COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 11 July 1995)

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 129.

§ Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, as I understand it, Amendment No. 129 introduces a new subject. Perhaps the noble Earl may wish to expand on the subject that it introduces before the Question is put to the House.

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, is enormously helpful. I am deeply grateful. I am afraid that in the excitement of the last amendments my papers became a little confused and I thought that we were dealing with a different amendment. I am grateful to the noble Lord for having pulled me back on to the track.
In moving Amendment No. 129 perhaps I may speak also to Amendments Nos. 186 to 188, 214 to 219, 318, 320, 321, 327 and 335. All of these amendments are minor or technical amendments, other than Amendments Nos. 129 and 188. They are required to validate payments of national parks supplementary grant which have been made by my department and the Welsh Office to county and metropolitan district councils since 1990.
The Secretary of State must lay a report annually before another place. This should specify both the determinations relating to the amount of grant to be paid to country councils which run the national parks and the considerations leading the Secretary of State to make such determinations. The report should be approved by affirmative resolution by another place.
Regrettably both my department and the Welsh Office have failed to lay such reports before another place since 1990. The legislation permits the payments to be made. The payments were made. They were properly audited in the same way as other local authority expenditure is audited. However, regrettably, the necessary reporting procedure to Parliament was omitted. This problem has only recently come to light and we thought it important that the legality of the payments which have been made to local authorities should be put beyond doubt. That would be achieved by Amendments Nos. 129 and 188. I commend the amendments to the House.

§ Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, this is a regrettable event. Not only do we have retrospective validation of payments which were apparently made illegally, but we also have an admission by the Minister that his department and the Welsh Office did not lay the appropriate reports for the payments in question.
This is an important issue. Can the noble Earl explain to this House what inquiries have been made in his department and in the Welsh Office to find out why such 1536 reports were not laid before the other place, as was their duty? What sanctions have been taken against those who were responsible? Which Ministers were involved, and what sanctions have been taken against those Ministers?

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, I have no hesitation in saying that this is a regrettable occurrence. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, is quite right. Rather than brush the matter aside, we thought it appropriate that it should be put right. It should be made clear that the payments were not made illegally. Legislation permitted the payments to be made and the payments have been properly audited.
Where we went wrong was in omitting the reporting procedure to Parliament. That was due to an oversight. It is clearly something which should not have happened. Both departments regret that it has happened. The failure appears to be associated largely with the major changes in the regime for local government finance which were introduced in 1990. Both my department and the Welsh Office faced a major task in introducing the new arrangements. In focusing on those they regrettably lost sight of the fact that approval for those grants continued under the previous arrangements. That is the position. It is a regrettable one and we thought it right to correct it.

§ Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, the noble Earl said that the payments were not made illegally. If they were not made illegally, why do they have to be validated? I understood the expression "validated" to mean that payments which were made contrary to certain provisions, rather than merely not being reported—payments made by mistake—are validated retrospectively by both Houses of Parliament. That is the meaning of the word "validation" as I understand it. If that is not the case perhaps the noble Earl will explain that I am wrong. I believe that I am right.

Earl Ferrers
My Lords, much as the noble Lord would like me to, I shall not enter into the semantics of the definition of the word "validate". I tried to point out to him that these payments were made perfectly correctly. There was legislation which permitted those payments. It is not a question of payments being made which should not have been made. However, there should have been a report to Parliament, as he says, validating the payments. That is why we seek to amend the Bill now.
I tried to make clear that that should have been done. Parliament should have known about it. It was an error. However, the payments themselves were covered by legislation which permitted them. In addition, the receipt of the payments was audited.