THE POLICE NEGOTIATING BOARD FOR THE UNITED KINGDOM (Hansard, 6 March 1980)

§ Mr. George Cunningham
May I take the opportunity to ask for one further point of clarification from the Minister of State? Clause 1 clearly provides for the method by which the chairman and any deputy chairmen of the board will be appointed. When we come to the other members, subsection (3) simply tells us that the Board shall be established in accordance with such arrangements made after consultations between the Secretary of State and organisations representing the interests referred to in subsection (1) as appear to him to be satisfactory. It was in that sense that I referred to the Bill as an enabling Bill on Second Reading.
It would be useful to know how that will operate. Will the members on the official side, other than the chairman and deputy chairman, be appointed technically by the Secretary of State on the basis of submissions put to him by local authority associations, or will the arrangements referred to in that subsection give the technical right to appoint to local authority associations? It is important for us to know that.

Mr. Britton
It would be better if I told the hon. Gentleman that later. I am not now in a position to answer with guaranteed accuracy.

§ Mr. Cunningham
I am sorry to hear that. I do not wish to be unkind to the Minister of State, but we are in Committee. It is an obvious question to ask. We are authorising arrangements of unusual vagueness. I do not criticise the vagueness. It is perfectly appropriate, but we are entitled to know, if it has been 747 decided, how the Secretary of State in-ends to exercise the powers that we are conferring on him. I should like an answer.

§ Mr. Brittan
I know that the hon. Gentleman would like to know the answer, and I do not criticise him for that. I have explained in considerable detail the composition of the board and where it derived from. I believe that I have accounted for the origin of every member of the board.
I am now able to tell the hon. Gentleman that the members will be appointed by the local authority associations. That is the arrangement that has been made.

§ Mr. Cunningham
I am grateful to the Minister. That is exactly the point that I was after. I was asking not about the composition of the board but who, technically, would appoint it.
May we take it that details of those arrangements, which presumably will be set out in some document, will he at least placed in the Library? I realise that there is no provision for there being a statutory instrument, but it is a document that should be available here and, I believe, more widely. May we have an assurance that it will be available in the Library?

§ Mr. Brittan
I see no reason why it should not be possible to produce a document setting out the arrangements. I believe that we can reopen the question whether it is appropriate to put it in the Library or deal with it in some other way. It is certainly not a secret, and I can undertake to supply a documentary description of the arrangements.