FINANCING OF AGRICULTURAL TRAINING (Hansard, 7 April 1970)

§ Mr. Mackie
I beg to move Amendment No. 48, in page 80, line 33, leave out from 'shall' to end of line 41 and insert: 'not be so raised, but—

(a) subject to subsection (5) of this section, the Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity shall from time to time certify an amount as being one required by the Board for meeting such expenses other than 467 expenses by way of payment of interest on, or repayment of, any loan, and shall pay the amount so certified to the Board;

(b) the said Secretary of State shall also from time to time pay to the Board any amounts paid or payable by them by way of interest on, or repayment of, any loan made to them by a third party so far as so made for the purpose of defraying relevant expenses; and

(c) the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food shall pay to the said Secretary of State—

(i) any amount certified by that Secretary of State under paragraph (a) of this subsection, and

(ii) any amounts certified by that Secretary of State either as payable by him by virtue of paragraph (b) of this subsection or as payable to him by way of interest on, or repayment of, any loan made by him so far as so made for the purpose of defraying relevant expenses'.

§ Mr. Speaker
I suggest that it would be convenient for the House to discuss at the same time Amendment No. 49.

§ Mr. Mackie
It is convenient to discuss the two Amendments together because the first is incomplete without the second.
The sole purpose of the Amendment is to give effect to an undertaking which I gave in Committee when debating an Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. Peter Mills). I said: …the Government accept that the Board's expenditure"— that is, the Agricultural Training Board's expenditure— should be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny in the same way as that of other boards. We are, therefore, prepared to provide for negative Resolution procedure on Report. This will entail considerable redrafting of the Clause to provide for approvals of the expenditure involved to be given by way of Statutory Instruments by the appropriate Ministers in relation to Great Britain and Northern Ireland"—.[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 26th February, 1970; c. 924–5.] That is what we have done in the Amendments now before the House. The Amendments are rather extensive and they may seem complicated, but they are consequential on the introduction of the negative Resolution procedure. In order to provide for that, the sums required for meeting the expenses of the training board in Great Britain and the Ministry of Agriculture in Northern Ireland will have to be certified or 468 approved by the United Kingdom Ministers concerned by means of statutory instruments. These will be subject to annulment.
I am advised that it would not be legally proper to make the cost of servicing loans the subject of a statutory instrument. The interest on and repayment of past loans is a firm commitment which cannot logically be prayed against, but Parliament will be able to pray against the Secretary of State's certificate of the sums required for meeting the Board's other expenses which will be incurred in carrying out its proposals. I think that this provides the opportunity for Parliamentary scrutiny that is required.
For Northern Ireland the provisions are more straightforward. In order to provide for a statutory instrument to be made, it is necessary for approval to be given to the sums required by United Kingdom Ministers. For this purpose we have taken the four agricultural Ministers, all of whom have an interest in the approval of the sums required, as distinct from the payment which will be my right hon. Friend's responsibility.
Lastly and more generally, I should explain that the new procedure will apply to expenditure to be incurred in the financial year 1971–72 and succeeding years. By the time the Bill has received the Royal Assent expenses for the financial year 1970–71 will be being incurred and, as the House knows, arrangements have been made for taking them into account in the Annual Review. I think the House will agree that it would be unrealistic and confusing to represent the expenditure as open to debate at some uncertain time in the course of the year in which it is being incurred.

§ Mr. Godber
I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for these Amendments. Unfortunately, I was prevented from being present in Committee when this matter was debated. I have always felt strongly that there was a need for such a provision and I wrote to the Minister about it at an early stage. If changes had to be made in regard to the financing of the Agricultural Training Board, it would be wrong to take away the power which previously existed for expenditure to be debated in this House. That applies to 469 every training board under the Industrial Training Act. Purely by chance, because of the way in which the change had been made, the power was taken away.
The Government have seen the force of this argument and have been good enough to introduce these Amendments. I believe we proposed that there should be affirmative Orders, but the fact that there will be a negative Order gives us the opportunity to pray against it. That is the main thing we wanted, to enable the Opposition of the day always to have the opportunity to challenge expenditure publicly in this House. We regard that as a very useful safeguard.
Having regard to the somewhat chequered history of the Agricultural Training Board so far, we think this an important safeguard which may help to create that greater degree of confidence which hon. Members on both sides of the House want to see achieved. We all believe in training, but we have to consider the way in which it is to be carried out and financed. I think that with this Amendment we can achieve the best result after the rather unfortunate happenings of the early days of the Training Board.