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Public Bodies (Abolition of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) Order 2012

I thank noble Lords for their consideration of the order and will try to answer the questions asked by my noble friend Lord Razzall, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and by the noble Lord, Lord Young. I can assure my noble friend that there will be no attempt to control how the endowment is spent by the Treasury once the transfer scheme comes into effect. I hope that he will find that answer reassuring. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, asked several questions. I will try to answer most of them. Of course I agree—as I did in my earlier speech—that NESTA has done a wonderful job. The idea is to set it free to be able to do even more. Its objectives were registered with the Charity Commission and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. Perhaps the noble Baroness did not ask about the Scottish Charity Regulator, so I have given her a bit more information than she asked for—but it is jolly nice to know these things. In answer to the noble Baroness's next question, once NESTA is reconstituted as an independent charity and trust, it will continue to support innovative companies, both as part of a diversified portfolio invested for financial return and through grant funding and programme-related investment in line with the charitable objectives that have been cleared. I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that reassurance. In answer to the noble Baroness's third question, the new NESTA trust and charity will be subject—as is the case with all charities—to charity law and charity accounting rules. There are currently four trustees of the charity. The appointment of trustees to the charity will be a matter for the charity itself. We understand that the NESTA charity intends to appoint a number of new trustees in April 2012. It has established a nominations committee to consider the skills and experience required for the board, and is currently running an open applications process for new trustees. There will be no government involvement in that. I am as delighted as the noble Baroness that half the charitable trustees are women. We will see if that continues—or perhaps it will finish up as an all-women board, whereupon the men will start to complain that they are not getting in anywhere. However, we will deal with that when we get to it. She mentioned that the previous Government had done a lot of work with NESTA, and we have been able to take on a concern that is going extremely well. We think that it will be very happy with this new move. The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked about the protector—like him, I immediately thought ““Cromwell”” when I heard the word. There are no plans for the protector's report to be presented to the House. The Government will continue to collaborate with NESTA in the future. As I said, there is a previous organisation; the model is already in use by the Millennium Awards Trust. We are watching carefully how that runs. NESTA promotes innovation and creativity to help tackle social and economic problems, and provides the independent, well informed commentary on innovation policy that we have been asked should continue. However, after consideration of the conditions set out in the Public Bodies Act, the Government have concluded that NESTA does not need to be in the public sector to carry out its work. Abolishing NESTA as a non-departmental public body and reconstituting it as an independent charity and charitable trust will give NESTA greater freedom to pursue its valuable activities, which noble Lords have praised this afternoon. I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this interesting debate, and I commend this draft order to the Committee. Motion agreed.