Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Friday 25th November 2016
(8 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Before I come on to the detail of my Bill, I would like to say what a pleasure it has been to spend time in the Chamber this morning, and particularly to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) and what he aptly calls his Santa Claus Bill. I remember introducing my first private Member’s Bill last year, which we fondly referred to as the Peter Pan and Wendy Bill.
Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing her second private Member’s Bill in her first term in Parliament. If she is successful, as we hope, she will have equalled my record in the last Parliament. I wish her every success.
Wendy Morton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. If I am successful with this Bill, I will perhaps have to try to beat her record and go for a hat trick. There is a challenge for her.
Going back to my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth, it struck me that there is a link between my constituency and his—the A5, which runs to Hinckley, but also through Brownhills in my constituency.
Although the title of my Bill is the Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill, it is not really about audit at all. I was going to say that the title might be a little misleading, but I am not sure whether I am allowed to use that term, so let me say that the title does not really encapsulate what the Bill is all about. Let me explain that a little further.
The aim of the Bill is further to improve the transparency and accountability of local public bodies. Because it would amend the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 in respect of the people who are able to inspect accounting documentation, the title has to reflect that parentage. I hope Members will indulge me in explaining that point today. This is a very short piece of legislation, but I believe it is one that we should welcome, because it would make a single and very simple change to the 2014 Act.
The Bill is designed explicitly to amend legislation so that journalists, including citizen journalists, can have the right for one month to inspect the accounting records of the financial year just ended of any relevant authority and to request copies of those documents—without being required to have an interest in that authority.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
When I sat on the Investigatory Powers Public Bill Committee a few months ago, we spent quite a bit of time talking about journalists and how we should define journalists for the purpose of the legislation. Could anybody with an iPhone, for example, legitimately call themselves a journalist? Will my hon. Friend explain in greater depth to assuage my concern that her Bill might put an undue cost pressure on local authorities if officers had to find time to meet any requests, particularly when anybody could classify themselves as both a citizen and a journalist?
Wendy Morton
That is an interesting point. I shall deal later in my speech with the definitions of “journalist” and “citizen journalist”.
My Bill seeks to increase transparency and openness, but—I must stress this—not to place an unnecessary burden on local authorities that work very hard and often have to handle a great many requests for information.
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
I know that the Bill is about openness and transparency, but—this is in the same vein as the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare)—has my hon. Friend conducted an analysis of the extra cost and burden that would be placed on local authorities that are already burdened with huge numbers of freedom of information requests, as she has just said, and the requirement to publish numerous responses?
Wendy Morton
That is another interesting point. We need to get the balance right. We want openness and transparency, but we do not want to place an unnecessary burden on local authorities. On the basis of indications that I have received, I do not believe that the Bill would impose a huge burden on them. As for the cost, they will still be able to charge for requests for information, and I shall say more about that later.
A complete list of the local bodies that would be affected is set out in schedule 2 to the 2014 Act and includes local authorities, police bodies, fire and rescue authorities, parks authorities, combined authorities, and parish councils with an annual turnover of £25,000 and above. It is worth recognising that the Bill provides for that threshold.
Section 26 of the Act enables “any persons interested” to “inspect the accounting records” of such bodies, and to request copies of any part of those records or related documents. However, under previous case law it has been determined that the definition does not include journalists, although it would include, for example, local business rate payers or others who pay fees or charges to the body in question. Section 25 gives local electors the right to inspect and have copies of a wider range of accounts-related information from their council, such as the auditor’s opinion or any public interest report. They can also question the auditor and make an objection to the accounts, which the auditor is required to investigate unless he deems it to be vexatious or a duplicate of another request. That, I think, is an important provision, because it provides some safeguards for local authorities.
In all cases, whether the requester is an interested party or a local elector, the relevant authority is able to charge
“a reasonable sum for each copy”
of any document that is made. I hope that that goes some way towards answering my hon. Friends’ questions.
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her Bill. I spoke during the debate on her previous one.
I have some reservations about “reasonable” charges. We know about the pressures on local authorities and, despite references to reasonableness and vexatiousness, I am slightly wary of the possibility that serial troublemakers might submit requests to numerous councils. Can my hon. Friend reassure us that they will be protected from people who are just digging around?
Wendy Morton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and for speaking in the debate on my previous Bill; I hope she will support me again this time. Reasonableness is important, and including the words “vexatious” and “duplications” should offer some reassurance, but if the Bill makes progress we could seek more clarity on this in Committee. We all work under tight budgets these days, so a balance always needs to be struck between openness and transparency, and unreasonably high charges.
Members may wonder why I am introducing this Bill—why I have given up another Friday to stand here in the House of Commons, as I happen to quite enjoy Fridays. Members may also be a little puzzled as this is a rather technical amendment to audit legislation.
Hon. Members may recall my predecessor as MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, Sir Richard Shepherd. He has probably not had a mention in this place since I made my maiden speech, but my constituents often remind me about him. Sir Richard was a staunch defender of whistleblowers and fought for a more transparent and accountable government and greater freedom of information: if we googled him, we would find many references to the work he did in this place on those topics. His principled stance on those issues resonated with many inside the Chamber and outside, and I am keen to see that that continues. The Bill speaks to those interests by seeking to make local government more transparent and subject to more effective public scrutiny of their spending, and I am sure we can all recall occasions or circumstances when such scrutiny might have been able to help.
The new rights I propose for journalists would provide access to the accounting records of any local authority, thus giving them an important tool. They would be able to access spending information across the piece that would aid their journalistic investigations and the publishing of their findings would provide local electors with information that might enable them to question the auditor or raise an objection, thus enabling them to better hold their local authority to account for poor spending decisions.
Why “journalists” and how do I define that term? I am conscious that Members might want to know why I do not propose extending the inspection rights to everyone or whether “journalist” is a suitable category for the definition of interested person.
Proposed new subsection (1A) defines a journalist for the purpose of this new right as
“any person who produces for publication journalistic material (whether paid to do so or otherwise).”
As well as accredited members of the press, the term is intended to cover citizen journalists, by which I mean bloggers who meet the conditions, although it would not extend to anyone who simply has social media access.
Craig Whittaker
My hon. Friend makes a valid case for what she is trying to achieve, but why journalists? Why not open it up to everybody to access these accounts? If we really want to be open, honest and transparent, surely we should not put any criteria or restrictions in place.
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend makes an interesting and fair point, and I would not be against looking at that further in Committee, but I think it is the best way to strike a balance between openness and transparency, and making requests reasonable for councils to deal with. Furthermore, a journalist or citizen blogger would be requesting information that they would then share with the wider public.
Seema Kennedy
I am pleased to hear that my hon. Friend is willing to consider the definition of a journalist in Committee, but we all have to recognise that journalism is changing. Accredited journalists will always come back for a comment and seek to put forward a balanced argument, but I am sure that we in this place have all been subjected to so-called citizen journalists who do not present their arguments with the same critical nature. Furthermore, journalism will probably have evolved another step by the time the Bill receives Royal Assent. Would it not be better to extend these rights to all people?
Wendy Morton
This power is already available to electors, but this group of journalists cannot currently access the information in question. I am trying to achieve that access for them in the Bill. I hope that I will be able to give my hon. Friend more clarity as I proceed with my speech. Otherwise, should the Bill go through today, she will be most welcome to serve on the Bill Committee.
Careful consideration has also been given to the language in the Bill. For example, by referring to “journalistic material”, the Bill focuses on what the person does. This would exclude someone who worked at a newspaper but compiled classified ads. I am trying to keep this really focused. Use of the term “publication” would exclude student journalists who compile journalistic material but do not publish it. I want to keep the focus on openness, transparency and the public.
Furthermore, other legislation defines “publication” as material having a public element. So, while the Bill might include journalistic material tweeted on Twitter, it would not include material circulated to a small, invitation-only Facebook group. It would also be unlikely to include material sent as a direct electronic message. It probably would include a blogger such as Guido Fawkes but not campaign groups such as 38 Degrees or SumOfUs. The extension of the rights to journalists alone has been the subject of careful consideration.
I understand that hon. Members have raised concerns today, and they are exactly the kind of points that I would be more than happy for us to consider in Committee. If the rights were extended to anyone and everyone, there would be great potential to make mischief through multiple requests to inspect or copy documents, without the accompanying ability to make a meaningful contribution towards raising awareness or improving the accountability of the body concerned. I hope that that answers the question raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker), who is no longer in his place.
The matter of costs has been raised. Like others, I am conscious of budget pressures; I am, of course, keen not to place further burdens on councils. Therefore the Bill would not enable journalists to question the auditor about a local authority’s accounts. Nor would they be able to make a formal objection to the accounts, as a local elector can. Furthermore, the body would be able to recover the cost of providing any copies from the requestor.
I understand that the number of objections and questions received from local electors is small and, although the publication of articles detailing high or unorthodox expenditure in an area could result in more local electors asking questions of the auditor, the number who will take that next step is still likely to remain small, especially given the short time window available for inspecting the accounts. Again, I hope that that gives reassurance to Members who have asked about those matters today.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
Central Government now write to all taxpayers to tell us how money is being spent. Does my hon. Friend think it would be a clever idea if local authorities were to publish exactly where they are spending all their money? That would bring it back to people’s minds.
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point highlighting the importance of openness and transparency. Whether on car parking charges, which we were discussing earlier, or other matters of council finance, I believe there is public appetite for a greater understanding of what local and national Government are spending their money on.
Oliver Colvile
May I also suggest that universities write to their students to tell them how they are spending their tuition fees? I tried to encourage that with a ten-minute rule Bill some time ago.
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend is making some interesting interventions this afternoon, but to expand my Bill to that extent might be a little beyond its remit.
Mrs Sheryll Murray
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill builds on the requirement in the Localism Act 2011 that any local authority that wants to increase its council tax revenue by more than a certain percentage has to take the matter to a referendum? The Bill will bring more transparency and enhance what there is already.
Wendy Morton
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right, and her point goes back to what I am trying to say about openness and transparency, which are at the heart of my Bill and which I believe the public want to see more of.
Following the abolition of the Audit Commission, it could be argued that local electors should have more awareness of their rights and be prepared to challenge councils on unacceptable spending, especially in the light of reducing resources. The Bill has the potential to provide local electors with information that will help to raise their awareness, which surely can only be a good thing.
I understand that the Government support the Bill’s intent and have previously signalled their intention to legislate on this issue at the earliest opportunity. My hon. Friend the Minister might wish to say a little more on that point in due course, but I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members present will support me in taking forward the Bill so that it receives its Second Reading and can go on to Committee and beyond.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I take my hat off to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for her bravery in entering the private Member’s Bill raffle for two years running. I entered last year and was drawn ninth, and I am only just recovering from the process. For my hon. Friend to do it for two years running is either commendable or just downright greedy. I will leave the House to work out which it might be.
Wendy Morton
My hon. Friend is being very generous in his comments. Should he wish to follow the direction I have taken, perhaps I could point him down the route of presentation Bills. If one is willing to queue outside the Public Bill Office, it is possible to get a presentation Bill slot. If he would like me to explain a little more about that after the debate, I will be more than happy to do so.
Simon Hoare
Tempting as the thrill of being inducted overnight by my hon. Friend in the arcane rituals of securing a place for a Bill is, I hope she will not be too offended if I find I have a prior engagement when that invitation arrives at my desk.
Simon Hoare
If it is on that point, I will of course give way to my fellow Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Mrs Murray
May I offer my hon. Friend some advice that I heeded when I took two private Members’ Bills through in the previous Parliament? Pick the same number—336 was very lucky for me.
Simon Hoare
That might explain why my hon. Friend has never won the national lottery.
Simon Hoare
Well, if I have given way to Cornwall, I must of course give way to Devon in this west country pincer movement.
Oliver Colvile
My hon. Friend is missing a chance, because he could then have told me how the whole process works.
Simon Hoare
This could almost become a parliamentary orgy, and we should probably avoid that at all costs. Rather than risk the wrath of your chastisement, Madam Deputy Speaker, by having a slightly arcane debate that may be more appropriate for the Procedure Committee, let me return to the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills introduced the Bill with her customary eloquence, and I support the principle behind it—who in all honesty would not? Government of all types, whether local or national, has no funds of itself and merely acts as a clearing house for council or national taxpayers.
We are not spending our money: that fundamental principle underpins a lot of Conservative party thinking, in sharp contrast to the Labour party, for example, which always believes that the state knows best and wants to take as much as it possibly can—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), a former leader of Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, is chuntering from a sedentary position, but I will leave him to defend his council tax-raising powers to his electorate at the appropriate time. It is absolutely pivotal that voters and members of the public have access to as much information as possible about the finances spent on their behalf.
My next point was also made by some hon. Friends. There will be some issues to be teased out in Committee—I hope the Bill reaches that stage—but I fear that the Bill could in some respects be described as an analogue Bill for a digital age. For example, proposed new subsection (1A) in clause 1 refers to both “journalists” and “publication”. As I mentioned in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, we spent quite a bit of time during the Investigatory Powers Public Bill Committee desperately trying to wrestle with what a journalist is in 2016. Not even the towering intellects of the Solicitor General and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) could come up with a definition that adequately reflected what a journalist is in today’s world. In the 1950s and 1960s, it would have been rather easier: journalists would have carried a NUJ card; they would have written for their local newspapers or broadcast on their local radio station; or they would have published in a national newspaper or periodical.
I move on to the word “publication”. We would have understood what it meant in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; it was either publication by verbal broadcast or in hard copy. Today, the lines are not so clear. If I use my iPhone to take a photograph or write something on my Facebook page or blog, am I a citizen journalist? I do not know. Would my rights be enshrined within the Bill?
Seema Kennedy
Does my hon. Friend agree that different standards are exercised by, and expected of, journalists who are members of the National Union of Journalists and citizen journalists, and those do not always go to the same level of criticality and balance?
Simon Hoare
I agree entirely. I would add another differential, which is that, as much as I am a champion of a free press, there are many who publish online today without knowing that they are actually covered by the libel laws, as we have seen in a number of cases, and without the double-check of a sub-editor, an editor or a chief news reporter—there will be nobody to sense-check their work, and I will come on to that in a moment or so.
If we turn to clause 1(2), we see the phrase “related documents”. Again, I am absolutely certain that the issue will be teased out in Committee, which will add value, cogency and clarity to the Bill.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Clearly, the aim of the Bill is to throw the light of transparency on council proceedings where taxpayers’ money is being spent. In that regard, it is vital that commercial confidentiality is not used as a tool to hide documents and that these proceedings become more open. Whether it is citizen journalists or NUJ journalists, we need that transparency and the expertise of armchair accountants.
Simon Hoare
“Up to a point, Lord Copper” is how I would answer that. My hon. Friend perhaps has very good eyesight, and she would have to in order to read my notes, but she slightly pre-empts something I am coming on to. First, however, I want to talk about “related documents”.
Before coming to this place, I was a district councillor and a county councillor, like many people in the House. I was involved in trying to raise additional funds for our local authority by purchasing commercial property. Some of those transactions would take a little time, but there was documentation available to cabinet members so that we could look at the figures. I take my hon. Friend’s point, because it goes back to my earlier point that local councils have no money themselves, only council tax payers’ money, but we need to think about the precise time when often commercially sensitive financial data would be available and would fall under the Bill.
I also note—I do not say this necessarily with overt seriousness—that I take exception to one word in the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills should be alert to the gravity and depth of my exception. There is an odd juxtaposition in the marvellous language of the Bill—that wonderful prose with which any Bill begins, which we are all, of course, familiar with:
“Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows”.
We then refer to “citizen journalists”. It is the word “citizen” that we should all take exception to. It is a word that republics may very well use, but we are subjects of Her Britannic Majesty. Therefore, while the words “subject journalists” might not necessarily be as easy on the tongue, they do reflect a better sense of our island nation’s history. If my hon. Friend is lucky enough to secure a Second Reading of her Bill, and daft enough to put me on the Committee, I may very well wish to table an amendment on that issue. Whether I would press it to a Division, I will leave that to my hon. Friend to cogitate on over the coming hours.
Wendy Morton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he is clearly making a pitch to be on my Bill Committee, should I be successful today. All I will say to him is that I will add him to my list and I will consider that request in due course.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend is clearly exploring the opportunity for another career; I will leave it to the House to consider what it might be.
This important Bill is required because, as was said when we discussed Lords amendments to the Investigatory Powers Bill and section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 on freedom of the press and Leveson, we are seeing a big diminution in local and regional media, and that is having a significant and damaging effect on how information is shared nationally. The days when the local newspaper reporter, with his or her pad and pencil, attended the finance committee, full council, cabinet or the planning or housing committee have, regrettably, gone. It is now often the case that one journalist covers a very large geographical area, and that is not restricted to rural areas; it is also a phenomenon in town and cities.
My own part of the world, North Dorset, does not have a daily or weekly newspaper. We have the most excellent publication, Blackmore Vale Magazine, and Valley News. The first is weekly, the second monthly. Those free publications are available to the subjects of North Dorset—if you live by the sword, you have to die by the sword when you make those sorts of remarks—and they are excellent. That is how people get news, but they do not have the staff or the journalists to cover district or council meetings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. If the journalist behind a small publication lived in Poole in Dorset, that person—or subject, as my hon. Friend puts it—would not be able to get the information under discussion. He is showing why the Bill is so important.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend demonstrates his perspicacity, and that is why he is a Minister of the Crown and I am not. He gets my point entirely. A vacuum is being created and it needs to be filled, if for no other reason than democratic accountability.
In all seriousness, we need to consider a couple of caveats, if and as the Bill proceeds, which I hope it will. When the Freedom of Information Act went through this place, it was said that it would not represent a financial burden to local authorities, but it has and it does. We have to consider the Bill against the backdrop of a prevailing picture of a change in local authority funding and a reduction in the direct grant, as we continue to hoover and shovel up the mess left by the Labour party at the end of its period in office.
We also have to take into account the fact that there has been—I welcomed this when I was a local authority member and championed it hugely—an enormous local government reorganisation of shared and combined services. It is also the case—I am sure that this will resonate with the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, given his experience of local government—that there are far fewer local authority officers who are able to deal with requests from the public. Moreover, local government reorganisation—this is certainly the case with my own council in Dorset—will involve unravelling, over probably the next three to 10 years, the financial meshings and harmonisations of council taxes.
Simon Hoare
Let me just finish this point, because it is very important. That will take the integrity and knowledge of a chartered accountant at least to be able to follow it.
Let me go back to the point I made a moment ago about the sad absence of local journalists in the council chamber. The fact that they are there, and that the information can be provided to them, does not necessarily mean that they understand what they are seeing. I can well recall a headline in my local paper that said, “Council to Slash Flood Defence Budget,” but we were not going to. I had the local journalist in and we sat and discussed it for an hour. Literally the same sum of money was being moved from one budget head to another. Could he grasp it? No, he could not, even though I explained it to him on at least half a dozen occasions. Therefore, with the right of access to information has to come an obligation from the person accessing it to be responsible for at least making sure that they understand and can contextualise what they are being made privy to. If, particularly in a local authority setting, these sorts of things are viewed in a silo and not seen as a bigger picture, that will often lead to a huge amount of confusion.
Oliver Colvile
Does my hon. Friend not think that the public could write to the local authority explaining where the council could be making savings and help them with priorities? That could appear in such wonderful organs as the Plymouth Herald in my constituency—a daily newspaper that is always looking for copy.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend tantalises the House with the wonder of his organ, but we had better be careful on that one as well. I happen to know the Plymouth Herald pretty well. It is a great champion of local stories, which it covers extremely well. I never quite think it gives enough coverage to my hon. Friend—hopefully the editor of that journal might listen to that—or indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). [Interruption.] Or to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter). [Interruption.] Well, let us not get too carried away. I often think that if my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) was “Mr January” and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View was “Mr the rest of the months”, the ladies of Plymouth would be delighted. That is up to editorial control and I am going to leave it to them. However, with freedom has to come responsibility.
I also wish to say a few words about vexatiousness. I can think of an occasion when somebody might get the bit between their teeth, and no matter how clearly it is spelt out to them that they have get the wrong end of the stick, they seem not to be able to grasp it and persist and persist. They will often go and tell their local newspaper that they are persisting. That can be damaging to the reputation and corporate profile of the local authority and potentially adds costs to the administration of the local authority.
Craig Whittaker
My hon. Friend’s points about the burdens of freedom of information requests and the reduced number of staff are interesting. Would he consider that fair and reasonable costs of providing that information could be the actual costs of doing so?
Simon Hoare
I agree entirely and add that those fees should be paid up front rather than retrospectively, because trying to get hold of that money afterwards can often be very difficult.
I am conscious of the time so I will draw my remarks to a close. I do not want my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills to think for an iota of a nanosecond that I am opposed to her Bill. Far from it—I support it. Why? For the sacred principles of conservatism. The first principle is that we are spending other people’s money and that the people who give it to the local authority or the Government have a right to know how it is being spent. The second principle is that the Bill clearly seeks to fill a vacuum by providing information to a new set of people whose aspirations and inquiries would probably have been covered in the local media. I hope that local media are not in decline, but they are certainly in a period of shrinkage and recalibration.
The principle of the Bill is fundamentally important—to provide access on behalf of taxpayers to information from local authorities and from other bodies that may be added to the Bill as and when it is goes into Committee. I think that that is fantastically important because the key word in the title of the Act that this Bill will amend is not “local” or “audit”, but “accountability”. We are accountable to our constituents in whichever forum we seek to represent them for the money we spend or allocate on their behalf—there should be no opportunity to hide, mask or obfuscate in relation to the audit trail—and we must ensure that people have confidence in how public bodies spend the hard-earned money of hard-pressed taxpayers.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for bringing forward the Bill. It is a very simple Bill, which many of us will find quite refreshing for a Friday. It is really a Bill to repair things, following the passage of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. I thank my hon. Friend for introducing it, because it has given me an opportunity to get a greater feel for the existing legislation. I perhaps should have had a little more awareness of it, given that in a former life I was the chairman of an audit committee in a unitary authority. In that role, I was very aware of what we should do: how we should be open and transparent, and how we should listen to the public when they raise queries about how their money is spent by their elected representatives.
My hon. Friend explained why she has given up a Friday to be in the Chamber. I am giving up my Friday for a very similar reason, which is to try to advance a Bill. Unfortunately, my Bill is No. 5 this afternoon, but I am very pleased to be able to consider and support my hon. Friend’s Bill.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
May I take a moment to congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill, at No. 5, which is extremely important? He and I are most passionate about it, because we do not like exports of live animals.
Craig Mackinlay
I thank my hon. Friend for the support he would have given my Bill, had we reached it, but we have not. Let us therefore consider very carefully the Bill to amend the Local Audit and Accountability Act. Very soon after it became law, the Government recognised that the terminology of “persons interested” should be expanded, and that is what the Bill is trying to achieve.
We would not have got to this point had a council not tried to hide behind the legislation and examined what “persons interested” actually means. Bristol City Council obfuscated on a request by HTV, the western brand of the ITV network, in 2004. It is quite remarkable that the council felt that it was reasonable to spend taxpayers’ money on fighting, under the legislation at the time, what I imagine was a reasonable freedom of information request for transparency about what it was doing. Journalists can be troublesome people—
Craig Mackinlay
No, indeed, and I will explain how good some journalists are. Journalists have benefited from FOI legislation, and many public authorities see them as something of a scourge, but I do not agree.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend is being very generous with interventions. First, does he agree that journalism and investigative journalism are important in ensuring that there is full accountability in our democracy? Secondly, does he agree that FOIs are incredibly important in finding out information that large authorities often try to conceal?
Craig Mackinlay
I was about to explain the power and importance of a free press to a democratic society. To my mind, FOIs are very important. It is important that journalists and members of the public can shine a light into areas of government—today, we are considering local government in particular—that might otherwise have remained in the dark. Many right hon. and hon. Members, including those present, will have experience of journalists. They often give us a tough time, and so they should. Sometimes it is deserved, though sometimes it is not.
Antoinette Sandbach
A very good example of that type of journalism is when the BBC looked into the Circuit of Wales. A £10 million grant that was given to it led to more than £1 million of public money being wasted. It was transferred to the private company of the Circuit of Wales’ director, Aventa Capital, and many thousands of pounds were spent on gardening fees for his garden. Good journalism can highlight those wastes of public money.
Craig Mackinlay
I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the parliamentary record. That shows that we cannot always rely on external, or even internal, auditors of councils, who have materiality levels to consider. It is often individuals, particularly the press, working through FOIs who shine a light on various areas.
As I was saying, we are sometimes deservedly, and sometimes not deservedly, investigated by the press, but bodies that spend public funds deserve no protection whatever from the eyes and ears of the press. I say again how important a free press is to democratic accountability in this country, whether in central Government, Departments, quangos or local authorities.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for explaining the extent of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It covers fire and rescue authorities, police authorities, parks, local and combined authorities, and parishes and town councils, beyond the £25,000 threshold. The 2014 Act does not restrict the definition of individual electors. Indeed, that was expanded through the case that was brought against Bristol City Council. It allows members of the local press to make inquiries, because they are likely to be local electors.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) for making a relevant point about the sad demise of local reporters and the local press. I have two local newspapers, the Isle of Thanet Gazette and the Thanet Extra. Once the homes section of the newspaper has been shaken out, there is not much left. The opportunity for local reporters to go to council meetings and attend civic events has diminished greatly. That reflects changes in advertising revenue, which often underpins local newspapers, as more and more material goes online—a point ably made by other colleagues. The whole movement online raises the question of what “publication” means. It means something very different from what it did in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
That brings me on to the question of what a journalist is. Given my ideas on open and democratic government, accountability, and people’s ability to ask questions, I would be more comfortable allowing anyone to make a request under the Bill. However, I fully understand how vexatious those who seem to be serial question-askers can be. We have to balance that tendency with the cost to local government of supplying information that has been asked for.
The term “citizen journalist” has been mentioned, although I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset: I do not subscribe to being a citizen; I would rather remain a subject, so “subject reporters” may be a better term. However, am I a subject journalist? Possibly; I do Twitter and Facebook, and my Facebook account is open, not closed, so perhaps I, too, am a subject journalist. It worries me when legislation that comes through the House has slightly vague terminology, as a lot of it does. We may have an opportunity in Committee to get rid of any vagueness about the term “journalist”, and to get to what I feel my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills intends, namely that this type of inquiry is narrowed down to people who really have an interest in reporting and looking at matters rather more closely, in the public interest.
Craig Whittaker
In the same vein of getting some context on what is defined as journalism, is my hon. Friend aware of the huge rise in fake news websites around the world, which specifically—I have just googled this—attempt to
“play on gullible people who do not check sources”,
and will simply pass the fake news on, as if it were really true? How do we get around that problem?
Craig Mackinlay
My hon. Friend makes an enormously interesting point. In the modern world, there are new websites that simply drag in bits of information from other, more credible, websites and pass it off as their own.
We are now struggling with what “journalist” really means. Perhaps that can be battened down a little more in Committee. Arguably that definition could be even wider—as I have said, I would be comfortable with that—with anyone being involved, given that arguably every voter in the UK has an interest in every single authority because of the national grant that passes from this place, through the Department for Communities and Local Government, to local authority level. Perhaps everyone has an interest, but we need nevertheless to narrow the definition down away from the vexatious inquirer with whom we are all very familiar.
I will leave my remarks there, but in support of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, I say that it is quite right that journalism should play a key role in our democracy. People have the right to ask questions about any fund-holding body spending money in their name, so I struggle to find any reason to be against the Bill. I wish it every support possible in its next stages. Any rough edges will be ironed out in Committee.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker; I was beginning to think that the time would never come. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am a serving member of Oldham Council. I thank the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for bringing the Bill forward for debate.
We share the same end: when spending public money and making decisions, public bodies need to be accountable to the public. We need to make sure that information is easily accessible, and that people can access it in more ways than by viewing it in the cold reception of a council office; we need to do something about making it available electronically for people to view.
We should also explore why the Bill narrows down the definition of journalist. That point has come out slightly in the debate, but I am not sure that we have quite got to the spirit of what the Bill is trying to achieve—namely that anyone with a legitimate interest in finding information should have the right to access it. We should not predetermine the motives of an organisation or individual; a spirit of openness should be the foundation for providing information. We can imagine a situation in which an academic might want to carry out legitimate research into how public money is spent, and might require that deep dive into the accounts. We can also imagine a situation in which a resident of a neighbouring or similar authority, investigating his local authority’s spend and wanting a comparator, would like to be able to look at such information. We can see that a wider group of people than just journalists might legitimately want that information.
I am not sure that it is necessary for this place to judge the motives of journalists, or to debate the quality of journalism. I often go into the Members’ Tea Room and question why we waste money on some of the newspapers on the rack, but it is right that people have access to information, and that journalists put that information out in the right way. However, journalism is changing very quickly and we need to review this issue. Rather than being prescriptive, perhaps the answer is to offer it out to a wider group of people and let them access it, and to recognise that what people choose to do with it is a matter for them; it is public information. That is how it should be dealt with. The Bill has the support of the Government, which is good to see. It is also good to see that it has the support of the Local Government Association, which is a champion of transparency and open government.
It is a shame that we have been so busy today that the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) has not been debated. It is on a very important issue that affects many communities. Family homes are being amended for a use that may not be in keeping with local neighbourhoods, taking away vital family housing and having a negative impact on the community. I pay tribute to him for at least putting this very important issue high up on the list of private Members’ Bills.
The Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill appears to be quite technical, but I fully recognise that it is very important, in terms of the spirit of democracy and transparency.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
It is a pleasure to speak in favour of this extremely important private Member’s Bill brought to the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton).
The Government believe that the issue is worthy of our support. The clear intention to legislate on this issue goes back to December 2014 in the then Conservative-led coalition Government’s response to the consultation exercise on secondary legislation implementing the new local audit regime. I would like to quote the exact wording used in paragraph 4.11 of that response:
“Government believes that journalists should also be able to inspect accounts and information, in the interests of local people, and therefore intends to legislate at the earliest opportunity to ensure that the definition of ‘persons interested’ (see section 26 of the 2014 Act) is wide enough to enable this”
Charlie Elphicke
The Minister is making a typically polished and erudite speech from the Dispatch Box, but there is one thing that troubles me about this measure. What exactly will it cover that is not already covered by measures in the Freedom of Information Act 2000? I can make a freedom of information request about a council’s accounts and obtain the information anyway. Will he help me and other hon. Members to understand how all this works?
Mr Jones
As ever, my hon. Friend makes an extremely pertinent point, which I will come on to. The Bill will be an important aid in the fight to improve local transparency and accountability by amending section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. Journalists, including citizen journalists, will be afforded the same rights as “persons interested”. They will be enabled, for 30 days, to inspect the accounting records of the financial year just ended of any relevant authority and request copies of these documents.
Hon. Members might wonder how such a small change could improve local transparency and accountability, and about the potential associated costs—both points were raised by several hon. Friends. I hope that I can reassure the House on both. On the first, by giving journalists the right to access recent accounting information from a range of local public bodies, the Bill will assist them in their investigations, and publication of their findings could alert local taxpayers to poor spending decisions. As a result, local electors might wish to seek information from the auditor or object to the accounts, thus enabling the auditor to investigate. The measure could therefore increase town hall transparency and accountability.
On the costs, we are not introducing a new right, but extending an existing one to include journalists. Furthermore, the timeframe for these requests is limited to a month in each year, and the body concerned can recover the costs of providing any copies from the requester. The Bill will enable journalists only to examine the documents and seek copies; they will not be able to question the auditor or make objections. Those rights could still only be exercised by local electors, as is the case now.
Oliver Colvile
Would it not help if local authorities were much more proactive in revealing information, rather than people having to depend on FOI requests or journalists picking up the phone? If local authorities could be much more aggressively transparent, it would be incredibly helpful.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is often easy to forget that some local authorities are extremely good, have high-quality members and officers, are open and transparent and offer up the type of information to which he alludes. That said, others are not so transparent and open. It would be great if they could all follow the examples of best practice to which he refers, but that is regrettably not always the case, which is why we support the Bill.
Seema Kennedy
My only hesitation concerns the role of the auditor. Might another burden put off some auditors and thereby call their role into question? I am sure that will be teased out in Committee.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I can reassure her that the role of the auditor will not change. The current situation is that local electors can make requests of the auditor for further information and objections to the audit, but those who are not electors in that area cannot.
Craig Whittaker
While we welcome the extension to include journalists, might not the Government—in the interests of honesty, openness and accountability—consider in Committee opening things up completely, well beyond the intention of the Bill, so that anybody can access this information?
Mr Jones
I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I shall come on to that point a little later and explain why the balance is right.
To return to the issue of costs, it is our view that only a relatively small group of journalists or bloggers might wish to take advantage of the new rights. We recognise the potential for increased costs if a journalist running a national campaign asked for particular information from a raft of local authorities on issues such as salaries in local authorities or the cost of refurbishment. I suggest that that might not necessarily be a bad thing.
Mr Jones
I shall make some progress, if I may.
This provision might make local public bodies think more carefully about high levels of expenditure on certain items and how it might look to the general public during periods of financial constraint and reduced public spending.
I should also point out that the 2014 Act includes an explicit power for auditors to refuse to consider vexatious objections, and even if several electors were to ask the same question or make the same objection, the auditor need undertake only one investigation, although a reply to each individual with the outcome might be necessary. The auditor is able to recover any reasonable costs of carrying out this work from the authority concerned. However, if the work results in increased costs, it could be argued that that might cause the authority to consider its future expenditure more carefully.
Charlie Elphicke
The Minister is making a passionate speech and is being so generous in taking interventions. I want to push him a bit harder on one aspect. Under this measure, journalists cannot raise objections or question the auditor. I used to sit on Lambeth Council in the days when it was called “loonyland” and was as bent as a corkscrew. Will the Minister reconsider whether, in such cases, journalists should be able to question the auditor and press him a bit harder, because if that had happened, things might not have come to such a pass in the London Borough of Lambeth as they did under old Red Ted Knight?
Mr Jones
I thank my hon. Friend. The overarching objective here is to enable a journalist who might not be an elector in a particular area to uncover that sort of information and bring it to the public’s attention, so that the public can then question the auditor. There are a number of examples of where that has happened to positive effect, with changes having to be made by a local authority as a result.
The overarching objective of external public audit must be the proper use of public money, and if an elector objects and it results in investigations by the auditor, he is doing his job and any resulting delay in completion of the audit or additional cost to the body must be seen as a secondary consideration.
Mr Jones
I apologise, but I will not because I want to make sufficient progress so that the Bill receives its Second Reading.
It might be helpful here to illustrate the difference between this provision and the powers provided by the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) mentioned. The ability to inspect and make copies of the most recent accounting information from a local authority during a specific period could provide compelling and timely evidence of poor spending decisions in the last accounting period that would enable a journalist to bring them to the attention of local electors by publishing the evidence uncovered. That would provide electors with the opportunity to ask the auditor about the issue or raise an objection so that the auditor can investigate the matter further, and it would potentially enable action to be taken to investigate poor spending, potential fraud or maladministration within a local public body. FOI requests, while being subject to timing constraints in terms of providing a response, do not have the same capability for potentially engendering swift action that could have the effect of stopping illegal activity.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, the smallest parish councils—those with an annual turnover of £25,000 or less—will not be subject to the Bill, because they are subject to separate provisions under the 2014 Act. They must follow a different transparency code, which we believe works for them.
I know that some stakeholders have expressed reservations about the value of the Bill, and about whether the potential costs will outweigh the benefits, but I firmly believe that enabling journalists to inspect the accounting records of a range of local authorities could uncover more poor spending decisions by councils, which in turn would lead to more potential objections from electors. Although the existing rights are not often exercised, this kind of transparency has, in the past, enabled illegal activity and poor governance in local authorities to be uncovered. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover gave a good example involving failings on the part of a local authority, but there are other examples. In the event of poor decision making and maladministration in councils, it is entirely reasonable for local electors to be able to obtain information and shine a light on what is going on. They may not be financial experts, but the Bill will add another tool to the box, and enable them to hold their local authorities to account.
I stress that the timescale for action would be limited, and that the window of opportunity, and thus the additional cost that Members have mentioned, would be restricted to the 30-day period in which the previous year’s accounts would be available and the inspection rights could be exercised. Any questions or objections would also have to be received within that period to enable an investigation to take place.
The measures in the Bill are proportionate and they could help to uncover poor practice so that people could hold their local councils to account. I am delighted to be able to support the Bill, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for introducing it.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Public Bill Committee (Standing Order No. 63).
Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 7th February 2017
(7 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text
The Chair
Welcome to this Public Bill Committee on the Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill. I have a few preliminary announcements. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. No amendments have been tabled to the Bill, so we begin with a debate on clause 1, but I suggest that Committee members make any remarks about clause 2 during this debate. In other words, we will have a general debate about the contents of the Bill on the question that clause 1 stand part of the Bill. If the Committee is content with that suggestion, I will put the question that clause 2 stand part of the Bill formally once we have completed consideration of clause 1, on the basis that clause 2 will already have been debated. Is that agreeable? [Hon. Members: “Yes.”] Thank you.
Clause 1
Inspection of accounting records by journalists and citizen journalists
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and to have the benefit of your expertise and good guidance. I thank hon. Friends and hon. Members for attending this sitting, and hope that they can continue to support this Bill on its passage through this House. I especially thank the Minister, for representing the Government today in lieu of his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), who I believe is in another Committee. I believe that a number of years ago, before entering this place, my hon. Friend the Minister served as a councillor on Hull City Council, and I am sure that his experience will be of great use today and will serve us well.
We had a very good debate on the Bill on Second Reading, so I do not intend to take up too much of your time today, Ms Dorries. The Bill is short and sweet, with only two clauses in total. It seeks to give journalists and citizen journalists—that is, bloggers and others who scrutinise local authorities, but who may not be accredited members of the press—the same rights of inspection as interested persons under section 26(1) of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It will require relevant authorities—other than health service bodies—as defined in that Act to make available for inspection the accounting records and supporting documents for such an authority for the audit year.
The Bill’s purpose is simple: it seeks to enable such persons to access a wider range of accounting material, so that they can report and publish their findings, making them available to local electors, thus providing them with information enabling them better to hold their local council to account for their spending decisions, by either questioning the auditor or objecting to those accounts. Let me make it clear that the Bill will not enable journalists to question the auditor or object to those accounts, unless of course they are also a local government elector for the area.
I do not want to repeat all the points made on Second Reading, as the responses received then were comprehensive and covered all the issues raised. However, if anybody wishes to ask a question, I will be more than happy to answer it this morning. Besides, the Minister who has responsibility for local growth and the northern powerhouse, wishes to say a little about the Bill, and perhaps to touch on the consultation that has taken place since Second Reading.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Percy)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, on my first—and possibly last, depending on how well this all works out—Bill Committee as a Minister. I apologise for the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton, who is on a Bill Committee just a couple of Committee Rooms away. It is a pleasure to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills this morning. She has already done far more than I managed to do in my six and a half years as a Back Bencher in successfully—hopefully—getting a Bill though this House, and I congratulate her on that. She is right to say that I served as a local councillor; I was also a parish councillor for the village of Airmyn, so this is a matter in which I have some interest from my previous role.
I am delighted to support the Bill on behalf of the Government and congratulate my hon. Friend on steering the Bill successfully thus far. I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher, who in her maiden speech introduced the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, which was in a similar vein; it was about opening up local government to journalists and other interested parties. In that respect, my hon. Friend is very much channelling Margaret Thatcher with the Bill. Conservatives will be happy with that, but I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd is quite so pleased.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said, this small amendment could increase town hall accountability and ensure that councillors are responsible for their spending decisions. As she also said, we held a consultation with a range of interested parties, including the Information Commissioner, the National Association of Local Councils, the Society of Local Council Clerks, the National Union of Journalists, the News Media Association, local authority treasurers’ societies, Public Sector Audit Appointments, and Smaller Authorities Audit Appointments. The majority of respondents were able to support the Bill’s intentions, but two key issues—whether the Bill’s provisions excluded the very smallest parish councils, and more generally whether the potential cost on local government was onerous—arose during the process that we have considered further, and I should like to put them on record.
As I have said, I served on a very small parish council with a very small budget. During the consultation, we engaged with stakeholders on whether the Bill would grant journalists inspection rights in respect of the very smallest parish councils, by which I mean those with annual turnover of £25,000 or less. Our conclusion is that journalists will have those rights through the Bill. The smallest parish councils are therefore included in the legislation rather than excluded, as we originally thought. That raises the question of whether that is onerous or burdensome for those small parish councils. We have concluded that amending the Bill to exclude those smaller authorities would likely have a limited impact, and is therefore unnecessary. In response to the consultation, the Society of Local Council Clerks stated that
“having a different range of people having inspection rights at bodies under £25,000 compared to those over £25,000 might create confusion, particularly for clerks who serve several councils of differing sizes”.
It is not unusual for a parish council clerk to be clerk to a number of different local parish councils of various sizes. Consequently, we are content that smaller parish councils will be within the scope of the Bill.
With regard to the potential cost of extending inspection rights to a large group of people with no local connection to the area, I can assure the Committee that we have investigated the extent to which current rights are exercised. In 2015-16, it would seem that local electors exercised their rights over a total of 11,000 bodies only around 65 times. Although those rights are to question and make objections to the auditor, rather than broader inspection rights offered to interested parties, it is clear that this set of public rights is not used to any great extent, so it is not particularly burdensome on authorities.
Furthermore, in its response to our informal exercise, the Society of Local Council Clerks, which represents around 5,000 parish clerks, reported that its members had not experienced a high level of interest in their accounting records. I can attest to that, because journalists from around the country did not swoop down on the accounting records of Airmyn parish council, important though it is to have the power to do so. Only around 5% of the 562 attendees at 10 SLCC regional events last year had ever had someone exercise their inspection rights. A significant proportion of those inspections—perhaps a third—were by former councillors. That would seem to bear out our view that the number of requests to inspect is relatively low.
The changes are therefore not burdensome. They are important, in terms of making good on the Government’s intention of increasing local transparency and accountability. This is an excellent Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such support so far, and on her handling of the Bill at its various stages. I commend the Bill to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill to be reported, without amendment.
Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Friday 24th March 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 24 March 2017 - (24 Mar 2017)
12:36 - The House divided: - Ayes: 15 / Noes: 41 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 2, page 1, line 5, leave out from “after” to the end of the subsection and insert—
“any members of the public who are registered to vote in local elections in the United Kingdom”.
This amendment would further extend the public access to local audit documents under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 in the interest of transparency and accountability.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 3, page 1, line 5, leave out from “insert” to end of subsection and insert “including any politician or journalist”.
This amendment extends access to politicians as well as journalists so that they can access the information needed to fulfil their scrutiny function.
Amendment 4, page 1, line 5, leave out from “insert” to end of subsection and insert “including non-domestic ratepayer”.
This amendment extends access to non-domestic ratepayers and clarifies the existing law.
Amendment 5, page 1, line 5, after “any” insert “accredited”.
Amendment 6, page 1, line 5, after “any” insert “professional”.
Amendment 7, page 1, line 5, after “any” insert “qualified”.
Amendments 5, 6 and 7 would ensure that bloggers and citizen journalists would not have greater access than other members of the public.
Amendment 8, page 1, line 6, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment would remove the definition of journalist.
Amendment 1, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“(1B) In subsection (1A) publication of journalistic material means the proposed inclusion in a newspaper or magazine whether paid for or distributed without payment and includes any article proposed to be published on any website on the internet whether it can be accessed without payment or upon payment of a subscription.”
The purpose of this amendment is to make clear that the section covers all journalists who may wish to publish their articles in a newspaper or magazine or on the internet, irrespective of whether there are any charges for either.
Amendment 9, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) The relevant authority must ensure that any person interested in making an inspection within subsection (1) may do so at all reasonable times and without payment”.
This amendment would extend to section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 the same conditions as is set out in section 25 (3) of the Act.
Amendment 10, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) In subsection (1) after ‘Act’ in line 1 leave out ‘other than an audit of accounts of a health service body’”.
This amendment (which amends section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014) would enable “persons interested” to inspect the accounting records relating to the audit of accounts of a health service body.
Amendment 11, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) In subsection (1) after “At” in line 1 insert “and after”.
This amendment (which amends section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014) would extend the period in which inspections can be carried out beyond 30 days.
Amendment 12, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) In subsection (4)(a) leave out “inspect or”.
This amendment (which amends section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014) would remove the restriction on inspecting any part of any record or document on the grounds of commercial confidentiality but would retain the restriction on copying.
Amendment 13, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) Subsection 4 (a) after ‘grounds of’ insert ‘current’”.
This amendment (which amends section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014) would ensure that documents relating to past contracts could be inspected.
Amendment 14, page 1, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) Subsection (5) is hereby repealed.”
This amendment (which amends section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014) would remove the definition in the Act of when information is protected on the grounds of commercial confidentiality.
Mr Chope
In moving amendment 2, we are mindful that this is a week in which there has been an attack on our parliamentary democracy, and we mourn Keith Palmer and the others who were the victims of that terrorist. This Bill and these amendments deal not with parliamentary democracy, but with local democracy, and their purpose is to strengthen further our local democracy in the United Kingdom.
I will also speak to amendments 3 and 4, which extend the range of individuals who are able to benefit from the powers under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014—my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) is seeking to achieve that in her Bill. I shall also speak to amendments 5, 6, 7 and 9, which look in detail at what we mean by the expression “journalist” in clause 1. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has an amendment dealing with the definition of journalistic material, which I shall leave him to address.
Amendment 9 deals with the arrangements for exercising the right to inspect, and amendment 11 would extend the period within which such rights can be exercised beyond 30 days. Amendment 12 would enable documents, which are claimed to be commercially confidential, to be inspected but not copied. Amendment 13 would extend the right to inspect past contracts, and amendment 14 would leave the definition of commercial confidentiality unaltered in common law. Finally, amendment 10, which is arguably the most radical of these amendments, would extend the right of inspection beyond local government to the audit of accounts of any health service body as defined in the 2014 Act.
It will be obvious from that brief summary that all the amendments are faithful to the long title of the Bill, which is to extend public access to certain local audit documents under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.
My amendments are also inspired by recent experiences of how secrecy in local government is undermining the ability of members of the public properly to scrutinise what is happening and to hold councils to account. They also seek to address some of the issues raised on Second Reading on 25 November.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend touches on the Second Reading debate, which is something that I hope to address in my remarks later today. Does he share my concern that the matters that were raised on Second Reading were not addressed when this Bill was in Committee?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is on to a good point. On Second Reading, quite a lot of references were made to the fact that we would discuss matters in Committee. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) said that if he was put on the Committee, he would like to raise this and that as an amendment, but he was never put on the Committee. If the records are correct, the Committee stage lasted for all of 21 minutes. I do not think that there could have been proper scrutiny of the Bill. None the less, there were some interesting remarks made in Committee, some of which I shall refer to shortly.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
I just wish to make it clear that we had a debate in Committee. No Member was precluded from tabling an amendment, and we had a good turnout on the day. I will be responding to the hon. Gentleman’s points in more detail when I have the chance to speak.
Mr Chope
I am told by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North from a sedentary position that the Committee lasted only 11 minutes. I am sure that he will be able to explain further in due course.
Currently, a person who is registered as an elector in a local authority area has the right to inspect and have copies of a wider range of accounts and related documentation under section 25 of the 2014 Act and therefore has no additional benefits under section 26. Amendment 2 addresses the issue of electors in other local authority areas, who have no such rights unless they can show that they are “persons interested” under section 26. At no time, in my submission, has it been more important for electors in other local authority areas to be able to see what is going on elsewhere. Following the abolition of the Audit Commission, which provided easily accessible local authority data, it has become more difficult to make comparisons, despite the importance of comparative data for accountability and policy making.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I chair the Public Accounts Commission, and we have been looking at the accountability of local government. My hon. Friend makes a good point: the National Audit Office, which audits all central Government Departments—a massive task—is now effectively the auditor of local government. Although I favour the reform, my hon. Friend is right to raise the fact that there is undoubtedly much less detailed inspection of local government audit and finance as a result.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend speaks with great knowledge and experience on this matter. The amendment is, in a sense, supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker). On Second Reading, he intervened on the Minister to ask,
“might not the Government—in the interests of honesty, openness and accountability—consider…opening things up completely, well beyond the intention of the Bill, so that anybody can access this information?”
The Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), said,
“I shall come on to that point a little later and explain why the balance is right.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 1211.]
Unfortunately, apart from asserting that the measures in the Bill were proportionate, the Minister never got on to that important point. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), will be able to address that shortcoming.
I was somewhat perplexed by a comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, who was the Minister in Committee on 7 February:
“I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher, who in her maiden speech introduced the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, which was in a similar vein; it was about opening up local government to journalists and other interested parties.”––[Official Report, Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Public Bill Committee, 7 February 2017; c. 4.]
With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend, I think that the core of Margaret Thatcher’s Bill was ensuring that the public had access, which is what I seek to achieve with this amendment. We need more open, public access, just as the late Baroness Thatcher wanted the public to have access to local authority meetings. Her references to journalists in the 1960 Act were mostly about ensuring that accredited representatives of newspapers who attended such council meetings were provided with reasonable facilities for taking their report. I do not think it is fair to pray in aid our distinguished former Prime Minister as a supporter of the Bill, but not amendment 2. I suspect that the noble Baroness would have been a strong supporter of the amendment.
The amendment is highly relevant in the current climate, in which many councils seek to reorganise themselves into new structures—you know that as well as anybody does, Mr Speaker. At district council level, Buckinghamshire, Dorset, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Kent are all toying with that idea, and I have no doubt that many others will do so. At present, it is difficult for a local taxpayer to get hard access to information about what is happening in another council, despite the fact that that local council may aspire to take over the assets and income of the council in which the taxpayer is resident.
I will illustrate that point with an example from Bournemouth. In speaking of Bournemouth, may I say how proud those of us who live near Bournemouth are of the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) conducted himself on Wednesday? That was an example of public service at its best, and I fear that what I am about to say compares very unfavourably with his conduct.
Mr Speaker
Order. The reference by the hon. Gentleman to the “Rotten Boroughs” column is, of itself, orderly, but it might help and inform the debate if that reference could be related more specifically to the terms of the important amendment to which he is speaking.
Sir Edward Leigh
I want to speak directly to my hon. Friend’s amendment in terms of understanding what other local authorities are doing. I see the Minister sitting in his place. We have had hugely controversial arguments in Lincolnshire about whether to have a mayor, and I and others managed to defeat that. There is now a proposal—it is only a rumour—that North Lincolnshire Council may want to take over or merge with West Lindsey, which I represent. As an elector of West Lindsey, I have absolutely no way of knowing what is going on in North Lincolnshire. I think that if that is being discussed in private, electors in West Lindsey, who have a crucial interest in that, should have a right to know what is going on.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is in essence what I have been saying about the position in Bournemouth. If Bournemouth is to take over or merge with Christchurch in a unitary authority, the people in Christchurch need to know the nature of Bournemouth Borough Council’s debts and liabilities and how it conducts its proceedings, particularly in planning. One of the key losses in such a merger would be the loss of Christchurch Borough Council’s control over its own greenbelt and planning policy. That is one of the biggest concerns that my local residents have. They fear that they will lose control over the quality of their local environment, which they currently control through local planning policy.
The amendment seeks to ensure that anybody can get access to such information, rather than just limiting it to journalists. Obviously, the information to which I referred earlier will become available only when the audit for this financial year is conducted, and that may be rather later in the day than most people would wish.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
As my hon. Friend knows, many local papers are stretched financially and therefore deterred from publishing things—perhaps including things about the leader of Bournemouth council—because they fear being sued and do not have the resources to defend themselves. Does he agree that that is why it is so important that not just journalists but the public have access to such material, so that they can make up their own minds and are not dependent on newspapers being able to afford to risk publishing things that may cause them to end up in court?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We in this place are trying to do the job of holding councils to account. I tabled a parliamentary question earlier this year to find out the level of non-domestic rate arrears in Bournemouth. I eventually got the answer that there were between £10 million and £12 million of uncollected non-domestic rates. To the council’s credit, within weeks it had issued summonses against all those who owed arrears—I like to think I had some influence on that. We are talking about £10 million to £12 million of non-domestic rate arrears, at a time when we are saying that it is absolutely essential to save 1% of turnover by abolishing existing sovereign councils. It is farcical.
Trying to get councils to address these issues themselves is often very difficult. The idea of setting up scrutiny committees, which was part of the Localism Act 2011, has not really worked because those committees are often occupied by people who do not really understand, or are not interested in, genuinely holding the council to account. There is also the problem that scrutiny committees are not entitled to look into planning issues, which are often among the most controversial local issues.
There are lots of other things I could say about neighbouring councils, but I will not trouble the House with all that now. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) is here, and he may wish to add to that catalogue in due course if he contributes to the debate. The essence of the amendment is that everybody should be able to access such information. It should not be limited to journalists and other interested parties.
The idea is very much supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley, who wanted to extend those rights to everybody. I anticipate the probable response of the Bill’s sponsor, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, to this point. On Second Reading, she resisted arguments to extend the rights by saying:
“If the rights were extended to anyone and everyone, there would be great potential to make mischief through multiple requests to inspect or copy documents, without the accompanying ability to make a meaningful contribution towards raising awareness or improving the accountability of the body concerned.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 1199.]
I implore my hon. Friend to reflect on what she said, because it is a sweeping generalisation and no evidence was adduced in support of it. Where is the evidence that the freedom to look at documents would be abused? Indeed, if it is abused, there are already safeguards to deal with vexatious behaviour. That, in summary, is the case for amendment 2.
Mr Nuttall
The whole Bill arises from the problem of defining terms. Has my hon. Friend given any thought to exactly what constitutes a “politician”? For example, does it include someone who is a candidate in an election, or only an elected politician?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has tried, probably very successfully, to torpedo my amendment. I accept the implied, or even indeed the express, criticism that he has articulated. However, I would fall back on the general common-law interpretation of “politician”, which is probably the best way of dealing with that, without specifically having to define it in the amendment.
Amendment 4 would clarify the law by making it clear that “persons interested” also includes non-domestic ratepayers. I raise that issue because it was the focus of the court case of R. (on the application of HTV Ltd) v. Bristol City Council, reported at EWHC 1219. Paragraph 48 of the judgment of Mr Justice Elias on 14 May 2004 said that he had
“reached the conclusion that the interest which the claimant has as a non-domestic ratepayer is sufficient to bring it within the concept of ‘persons interested’.”
In that case, Bristol City Council had argued to the contrary, citing in support the changes to non-domestic rate legislation in the Local Government Finance Act 1988. With forthcoming changes—the introduction of the 100% retention of business rates, and the pooling of business rates across local authorities—it is worth using this opportunity to clarify and put on the record that the existing legislation should expressly incorporate the rights of non-domestic ratepayers. That is the background to amendment 4.
Amendments 5 to 7 are alternative ways of limiting the term “journalist” in the Bill to real journalists. It is noteworthy that section 1(4)(c) of the 1960 Act provides that
“duly accredited representatives of newspapers attending for the purpose of reporting the proceedings for those newspapers shall…be afforded reasonable facilities”.
The National Union of Journalists website sets out what is needed to establish that someone is an accredited journalist. An accredited journalist must have
“Employer Identification: Business card, employer I.D. badge, or letter of assignment on corporate letterhead. (Letterhead must identify media outlet name, address and phone)”
and
“Proof of Assignment: Sample by-lined article published within the past 6-months, or current masthead that includes the reporters name & title, or official letter of assignment from a media outlet.”
Those are necessary, for example, for a person to be admitted to a press conference as an accredited journalist. It seems to me that if we are to extend such rights to journalists, we should encourage those journalists to be accredited, rather than amateur journalists.
Sir Edward Leigh
Why? We are moving into a completely different digital age in which people can set up blogs and Facebook pages. This is just inevitable, and my hon. Friend is slightly living in the past when he talks about the NUJ and journalists having to be accredited. He is just trying to put his finger in the dam, and it is not going to work. We need to have complete openness and complete transparency.
Mr Chope
That is the first time that anyone has suggested I am living in the past. To take my hon. Friend’s point, if we are to give privileged access to journalists—our hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills is seeking to give journalists privileged access compared with other members of the public—those journalists need to be qualified in the sense that they understand the law, not just people who are prejudiced or not objective and who do not have the standards that we normally expect of journalists. My feeling is that if we are to give them special privileges, they should be duly accredited.
As I have said, I have expressed that point in alternative ways: we could also refer to them as professional journalists. As you may know, Mr Speaker, there is a society called the Society of Professional Journalists, which requires a professional journalist to adhere
“to a strict code of ethics so as to maintain and preserve public trust, confidence and reliability”—
I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) thinks it important that journalists should adhere to a strict code of ethics—
“To ensure this the process of ‘gate keeping’ is upheld within mainstream media. This relies on all experienced and trained journalists and editors to filter any nonfactual information from news reports before publication or broadcasting.”
I do not want to go into the whole issue of fake news, but it is probably now more important than ever for us to ensure that there is some basis for the reports put forward by journalists, and how can that be policed unless by a body such as the National Union of Journalists or the Society of Professional Journalists?
Mr Speaker
Order. Ordinarily, I feel that I can follow and, to an extent, anticipate the hon. Gentleman, such is the frequency with which I have heard his speeches over three decades, but on this occasion my senses have deserted me. I had thought that he was going to tell us how many members the society has.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is beginning to lose me. It seems to me that he made a good case earlier for his amendment 2, which would provide access for as many people as possible—I am absolutely with him on that—but he now appears to be arguing for restricting the number of people who have access to such things, which flies in the face of his earlier amendment. Will he clarify whether he really supports his earlier amendment, rather than what may be seen as these probing amendments?
Mr Chope
Yes, it is indeed defeatist, and it is uncharacteristic of me to be defeatist about such things. In a sense, this is a case of belt and braces: if we are going to give privileged access to a group of people—my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills wants it to be journalists—they should be accredited, professional or qualified journalists, rather than people who simply call themselves journalists.
Philip Davies
I hope that my hon. Friend will not be defeated on amendment 2—I encourage him to strive for it and I think that he will garner a lot of support—but surely if his first amendment fails, the second-best option is for as many people as possible, within the terms of “journalist”, to have access to this information. Surely that is a better fall-back position than trying to restrict it even more?
Mr Chope
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but why should we, to maximise the number of people who have access, distort the meaning of “journalist” by saying that any member of the public can describe themselves as a journalist and thereby come within the terms of the Bill, rather than make it clear that we want to include all members of the public? But if we are talking about journalists, we owe it to them to try to maintain a standard for professional and accredited journalists.
Mr Nuttall
Has my hon. Friend noted the title of clause 1: “Inspection of accounting records by journalists and citizen journalists”? I hope, when I come on to my amendment, he will see that I have gone in exactly the opposite direction: rather than try to narrow the definition of journalist, I am trying to widen it.
Mr Chope
That is probably why I have not sought to address my hon. Friend’s amendment. I am sorry that we cannot reach a consensus on this group of amendments, although there does seem to be a pretty strong consensus on the earlier amendments.
I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the NUJ has a code of conduct.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about professional qualifications and the accreditation of journalists and newspaper people. Does he agree that that would also apply to the editors of newspapers, including large publications that represent London?
Mr Chope
I would indeed—absolutely. Editors are included in the wider definition of “journalist”. The hon. Lady makes a good point.
The NUJ code of conduct sets out 12 principles by which its journalists are expected to abide. I will not tell the House about them all, but, for example, one is to avoid plagiarism. Another is to resist threats or any other inducements to influence, distort or suppress information and not to produce any material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age, gender, race and so on. The most important of all is for journalists to do their utmost to correct harmful inaccuracies and to distinguish between fact and opinion—although that is not something we always find with journalists.
Mr Nuttall
Before my hon. Friend moves on, amendments 5, 6 and 7 have been tabled as alternatives—we cannot adopt all three. Will he let the House know which of the three alternatives he personally prefers?
Mr Chope
Of those three, I prefer amendment 5 on accreditation, because “accredited journalist” is a well-understood expression. As I said earlier, it is even referred to in statute, such as in the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960.
Amendment 8 seeks to ensure that we do not define “journalist” in the Bill. The Office for National Statistics lists a series of roles defined as “journalist”. These form the single occupational group of journalists and newspaper and periodical editors—including the editor of the London Evening Standard.
Amendment 9 would ensure that any person making an inspection under section 26(1) of the 2014 Act could do so at all reasonable times and without payment. If section 26 is to achieve the Government’s purpose, we need to ensure that this provision is included, otherwise it would be too easy for the objectives of transparency and accountability to be frustrated. In Committee, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, said:
“In 2015-16, it would seem that local electors exercised their rights over a total of 11,000 bodies only around 65 times.”––[Official Report, Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Public Bill Committee, 7 April 2017; c. 5.]
They did so under section 25, but it would be ridiculous to suggest that extending the same rights to section 26 applicants would be unduly burdensome and too expensive.
Sir Edward Leigh
My hon. Friend speaks with authority and knowledge, so this intervention is a genuine request for information. We have the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I would like to hear from him—I suspect the House would like to hear it, too—how the ability of a member of the public to get information about local authorities relates to his or her freedom to get information about central Government.
Mr Chope
I do not hold myself up as an expert on the Freedom of Information Act, but local authorities are subject to it, just like any other public body. Freedom of information depends on being able to know what question to ask. Quite often, it is only when one looks at the accounts, or documents relating to the accounts, that we know what question to ask. Freedom of information powers can be more potent because they can be exercised at any time and the local authority is under an obligation to respond within, I think, 20 days or a reasonable period. They can be more potent, but the base information that enables people to understand what questions they really want to ask can probably be ascertained only by inspecting the documents.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
I am not an expert, but I would think that a freedom of information request is more costly to a council than what is proposed in the Bill. Perhaps a balance on cost-effectiveness needs to be taken into consideration, too.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend may make a fair point. One problem is that some councils are really open and transparent. They receive very few freedom of information requests because they make information available. I will come on to an example where that has not been happening, and even councillors say, “Will I have to make a freedom of information request to get information from the chief executive of the council on which I serve?” That situation is intolerable. A lot depends on the culture of a council.
I was first elected to Wandsworth council in 1974—this is going back a long way—in the aftermath of a big corruption scandal. Immediately prior to 1974, the housing committee chairman of the Labour council had been sentenced to a term of imprisonment for receiving corrupt payments from someone called T. Dan Smith. After that, the culture in Wandsworth changed: everything was open. Tender documents were open, so everyone could see what was happening. It is a pity that that transparency is not the norm in so many councils throughout the country.
Amendment 12 would remove the restriction in section 26(4)(a) of the 2014 Act on the entitlement of a person
“to inspect…any part of any record or document containing information which is protected on the grounds of commercial confidentiality”.
There is an interesting interaction between the freedom of information rules and the rules relating to a council’s access to documents under the powers in the 2014 Act. The amendment does not go the whole way—it would not remove the restriction on copying—but it was inspired by a recent set of events in Christchurch. Local people wanted to get to the truth of an extraordinary episode.
You will remember, Mr Speaker, that we had an Adjournment debate about beach huts in Christchurch just before the summer recess. During that debate, I drew the House’s attention to an extraordinary state of affairs. Christchurch borough council had entered into an agreement with an organisation called Plum Pictures to develop overnight residential beach huts as part of a competition organised by the Channel 4 programme “Amazing Spaces”. It did not need to obtain planning permission. There was a big stink about it all, and—partly, I think, as a result of the Adjournment debate—the contract was aborted. The council’s scrutiny committee then started an inquiry.
Despite the recommendations of the committee, which reported two or three weeks ago, the councillors have still not been shown a copy of the original contract, although it had been negated. The council is citing commercial confidentiality. I wrote to its chief executive on 3 August last year asking to see a copy of the competition and access agreement with Plum Pictures, but I have still not received a response. I had been waiting for the result of the scrutiny committee’s inquiry, but the chief executive is apparently not obliged even to comply with its recommendations.
On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) said:
“Clearly, the aim of the Bill is to throw the light of transparency on council proceedings where taxpayers’ money is being spent. In that regard, it is vital that commercial confidentiality is not used as a tool to hide documents and that these proceedings become more open.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 1203.]
I know that amendment 12 has the support of colleagues who participated in that debate.
Amendment 13 complements amendment 12 by enabling past as well as current contracts to be looked at. Amendment 14 would remove the definition of commercial confidentiality from the Bill so that it relied on existing common law. There is a mass of documentation about common-law commercial confidentiality, linked with the rules relating to freedom of information. In view of the time, I shall not go into the details now, but it seems to me that if we want the Bill to achieve its objective, there is no point in maintaining the ability of councils to impose a complete closedown by asserting that information is commercially confidential—which is all that has to happen.
The amendments would enable a member of the public to look at the document concerned, although not to copy it, and then to make his or her own assessment of whether it was commercially confidential, and whether it was in the public interest for it to be made more widely available. I think that the current tight drafting, and the restrictions on any material that is, or may be, commercially confidential, is a big weakness in the Bill.
I said at the beginning of my speech that I would keep the most radical amendment until the end. Amendment 10 would extend the right to inspect documents relating to the accounts of a health service body. I do not understand why, at a time when there is so much public concern about what is happening in various branches of the NHS—whether it be trust hospitals, clinical commissioning groups or other organisations—we are not allowing members of the public to have access to the relevant documents. We know, for example, that some NHS chief executives and other staff and administrators have received massive pay-offs. At the end of the day, the costs are not just borne by the national taxpayer but are taken out of local budgets, because they are allocated to clinical commissioning groups such as the one in Dorset.
I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills this question: why should not local people, including local journalists, be assisted by the Bill? On Second Reading, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton, said:
“by giving journalists the right to access recent accounting information from a range of local public bodies, the Bill will assist them in ?their investigations”. —[Official Report, 25 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 1210-11.]
Sir Edward Leigh
My hon. Friend is on to a very good point. We are dealing with a powerful issue, and there is not really enough time for us to discuss it today, but let me explain what I want the Bill to do. Again, I am addressing the Minister, because I think that the Government must get a grip on this. I want a culture that enables all members of the public—not just members of the National Union of Journalists, not just cliques, not just councillors, not just Members of Parliament—to have access to the accounts of not only those who work in local government and health services but those who work in academies, where huge salaries are often paid. That is what should happen in a modern age.
Mr Chope
I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to what my hon. Friend has said. I know that health is not his direct responsibility, but I am sure that he will have been briefed by his colleagues, because he obviously had notice of the amendment.
Surely this is an opportunity for the Government to demonstrate again to the public of the United Kingdom that they are on their side and will do everything in their power to ensure that there is proper scrutiny and accountability in relation to bodies that consume so much public resource. In my area, there continues to be a big conflict over a proposed merger between Poole hospital and the Royal Bournemouth. Eventually, during the last Parliament, I was able to persuade the Competition and Markets Authority that the merger should not be allowed to go ahead.
However, I have been told that covert discussions are taking place, and that the two hospitals are trying to persuade the authority to change its normal rule—that a merger cannot proceed within the next 10 years—in this particular instance. However, it is all happening under the radar: Joe Public does not know about it. That strikes me as another example of the sometimes cavalier way in which some of our local health organisations are operating.
Mr Nuttall
May I start by paying tribute not only to the promoter of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), but also to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), because the whole House owes him a debt of gratitude for the forensic way in which he has analysed this Bill and brought such a wide array of amendments for the House to consider this morning? It seems to me that if this Bill had been subject to my hon. Friend’s level of scrutiny in its earlier stages and been examined in the detail he has demonstrated this morning, perhaps we would not be in the position that we find ourselves in now.
I cannot make any prediction as to the length of time for which I will need to address the House, but I will deal succinctly with the amendments before us. I wish to advance to the House the reasons for my amendment and explain why it is important that it is accepted. I have adopted a slightly different approach from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. He has adopted a more scatter-gun approach—that is a description, not a criticism—whereas I have concentrated my fire on just one amendment, and I will guide the House through why I think it is critical that it is accepted.
I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills. As the House will be aware, she has rightly already achieved a degree of expertise in private Member’s Bills. In her first session in Parliament, she steered on to the statute book a private Member’s Bill dealing with Great Ormond Street hospital, and everyone is grateful to her for that. She has also demonstrated her expertise in the way in which this Bill has been progressed so far: it was piloted through Second Reading in about 80 minutes and, as was mentioned earlier, it went through Committee in just 11 minutes. My hon. Friend no doubt felt very pleased about that, but I have to question the speed with which the Bill passed through Committee. I make no criticism of the Members who served on the Committee, but, as has been mentioned, no amendments whatsoever were tabled in Committee. It is also worth placing on the record that although my hon. Friend was obviously present in Committee, as was the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and seven other hon. Members, there were several Members missing: the hon. Members for Clacton (Mr Carswell), for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay). It is particularly noteworthy that my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), who had quite a lot to say about this Bill on Second Reading, missed the cut, as they say in golf, when it came to selecting the Committee members. Had he made the cut, some of the matters we will be touching on this morning might have been dealt with then.
I fear that the number and nature of the amendments before us today suggest that matters were somewhat glossed over in Committee. As evidence of that, I cite the transcript of the Second Reading debate on 25 November last year. That debate contained several references to things being ironed out in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said:
“I understand that hon. Members have raised concerns today, and they are exactly the kind of points that I would be more than happy for us to consider in Committee.”
My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset said:
“There will be some issues to be teased out in Committee”.
He then doubled up on that when referring to the question of what constitutes related documents. He said:
“I am absolutely certain that the issue will be teased out in Committee”. —[Official Report, 25 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 1200-03.]
Well, I am sorry to say that it was not.
The purpose of my amendment is to clarify the terminology used in this Bill, and to avoid any possibility of confusion in the future. I hope that, after I have spent a few minutes advancing the arguments for the importance of my amendment, it will be accepted, because I believe that its inclusion would strengthen the Bill. It is not what I would term a wrecking amendment, and I have tabled it in the best possible spirit. This is a short Bill, and my amendment to clause 1 simply seeks to put in the Bill what is inferred from the explanatory notes and the briefing papers, which I believe is the intention of the Bill.
The first three subsections of section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 state:
(1) At each audit of accounts under this Act, other than an audit of accounts of a health service body, any persons interested may—
(a) inspect the accounting records for the financial year to which the audit relates and all books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers, receipts and other documents relating to those records, and
(b) make copies of all or any part of those records or documents.
(2) At the request of a local government elector for any area to which the accounts relate, the local auditor must give the elector, or any representative of the elector, an opportunity to question the auditor about the accounting records.
(3) The local auditor’s reasonable costs of complying with subsection (2) are recoverable from the relevant authority to which the accounts relate.
That is the underlying provision in statute that my hon. Friend’s Bill seeks to amend. It is important to bear it in mind, however, that that Act was itself a consolidating Act of a previous consolidating Act—namely, the Audit Commission Act 1998. It is important to remember that reference was made to a previous Act, as we shall see when we look at the leading case involved.
I want to talk now about the bodies that are covered by the 2014 Act. It covers a number of relevant authorities, which are set out in schedule 2 to the Act. For example, it covers county, district, borough and parish councils, combined authorities, police and crime commissioners, passenger transport executives and national parks authorities. At that time, it also covered the Greater London Authority. The bodies covered by the Act will inevitably produce a wide variety of stories that journalists might wish to pursue.
The leading case relating to this matter is that of R. (on the application of HTV Ltd) v. Bristol City Council. The House of Commons Library briefing on this Bill refers to that case, and the explanatory notes to the Bill mention the fact that it was this Bill that first identified the problem in the earlier legislation. We must bear it in mind that, although that case took place in 2004, it refers to the previous Act and not to the current Act that is being amended.
Mr Nuttall
Ah, a dilemma. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is making a fascinating contribution. Although “citizen journalist” is referred to in the rubric of clause 1, there is no definition of it; there is only a definition of “journalist”. Does he agree that that rather suggests that there was originally other material in clause 1 that was cut out as a result of negotiations between our hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and the Department, and that the Department failed to observe that there was no longer any definition of “citizen journalist” and amend the Bill accordingly?
Mr Nuttall
There may be some reason for why there is no definition of “citizen journalist” in the Bill, but I must admit that I am unaware of what that reason might be. What I can say, before I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), is that the Bill’s explanatory notes state in paragraph 4:
“Accordingly, we are seeking to extend the definition of ‘any persons interested’ in section 26(1) of the Act”—
the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014—
“to include journalists, including ‘citizen journalists’”.
Crucially, paragraph 4 goes on to state that “citizen journalists” means
“bloggers and others who scrutinise local authorities but who may not be accredited members of the press to enable them to access a wider range of accounting material in order to report and publish their findings so that it is available to local electors in an area, thus providing them with information that will enable them to better hold their local council to account.”
Who can disagree with that? It seems an entirely laudable aim, and it is rather disappointing that that laudable aim was not carried through on to the face of the Bill. That is what my amendment seeks to do.
Philip Davies
Where do social media fit into my hon. Friend’s wide definition of the term “journalist,” particularly with regard to Facebook and Twitter? If he is basically saying that the term covers anyone who wants to publish anything on the internet, it seems to me that anybody, anywhere can publish on Twitter or Facebook, or whatever. Will that fall within his definition? Does his definition of journalism cover any member of the public? That brings us back to amendment 2, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention because he touches on what I will cover in my remaining remarks on amendment 1. There is a distinction to be drawn, because although I agree that my wide definition would, on the face of it, give a very large number of people the right to go and inspect the accounts, the definition does require some publication on the internet. If somebody wanted to go for their own private interest, perhaps for academic research, they would not be included without there being such a publication. There would have to be some element of publication on the internet, and I make no apology at all for my definition covering a wide category of people, because I want to make it as wide as possible.
Philip Davies
Just to clarify, as I am still not entirely clear, does that mean that publication on social media such as Twitter would fall within my hon. Friend’s definition of journalism?
Mr Nuttall
In short, yes—I am absolutely clear about that—because my definition refers to publication on a website. If a person publishes something on their Twitter account, it is possible to look them up using the web address and to scroll back through their tweets to see what they said yesterday, a month ago or a year ago. It is published for all time on the internet.
Philip Davies
I am not unsympathetic to my hon. Friend’s point. The only issue I would raise, and it may be an added complication, is that many Twitter profiles, as we all know too well, are anonymous. We would have no idea who is behind such publications. Is there any implication in amendment 1 that, in defining “journalist”, the public should have the right to know who is publishing the particular material?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend raises a good point that I had not previously considered. On the one hand, I agree with him that it is important that individuals should know who is putting such information out there. On the other hand, if it is an anonymous Twitter account, or if the user’s identity has been protected for some reason, I would be inclined to trust the public to treat any published information with a high degree of caution because they would not be able to know its source. Although I would defend the right of anyone to publish such information —this comes back to the question of fake news raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—the problem with such accounts is that, because they are not accredited to any recognised journalistic outlet, members of the public should be cautious about what they read on them. That does not detract from my fundamental point that the mere fact of information being published on what we refer to with the shorthand “social media” should not stop it being regarded as having been published.
In the past, things were published in a daily newspaper and that was it. There is the old saying about today’s newspaper being tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, and I am old enough to remember when that was true.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend accept that even in newspapers some items are anonymous? For many years there was a column in the Daily Express called “William Hickey,” but there was no such person.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comment, which supports my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. The mere fact of anonymity should not preclude publication, but it should then be up to the individual reader to decide what weight to give the information or news item in a column. Of course, the law would apply equally to printed material under the 2014 Act.
In answer to my hon. Friend, things can be published anonymously in a newspaper, not just on the internet. We often see letters in newspapers saying “name and address withheld.” Information can be put into the public domain without any indication of who has put it there.
Amendment 1 would broaden the scope of what is termed “journalistic material” to ensure that news websites in all media formats are included. The world of journalism is changing and evolving, and it is important in a free society that different viewpoints can be freely expressed and that journalists have the freedom to go about their work.
The public affairs and software company Vuelio listed the top 10 political blogs in the UK as of June 2016, and in first place was Guido Fawkes. It was followed by political websites of all persuasions, including Wings Over Scotland, which I cite for the benefit of our friends from Scotland—the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) has left her place. The list also included LabourList, Left Foot Forward, Political Scrapbook, Political Betting, ConservativeHome, Slugger O’Toole, Liberal Democrat Voice and Labour Uncut. All aspects of the political spectrum are covered by political blogs.
The number of viewers watching a programme, the number of readers of a newspaper and the number of visitors to a website should not, of itself, be the criterion by which we determine whether something is valuable. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made the interesting comment that if something is published on a website that only has a readership within the area of Christchurch and Bournemouth, that would be sufficient to meet the definition of publication. It does not have to be a national publication because, by definition, we are talking about local bodies and local councils. It seems more important to consider the quality of the readership, rather than its number or location. It might be more relevant to communicate something to 100 people in the locality than to 10,000 people who live somewhere else in the country, so we cannot purely look at the numbers when deciding this.
We need to bear in mind not only written publication and communication by social media and on the internet, but the fact that we are moving into an age of video bloggers—vloggers. I have therefore tried not to be too prescriptive about what constitutes a news outlet and my amendment simply specifies “on any website”. With modern technology, it is easy for anyone to produce their own reports and put them on the internet for others to view. Last year, research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggested that 51% of people with online access use social media as a news source. That is a fairly high proportion, but 28% of 18 to 24-years-olds—the younger generation, whom we want to get involved in the political process—cited social media as their main news source; nowadays this is where people get their news. More of that age group cited social media as their main news source than cited television—its figure was only 24%. It is important that this legislation reflects that changing landscape in journalism. We have to accept that in an evolving social media world the definition of “a journalist” will inevitably change over time. My amendment seeks to future-proof the Bill, which is why it stresses the words
“any website on the internet”.
Sir Greg Knight
I am a little concerned about my hon. Friend’s amendment, because I think it is restrictive. In terms of hard-copy publications, it refers only to “a newspaper or magazine”. Would it therefore not exclude a parliamentary candidate who was seeking to root out local corruption and wanted to publish in an election leaflet?
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention, and I fear my definition might exclude that, which may be why my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch tabled an amendment to include “politician” in the definition. I would hope that any would-be politician—any election candidate nowadays—would have access to social media and their own website and so would be able to use the fact that they were going to publish on that website as reason to inspect the documents.
Let me try to pre-empt some further criticisms that may be made of my amendment that relate to the definitions of “internet” and “website”. The definition of “internet” is:
“A global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols.”
Alternatively, the “net”, as the internet is often referred to, is defined as
“a worldwide system of computer networks—a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer”.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend says that there is no ambiguity, but clause 1’s title refers to “citizen journalists”, yet the clause contents refer only to “journalists”, not to “citizen journalists”. That creates confusion, does it not? Why are we not just talking about journalists and then defining “journalists” in subsection (3)?
Mr Nuttall
To be fair, my amendment does not refer to “citizen journalists”—only the clause title does, although the term is used in the notes and the briefings. With hindsight, I think this should be deleted from the clause title, because it leads people down a cul-de-sac, as they will think a bit is missing from the Bill and will wonder where the definition of “citizen journalists” is. As I said, I decided that rather than trying to define that, it would be better to extend the existing definition of “a journalist”. Perhaps it would have been better to define—somehow— what a “citizen journalist” is, but I was conscious that a number of colleagues objected on Second Reading to the reference to “citizen”, because we are all subjects of Her Majesty. For that reason, I felt it was not sensible to incorporate the term “citizen journalists” in legislation, and I would prefer it if those words were struck from the Bill.
My amendment deals with whether payment being made for a newspaper or magazine, or for access to a website, should affect the situation. I have made it clear that that should have no bearing on whether someone, whether or not a citizen journalist, should have the right to access the accounts of their local council or other body covered by this legislation. The Bill makes it clear that it matters not whether the journalist is paid or unpaid, but I thought it was equally important to clarify this issue about payment to access the site.
Sir Greg Knight
The more I reflect on my hon. Friend’s amendment, the more unsatisfactory I think it is. Why is he apparently discriminating against television journalists? Many journalists, such as Michael Crick, might want to prepare a news piece for broadcast in a television programme, not for release in a magazine or newspaper, or on the internet. Why are television journalists excluded from his amendment?
Mr Nuttall
I do not intend to exclude anybody. Nowadays, all the broadcasters have websites. They would not necessarily need to publish or broadcast online, but I am not aware of any broadcasters that do not have websites. Perhaps my right hon. Friend is aware of some, but I would have thought it very simple for any broadcaster, faced with a council using the argument advanced by my right hon. Friend as a shield, to say, “In any event, we will be publishing it on our website.”
Philip Davies
To reinforce my hon. Friend’s point, all TV channels can be accessed via the internet these days, so really they all publish on the internet as well. If I read his amendment correctly, it talks about what is included; it does not necessarily refer to excluding other things. It is really an enabling amendment, which I hope will give some comfort to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight).
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it is important to note that the amendment says “and includes”; I have tried not to exclude any other options but merely to clarify. I hope that that will be noted by the Bill’s promoter and the Minister, who I fear may have some reservations about my amendment. I hope they will concentrate and reflect on that intervention from my hon. Friend.
I wish to comment briefly on several other amendments, but I am understandably concerned that I advance the best possible case for my own. I hope I have been able to satisfy all those with concerns about my amendment and that I have set their minds at ease. I note that the Bill’s promoter has not sought to contest my amendment in any way during my remarks. I sincerely hope that, when she speaks, she will indicate her willingness to accept it in the spirit in which it was tabled. It is not a wrecking amendment; it merely seeks to achieve what her explanatory notes to the Bill say and extend the cover to citizen journalists and bloggers to enable them to inspect the accounts of local authorities.
I wish now to deal with the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and make it clear which of them I do and do not support. His amendment 2, as on the amendment paper, would essentially mean that virtually anyone would be able to make use of the powers in the Bill. I am happy to support that, although it is perhaps a touch ambitious, given the views expressed so far during the Bill’s progress by its promoter and the Minister.
My hon. Friend has suggested several other options for the House to consider, including, in amendment 3, extending the access to include politicians. As I made clear in my intervention earlier, I have some concerns about the fact that the word “politician” is not defined anywhere in the Bill, but I have no objection at all to the general proposition of extending the scope from journalists to politicians.
Amendment 4 deals with the position of non-domestic ratepayers, which is particularly important as we move into an era in which we are going back towards the localisation of business rates. That move will inevitably lead businesses within an area to take more interest in what is going on in their local authority, so I wholeheartedly support the amendment.
Amendments 5, 6 and 7 give the House the opportunity to choose between the Bill applying to journalists who are accredited, professional or qualified. We heard from my hon. Friend earlier that his preferred option would be for it to apply to accredited journalists, as per amendment 5. I am happy to go along with my hon. Friend for the reasons he set out.
Amendment 8 would remove the definition of a journalist entirely. As that would, of course, be in direct contravention of my amendment, I would oppose it and press my own instead.
Sir Greg Knight
My hon. Friend is galloping on at such a speed that he rather skipped over amendment 3. Does he share my concern that it might be defective because it refers to a politician, the definition of which is someone who is professionally involved in politics, especially someone who holds an elected office? That might rule out an aspiring politician who is a candidate but is yet to be elected.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He might have missed my intervention, but I made that point earlier in the debate. I entirely agree that there is a difficulty with not defining the term “politician” to make it clear that someone who aspires to elected office should be included, because they are as likely as anyone to want to carry out investigative work, study the accounts to get to the bottom of them, and see whether there is anything in there that they need to bring to the public’s attention.
Amendment 9 is as on the amendment paper. It would extend to section 26 of the 2014 Act the same conditions set out in section 25(3) of that Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has again struck on something that is worthy of the House’s consideration. I am not sure whether he wishes to press the amendment to a vote but, should he so wish, I would certainly consider supporting it.
Mr Chope
To reinforce that point on clinical commissioning groups, CCGs have a veto over the use of procedures for people living within their areas. Those vetoes are often controversial and are justified on the basis of cost. If people cannot examine the cost bases of decisions, it is difficult to hold CCGs to account.
Mr Nuttall
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. There would be considerable interest from local residents in accessing all the accounts of all health service bodies.
My hon. Friend’s amendment 11 would extend the period in which inspections can be carried out beyond 30 days. I have heard no explanation as to why the period is 30 days and not 60, 25 or another number. I entirely agree that no logical reason has been advanced as to why we should have a 30-day limit. I would support him on the amendment.
Amendments 12, 13 and 14 are more technical amendments dealing with commercial confidentiality. I welcome amendment 13 and recommend it to the House. The fact that something was commercially sensitive in the past should not prevent the accounts and associated paperwork from being inspected now.
Those are my views on my hon. Friend’s amendments, but I reiterate that I commend my amendment 1 to the House. I hope this is not the case, but if the amendment is opposed, that will draw into question everything said about the Bill’s extending access to a wider number of people and giving information to the public. I have sought only to put in the Bill what the explanatory notes say the Bill is about.
At the very least, if for whatever reason my amendment does not find favour with the promoter of the Bill, I would first be interested to know why. Secondly, the public would be suspicious of the Bill. Let us not forget that the Bill was brought before the House because the initial Acts were defective. I advise the House to be wary of any arguments advanced by the Government against my amendment, because Governments of various hues down the years have led us to the position we are in this morning. I have attempted to be clear and open. One can argue over individual words, but I submit to the House that my amendment is perfectly clear. It seeks to give clarity to the phrase “citizen journalist”, which, whether we like it or not, appears in the heading of clause 1. I commend my amendment to the House.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who have given a compelling and comprehensive account of their amendments. I rise to adjudicate between them. It is a rare occurrence when my two hon. Friends come at things from slightly different perspectives, but I sense that they have their differences on the Bill. I will do my best to be fair to their amendments in my adjudication.
I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North in congratulating the Bill’s promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), on getting her Bill to this stage. It is a good Bill, but if it were to incorporate some of the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North, it would be a better Bill. The whole purpose of the Report stage is to try to improve a Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is an excellent Minister, and I hope that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills have listened carefully to my hon. Friends, and that they appreciate, on reflection, that the Bill could be better. I will try to set out which of the amendments the Minister and my hon. Friend should be minded to accept. If they are minded not to accept them, I encourage my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North to consider pressing them to a Division to test the will of the House.
My hon. Friends have made compelling cases for some but not all of their amendments, which is where I will focus my attention. Amendment 2 is the lead amendment in the group—rightly so, in many respects. It is my contention that it is the most powerful amendment in the group and if my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is tempted to press any of his amendments to a Division, I hope he focuses his attention on amendment 2, which states:
“Clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out from ‘after’ to the end of the subsection and insert ‘any members of the public who are registered to vote in local elections in the United Kingdom’”.
In simple terms, my hon. Friend is basically saying that everybody in the country should have a right to know what is going on in local authorities. His compelling case was based on what is happening in his local authority and the neighbouring authority in Bournemouth. Clearly—it seems obvious to me—if two local authorities are potentially merging, a member of the public in one should have the absolute right to full access to all the information from the other to assess whether it is in their best interests for the merger to go ahead. Without access to the information, how on earth can they be in a position to make that judgment? That completely flies in the face of democracy.
It would be perverse in many respects if, in respect of my hon. Friend’s local authority area, the editor of the Evening Standard, who was mentioned earlier, was able to access the documents relating to his neighbouring council by virtue of being a journalist—a fine and leading one, at that, as the editor of a prestigious newspaper—but my hon. Friend’s local residents were unable to get the same information. That would surely be a perverse outcome, and it cannot really be the one envisaged when the Bill was in its infancy. I do not see what possible argument there could be against his amendment. If we believe that, in extending transparency, local authorities can rightly be held to account and the public can have greater awareness of what is going on, why do we not give them all the opportunity to see the information for themselves rather than relying on journalists to do the job for them?
I agree with the principle of extending the range of people who have access to these documents. However, the problem is that this proposal, while a step in the right direction, is not sufficient because, as we all know, the newspaper industry, and local newspapers in particular, are going through a pretty torrid time financially at the moment—I do not think there is any secret about that. With things moving on to the internet, newspapers find it very difficult to adjust and to monetise their content. We therefore tend to find in many local areas that, unfortunately, despite the best efforts of local newspaper groups, they are not increasing the number of journalists who would get access to all these documents and go through them with a fine-tooth comb; they are actually shedding journalists, and they are being spread more thinly. It is slightly naive to hope that, on the back of having given local journalists access to this information, all this stuff will suddenly be in the public domain, because I am not entirely sure that the journalistic trade has the capacity to do that. We will therefore be enabling something that is very worth while but which may not happen in practice. If we want this information to be in the public domain so that the public are able to hold local authorities to account, we cannot just rely on journalists because it is difficult to see how they will have the capacity. We have to allow the public to do it themselves.
I do not see why anybody should not be able to have access to this information. In practice, the chances of somebody in Shipley gratuitously showing an interest in the local authority in Christchurch are very remote. Nobody is going to be inundated with requests for that kind of scrutiny, but residents in Christchurch may well want to know what is happening in Bournemouth, which is just down the road, and they should absolutely have the right to inspect and see whether the council is behaving in the way it should. I was rather shocked to hear the allegations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the conflicts of interest of the leader of Bournemouth Council. Without going over the detail myself, it certainly did not sound very good. It is absolutely right that local residents in adjoining authorities should be able to know what is going on.
I genuinely do not see why my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills or the Minister would want to resist this greater transparency and scrutiny, because surely that is the whole purpose of the Bill. In his amendment, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is, in effect, taking the Bill to its logical conclusion. I am pretty sure that if we do not do this now, there will be another private Member’s Bill further down the road introducing the measures that he proposes, because there is a clear logic to what he is trying to achieve. I believe in transparency, and I think it is very difficult to argue against it. If we are to go down the route of transparency, let us have full transparency so that nobody can claim that they did not have an opportunity to access any detailed information that they wanted to see.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend mentioned the shortage of local reporters and the pressures on local newspapers. Does he recall that only last month the BBC said that it was setting aside £8 million a year to pay for 150 reporters to work for local news organisations across the country? Is not that stark evidence of the plight of many of our local newspapers?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not want to get too side-tracked, Madam Deputy Speaker, and you would not allow me to, but it is fair to say that the BBC does not help in these matters because it pinches local content and shoves it on its website free of charge, making it difficult for local papers to monetise their work. I welcome what the BBC said, but I do not know whether it will work in practice in the way that is envisaged, because what I see, Madam Deputy Speaker—I do not know what is happening in Derbyshire or in other parts of the country—is local papers still shedding staff rather than recruiting staff. I have not noticed any difference in that regard since the announcement was made. We will have to see what happens. However, as my hon. Friend says, we cannot rely on local newspapers being able to fill this void. I think he is on to something with amendment 2, which is the strongest of the group.
Amendment 3, also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, mentions
“including any politician or journalist”.
I got the sense that my hon. Friend felt that, between them, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North had torpedoed his amendment with regard to the definition of “politician”, which is clearly unsatisfactory. As they both said, to include people who are elected but exclude those standing for election would be unacceptable, because everyone should be on a level playing field. Because amendment 2 is so good, it rather exposes the weaknesses in my hon. Friend’s other amendments. He seems to be making the best of the bad job, working on the premise that if amendment 2 is not accepted, let us see what else we can do to try to make the Bill better. I think he should be focusing his fire on amendment 2; the others do not really cut the mustard.
My hon. Friend is also on to something with amendment 4, whereby he wants to include non-domestic ratepayers. He is absolutely right about that. I suppose that if he had not tabled amendment 2, I would have supported amendment 4, but if we go for amendment 2 we do not need to bother with amendment 4, because it rather weakens what he is trying to do with his lead amendment.
In amendments 5, 6 and 7, my hon. Friend is trying to make the best of a bad job with his “accredited”, “professional” and “qualified” definitions of journalists. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North pointed out that those were not good enough, and I accept that. I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is a rather unenthusiastic supporter of those three amendments, but I appreciate his tabling them because they have prompted a debate to consider whether they have any merit. I think we have generally concluded that they do not, but I am grateful to him for allowing us to look at them.
Amendment 8 is about removing the definition of “journalist”. Again, that amendment has merit, but amendment 2 rather supersedes it.
I wish to touch on amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. I am interested in both the amendment and his defence of it. He made some very good points. I moved between supporting it, opposing it and supporting it again as he was making his remarks. He certainly put up a very good defence of it. I agree with the thrust of what he is trying to achieve, which is to extend the definition of “journalist” to cover as many people as possible. That is the common theme of what those of us who have spoken so far are trying to achieve. We want as many people as possible to have access to this information. The question is how we best achieve that.
Amendment 1 was a rather imaginative way of effectively trying to include virtually everybody. In some respects, it makes everybody a journalist, including those on Twitter and Facebook. I am not entirely sure how many people are not on Twitter or Facebook—they are the sensible ones as far as I am concerned—but probably not that many. I am not on Facebook, but I am on Twitter. I regard going on Twitter as probably one of the worst things I have ever done in my life. I have about 16,000 followers, all of whom hate me. It is very interesting to read what they have to say, but it all seems rather pointless. They can hurl as much abuse as they like—it does not bother me—but I am not entirely sure that it gets us anywhere. My hon. Friend wants to include those people in his definition of a journalist. As somebody who always wanted to be a journalist and actually did the National Council for the Training of Journalists course at Sheffield college, I am not entirely convinced that those of us on that course would think that any old moron on Twitter should be able to describe themselves as a journalist. None the less, that is the age that we are in. There is a lot of merit in what my hon. Friend says, and it would be bizarre in this day and age to exclude those people who publish material in those ways. That is the way of the world, and we must accept that whether we like it or not. It seems that he is working within the spirit of the Bill, and he made that clear during his remarks.
As my hon. Friend was speaking, I saw that the Bill said that
“‘journalist’ means any person who produces for publication journalistic material (whether paid to do so or otherwise).”
In the explanatory notes, it says that it covers journalists,
“including ‘citizen journalists’, that is bloggers and others who scrutinise local authorities but who may not be accredited members of the press to enable them to access a wider range of accounting material in order to report and publish their findings so that it is available to local electors in an area, thus providing them with information that will enable them to better hold their local council to account.”
What this Bill seeks to do is what my hon. Friend’s amendment states. I look forward to what the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills have to say in response. I cannot work out whether there is any reason for my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills not to accept the amendment, because it seems to be the thrust of what she is trying to achieve, or whether there is no point to the amendment, because it will already be covered by the Bill. I cannot work out which of those two it is; it may well be an element of both.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is trying to make sure that it is clear who is covered. It may well be that these people are already covered, but he wants to make that clear in the Bill. If that is what is happening, I do not see why anyone would want to oppose it. If all he is doing is clarifying what is intended anyway, it seems that we are all in agreement. I look forward to hearing whether amendment 1 is what this Bill is supposedly doing anyway.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made a very good case for all his amendments. I just wish to touch on amendment 10, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North called the most “controversial” one, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch called the most “radical” one. I describe it as radical rather than controversial. I am not entirely sure why it would be controversial, but I do accept that it is radical. The amendment would ensure that the provision includes health service bodies. I would be very interested to hear the argument against what my hon. Friend is trying to do. Why would we not think that there should be full scrutiny of the accounts of a health service body? Why would we want to focus just on local councils? Why should other local health authorities not be subject to the same rigours? Surely no one could suggest that it is utterly terrible for a local authority to be wasting or misappropriating money, but that it is absolutely fine for a local health authority to do so.
If we want to be sure that local authorities are not doing things that they should not be doing, and that there is full accountability to the people whom they are supposed to serve and to the people who may take an interest in what they are doing, the same rules must apply to a local health authority. I cannot see why anyone would argue against that. Again, I am interested to know what the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills have to say on that and on why they think that one is more important than the other.
In many respects, one could argue that people might be more concerned about what is happening in their local health authority, rather than in their local authority. It may well be more important to their day-to-day lives. Again, the amendment is certainly radical, but I cannot see why it should be controversial. Many people would be astonished that a local health authority is not already included in the Bill. I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for being absolutely forensic when scrutinising legislation, and this House would be much poorer without him doing so. It goes to show why Bills should not go through this place on the nod, and why we should have proper scrutiny. Lots of things come up in the course of that scrutiny that people have not considered. I do not blame my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for not including these measures. Indeed, it is why we have a debate and why we have amendments. The wisdom of 650 is quite clearly better than the wisdom of just one. Other people think of things that we would never have thought of. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch does so on a regular basis, and I commend him for that.
In summary, my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North have done the House a great service by seeking to improve the Bill. Anybody can see that they are not trying to ruin it; they are trying to make it better. It is a good Bill so far, but it would certainly be improved by some of these amendments. My final analysis is that if my hon. Friends are to press any of their amendments to a Division—with your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, of course—they should do so with amendments 2 and 10, because those amendments are the most powerful. The Bill represents an improvement, but amendments 2 and 10 would turn it into something that will be very good for the public and will stand the test of time. I wish the Bill well, and hope that it will pass with those amendments.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for introducing the Bill. As someone who has brought a private Member’s Bill to the House, I know the hard work that goes into it. Her Bill has got far further than my Bill did, and I wish her every success in taking it further.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Percy)
I welcome the opportunity to speak on behalf of the Government, in place, I am sad to say, of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), who has responsibility for local government. I know that he would be delighted to be here, were he not otherwise engaged. I, too, would be delighted if he were here, knowing as I do of his passion for the Bill.
Andrew Percy
I will, of course, give way to my fellow east Yorkshire colleague.
Sir Greg Knight
Has my hon. Friend any information to relate to the House about why not a single Liberal Democrat is here?
Andrew Percy
Sadly not, other than that the public seemed to diminish Liberal Democrat numbers somewhat at the last general election, proving once again that members of the public are very sensible individuals, on the whole.
I welcome the opportunity to comment briefly on the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and on the important points made thus far. I had the privilege of stepping in for the Local Government Minister in Committee, when I offered the Government’s support for the important principles behind the Bill.
The amendments have been tabled with the best of intentions—the Bill’s promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), will deal with them in more detail—but I want to set out the Government’s view on why we do not think agreeing to them would be a good idea. The Bill’s virtue is its simplicity. By seeking to clarify what is meant in the legislation by where material may be published, amendment 1 may unintentionally—we know that it is unintentional from the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North—narrow the places where such articles may be published. Sometimes, a less precise phrase in law permits a helpfully wider interpretation, and I believe that is the case here.
Mr Nuttall
I have no doubt that a similar argument would have been advanced when the original Audit Commission Act 1998—the legislation that led to the court case from which this Bill arises—was going through this House, so there is actually a strong argument for trying to be as clear as possible in the Bill about what is intended.
Andrew Percy
I do not agree. Given its reference to the internet and websites, my hon. Friend’s amendment could unintentionally and unhelpfully narrow the interpretation.
Hon. Members may be interested to know that the concepts of journalistic material and publication already appear in legislation many times—although to my mind, “publication” in particular is a simple, plain English definition needing no further clarification. For example, “journalistic material” appears in section 264(2) of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, as well as section 13 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and “publication” has similar antecedents.
It is fair to say, however, that not everybody who will seek to use the Bill will necessarily be familiar with the concepts and interpretation of those terms as they are used in it. I have heard what my hon. Friends have said and will therefore commit to ensuring that any accompanying explanatory notes are amended, if the Bill passes to the other place, to clarify those points. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North referred to journalists as opposed to citizen journalists. The definition of a journalist includes citizen journalists, which is why a separate definition has not been required.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills is keen to get to her feet and respond in detail to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, so in the interests of brevity, I want to concentrate on two issues he raised—or, on reflection, maybe three. Amendment 2 would be likely to impose a new burden on local authorities, because we would be asking them to make their records available to everyone, which is something that they have not previously been required to do under the 2014 Act. That would therefore need to be funded by the Government, whereas we are seeking to extend the existing right to a defined group of people, and that would not be considered in the same light.
I heard what my hon. Friend said about amendment 10 regarding health bodies. I cannot speak on behalf of other Departments, but as Members of Parliament we are all concerned about transparency in the health system. The stated intention of the 2014 Act and the response to the consultation on it did not include health bodies. It would therefore be wrong to include those in the scope of the Bill.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend was pretty succinct in rejecting amendment 2. Does he have any evidence of how much it would cost local authorities if it became part of the law, and will he seek to make a comparison between that cost and the pay-off for the chief executive of Bournemouth Borough Council?
Andrew Percy
I have listened with interest to my hon. Friend’s comments about the chief executive of Bournemouth, but—perhaps to the delight of my officials—I will not say anything about that decision, especially in the light of the other issues affecting the potential reorganisation in Dorset at this time. Needless to say, extending such a right more generally to any elector across the United Kingdom might have a substantial impact, and it is likely that local authorities and public bodies would ask the Government for additional resources. I cannot give my hon. Friend a figure—I want to be honest with him at the Dispatch Box—but there is no doubt that extending the right in such a way would come with additional burdens.
Further to my hon. Friend’s comments on amendments 12 to 14, paragraphs 31 and 32 of the local authority transparency code already require councils to publish quarterly spending and procurement information. He referred to tender documents, and the code requires the details of every invitation to tender for contracts to provide goods or services with a value that exceeds £5,000 to be published, as well as the details of any contract, commissioned activity, purchase order, framework agreement and other legally enforceable agreement with a value that exceeds £5,000. Such documents are of course available to anybody.
Last May, the Government consulted on updating the code to provide an opportunity for greater town hall transparency—Members on both sides of the House, but certainly Conservative Members, want that—and for enhanced scrutiny of the use of public assets and resources, including through the better comparison of data. In respect of contractual information, the consultation proposed to standardise the data and, importantly, to make comparisons easier through their publication in a central source. We hope to publish our response to the consultation shortly, and I hope that it will abate some of my hon. Friend’s concerns about local transparency.
I want to deal quickly with an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who is not now in his place because he is on his way back to his constituency. He mentioned local government reorganisation in Lincolnshire and stated that one council is trying to take over another. I want to make it clear for the record that North Lincolnshire Council has not proposed to take over any other neighbouring authority. The Government have received no proposals of such a nature. All that is happening is that across Lincolnshire in the broadest sense—the county and the two unitary areas—a conversation is going on between council leaders about how the future of local government will look. It is important to provide that clarification as the matter was raised during this debate.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills will address some of the amendments in a moment, but I am confident that my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North and for Christchurch will respond, in their usual way, with reasonableness and, as I think that I got from their speeches, with an understanding that what lies behind the Bill is a good thing—it will extend a right to increase transparency—so I urge them not to press their amendments but to enable the Bill to pass to the other place. I look forward to the further progress of the Bill this afternoon.
Wendy Morton
I am very pleased to be able to speak again on my private Member’s Bill. As my hon. Friends have explained, no amendments were moved in Committee on 7 February—the passage of the Bill through Committee was quite swift—so the Bill has been reported to the House unamended.
The amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) are therefore late entries to the debate, but I was very keen to listen to their arguments. They have provided some additional scrutiny and additional debate in the Chamber.
Mr Nuttall
I should have covered this point in my speech, and I apologise for not having done so. I do not think we should go solely by that parameter. What if a local Facebook group contains 5,000 local interested residents? Surely that constitutes publication to interested people. It is just as valid as publishing material in a newspaper that no one reads.
Wendy Morton
That is a fair point, but what I am driving at is the difference between a small “invite only” Facebook group, which the Bill will not cover, and a broader, open Facebook group. The Bill is about transparency and openness, not about “invite only” groups.
The definition is also unlikely to include material sent as a direct message via Twitter, Facebook or email. It might be expected to include people such as Guido Fawkes, a blogger whom most of us know of, but not a campaign group such as 38 Degrees or SumOfUs.
I believe that the aim of amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, is to clarify the fact that the Bill would cover all journalists who might wish to publish their articles in a newspaper or on the internet, irrespective of whether there were charges. Let me reassure my hon. Friend that the Bill, as drafted, would include an article in a newspaper or magazine or on the internet, either on a website or in a blog, whether paid for or free, through use of the words “journalistic material” and “for publication”. In fact, by specifying where such material is published, he may be limiting the potential forums in which it is placed, as a blog or a tweet may not be part of a specific website.
The issue is important, because it is necessary to keep up with the times and use terminology that incorporates the many and varied realms of the internet, such as Twitter and the “blogosphere” . Some Members may fear that that might mean that anyone could say that they blog or tweet, but the onus would be on such people to show that their work had been made available in a sufficiently public forum in order to prove their credentials as citizen journalists before access could be given.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend refers to a “sufficiently public forum.” How many members of the public would be required to meet that criterion?
Wendy Morton
What I am trying to set out here is the difference between information that goes on to a private forum—such as open Facebook sites, direct emails and Twitter—and the more open social media that citizen bloggers would be proving that they are on. At its heart, this Bill is about giving citizen bloggers access to local government accounts, so that they can put information into the public domain and the electors can then conduct further scrutiny if they so wish.
Philip Davies
I am concerned that we might end up getting ourselves into a muddle. Many journalistic publications are private-subscription; the reader has to subscribe privately in order to get information from The Spectator, for example, so it is not in that sense public. I am therefore not entirely sure why we are distinguishing between a magazine publication that is a private subscription magazine, which it seems to me would still be covered by the Bill, and other private publications that my hon. Friend is seeking to exclude from the Bill. Why cannot we just include everything?
Wendy Morton
There are many sites that do not require a subscription, and I am endeavouring to explain the difference and address the need to ensure that the citizen blogger is someone who is getting information for the greater use of the public, rather than just for a private-only social media group or direct Twitter.
I want to move on now and speak to amendments 9, 10 and 11, also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. On amendment 9, I recognise that he is seeking to achieve comparability with the rights held by electors under section 25(3) of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. While it is not explicitly included in section 26, because this is a right enshrined in law my view is that a council would be on questionable ground if it tried to charge an interested person to inspect their accounting records, as it would in effect be fettering that right. Furthermore, there are existing powers in the Local Government Act 2003 for an authority to charge for discretionary services—that is, services that it is not under a duty to provide. In facilitating an interested person’s right to inspect documents, an authority would surely not be able to charge, as that person has a right to inspect. In addition, while section 26(1)(b) also gives a right to interested persons to “make copies”, there is no equivalent provision requiring an authority to provide copies to them. This would be a discretionary service, so the authority could be relying on its powers under the 2003 Act to charge for providing copies.
On amendment 10, sections 25 and 26 of the 2014 Act exclude health bodies, because the inspection rights in relation to their accounts do not apply. Health bodies differ in several key respects from other relevant authorities covered by the 2014 Act, not least in the treatment of their accounts, which include separate monitoring arrangements through the NHS and the Department of Health. In addition, the Government’s initial stated intention to act in this respect in their 2014 response to consultation did not include health bodies. It would therefore be wrong to extend these rights now. I hope that provides my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch with some reassurance on amendment 10.
It is my understanding that amendment 11 seeks to extend the right to inspect accounting documents beyond the current accounting year. The primary purpose of these rights at present is to enable the interested persons, which would include a local government elector, to inspect these additional documents so that they have all the information they might need in order to question the auditor and potentially make an objection within the 30 working-day period while the accounts for that year are still open.
Once the accounts have been signed off, the right lapses because the auditor is unable to investigate the question raised or the objection made, so being able to inspect past years’ accounting information becomes an academic exercise. I must also point out that the 30-day period is provided for in secondary legislation, which I believe makes the amendment inappropriate. Again I hope that I have been able to clarify the points that have been raised.
Mr Chope
May I begin by thanking the promoter of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton)? She has been assiduous in addressing the amendments that we have tabled. Would that that were always the case. She has also been charming and courteous in how she has dealt with us throughout the proceedings, so it is with some dismay that I say I cannot agree with everything she has said.
Before I go into detail, however, I should like to point out how helpful it has been to hear the views of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce). She supports some of the amendments, which gives me extra enthusiasm and confidence that I am on to a good thing here. I have always been in favour of trying to find consensus across the House and gaining cross-party support. The shadow Minister expressed support for amendment 2 and amendment 10. I am not going to push amendment 10 to a vote, but I certainly hope to do so with amendment 2. We will need to come back to amendment 10, because I think my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills —and indeed the whole House—will agree that there is a strong case for extending those powers to health bodies.
Let me turn to the objection to amendment 2 put forward by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). He said that it would place a new burden on local authorities, which would have to be funded by the Government. In fairness to him, however, he made no bones about the fact that he had no idea of the extent of that burden. He has made no estimate of it. In my submission, it would be relatively small and it would tend to be a burden only for those local authorities that were not already sufficiently transparent and accountable. It is those authorities that would, because of their secrecy, prompt people to try to inspect their books and accounts.
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend agree that this scrutiny of local authorities would probably lead to their saving more money in their everyday business than it would cost them to implement the provisions in amendment 2?
Mr Chope
I absolutely agree. As with all such things, the issue is one of proportionality. There is a balance between the burden on local government and the benefit to the public interest. In the case of amendment 2, the benefit to the public interest far outweighs any miniscule burden on local authorities, even if the argument put forward by my hon. Friend was not accepted by those authorities.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said that the Bill does what it says on the tin and talked about wanting to confine the Bill to extending rights to journalists. However, I remind her of the long title of her own Bill. It is a Bill to
“Extend public access to certain local audit documents under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.”
It is not limited to journalists. If my hon. Friend had wanted to limit it to journalists, she could have done so when she put down the long title of the Bill. It is sensible that we should take this opportunity to see whether we can make this Bill a bigger, more substantial piece of legislation than it would otherwise be, so I want to press amendment 2 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Wendy Morton
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Despite having had some previous success with a private Member’s Bill in this place, it is always special to have brought a Bill to its Third Reading. I am particularly pleased to have been able to introduce this Bill because although, as I have said, it is short and simple, it will have an impact nationally in potentially improving the transparency of local councils. I hope it will have an impact within my own local council area of Walsall and will help local journalists there. We have some excellent local newspapers—the Walsall Advertiser, The Express & Star, the Chronicle and the Sutton Coldfield Observer. As I set out at the start, the Bill’s intention is to improve transparency and accountability in both central and local government. This Government have done much to improve that since coming to power, and I am pleased to play my small part in furthering that agenda.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on piloting this Bill through its many stages in the House of Commons. She is fast becoming a master of these private Members’ Bill Fridays, although she is far too bashful to say so. I believe this worthy Bill will really add something to our statute book.
Wendy Morton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who also contributed on Second Reading, for his kind words. I am grateful to all hon. Members who have played a part in the progress of this Bill. If even one journalist or one citizen journalist uses this power to bring poor spending decisions or untoward expenditure to the attention of local electors so that they can ask questions of the auditor or object to their council’s accounts, thus forcing people to account publicly for their spending decisions, this Bill will have done its part.
In conclusion, I thank all those who have enabled me to get my Bill to Third Reading. I thank those who initially supported it, those who contributed on Second Reading, and those who supported me in Committee as well. I also thank everyone present for giving up yet another precious constituency Friday in a week that has not been the easiest in this place, or in this country. I hope that the Bill’s smooth and speedy passage through this place and into the other place continues, and that it becomes law.
Mr Chope
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on having taken the Bill so far. As I said on Report, I do not oppose the Bill. I think it could have been so much stronger and more worth while, but that is how it is. Friday business is iterative in nature: once an issue has been ventilated on a Friday, as sure as eggs are eggs, it is probably going to come back on another Friday. Ultimately, the extension of the rights in the Bill to include health bodies and to go beyond journalists is likely to find favour with other Members.
As my hon. Friend said, the Bill is currently limited to extending the powers under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 to journalists. We are extending them in a climate in which journalists are under a lot of pressure. Perhaps one exception to that is the fact that a new local newspaper has started in Christchurch this week. The title the Christchurch Times has been revived, and edition one is out this week; I look forward to reading a copy when I get back to my constituency later. That shows that local newspapers are not dying or dead.
Sir Greg Knight
Will my hon. Friend tell the House whether he has any intention of becoming the editor of this publication?
Mr Nuttall
I agree with my hon. Friend that the new arrival on the newspaper scene in his constituency is good news. Does he know whether the newspaper in question, being a new arrival, is making use of the new breed of citizen journalists we have been discussing?
Mr Chope
I suspect it is probably going to rely on citizen journalists to send it letters and report to real journalists information that they think the newspaper should investigate. I think it is going to have a responsible attitude to ensuring that the news it prints is properly authenticated and cannot be put in the category of fake news, or news the sources of which have not been properly checked out. I regard it as an example of highly responsible journalism.
I think we will find similarly responsible journalism from the additional reporters who are going to be recruited throughout the United Kingdom as a result of the requirement on the BBC to set aside money to pay for local reporters. As I said earlier, the BBC has set aside £8 million a year to pay for 150 reporters who will work for local news organisations, rather than the BBC, throughout the country. I am sure that those reporters will be professional, accredited and responsible journalists, and that they will add to the scrutiny of local democracy throughout the country.
I know from reports that, unfortunately, not all parts of the country are as well served by their local newspapers as we are in Dorset. There are parts of the country, including constituencies and whole local authority areas, in which no proper newspaper operates—certainly not a daily newspaper and, quite often, not even a weekly newspaper. That means that it is very difficult to hold local authorities properly to account.
I have referred to local stories, but how about this headline from 16 January: “Poole council revamp ‘waste of money’ before merger”? The story refers to the fact that the council proposes to spend £250,000 on revamping the civic centre when it also proposes that it should be abolished in favour of a council merger. There is another one from Bournemouth: “Council shuts £15 million bank of Bournemouth after issuing just 22 loans”, which happened just 18 months after it was created. That was another completely haywire scheme that cost local tax payers a lot of money. Nobody has been properly held to account for it.
I could go on, but will not. The Bill could have been so much better than it is, but it is better than nothing and for that I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge—Brownhills. I do not know whether it will find favour in the other place in the short space of time it has to consider it. One of my concerns about Bills going through at this late stage in the Session is that, if the other place is minded to amend them—I hope the Lords is minded to amend this Bill in the light of the debates we have had today—it is often inhibited, and told, “If you amend it, the Bill will not be able to come before the Commons before the end of the Session.” In that context, I hope the Minister in responding to the debate can give an assurance that the Government will provide time to ensure that the Bill will be dealt with by the Commons before the end of the Session if their lordships are minded to amend it in any way, so that that pistol cannot be held to the head of anybody who seeks to amend the Bill in the Lords. If they amend the Bill, it will be the death of it. Having said that, I will support the Bill should there be a Division.
Mr Nuttall
I, too, welcome the Bill in the spirit in which it has been introduced, despite the fact that my attempt to amend it did not meet with the approval of the promoter of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). As I said at the time, it was not a wrecking amendment but a genuine proposal to try to improve the Bill.
I listened carefully to my hon. Friend on amendment 1 but did not wholly agree with her. The explanatory notes refer to citizen journalists, and the heading of clause 1 includes the words “and citizen journalists”. Her explanation was that journalists includes citizen journalists. If that is the case, why was it thought necessary to go on to say “and citizen journalists” in the title of clause? That needs looking at again, but I am conscious of the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I appreciate that, if it were amended in the other place, it would spell the death of the Bill in this Session, unless the Government make time for the Commons to consider any Lords amendments. It is a question of what is more important. Is it more important that we get this legislation right, or do we let it go through in a form that we are not happy with? It is a fine balance. I hope that the answer lies in the Government saying that if the other place does feel that it is appropriate for the Bill to be amended, they will find Government time in which to consider those amendments on the grounds that those in the other place may have read this debate and heard our arguments as to why the Bill would benefit from further clarification. Their lordships may reach a different view from that taken by this House today.
The reason I suggest that it would be appropriate for the Government to find time for any Lords amendments to be considered is that after the Act that this Bill seeks to amend—the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 —was passed, it was put out to consultation by the Department for Communities and Local Government. In December 2014, it published its response, which says at paragraph 4.11 on page 10:
“Government believes that journalists should also be able to inspect accounts and information, in the interests of local people, and therefore intends to legislate at the earliest opportunity to ensure that the definition of ‘persons interested’”,
as defined in section 26 of the 2014 Act,
“is wide enough to enable this.”
That was a very clear commitment by the Government to making this amendment to the legislation, albeit that it is now being introduced in a private Member’s Bill. There is therefore a sound argument as to why they should make this time available.
I wholeheartedly support the general thrust of the Bill. It is right that we should give as much access as possible to those who are “interested”—the phraseology used in the initial legislation, which is now being extended to include journalists. I am sorry that we are not extending that to all electors who can vote in local elections, but the Bill is nevertheless a step in the right direction. It is right that we try to extend the right to inspect the accounts of local government, and all the other bodies listed in schedule 2 of the 2014 Act, to journalists and citizen journalists.
I accept that there is a concern that this might result in those bodies being inundated with requests, as was suggested earlier, but there is no evidence to suggest that that would be the case. I suspect that the answer lies in the legislation, which provides for the bodies to be able to charge for copies of documents that are taken away. We are weighing up two competing interests. The overriding interest is the interest of the public in knowing what is going on. The alternative is to say, “Well, once the accounts are published, there should be no right for anyone to go in and inspect the underlying documents, the books of accounts and so forth.” I do not think that any of us would want to go down that road. I suspect that what we have stumbled on here is probably the best of the options available to us. I would like to have gone further, but, nevertheless, extending the right to journalists is better than nothing. It is now up to journalists to make use of the new power that will be given to them once this Bill becomes law.
It will be interesting to see whether anybody covered by this Bill actually seeks to do what Bristol council did in respect of the 2014 Act and exclude citizen journalists because they are not specifically mentioned other than in the clause title. I hope that does not happen. If anyone tries to do that, I would refer them to the explanatory notes, which makes it very clear that the term “citizen journalists” should include
“bloggers and others who scrutinise local authorities but who may not be accredited member of the press.”
Paragraph 7 of the explanatory notes states:
“As well as accredited members of the press, the term journalist would be extended to cover ‘citizen journalists’, such as bloggers, enabling them to inspect the accounts of a local authority where they are not a local elector so that in publishing their findings they can help enable the public to hold that local authority to account.”
That is the key to the whole Bill. It is about being able to hold elected politicians to account. I trust that when the Bill is considered by the Lords, they will look carefully at the arguments that have been made here and consider whether it is worthy of further amendment. But I hope that the Bill is not amended in the other place unless there is an assurance that the Government will provide time—it will have to be Government time, as there are no more private Members’ days allocated in this Session—for those amendments to be considered.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for her work in ensuring that the Bill has reached this stage and for the efficient and courteous way that she has handled proceedings. I wish the Bill well.
Teresa Pearce
I do not intend to make more than a few remarks on Third Reading, as this Bill has the support of the Opposition, the Government and the Local Government Association. It is a short, and welcome, piece of legislation which aims to improve transparency and accountability of local public bodies. In an era in which local newspapers are in many places diminishing and in some places do not exist at all, extending transparency of public bodies benefits all of our local democracy.
Indeed, as we devolve more powers and sometimes even funding to local authorities, there is an ever increasing need for greater transparency. There are many other important Bills to be debated today, so I will draw my comments to a close.
Andrew Percy
It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Mr Deputy Speaker, you have changed.
I am still recovering from the exciting debate on Report. I was delighted to be able to contribute to it, as I was to be able to contribute to the debate in Committee. It is also a pleasure to speak on Third Reading on behalf of the Government and once again to offer our support for the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). I pay tribute to her for getting it this far, and I pay tribute to the other hon. Members who have sponsored and supported it. I associate myself entirely with her comments about how nice it is, after a week that has been difficult for Parliament, to be here looking at the detail of the legislation—doing the job that we are elected to do, and that others tried to prevent us from doing this week.
The Government have supported this Bill from the beginning, and I note the Opposition’s support as well. We have done so because it furthers our ambitions of improving local transparency and accountability by extending this important right to journalists. I pay tribute to the other hon. Members who spoke today, and I associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) about the importance of local newspapers to local transparency and accountability. It would be wrong of me not to mention the excellent work of one of my local papers, the Goole Times, thereby securing my place in it next week. Local newspapers are very important to local democracy and accountability, and I associate myself with everything he said about that.
I will say little more than that, because there is other business to be conducted. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for bringing forward the Bill, and I congratulate her on its passage unamended through this House. We wish the Bill well in the other place. I understand that she has already secured the support of the noble Baroness Eaton of Cottingley. Without wanting to jinx the Bill, I hope that it will pass into law before the end of the Session. In response to the direct question from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I am not in a position at this time to make any guarantees about future time, should this Bill be amended in the other place, although the Government’s hope and wish is that it will pass through the other place unamended.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Monday 27th March 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 24 March 2017 - (24 Mar 2017)
Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Thursday 6th April 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 24 March 2017 - (24 Mar 2017)
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to be supporting this Bill through the House and believe it adds a valuable dimension to existing inspection rights and local accountability for relevant authorities. The complete list of bodies to which the Bill will apply is set out in Schedule 2 to the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, which this Bill amends.
The Bill will extend the definition of interested persons to include journalists, which includes citizen journalists, so that they may access a wider range of local audit documents to assist with their investigations and publicise their findings, so that local electors are made aware and thus better able to hold their council to account for its actions through questioning the auditor or making an objection. It is important to emphasise that it will not allow journalists themselves to question the auditor or make an objection. Given that the cost of the auditor investigating a question or objection is met by the local body concerned, and given the cost of such action to the local public purse, this right should be exercised only by an elector in that area, who could be impacted by those costs. As an ex-chairman of the Local Government Association, I firmly believe that openness and transparency should be the default position in local government. In my view, this short and simple Bill will assist in achieving that aim.
In the other place, there was some debate over the merits of extending these rights to all UK registered electors. While the amendment that would have implemented that change was ultimately withdrawn, my strongly held view is that extending this right to all would be wrong for several reasons. While Ministers clearly flagged their intention back in 2014 to extend the inspection rights for accounting information to journalists in order to assist them in their investigations, they did not suggest extending such rights to all and sundry. Extending these rights to everyone without any consultation as to the impact would vastly expand the potential for mischief-making without any wider public benefit, as well as potentially placing a cost burden on local public bodies.
Other provisions in the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 already require local government to publish a wide range of information, including financial data, through adherence to transparency codes. However, the ability to inspect the financial records of the year just ended for 30 days and before they are signed off by the auditor is a separate right that can be exercised only by interested persons and local government electors for the area concerned. This is because such persons have the right to inspect a wider range of information than just the final accounts, which are required to be published. Electors in the area may also question the auditor or make a formal objection to the accounts, which may require the auditor to investigate and could prevent closure of the accounts until the investigation is complete.
To allow anyone to inspect this wider range of accounting information could result in a greater cost burden on local authorities, as there would be a far greater volume of requests to fulfil, with associated administrative costs in locating the documents requested. Such costs could be regarded as a new burden on the authority, because we would be asking them to do something they have previously not been required to do, and which would therefore need to be funded by the department. Extending an existing right to a defined group of people would not be considered in the same light.
To those who think that by extending this right to citizen journalists, we are in effect opening the floodgates, I say that the wording in the Bill helps to define who might reasonably be expected to fall within that category. By referring to “journalistic material” the focus is on what the person does and would suggest that such a person would be able to provide details of blogs or tweets they had authored and the forums in which they had been published. Furthermore, use of the term “publication” implies a public element. Therefore, while it might include journalistic material tweeted on Twitter, it may not include material circulated to a small invite-only Facebook group. It is also unlikely to include material sent as a direct message on Twitter, Facebook or by email. The onus would be on the citizen journalist to provide proof. Such a person should be able to provide details of articles, blogs or tweets they have authored and where they have been published in order to gain the ability to inspect the accounting documents requested from the local authority.
The other key issue debated in another place last week related to health bodies and why they are excluded from this Bill and, indeed, from the inspection provisions in the 2014 Act. I am going to leave it to my noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth to set out the Government’s view on how that issue relates to government policy.
Given my attempts to further address the key points raised last week in the other place, I am hopeful that noble Lords present here today will feel able to support this small but important measure. I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I refer the House to my entry in the register of Members’ interests. I am an elected councillor of the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing forward the Bill for debate today, which has the full support of the Opposition. We will not table any amendments to it and urge all noble Lords to do likewise. We wish it a speedy passage through this House and hope it will receive Royal Assent soon afterwards.
The Bill is short and, in effect, makes only one important change. It will allow journalists to inspect accounting records of the public bodies listed in Schedule 2 to the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 for one month without being required to have an interest in the authority, as the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, explained to the House. Those who spend public money should be accountable to the public for how they spend it and what they spend it on. The Bill goes a considerable way towards improving the present position, and that is to be welcomed.
The Bill is necessary because the “interested person” test goes only so far. It goes beyond a registered elector but not as far as to include a journalist. The definition of “journalist” has been written in such a way as to include bloggers and others who may not be seen as conventional members of the media, but perform a valuable function in covering the activities of local public bodies and questioning them. This is to be welcomed as their efforts are of benefit to the local community and local taxpayers.
I do not expect to see a stampede of journalists or bloggers heading down to their local town hall to inspect the invoices and receipts for the coffee machine in the members’ room or anywhere else, because there are provisions in the Act to deal with vexatious requests. This is important because some people go beyond what is reasonable and see conspiracies and corruption where people have acted perfectly properly. Simply not liking a decision does not mean that it was not a perfectly lawful decision to take. It is important that there is a protection for members of local authorities.
Anyone who has been on a council or is a Member of this House or the other House will have had to cope with losing a vote every now and again. That is part of our democracy. I always believe that anything I put forward from this Dispatch Box is worthy of support from the whole House, but that is not always the case. The actions of journalists can alert the local community to some of the decisions taken in its name, raise questions about how the money has been spent and lead others to question whether the actions taken are the most appropriate use of public money—of their money.
The period for allowing inspections is limited to one month. While looking at the documents is free, the local body can make a reasonable charge to cover its costs where copies of documents are taken. That is sensible as all public bodies have to think carefully and account for their money, which is tight at the moment.
I welcome the Bill and wish it a speedy passage through the House in the next few weeks.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to speak today on behalf of the Government in support of the Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill, introduced by my noble friend Lady Eaton. I thank her for her sterling efforts on this legislation. She comes to the task with vast experience of local government. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his typically responsible position on scrutinising legislation and for his kind and appropriate words in relation to the efforts of my noble friend Lady Eaton on the Bill.
It is absolutely right that both the Government and the Opposition should seek to provide appropriate accountability, and we both believe that this is a necessary extension of what exists at the moment. Transparency is important. The disinfectant of light on what happens in public proceedings in Parliament, council chambers and other elected bodies is absolutely right.
I also thank my honourable friend Wendy Morton MP, who has taken this legislation through the other place, for her efforts in relation to it.
On the noble Baroness’s earlier comments, this Bill is small in size but important in relation to the Government’s transparency agenda. This is why the Government are happy to support it. We believe that its potential impact in assisting local transparency and accountability will help local electors better to understand their local authority’s spending decisions. If they are unhappy with those decisions and something deserves scrutiny, those electors will then be able to ask a question of the auditor or raise an objection to a particular matter. That action would then empower the auditor to investigate further before the accounts are closed. The 30-day timing before the sign-off will enable the auditor to seek corrective action, where appropriate, from the authority—perhaps by making recommendations for change in the audit report—to comment on value-for-money judgments made by the council, or, in the most serious cases, to issue a public interest report, which the council is required to consider publicly and respond to.
Some have suggested—although not today—that a freedom of information request would have a similar effect. However, that would require the requester to know to some extent what they want before seeking information. Furthermore, unlike these rights, it cannot directly result in preventive action or change in relation to the most recent years’ accounts. That is why we believe that this Bill, though small in size and provisions, will potentially make a considerable difference.
My noble friend Lady Eaton kindly suggested that I pick up the point in relation to health bodies, which are excluded from, among other things, the inspection rights in the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 and are, consequently, also excluded from this Bill, which amends that Act. This is because local health bodies are not directly accountable to the local electorate in the same ways as local authorities. The National Health Service Act 2006, as amended by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, enables residents and patients to see the accounts of clinical commissioning groups and NHS trusts. However, the local auditors of health service bodies are required to report unlawful expenditure to NHS England or the NHS Trust Development Authority—which now, since 1 April, forms part of NHS Improvement—of clinical commissioning groups or NHS trusts respectively, and to the Secretary of State.
The accounts of all of the health service bodies covered by the 2014 Act are consolidated into the resource account of the Department of Health, which is presented to Parliament and subject to audit by the National Audit Office. The expenditure of those bodies is also within the scope of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s value-for-money remit under the provisions of the National Audit Act 1983. In general, foundation trusts are not covered by the 2014 Act. They are responsible for appointing their own auditors under paragraph 23 of Schedule 7 and Schedule 10 to the NHS Act 2006. The rules governing audit for these bodies are set out in that Act. In short, that is why the health bodies are not encompassed by the 2014 Act and hence not in the Bill. I hope that that demonstrates why they are excluded.
Unlike health bodies, local authorities are directly accountable to their electorate, and it is therefore only right that local people should be able to inspect their accounts in order to ask questions of the auditor and potentially object to items of expenditure. This Bill, by enabling journalists to inspect accounting records and publicise what they find, has the potential to bring this information to the wider attention of local electors, who will then be empowered to act by asking the auditor questions or by making an objection, thus triggering an investigation.
Points have been made in relation to this legislation that it might potentially result in auditors receiving a large number of questions or objections. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that it is not foreseen that there will be a stampede of journalists taking up this right. It does not seem that that is going to happen. Currently the number of objections and questions received from local electors is very small—last year only around 65 from more than 11,000 audited bodies. While the publication of articles detailing high or unorthodox expenditure in an area could result in a number of local electors asking questions of the auditor, the number who will take the next step is likely to remain small, especially given the 30-day timeframe.
In closing, I once again thank my noble friend Lady Eaton. I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords on the two specific issues of health bodies and the likely number of people who will take up this right. I echo the words of my noble friend and of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, by encouraging all noble Lords to support the Bill.
Baroness Eaton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his encouragement and support for the Bill and I thank my noble friend Lord Bourne for his clarifications and for stressing its importance.
Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Wednesday 26th April 2017
(7 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 24 March 2017 - (24 Mar 2017)
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Thursday 27th April 2017
(7 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 24 March 2017 - (24 Mar 2017)
Royal Assent
Thursday 27th April 2017
(7 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 3 February 2017 - (3 Feb 2017)