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Public Bodies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I had not thought of declaring my disability as an interest but, in view of what the noble Baroness has said, perhaps I had better. I certainly sympathise with some of the points that she has made. However, I had been going to declare two other interests in a speech which I do not think will count on the McNally scorecard, partly because it is not related to his department and partly because it will be as neutral as I can possibly make it. One interest is that I must have been the Minister responsible for disabled people at the time when DPTAC was established—albeit not by what was then the DHSS, or the DSS; I have forgotten which. I was certainly the Minister responsible, as Secretary of State, for creating the disability living allowance in its current form and therefore for establishing the advisory committee. I do not regard either of those points as an argument for me to defend the status quo without regard to what has happened in the intervening period, but it clearly gives me an interest in the matter. I am bound to express some caution, particularly in respect of the Disability Living Allowance Advisory Board, when I am told that one reason why it is thought to be no longer needed is that its function is to give advice only when asked for by the Secretary of State, so that when the Secretary of State decides that he does not want the advice—which may well be because he knows what he is going to get but he does not want it—it should become redundant. There appears to be a certain amount of circularity about that argument, which I hope that my noble friend from the DWP will be able to deal with. As to DPTAC, I understand that some alternative arrangement is to be made, but no one knows what that will be. I hope that we can be told today but, if not, we are back in the situation of the previous debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, all of this would be much easier if the Government came clean and said, ““We need something. It isn’t this, but this is what it is””. What we are being told time after time is, ““We don’t need this. We know we need something, but we don’t know what it is””. That is very unsatisfactory indeed.