suggest that he might reconsider how best to achieve it. I should mention two other matters. The House will recall that in our previous report we gave our support in principle to the establishment of a Joint Committee on what is now the UK Statistics Authority. We noted that the Leader of the House had agreed to relay our views to the Leader of the House of Commons. The Leader of the House has now reported back to us that she has not been able to persuade her colleagues in the Commons of the merits of this idea. Given this, we do not see any practical way to pursue the suggestion further. Finally, we endorse the principle that the maximum number of members of a sub-committee of the European Union Committee should be raised to 12—the same as that of other sub-committees. I beg to move. Moved, That the 2nd Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 142) be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)