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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Perhaps I may respond to the noble Lord. I am grateful to him for making the point, which is perfectly valid. It is true that the powers are general in their scope within the context of a constitutional arrangement. It may well be that it will concern changes in governance and so on of a body, or its representation in the case of a body listed in Schedule 3—that is, how the governing bodies are appointed. There could be a number of different aspects. I agree that they will differ and, by necessity, that is why this has been put in the most general of terms. We would argue that we are indeed trying to construct a special form of scrutiny for the orders that will be tabled under this Bill, and that is what our amendments seek to address. I have accepted that the comments of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published this morning mean that we need to look at this again because we want to try to do this within the context of parliamentary accountability. That is the purpose of seeking to reconsider this matter. I think that I have set out the arguments for why we are where we are and what we are seeking to do with our enhanced procedure for parliamentary scrutiny. However, it is important that whatever we determine here has to be compatible with the procedures of the other House because we would not want ping-pong on statutory instruments. That would be pretty difficult, so we need a process which is capable of operating across Parliament. That is an important consideration of which we are mindful.