House of Lords
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Death of a Member: Lord Croham
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Croham, on 11 September. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Police: Funding
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest assessment of the impact of police funding cuts on front-line services.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)
My Lords, when the Government came to power, we were borrowing £1 for every £4 we spent. We must reduce the budget deficit. The police funding settlement is therefore challenging but manageable. The Government are clear that savings need to be made while protecting front-line services, and the most recent report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary shows that forces are working hard to do so. It is largely a matter for individual forces how they achieve this, but the Government are playing their part, including through a new package of policies that will cut bureaucracy, which could save up to 2.5 million police hours per year.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I hardly think that the Government are in a position to lecture this House on the state of the economy.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Where is the Government’s growth plan, I wonder? Turning to the Question, surely it cannot be the case that a reduction of 16,000 police officers will not have an impact on front-line policing. Will the noble Baroness acknowledge that the cuts already made are already impacting on front-line services, and will she respond to recent research by the London School of Economics showing that the proposed police cuts are likely to undermine forces’ ability to stop crime rising?
Baroness Browning
My Lords, the noble Lord should step back from the brink. From where we sit, we are peering into the abyss because what we inherited has made this necessary. As a member of the former Government, he will know only too well from the last Labour Home Secretary that had Labour been re-elected, it too would have been making changes and looking for reductions in police force numbers. We have that on the record.
I have to say that noble Lords will have to get over this and face the reality, which is what we have had to do. Forces are focused on protecting front-line services. I have read many comments from chief officers who, I acknowledge, have a difficult and challenging task, but they are going to put the front line first and are rising to that challenge. The most recent report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Adapting to Austerity, sets out a summary of force work plans for the spending review period which states that the number working in front-line roles was expected to fall by, on average, just 2 per cent over the two-year period between March 2010 and March 2012. I have every confidence that chief officers will ensure that the front line is protected.
Lord Imbert
My Lords, do Her Majesty’s Government expect the British police service to lose its global reputation for being the most accountable, well governed and respected service in the world? If so, do they really care?
Baroness Browning
My Lords, not only do we care, but we have every respect for the work done by police forces every day. However, it is time to look at how the police are deployed in these times of austerity—the very title of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate’s report. We have to challenge, as senior police officers are doing up and down the country, the way forces are deployed. For example, we see in the recent report that, astonishingly, there are more front-line police officers on duty on a Monday morning than on a Friday night. Surely that has to be challenged. Surely there are ways better to deploy forces to protect the public and the front line, and to ensure that we maintain the important reputation that the noble Lord is so familiar with.
Baroness Hamwee
Is the Minister confident that enough funding is available for up-to-date technology? Used well, technology can achieve savings and greater productivity.
Baroness Browning
My noble friend is absolutely right. Indeed, it is very encouraging to see the way in which forces are using technology, and combining across force borders, by mutual agreement, to share in it to improve the way they serve the public.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister about her comments on protecting front-line services. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself said that front-line services would be protected. Will she then explain to me how that equates to the response in the county of Essex, where 24-hour police stations will no longer exist as a result of these cuts, and where half the police stations are going to be closed? Is that protecting front-line services?
Baroness Browning
My Lords, these individual matters in individual forces are for individual decisions taken by the individual chief officers for good reasons when they are looking at priorities. However, buildings, numbers and statistics mean nothing compared to the way in which the leadership in police forces ensure that the police are deployed. We are very determined that police officers will police on the front line, in the streets, and not in offices.
Baroness Trumpington
Was it the result of police cuts that prevented the police from preventing the Muslim group burning the American flag in Grosvenor Square on Sunday?
Baroness Browning
I sense from my noble friend’s question how she felt about seeing that scene on television. I have absolutely no reason to believe that it was anything to do with lack of policing, but I am very happy to write to my noble friend with more details about the background to that incident.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, will the Minister comment on the view that, given the scale and speed of the Government’s reductions in police budgets over the next two years, most members of the public to whom Members of your Lordships’ House speak would rather see the money put into what the noble Baroness referred to as “numbers” of staff than into some newfangled American scheme to elect police commissioners? Surely the Government could have been patient with their pet scheme and protected the public from the cuts they are imposing?
Baroness Browning
My Lords, the noble Baroness and I have had many discussions along these lines during the course of the Bill, the later stages of which are being considered today. I totally dispute the point she is making; the money for this is not coming out of the police budget. I remind her that there were many times when the previous Government spent money on elections, which they thought were extremely worthwhile. Nobody suggested at the time that democracy was something not worth paying for.
International Democracy Day
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to mark the United Nations- sponsored International Democracy Day on Thursday 15 September.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford)
My Lords, to mark the international day of democracy, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will issue a Statement reaffirming the United Kingdom’s support for more open societies, political freedom and democratic values across the world. We will encourage our bloggers at posts overseas to discuss democracy issues in their countries to promote greater public awareness and use a variety of digital communications to highlight our work in supporting democracy worldwide.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, which was very informative. Is he aware that the Inter-Parliamentary Union has 157 member countries and is in fact the United Nations of parliaments? Its principal purpose is to promote the cause of democracy worldwide. It is currently wrestling with the emerging democracies in the Middle East and north Africa.
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am indeed aware of the IPU, which does excellent and valuable work. It reinforces the causes and activities not only of Governments but of all kinds of organisations, non-governmental and governmental, in promoting democratic values.
Lord Ryder of Wensum
My Lords, in view of the fact that every piece of legislation which comes to your Lordships' House has been automatically guillotined in the other place, can my noble friend and his right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary spend a little of democracy day trying to persuade their colleagues to stop this miserable practice in the interests of better Parliament and for the sake of true democracy, to which I gather from my noble friend’s reply the Foreign Secretary clearly adheres?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am asked whether I can comment on that. I can’t and, in fact, I won’t, because these are matters not only for usual channels but for managers of business in both Houses. I add a general point: I think that it was Mr Churchill who said that democracy was the worst system except all others. It is certainly not perfect; it can be constantly improved. We try in both our Houses to do that, but how it should be done is not for me to advise.
Lord Triesman
My Lords, I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary will make the Statement that has been promised. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, I have looked at the IPU’s plans. It has encouraged parliaments and Governments around the world to organise activities for tomorrow, particularly directed at young people and students and focusing on democracy and human rights. That is obviously resonant given the events of the year—the growth of democratic demands and the Arab spring. While I am delighted to know that people who are in post around the world will be twittering, could we be told what events have been organised by the Government for young people and students, as the IPU suggests and at the request of Ban Ki-Moon, and where we might learn about them on any government website?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I could not speak about the detail of youth organisations, but it is obvious that vast numbers—billions—of young people need to be encouraged in the values of democracy throughout the world and we play our part. On specific propositions on the website and elsewhere, I shall have to write to the noble Lord.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the celebration is not just about our own historic past and the contribution that this great country has made to democracy, nor about encouraging democracy in other parts of the world—extremely important and exciting as that is—but about a never-ending requirement to ensure that each succeeding generation of young people in our own country understands the importance of democracy under the rule of law? Is he aware of the research of Professor Peter Weinreich and others which suggests that, in dealing with radicals and politically motivated, violent young people, it is less a question of dealing with the ideas that they have, fundamentalist as some of them might be, than of ensuring a commitment to democracy and the rule of law that means that they do not turn to violence but accept democracy as the way of dealing with difference?
Lord Howell of Guildford
Yes, of course I agree with my noble friend. There is great wisdom in what he says. Democratic values need to be constantly reasserted. Democracy lies in the responsibility of each individual. I think that it was Edmund Burke who said that society only works if there is a policeman within each of us. So it is with democracy. If democratic ideas are implanted in each generation, there will be democracy. It is about a lot more than votes and party politics.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, I apologise to the Minister for implying in a previous intervention that he was wrong in saying that the grant to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy had increased. In fact, depending on which start date one takes, he and I were both right as to whether it had increased or decreased.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
That is my kind of apology. However, in view of the greater demand and the plans that the Westminster Foundation for Democracy has, particularly in relation to the Middle East and north Africa, will he and his colleagues in the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development give sympathetic consideration to increasing the grant for the coming years?
Lord Howell of Guildford
I am in an extremely generous mood and I want to say to the noble Lord straight away that he was indeed half right, just as I was. The facts are that the budget for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy was cut last year—and unfortunately the year before, which I think that must have been under another Government; I am not sure. But this year there was an increase of 3 per cent. We support this very strongly indeed. I must tell the noble Lord that the level for next year has not yet been set, but his enthusiasm for it has been noted in the work we do in building democracy and supporting this organisation.
Lord Tebbit
My Lords, will my noble friend assert the democratic principle very strongly this week by telling the foreign judges in Europe that it is up to this Parliament to decide whether prisoners in jail should have votes, and not for a bunch of foreigners to decide it for us?
Lord Howell of Guildford
That is a robust point of view that I am sure will be noted in all the right quarters.
Young People: Politics
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Roberts of Llandudno
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have to encourage more young people to engage with democratic institutions.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government want to encourage everyone, young or old, to engage in the democratic process. We all have a role to play. On voter registration, for example, the Government are exploring how online services might be deployed, and across government we are looking at ways of promoting consultations and information on youth-friendly media.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he agree that it is essential that young people feel that their community belongs to them, so that they have a sense of ownership and a voice in shaping that community? In order to achieve this engagement in their communities—and I declare an interest as patron of the youth for democracy campaign, Bite the Ballot—could they not take leadership courses and engage in voter registration there? Young people could have far greater influence than older people on the youth element.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I will take back to the Cabinet Office the suggestion of specifically recruiting young people to encourage other young people to register. The Cabinet Office has been consulting with youth groups to develop detailed operational policy for individual electoral registration, including ways in which to tackle under-registration. Additionally, the independent Electoral Commission runs public awareness campaigns to encourage voter registration ahead of all major election events.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, can the Minister explain how the Localism Bill’s abolition of the duty to promote democracy will encourage more young people, or indeed any people, to engage with democratic institutions?
Lord McNally
I am not sure whether that particular part of the Localism Bill will have an impact in the way in which the noble Lord implies. As I have just indicated, the Government are taking a great deal of care and attention, particularly about individual registration. Going back to the original Question, we are taking particular care to try to ensure that young people register to vote.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
Will the Minister assure me that there will be young apprenticeships available for young people which will in fact enable them to give some of their time to the sort of projects suggested? I think that there is rather a dearth in the number of young apprenticeships available for young people.
Lord McNally
On the contrary, my Lords, one of the things I think this Government can take pride in is the funds that they have made available to extend apprenticeships. I think that over the months ahead we will see apprenticeships increasing in exactly the kind of areas in which the noble Baroness has asked for them.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it would be appropriate to pay tribute to the former Speaker of this House, who initiated and carried through a very wide programme of sending Members of this House to talk to schools, colleges and places where there are very many young people? Does he not agree that she did a great job in that regard?
Lord McNally
Indeed, and if I may say so, it is almost the mirror image of what my noble friend suggested in his opening question. The previous Speaker’s outreach programme allowed Members full in years and experience to go and speak to young audiences, not only about this House, but about participation in politics. As one who participated in that programme, I must say that they were most enjoyable meetings, and since they were usually compulsory for the school that was hosting them they were better attended than some political meetings I have addressed.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, there was an important democratic initiative earlier this week, with the publication by the Boundary Commission of its initial proposals for new parliamentary constituencies. Members of this House, all of whom are young at heart, have a close, appropriate and legitimate interest in these matters. Can the Minister inform the House why this material has not been made available for all Members of your Lordships’ House through the Printed Paper Office in the normal way, and can he give a clear assurance to the House that this disparagement of this House will be corrected immediately and certainly before the House rises tomorrow?
Lord McNally
I have heard this bubbling away on the other Benches. I will certainly look into it. I know of no reason why it is not available in the Printed Paper Office. I assumed that it was available immediately. Indeed, if I may say, one of the things that I would like to see is legislation in this House that would make every Member of this House interested in boundaries and elections.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I first declare an interest as the founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation, which works with over half the state’s schools in trying to educate the citizens of tomorrow. It is at present part of the Government’s policy—albeit it is out to consultation—to remove citizenship as a compulsory component of our education. Would he not accept that today’s democracy is fiendishly complicated; the output of Parliament is unbelievably complicated; and if we really want young people—particularly less self-confident and less able young people—to identify with democracy, take an interest in it and own it, we cannot afford at this point of all times to abandon citizenship?
Lord McNally
I pay tribute to my noble friend’s commitment to the concept of the teaching of citizenship and note what he says about the importance of keeping it on the curriculum. As he says, the matter is out for consultation, and I suggest that the Citizenship Foundation put in some weighty evidence on the matter. I am sure that it will.
Planning
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
To ask Her Majesty’s Government on what basis they consider that the current planning system needs substantial change.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, the planning system that we inherited is very bureaucratic and does too little to encourage sustainable development or community involvement. Rather than imposing targets or blueprints from above, this Government are changing things so that local people and their councils can decide what they need and how they accommodate it. Our reforms will create sustainable growth by working with people, not against them, and not at the expense of the environment.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Minister for her reply. Of course we need more affordable homes, but I am not interested so much in the arguments as in the basis, or evidence, on which the Government are putting forward their proposals. Can she give the House the evidence for their proposals or perhaps put them in the Library? Can she for example confirm that 80 per cent of all planning applications are approved and that there are extant planning permissions, right now, for 330,000 houses, which have just not been built?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I think it is probably correct to say that 80 per cent of planning applications are approved. It depends how long it takes for them to be approved. I believe that over 3,000 applications have been outstanding for well over a year. It is also true to say, I think, that as far as democracy is concerned, over 80 per cent of planning applications are considered by officers, something that was dictated by the previous Government. They do not have the democratic input that one would like. Somewhere along the line the local community is getting left out on this, and we need to put that right. It has been said that the land for those houses—I think the number is 240,000 rather than 300,000—amounts to about one year’s need in this country at the moment.
Lord Waddington
Does my noble friend accept that some of us on this side of the House are finding it incredibly difficult to accept that it is right to turn the planning system on its head and create a presumption in favour of development?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, the presumption in favour of development is set against the background of local plans. Those are being created, although some have not been completed. However, the presumption is there to ensure that decisions are taken with reference to the local plan, where there is one; if there is no local plan and there are no sizeable objections to the application, it goes ahead. That saves time, it gets things for the community developed more quickly and does not, I think, prejudice anybody’s interest.
Lord Howarth of Newport
My Lords, will the noble Baroness the Minister advise members of the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England actually to read the draft national planning policy framework before they allow themselves to be co-opted in a hysterical campaign of denunciation? Will she also take this opportunity to reaffirm a national commitment, which is lacking in the draft, to prioritise development on brownfield land? Will she undertake that the Government will allow reasonable time for local planning authorities to complete or to update their local development frameworks before the new policy is brought into operation?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, for raising this issue about the campaign that has been waged by both the National Trust and one of our major national newspapers. It has been both over the top and extremely personalised, which makes it very difficult for people to answer their attacks. That, I think, is well off the line. Nor do I understand it, because English Heritage itself—in the form of my noble friend Lady Andrews, who is not here at the moment—has already confirmed that the planning policy as it stands does not affect heritage at all but simply confirms the previous Government’s position on this as well as our own: that all aspects of our heritage are extremely important and that they will be protected through this new system. We expect brownfield sites to be developed, largely in town centres. Town centre planning, and development in town centres, is important, but we will not rule out, and the plan does not rule out, the fact that in some circumstances, particularly in the countryside, there may be a reason why some green land—not green belt land but greenfield land—may be appropriate to build on.
The Lord Bishop of Exeter
My Lords, I noticed that, in her reply, the noble Baroness referred to local councils, but is she aware that in many rural areas the issue is not the planning powers of local councils but the not infrequent disjunction between the outcomes of local community planning processes and the constraints of wider spatial strategies? I can think of examples in my own diocese where coherent and cohesive community plans for local regeneration and redevelopment have been turned down on grounds that appear from a local perspective to be remote, abstract and incomprehensible. Is she aware of just what a negative and depressing impact this can have on local initiative and community well-being, and could she give an assurance that the Government do intend to address this aspect of planning law reform?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I think this aspect will be much encouraged and much improved by the Government’s proposals for neighbourhood forums, orders and areas. The right reverend Prelate has said that this does not conform with—or that there have been difficulties with—strategic plans, but of course the neighbourhood plans, which have been made in conjunction with local people, parish councils and neighbourhood forums, will lay out precisely what local people feel and what they want. They will have to conform with the national policies, but far more account will be taken of what local people want than in the current situation. I think that the reforms in the Government’s proposals to the planning process will in fact ensure that we have far more community engagement and far more success for the community than is currently the case.
Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 (Consequential Provisions and Modifications) Order 2011
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
To move that the draft order laid before the House on 22 June be approved. 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 7 ewDebSeptember.
Landfill (Maximum Landfill Amount) Regulations 2011
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Henley
To move that the draft regulations laid before the House on 15 June be approved. 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 7 September.
Welfare Reform Bill
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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16:15 - Division on Baroness Anelay of St Johns’s Motion - Ayes: 263 / Noes: 211 - Motion agreed.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
That the Bill be committed to a Grand Committee.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Freud, I beg to move that the Welfare Reform Bill be committed to a Grand Committee. This is a question of business management, for which I am responsible.
Although the House is regularly called upon to agree commitment Motions, such Motions are normally taken formally because they are the result of an agreement among the usual channels. On this occasion, however, the usual channels have not been able to agree on the commitment of this Bill, despite protracted discussions. As a result, and because there appears now to be no prospect of reaching an agreement in this case, the question does need to be put to the House.
This is a matter I have taken not lightly but only after full consideration. In coming to a view on the Motion, noble Lords should be aware that if this House is to have reasonable time to scrutinise each and every one of the Bills sent to us by another place, a reasonable proportion of those Bills do need to be committed to Grand Committee, rather than being taken here in the Chamber itself. That is for the Committee stage only, of course.
That has been our practice for more than a decade. This Session, however, we are on course to have the lowest proportion of Bills sent to Grand Committee since 2001-02. That simply is not a sustainable position. If too large a proportion of Committee stages are taken on the Floor of the Chamber, that has to be, practically, at the expense of the amount of time that the House can debate each of our Bills. If the House is to have reasonable time to consider each of the government Bills, a further Bill needs to be considered in Grand Committee.
Welfare Bills have been considered in Grand Committee before; indeed, under the previous Government that was the case. The Companion sets no conditions on whether a Bill should be considered in one forum or the other. Colleagues will recall that the Goodlad group on working practices recommended that all Bills should be considered in Grand Committee but that Report and Third Reading be taken in the usual manner in the Chamber, where Divisions may take place.
I have taken soundings on this matter from around the House. Overall, bearing in mind the Bills currently before the House and those that are yet to reach it from another place, I believe that the Welfare Reform Bill is the best candidate for scrutiny in Grand Committee. It merits the more in-depth, informal and technical approach and the more, shall we say, paper-friendly reading from outside offered by the kind of facilities available in the environment of a Grand Committee.
I hope that it is noticed that I am stressing Grand Committee, not the Moses Room, where I understand there would be some concerns about a Bill of this nature being considered. I fully recognise that a number of noble Lords who use wheelchairs and have other mobility restrictions would find the Moses Room difficult, and I therefore discarded that as an option. I want to ensure that as many Peers as have an interest in the Bill, whatever their mobility or access issues, are able to play a full part. I am also concerned that those from lobbies who brief noble Lords, who may themselves have mobility issues, should also be able to attend and observe our debates. I know that they are broadcast from both the Chamber and Grand Committee but it is clear that members of the public treasure the opportunity to attend in person.
I have already asked the Director of Facilities to discuss with Members which Committee Room layout they would find the most convenient and to take account of the likely number of participants and observers and their full needs. I am confident that the end result would be significantly more convenient for everyone than would be the case if the proceedings were all in this Chamber.
I am aware that there may be concerns among those who are lobbying colleagues at the moment that Grand Committee does not work. I have been there many a time. It was introduced to facilitate the proper scrutiny of Bills in this House, and it does work.
As the government Chief Whip, my advice to the House is that this Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee for its Committee stage, with Report and Third Reading following on the Floor. This will ensure that the House as a whole has sufficient time to devote all its views to Committee-stage scrutiny of the Bill, as well as being able to give proper time to the other Bills still awaiting consideration over the remainder of the Session. I formally invite the House to commit the Welfare Reform Bill to Grand Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, this is a very grave situation. It is unusual for the usual channels not to be able to agree on a way forward in dealing with legislation. Colleagues in this House will know that I have a reputation for being very open in my negotiations and that I am always ready to conduct those negotiations in a friendly and charitable way. It is a role that I perform not just for my own party but with an eye on and a mind towards the whole House. I am frequently lobbied by others outside our grouping to approach these matters in that way.
I am deeply concerned about this Motion for several reasons. I see it as a first step towards a fully regulated House. I do not think anybody wants that; we certainly do not and I am sure most noble Lords do not want it either. I have tried to offer options on days in Committee. It is also an open secret that we were prepared to discuss splitting the Committee sessions of the Bill between Grand Committee and the Floor of your Lordships’ House. I thought we were making steady progress towards that objective. So far this Session we have agreed to commit eight Bills to Grand Committee and we were prepared to negotiate on a further two. That is the largest number since 2007-08.
I am seriously concerned about the ability of all noble Lords to participate in the proceedings on this Bill. The noble Baroness has rightly drawn attention to the shortcomings of the Moses Room. Those shortcomings are just as apparent on the Committee Corridor. Several colleagues have told me in clear terms that the rooms upstairs are not much better and that a lot of furniture will need to be moved to facilitate those who have difficulty with mobility and to enable lobby groups and those who are interested in the Bill to participate and observe proceedings.
We should take the Motion away and continue negotiations. There is no rush. In my view the Bill needs around 68 to 70 hours of Committee time. That is how long it had at the other end and that is how long we should spend on giving it fair consideration in your Lordships’ House. If that is to be the case, it would occupy around 15 or 16 sessions in Grand Committee. My last offer on this was to suggest that the Bill be considered on the Floor of the Chamber for some eight days and in Grand Committee for the remainder, to deal with those technical and difficult issues that are tucked away in schedules at the back of the Bill.
The Government have got themselves into a muddle with their legislative programme. I have said that at the Dispatch Box before and I repeat it today. This is a two-year Session at the beginning of a Parliament, and part of a five-year fixed-term Parliament. We have had fewer Recess days than previously; our Recess time has been cut to facilitate the Government’s programme. We are working longer parliamentary days: 70 days have gone beyond 10 pm and in many instances well beyond 10 pm. Bills have been delayed. We have only just received the health Bill for our consideration. There is great concern. This is a highly controversial piece of legislation; let nobody doubt that. The Bill deserves to be dealt with on the Floor of the House. I make my offer again to the government Chief Whip. I am prepared to negotiate; is she?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I have been open to negotiation and received just the word “no”. I welcomed the offer of the Opposition to engage in discussions about splitting the Bill between the Chamber and Grand Committee. However, the negotiation was one in which the Opposition said no to the Government. The offer of four days on the Floor of the House and as many as the House wished to spend in Grand Committee was turned down. This has to be balanced against the needs of other Bills, which will also attract great attention around the House from people who feel passionately about and have great expertise in all the issues.
In response, I shall refer to one or two of the points that the noble Lord raised, and I shall try to do so fairly briefly. This is not a step towards regulation—just the reverse. This is the House regulating itself. It is self-regulation to avoid full regulation. It is not the case that Grand Committee has been used effectively in the past few years. I note the careful way in which the opposition Chief Whip referred to a number of Bills. The numbers of Bills in Grand Committee in recent years are as follows. In 2007-08 there were 10 in Committee of the Whole House and 12 in Grand Committee. In 2008-09 there were nine in Committee of the Whole House and six in Grand Committee—that is 40 per cent. In the following years the figures were 36 per cent and 33 per cent of Bills in Grand Committee. We are at an all-time low in agreements from the Opposition to put Bills into Grand Committee.
I would have liked to have been in a position where we did not have to sit in the first week of October during the Conservative Party conference. We debated this in June, when I made it clear that the failure to put another Bill into Grand Committee would mean that this House would have to sit for longer in order to give proper consideration to Bills. On that day the Leader of the Opposition said:
“One of the problems, not only on my Benches but throughout the House as a whole, is that people do not understand yet that the Grand Committee is not a second-rate Chamber”.
She is absolutely right. She continued:
“It is a Chamber where we can deliberate and assess Bills and scrutinise them just as we can in this Chamber”.
Again, she is right. She continued:
“All around the House we have to be more aware of the ability of this House to better use the Grand Committee”.
She went on to say:
“I know that next week my noble friend the Chief Whip will wish to enter into further conversation with the government Chief Whip to see how we can secure other Bills in a Grand Committee of this House”. —[Official Report, 16/6/11, col. 1031.]
We had those discussions but the result was that the Opposition refused to allow the Government to split the Bill in such a way that there could be proper consideration on the Floor of the House and yet also consideration of other matters in Grand Committee, thereby allowing other Bills to have their time in the Chamber. I have done all I can to come to an agreement with the Opposition, but the response has been to turn down the Government’s offer of time.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, this is a very unfortunate day for this House. For the first time in the past decade we find ourselves having this kind of debate over whether or not a Bill should go to Grand Committee. I would hope that even at this stage the government Chief Whip would agree to go away and have wider discussions if necessary, involving the Convenor of the Cross Benches if that has not been done already, across the House.
I need to say to her that the House may have inadvertently misunderstood the noble Baroness, or she may have found herself misrepresenting the position to the House, but the Goodlad committee did not say that all Bills should go to Grand Committee. It said that Bills should go to Grand Committee except for controversial Bills, emergency Bills and constitutional Bills. I do not think that anyone can seriously argue that this is not a controversial Bill. The Government have got themselves a problem which the noble Baroness betrayed a little in what she said. She was saying that we have got to deal with all the Bills that come from the Commons. That number of Bills, and the degree to which they are controversial, is not an accident or event caused by a third party; it is a decision made by the Government at the highest level, of which the noble Baroness and the Leader of the House are an important part. We have an unprecedented two-year Session in which there has been a very high proportion of constitutional Bills and controversial Bills. It is astonishing that we have got to the position where the Government simply cannot accommodate the Bills. The Government should have had a shorter legislative programme. Why are we considering today a Bill for fixed-term Parliaments that establishes five years for each Parliament? Why could that not have been done next year? It would have saved us no end of time if we had had that Bill next year instead of this year.
I want to try to be constructive. Perhaps I may simply put it to the government Chief Whip that I am sure there is room for flexibility. Anyone who has ever found themselves in her position knows perfectly well how difficult it is. Why does she not have discussions with my noble friend and others? I am sure that there is at least one Bill left in the Government’s legislative programme that could be carried over to the next Session. It would require the approval of the House but I am quite sure that if it was a sensible proposal the House would carry over one of the Bills to the next Session, which would enable us then to have proper time on the Floor of the House, where this Bill should be, for proper consideration.
I just appeal to the noble Baroness. This is a really unfortunate road on which she has embarked if we are going to have these kinds of debates every time a decision has to be made on whether a Bill should be committed to a Grand Committee or considered on the Floor of the House. She should at least consider the proposal that one of the remaining Bills, in order to release time, could be carried over until the next Session.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, perhaps I may respond briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. Anyone can call a Bill controversial—that is true. I remind the noble Lord that we agreed that the very controversial Extradition Bill would go into Grand Committee—there are very good precedents—as did the Welfare Reform Bill and the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill. There is a clear impact on other Bills if this Bill does not go into Grand Committee.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware of the consternation that is being expressed by disabled people about this decision. I have been copied into an e-mail to the noble Baroness. Noble Lords have received a number of e-mails. There is both a practical and a symbolic significance to this decision. I am new to this House and I do not know the ins and outs of where Committee stage is taken, but disabled people feel that their democratic right to observe the proceedings at the Committee stage is being severely curtailed by any decision to take the whole of the Committee stage off the Floor of the House. It has been accepted on this side that some of the Committee stage should be taken in Grand Committee, but there are clauses in the Bill that are highly controversial. It is not just about experts coming in; it is about people who feel that their lives or livelihoods are at stake.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, normally I would not come in on the next day after participating in a very lengthy and big debate the night before. I generally need 24 hours at home to recover. However, this morning I was woken by several phone calls from disabled people who told me of this proposal and urged me to come in to speak. I feel compelled to be here. I am deeply concerned at the noble Baroness’s proposal. I had understood that the technical parts of the Bill would happen outside the Chamber—and we can live with that. However, the new proposal that takes us completely away from the Chamber unfortunately makes it tremendously difficult to have access, not just for disabled Peers to participate effectively—it is much easier in here—but for disabled people who are following this debate online or on the TV and who come here to brief us. It will be almost impossible for them to do this. Yes, a few can come into the room, but it will be more difficult.
Perhaps more importantly, not to be able to test the opinion of the House—I know it is not often done in Committee—on one of the most significant pieces of legislation for disabled people in my adult life is deeply disturbing. I ask the noble Baroness the Chief Whip please to reconsider.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I am afraid to say that I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. I believe that the Bill should go to Grand Committee. The last Welfare Reform Bill was quite controversial—I remember it. We had days and days in the Moses Room, it was very useful for the Minister to have his civil servants right behind him and we got a great deal of work done.
We must not forget that this Chamber is constantly interrupted by Statements. Noble Lords opposite, quite understandably, want every Statement going. We hardly ever turn down a Statement, which means that every Committee in the Chamber is interrupted, sometimes for several hours, by Statements. This pushes the time on and a lot of disabled people, me included, find it very difficult to stay late. We will probably find ourselves in a situation where there are a handful of noble Lords in the Chamber debating something important quite late—well after 9 pm. For all those reasons, Grand Committee is, on balance, the best place for the Bill.
It was very good to see so many noble Lords taking part in the Bill. Yesterday it was terrific that we had a really long debate; it does not always happen. Welfare reform Bills usually have a small number of experts, but this time there were masses of noble Lords, which was very welcome. However, if we can be accommodated in a suitable room upstairs, including wheelchair users and people such as me who have mobility problems, alongside members of the public and pressure groups, and we can have quite a number of days, I believe that the best course is to have the Bill in Grand Committee.
Lord Laming
My Lords, there can be no dispute in the House that this welfare Bill is a very important Bill. Everybody, I am sure, agrees with that. It is important for literally millions of our citizens out there—indeed, some of our most vulnerable citizens—so it needs to be scrutinised properly and we need to do our best to get the Bill right so that it meets its objectives. Yesterday there were some 50 speakers at Second Reading, which demonstrated very clearly the degree and range of interest in the Bill.
During the years I have had the privilege to be in your Lordships’ House I have always been immensely impressed by the arrangements that we call the usual channels. I have never been a member of the usual channels, but I have always been impressed by their efficiency and skill in managing business, including, I have to say, some complicated Bills and some very controversial Bills. I am sure that I am not alone in feeling sad that the usual channels have not been able to reach a consensus on how this important Bill is to be handled. I hope that I am in order in making a plea on behalf of the Cross-Benchers that we get back to effective use of the usual channels, because I am sure that that is the best way to manage the business of this House. Let me repeat that the business of this House in these Bills is extremely important, not for parliamentary reasons alone but for the impact that these Bills have on the lives of our citizens.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, in an effort to be conciliatory, would it not be possible when considering putting a Bill into Grand Committee to allow the House to vote that, in so doing, the Grand Committee shall have the right to vote? Obviously, the main difference between being in Grand Committee and being here is that Grand Committee does not have the right to vote. Would that not be a way of easing the problem we now have?
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, will the noble Baroness the Chief Whip please accept from me that the last suggestion, well meant though it was, would, from my experience as a Whip, be a bit of a nightmare? Having said that, I support my noble friend Lord Grocott and I say to the noble Baroness that, as well as the issue of the number of Bills, there is the fact that some of the Bills in this extra-long parliamentary Session have actually been two or three Bills wrapped up, described as one Bill and then—to shock-horror from the Government Benches—have taken a long time.
I suggest two things to the noble Baroness. This is unseemly. It would be much better if the usual channels could have regard to what has been said in the Chamber and look at the position again. Quietly, behind the scenes, the government Chief Whip could look at some of the Bills about which she is concerned, considering not only my noble friend's suggestion about carryover but a little surgical removal of extra Bills that have been slotted in to suit her friends in government which could well wait a short time.
Lord Kilclooney
My Lords, it appears that at the moment, the usual channels have not succeeded. I fear that this will not be the last time. It is the logical conclusion of shortage of time arising from the greatly increased membership of this House. Much more time will be required for other debates as well. We are told that Her Majesty's Opposition said no during discussion through the usual channels. Were the Cross-Benchers consulted? Did they say no, yes or nothing? We are also told that the Moses Room is unsuitable and that we must go upstairs. What would be the cost of adapting the rooms upstairs?
Baroness Grey-Thompson
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and feel very strongly about this. I have no doubt that appropriate access will be made available for Members of your Lordships' House who are in wheelchairs. My real concern is for members of the public, disabled people, who will really struggle with not being able to access these recordings and information if the debate is held outside the Chamber. For us to offer proper scrutiny and for the public to be able to understand and brief us, it is important that debates are held in an environment to which disabled people have access. It is virtually impossible for disabled people to come to London because of issues with public transport while we have legislation that allows only one wheelchair user to travel per train. We are doing them a great disservice by not having this debate in the Chamber.
Lord Corbett of Castle Vale
My Lords, behind the niceties and pleasantries of these exchanges, the simple fact remains that the Government are seeking to impose their will over the Opposition just because the Opposition will not dance to their tune. That is the fact of the matter. To clarify what are the differences between the two sides, as I understand it—I hope that the noble Baroness will correct me if I am wrong or confirm it if I am right—the Government wanted four days on the Floor of the House for the Bill and the other days in Grand Committee. The Opposition wanted eight days on the Floor of the House and the other days in Grand Committee. Is that the difference that is tempting the Government now effectively to try to impose a guillotine?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I do not find myself distressed by this debate. It does no harm for people like me, who grouse about the usual channels, to be reminded what a useful service they are and why we do not want this to happen too often. We have had the Education Bill in Grand Committee. It has not been a happy experience. I agree that it is, by and large, an uncontroversial Bill, although there are certainly some twitchy bits to it. To have the Moses Room filled by the 50 people who take a specialist interest in the subject and to have no room for people to drop in—to participate in small bits of it or to take a general interest in the Bill so that they are informed about it when they think about what they want to do at Report or to develop their ideas—prevents the House doing its job properly. I am not clear how we could adapt the accommodation upstairs to allow room not only for the 50 specialists who are there all the time but for another 50 of us to drop in to enjoy it and for 100 or so of the public, including people in wheelchairs, to participate as well. I do not understand how we can physically adapt ourselves to that, and I would be grateful for help on that point from my Chief Whip.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, it may be convenient if I respond to the points but I understand that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, wishes to speak.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I remind the House that I had ministerial responsibility for the last two Welfare Reform Bills, which, as has been explained, were taken in the Moses Room. However, the scale and scope of those Bills was nothing like the Welfare Reform Bill before us at the moment. This is not our description, it is the Government’s description. The Government have said that this is a landmark Bill, the biggest change in the welfare system since the 1940s, and how important it is for the future of our country. That is the Government’s position. Therefore, it deserves enough time on the Floor of the House.
Anybody who listened to the debate yesterday would have noted that a big aspect of the Bill, recasting DLA into a new system, has caused real consternation in the disabled community, with millions of people potentially affected by it. For their sakes, if nobody else’s, we need to make sure that we can debate that in this Chamber so they have the best possible access. We did agree a split of the Bill, mostly on the basis of what was tabled by the Government; I think there was one adjustment we wished to make to it. We have co-operated. As my noble friend Lord Corbett says, we are talking about just four days. If that is what divides us we should take this away, rethink and get back to the usual channels.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I think we have covered all the issues because I am hearing the same arguments again. The arguments are keenly felt and I do not undervalue them but it is right that I should be able to respond to those points.
Obviously my greatest concern is about those who wish to ensure that there is proper access for all Peers, particularly those with mobility issues, and also for those who wish to watch, hear, understand and read. I am assured that there is more space for wheelchair users upstairs than downstairs, for both Peers and members of the public. When bringing visitors here, I am all too keenly aware of the difficulties for members of the public in getting upstairs to watch the Chamber.
I was concerned by the presumption that those who wish to follow our proceedings will not be able to do so properly unless they are in the Chamber. All the proceedings in Grand Committee are webcast—I know because I watch them—and they are all recorded in Hansard. There is no difference in accessibility through the internet or paperwork between the Chamber and Grand Committee.
There is an allegation that the Government have too much legislation. I remember making the same allegation against the Opposition when they were in government but I agreed to controversial Bills going into Grand Committee to ensure that all Bills could have time for proper consideration.
There was a comment about the importance of scrutiny of Bills. Scrutiny by Members of this House is valuable, and valued by me, wherever it takes place, whether it is at the Dispatch Box opposite, on the Cross Benches or on the Back Benches behind and in front of me. It does not matter whether it takes place in this Chamber or in Grand Committee—the arguments are as strong wherever they may be made.
The point has been made that there is little difference between us, and that is precisely the case. The Government made an offer which the Opposition rejected. Our offer was to ensure that there was a reasonable split between Grand Committee and the Chamber—a split that would have meant that Peers who are interested in all the other Bills have a proper opportunity to consider those Bills as well. I am convinced that it is right to ask the House to take a decision on this matter.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
(12 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:50 - Division on Motion A2 - Ayes: 222 / Noes: 222 - Motion A2 disagreed.
19:06 - Division on Motion A3 - Ayes: 194 / Noes: 277 - Motion A3 disagreed.
Baroness Browning
That this House do not insist on its Amendments 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 to which the Commons have disagreed and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 6A to 6D in lieu.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)
My Lords, this Government are committed to radical police reform, to ensure that the police are first and foremost accountable to the public. This is, of course, not new: there is a consensus among the parties in favour of the democratic reform of police authorities, albeit differences of view about the best model. In Committee in the other place, the Opposition, too, proposed directly elected policing governance, albeit only chairs of police authorities. This Bill seeks to establish clear and democratically accountable leadership for police governance, but amendments in this Chamber removed those provisions.
I am proud to be a Member of a House that is known for revising and improving Bills. However, the amendments that removed the Government's provisions did not try to increase local accountability of the police. They said that the status quo should be preserved and that the chair of a police authority should be called a “police and crime commissioner”.
However, apart from this instance, this House once again demonstrated during our proceedings how much value it adds as a revising Chamber in a truly meaningful way. I thank Peers across the House for their very constructive and conscientious contribution to those debates. There has been some very thoughtful and considered debate both in this Chamber and in meetings outside. The Government have listened carefully, with well over 100 amendments made to this Bill as a result.
The numerous amendments tabled by Peers emerged from the recognition that there is indeed consensus that the status quo will not suffice; that the public do not know that they have somewhere to go to make their views on policing known; and that the public want the police to be subject to greater accountability. Let me be clear: these amendments were also born out of an appreciation that the model that the Government proposed initially could be improved. Peers rose to that challenge and for that we are grateful.
I will touch on just a few of the many improvements that this House has helped make to the Bill. We have strengthened checks and balances and the powers of the police and crime panel, most obviously by lowering the veto threshold from three-quarters to two-thirds.
We listened carefully to the debate on operational independence and, as a consequence, placed the vital policing protocol on a statutory footing. We reacted to points of detail on important issues which we agreed could have been clearer and so introduced a requirement on PCCs or the MOPC in London to hold chief constables to account with regard to their duties under the Children Act 2004 in particular. We have inserted a statutory obligation for the police and crime panel to support the PCC when performing its functions. We have inserted a right for a chief constable to appear before the panel and make representations prior to a proposed dismissal. We have amended the Bill to allow deputy PCCs to be appointed, and the Bill introduces a requirement that such appointment should be subject to a confirmation hearing by the police and crime panel.
There is now also a requirement on the police and crime panel to hold confirmation hearings for the appointment of the chief executive and the chief finance officer. We have inserted a power for the London Assembly to veto a non-Assembly candidate for deputy mayor for policing and crime. We have strengthened transparency arrangements by obliging forces to release information, not just reports.
We have placed a duty on PCCs and community safety partners to have regard to one another's priorities, and we have altered the composition of police and crime panels so that the necessary flexibility to achieve political and geographical balance is achieved. We have returned to the democratic principles that have guided this reform and removed the two-term limit on PCCs. Finally, after quite a bit of lobbying, we are allowing noble Lords to stand as PCCs, should any choose to do so.
The collective will of this House has been made known to Members in the other place. They have listened to us and in all but one respect have agreed with us. However, in one key area they have disagreed with us.
I come now to the most pertinent argument I must put to noble Lords today. The other place—the democratically elected Chamber—has now put the model of a single elected individual to us, not once, but twice. The first time, this House saw fit to reject that model. But our elected colleagues have disagreed with us and have put that model to us again for approval. I do not believe that it is for this Chamber to override the will of the people's elected representatives when it has been put forward so clearly.
I turn now to my noble friend Lady Harris. I am sad to see that my noble friend feels that the amendments that Peers have successfully pressed for and that the other place has agreed are not sufficient for her to agree to the elected Chamber's will—296 to 220 votes is not an insignificant amount of democratic will, particularly when one considers that the origin of the proposal is a coalition agreement on the back of a general election.
By voting for these amendments, we will be respecting the will of the elected representatives of the people, and respecting our precious democratic tradition as a revising Chamber that has significantly done its job and improved a key government reform with more than 100 amendments. I therefore hope that the House will vote for the government amendments to stand part of the Bill.
In reflecting on the debate in this House the Government also tabled a further set of amendments that were considered and agreed by the other place, and these are before us now to consider. The other place moved a government amendment to change the date of police and crime commissioner elections from May 2012 to November 2012, thus allowing enough time to ensure that all necessary preparations are in place. These reforms cannot wait, but they must be effective. The elections must be properly administered. A November election will ensure that this is the case, without having to wait a further year for these urgent reforms.
As many noble Lords will be aware—and many in this House are involved in policing—November is a key time in the business planning process for the forthcoming financial year. It is vitally important that the PCC is involved as early as possible in planning and setting the budget for policing in their area. November is the ideal time for them to identify and be part of that planning for the following financial year.
A November election is also important in this first round of elections for police and crime commissioners. It would remove much of the party politics to which noble Lords have referred during the course of our debate. When other elections take place, party politics start to consume not just the representations made to the electorate but the media, both local and national, and it is difficult for people to have a full understanding of what the first elections are about and of the candidates standing for them.
A November election would allow both local and national media to focus any coverage on the reason for the elections—what they intend to do, what the role of a police and crime commissioner would be—and, most importantly, the candidates. This would be very important for those candidates who do not have the support and the organisation of an organised political party behind them. We genuinely want to see good candidates—I have made this point before in the course of our deliberations. Political parties will of course field candidates, but among the pool of good candidates I believe there will be many independent candidates, who will be encouraged to put themselves forward because of their experience and ability to do the job, not just because they carry a party political tag. Elections held in November, unconstrained by local government or other elections taking place at the same time, will give independent candidates much more opportunity to be seen and heard, both at local and national level, so that they stand a chance of being able to get their message across.
I will move on to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Condon. I would like to thank the noble Lord for his constructive contribution to the debates we have had on this Bill, and more specifically to the improvements to the reform that have been generated as a consequence. I appreciate that he has not agreed with every measure that we have brought forward, but he has agreed with some, and he has played a constructive role in helping us to shape amendments that have been passed. In particular, I appreciate the noble Lord’s views on the protocol. Our amendments to give the protocol statutory cover were heavily influenced by those discussions.
In the true tradition of this House, I very much welcomed the noble Lord’s revisionist intentions from the outset, and the fact that he did not want to undermine the ambition of the Government in the Bill, because, as the noble Lord put it,
“there is ample scope for improving the democratic accountability and performance of local policing”.—[Official Report, 11/5/11; col. 911.]
To that end the noble Lord set about seeking change, including a desire that PCCs be located within a more supportive and collaborative framework locally. I hope the noble Lord sees some of his hard work in our amendment that creates a statutory obligation for the police and crime panel to support the PCC when performing its functions and minimises the risk that policing may suffer as a result of political infighting.
I will now turn to the noble Lord's amendment seeking further revisions, this time to something which the noble Lord had not raised previously, namely the date of the election. This is of course a debate that we have had during the course of our deliberations on Report and in Committee, with regard to an amendment that sought to move the election to October 2012. It is important to note that moving the elections to later than November 2012 as is suggested by the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, would deny PCCs the opportunity to be fully involved in the 2013-14 planning process: they would not be able to develop their own plan and set the budget or direction for the force—one of their responsibilities—until 2014.
Holding the election in November 2012 will in fact cost £25 million more than holding it in May 2012. Over the PCC term this equates to 0.05 per cent of the annual policing budget. I can assure the House that the funding for the election, including this additional sum, is not coming out of the money that goes directly to paying for the cost of policing. We believe that these additional costs are worth paying to ensure that PCCs are in place to be fully involved in the planning for 2013-14 and, of course, in planning how that £12 billion police funding budget is best spent. I know that many of your Lordships, including those who have previous experience in policing, such as the noble Lord, Lord Condon, will want to be reassured that this money does not come from the police budget. Let me be absolutely clear: this is an additional one-off cost and would not come from what would otherwise have been spent on policing.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the noble Baroness quoted that example but could have looked at Glasgow North East in November 2009, which saw a 33 per cent turn out, or West Bromwich West in November 2000, which had 27 per cent. She picked out the highest turnout, but November by-elections generally tend to be very low indeed. That is why, decades ago, local government elections were moved from the autumn to May, because there was concern about the effect of the inclement weather on the people who were campaigning.
Baroness Browning
I picked out Glenrothes because it was the most northerly of all the examples. I could have chosen others, but I was trying to make the point to the House that a 56 per cent turnout in Glenrothes in November is not an insubstantial result. I hope I have made my point—I am sure people in the House understand the point I am trying to make.
Coming back to the more salient point, the additional time gained by holding the elections in November will help to ensure that they benefit from the time that will be given to allow good-quality, independent candidates to come forward and establish themselves. They will have time to properly plan and campaign for the elections. The Government have been clear from the outset that they are keen for as many independents as possible to contest these elections. The November date allows for this. The fact that the first elections for PCCs will not be held at the same time as other local elections sets the tone from the beginning—it allows PCC elections to be established and for the electorate to understand the opportunity they will have to elect somebody who will represent them in being involved in local policing and holding the police to account.
I turn now to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who proposes a royal commission. I have a slight sense of déjà vu because I think he and I have discussed this before. I believe that a royal commission would use time and money that we do not have and that could be better spent elsewhere. Reform cannot wait. All parties agree that reform is needed and, more specifically, that it should be in the form of direct democracy. This is not the context for a lengthy and exploratory royal commission.
Ultimately, we all know and accept that police authorities are not the optimal model for police accountability. This has been stated by the Opposition, although I know there are different views about it within the House. But we do know that only four out of 22 inspected police authorities have been assessed by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Audit Commission as performing well in their most critical functions.
Local accountability must be both visible and accessible, yet only 8 per cent of wards in England and Wales are represented on a police authority, so it is no surprise that only 7 per cent of the public understand that they can approach their police authority if they have issues with policing.
Baroness Henig
I have heard this example—7 per cent—several times, but what percentage of population does that reflect? The reality is that police authority members represent a far higher percentage of the population than in terms of ward, which is actually a rather meaningless context since a lot of wards have very few people in them.
Baroness Browning
The point is that this is still a very clear minority and in fact the Government’s changes will allow every single council—including district councils, which at the moment do not have the opportunity to put forward people to sit on police authorities, county councils and of course unitary councils—to send a representative to sit on the police and crime panel. So in terms of the broader representation of the public, this is a very much enhanced way of making sure that people will associate with those who sit on that panel and know who they are.
I believe that the Government have set out a clear and comprehensive vision for policing. Direct local accountability and decentralisation are part of this coherent reform agenda to cut crime. We will refocus the Government away from micromanaging local policing. We will ensure the police and PCCs are properly supported on national policing issues. That is why we are also creating a powerful new national crime agency, to improve the fight against serious and organised crime and help protect our borders, and why we are introducing a new strategic policing requirement.
We are dealing with an overcluttered national policing landscape, phasing out the National Policing Improvement Agency and reviewing police leadership, training and skills, as well as examining pay and conditions to ensure we provide the police with the conditions in which they can thrive and continue to be the finest police service in the world.
I move now to the government amendment to re-establish the Secretary of State’s power to issue a financial management code of practice for PCCs. A code of practice is currently issued to police authorities, which are required to have regard to it in the discharge of their financial functions. This enables the Home Office Accounting Officer to assure Parliament that funds given to the department are used appropriately. The Bill as currently drafted repeals the general power to issue codes of practice to police authorities under which the existing financial management code was issued. To ensure that we adhere to the principles of financial regularity, propriety and value for money, we propose that the Bill should be amended to retain the power to issue codes of practice, but restricted to codes relating to financial matters.
I now turn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who seeks to ensure that the financial code of practice includes a requirement for the PCC to appoint four non-executives members to his or her team. The noble Lord will know that we have discussed this on several occasions. I commend his resilience and perseverance on this. I know the arguments put forward by the noble Lord and others were that the PCC must benefit from external expertise and challenge. I also recall that my reply when we last discussed this was that the police and crime panel had as its primary purpose the need to challenge constructively and in that way also support the PCC in meeting its statutory duties. This was debated at some length and it was felt that there was a risk that the PCP and the PCC relationship would be solely adversarial. The Government considered this carefully and brought forward an amendment that means the PCP has a responsibility to challenge but also to support the police and crime commissioner in delivering his or her statutory responsibilities.
We have listened to the noble Lord and amended the Bill to ensure that the PCC is able to benefit from constructive external challenge from the police and crime panel. I believe that our amendment does this, but the noble Lord clearly feels we have not achieved his aim. I return to the point that I made on Report: there is nothing in the Bill that prevents the PCC from appointing non-executives if he or she decides that that is what they want to do. We have provided a framework that allows the PCC to establish his support team, for those decisions to be made public and transparent and for the PCC to be challenged by both the PCP and the public on those decisions. With regard to financial governance and management, the auditors and the chief finance officer under law will be there to advice and raise any concerns publically if there is any sign of mismanagement.
I cannot therefore agree to the prescription that the noble Lord wishes to insert into the financial code, as it is unnecessary and has been dealt with by the Bill and the amendment passed by this House and agreed by the other place. I beg to move.
Motion A1 (as an amendment to Motion A)
Baroness Harris of Richmond
Leave out from “House” to end and insert “do insist on its Amendments 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 and do disagree with the Commons in their Amendments 6A to 6D in lieu .”
Baroness Harris of Richmond
My Lords, first, I send from these Benches the warmest congratulations to Bernard Hogan-Howe, who has just taken up his appointment as Commissioner of the Metropolis. We wish him the best of luck in that very challenging post.
The Motion insists on the amendment, previously tabled in Committee in this House, which would incorporate the police and crime commissioner and the police and crime panel within a single body corporate, a police commission. Your Lordships will recall that the House voted on, and approved, this amendment in Committee. However, during the debate in the other place on Monday night it was removed. Because this House clearly attached great importance to that amendment when it was approved, and because I believe it summarises some key matters of principle about the future of police governance, I have tabled this amendment insisting on its inclusion. The right honourable shadow Minister for Policing was quite right when he said in the other place that this House had not included this provision as the result of some inadvertent tinkering with the detail; if I recall correctly, it was preceded by a lengthy and considered debate, covering a large number of significant issues, that took up much of the first day of Committee. I will be much quicker today but shall outline briefly why I think my Motion is so important.
I want to be clear that this amendment is not about retaining the status quo, as suggested by the Police Minister in the other place. It is about ensuring a mechanism for strong corporate governance and balanced accountability, which is sadly lacking in the Bill at present. In short, it is about strengthening checks and balances in a meaningful way. While I acknowledge that some moderate improvements were made to the powers of panels on Report in this House, these were modest improvements and not robust enough. The panels have only two powers: to veto the appointment of a chief officer and to veto the police precept. Both of these are nuclear options—nuclear powers, so to speak. They are likely to be little used except in extreme situations. We had debates about that. They are not much use for providing meaningful safeguards in such key areas as standards and audit—topics that have also been the subject of much debate in your Lordships’ House because the Bill provisions are defective.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, Motion A3 is an amendment to Motion A.
I do not pretend that our police forces are without blemish, nor that we should not always wish to enhance their accountability to the people whom they are there to serve, but we should acknowledge the dramatic fall in crime rates and improved relationships with the public and local communities in recent years. Even more important, the essential characteristic over 150 years of our police forces of political impartiality, fair play and policing by consent is a huge strength and much admired the world over. That strength is now at considerable risk through the potential politicisation of our police forces with elected police commissioners.
The Bill places unprecedented concentration of policing power in the hands of one elected person with hire-and-fire powers in relation to chief constables that will almost inevitably put chief constables under pressure in operational decisions. There is also a risk that elected police chiefs will comment on sensitive operations while they are still under way. I was not enamoured of ministerial comments during the recent disturbances. I think that they have shown the problem that we will see in future. In the Bill, we have a lack of proper checks and balances which will make the problem worse. No one at local or national level can provide serious scrutiny or veto dangerous decisions. The police and crime panels will be toothless. They cannot even veto the firing of a chief constable.
This model comes from the US, but in the US, powerful city halls and district attorneys provide a counterbalance. Even Bill Bratton, much admired by some members of the Government, has criticised the Government's proposals. The nearest we have in this country to an elected police chief is the London mayor, but even he faces checks and balances from the cross-party Metropolitan Police Authority and the Home Secretary, and has many other responsibilities which distract him from second-guessing police operations. Even the Mayor of London in this term of office is now on to his third commissioner. My fear is that that pattern will be repeated up and down the country.
The US experience of an average tenure of police chiefs working to elected police commissioners is a little more than two years. It is easy to see why. The temptation to sack a police chief constable in the run-up to a re-election of the commissioner would become almost irresistible. Think of the instability that that would cause—a length of stay of little more than two years. I suggest that many senior officers will be reluctant to apply to be chief constables in future and that those who do so will be for ever looking over their shoulder for fear of the police commissioner’s shadow.
I have no doubt that the police must be accountable to the public. They have made great strides in recent years. Unlike the Home Secretary, who has chosen to denigrate police authorities, I pay tribute to their work—none more so than mine in the West Midlands. During the recent disturbances, the chairman did not hawk himself from studio to studio or second-guess the chief constable. Instead, he played a pivotal role working with the local community, defusing tension and helping to restore order to the streets of Birmingham.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, I think that this is one of the most disastrous pieces of legislation that this House has ever seen. This country will rue the day when we destroyed—destroyed, my Lords—the essential balance, fairness and impartiality that we have enjoyed from our police forces for so long.
Like the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, my Motion deals with the date of the elections for police commissioners. Once again I put to the House a proposal for a royal commission. I do not do that lightly because I am not always enamoured of the performance of royal commissions. However, I put it to the noble Baroness that currently there are two reviews or inquiries being undertaken in relation to the riots; in relation to the phone-hacking incident there are at least three inquiries. Each of those reviews or inquiries will, I am sure, have some implications for the way our police forces operate. All I am suggesting to the noble Baroness is that there is surely a case for waiting for those reviews and then establishing a royal commission. Like the 1962 Royal Commission on the Police, that would establish a basis for going forward with much greater consensus than we see at the moment.
I believe the Government took all the wrong conclusions from the experience of my Government in those first two years. In fact, the legislation that they are proposing today would be so much better if they had gone through a process of proper debate, consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny. They would have been much more likely to have got the kind of consensus that I think is necessary. I hope the House will be sympathetic to my amendment, and in particular that it will support the noble Lord, Lord Condon.
It is quite remarkable that the other place has dismissed the substantive concerns of this House and instead has offered as a concession the wonderful prospect of the first election taking place on 15 November next year. The media, very unkindly, seemed to suggest that this was because the Liberal Democrats feared the consequences of the elections next May and wished to remove the police commissioner elections from them. I am sure that is a very unworthy suggestion. The Minister was heroic in her explanation of why we should have these elections in November. I think the argument was that it enables the police and crime commissioner to take part in budget and planning decisions for the following financial year. This is the first time we have ever heard this argument so it is a new argument. If that is so—if it really is important to have a kind of shadow period—why not accept the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and give the PCC 12 months in which to find their way, discuss the budget and get ready for the new office? In fact, there is a very good argument for a shadow period of one year.
As for the argument that if the elections take place in May party politics will intrude and the media will be much more concerned about politics than the quality of the candidates, if the noble Baroness is concerned about politicisation, as she knows I am, why on earth go down this path in the first place? If the Government really wish to encourage independent candidates, the idea that independent candidates with this huge electorate are going to traipse round the streets in October and November is unrealistic.
Why did we change local elections from the autumn to May many decades ago? It is because the view was taken that the lack of daylight hours and the weather discouraged effective campaigning. The same argument now arises. I echo the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Condon. If November is such a very good month to hold those elections and to give time for the elected commissioner to go into the issues of planning and budgets, why do we not have them every November? Why are we reverting back to May elections after the first round of elections?
I think that a November election will essentially lead to extra expense. Earlier today during the first Oral Question, the noble Baroness was most concerned about expense. Here, she is flinging away millions of pounds on the extra cost of the election in November because it is a stand-alone election. However, the real risk is that there will be a low turnout. I have no doubt that if the election were held at the same time as local elections, it would slip-stream a higher turnout than will be the case when we are simply asked to vote for elected police commissioners.
The noble Lord, Lord Condon, has put forward a very effective Motion and I, for one, will certainly be supporting him.
The Lord Bishop of Guildford
My Lords, in speaking briefly in support of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Condon, and doing so after returning from a discussion this morning between the bishops of the Church of England—particularly the relevant bishops of the urban areas—about the disturbances, I recognise that there has been ministerial assurance in some of the areas that have been spoken about in earlier parts of the debate. However, a number of us on this Bench still hear of a continued anxiety, within the police forces and outside, about the potential for politicisation of policing. I note, for example, that serious comment has been made in at least two serious papers in relation to the appointment of a Metropolitan Commissioner. I do not say that I believe that or accept it, but those are concerns that are around, and that is dispiriting for senior police officers and their professional future.
There are three particular areas that have been touched on earlier in the debates. These have not yet been fully assured on, which is why I am supporting this amendment: to give more time for that discussion to take place. These areas relate to commissioners and chief constables. The first is finance. If a commissioner has absolute control of the purse strings, then where will the essential operational discretion of the chief constable be? Secondly, a local politician may well be too focused on the local, and under some circumstances impede the wider strategic vision of a chief constable in relation to both national and interforce strategies. Finally, while it is right that a chief constable can be sacked, if the safeguards which are already being discussed on hiring and firing are not properly worked out, then again, the proper autonomy of a chief constable will be prejudiced. We may then be in the kind of situation that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to.
There is a need for more time to have these difficult areas sorted out, so that there will be more confidence from chief constables, and downwards, in our police forces as they go into a new era.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I, too, rise to support my noble friend Lord Condon. I find this a very sad day, because again we are taking part in legislation which I believe can now be seen to be—and will prove to have been—untimely and indeed irrelevant. I say that because, like my noble friend Lord Condon, I was very struck by the events of August and what they portend. Several times during the Bill’s passage so far, mention has been made that its title is inappropriate, because it talks about police reform. There is precious little in the Bill about reform of the police, but a great deal about reform of the governance of the police, which is not the same thing at all.
A country can be at peace with itself only if it has such elements in it as law and order, based on consent. What August sadly showed us is that much of this country is not at peace with itself. What is needed, among other things, is improvement of policing in relationship to people and particularly to young people, a lesson which came out very clearly from 1981 as well. If we did not have this Bill in front of us at the moment, I venture to suggest that—following the Winsor reports, which have already been mentioned, and the reports of the task force that the Government have appointed to report on the events of August—the Government would be seriously considering what legislation ought to be brought in to bring about the reforms of policing that are necessary as a result of what has been disclosed. It might well be that, as part of that process, and as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested, there should be a royal commission on policing or something like it, because the last one was 49 years ago. Things have moved on since then. The situation that we now face is very different from the situation as seen in 1962. Whatever comes out of this, I hope that it does not include policing by fear and firearms American style. Therefore, I have to say with regret that I disagree with the Minister that the reforms before us now cannot wait. The one thing about them is that they can, and should, wait, because they are very likely to prove an impediment to what the Government will have to introduce when they examine the recommendations made to them as a result of the examinations of August. In normal terms, one will match governance to policing and not the other way round. What comes out will have to have governance attached.
Therefore, I believe that what the noble Lord, Lord Condon, has done by suggesting extra time, and it is very little time, is to give the Government the opportunity to examine these things and, one hopes, to do something sensible such as withdraw the Bill and not saddle themselves with its encumbrances. That would enable them to take advantage of what comes out of the studies and reports that they have initiated, which will provide this country with the policing that it needs so that, once again, it can be at peace with itself.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, begging the pardon of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for the term that I am about to use, I do not think that the choice today is “reform or no reform”. I use that term in the current context; I understand the point that the noble Lord makes. Nor even is it a choice between alternative models of reform, to which I shall come back in a moment.
Given both a free hand and the benefit of the expertise on this subject around this House, which has impressed me increasingly day by day, I do not pretend that I would have designed the model that we have in the Bill, but I have always said that the proposal for directly elected police and crime commissioners is in the coalition’s programme for government, subject to strict checks and balances. Although the Whips may not agree, the scrutiny which this House gave to the checks and balances is what the House is here for. The outcomes of those debates were not always as I would have wished—I argued for several tougher checks and balances, although I acknowledge now, which I did not at the time, that some would have undermined the direct accountability of the police and crime commissioners. But now we know what the elected House wishes, and we know what is before us.
My noble and, if I may say so, good friend Lady Harris of Richmond has pursued her amendment with terrier-like energy. I am sadder than I can say that I cannot support her today, and that is not because I disagree with so many of her arguments. It is an inevitable outcome of our procedures and the way in which we undertake our business that her model is insufficiently developed. That is not her fault. After the surprise vote, she and other noble Lords put enormous effort and ingenuity into consequential amendments—if I may use that term in the widest sense. They were not successful and therefore my noble friend’s model is left without the infrastructure within the Bill that would make it work. That is what I mean by not having a choice of models today.
With regard to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Condon, as has been said, at the root of many of the concerns that have been expressed is the possible politicisation of policing. We do not know whether independent candidates will be tempted to stand for the position. It is hardly possible that under my noble friend Lady Harris’s model independents could stand, because almost the whole of the panel from which she is proposing that a commissioner should come would have been elected on a party-political basis as local councillors would make up that panel.
We do know that the more different sets of elections are aligned, the more the focus on each is distorted, often to the basis of the lowest common denominator. There may be mayoral elections in November 2013, but they would be fairly limited geographically, so that date at least reduces that risk, if I can put it that way. I am thinking now not just of the elections for police and crime commissioners but about the local elections that will take place in May—pretty much every May.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the noble Baroness is making an interesting speech, but if the case is so persuasive for having separate elections—separate from any other elections—why do we not have a proposal to always have these in November?
Baroness Hamwee
I will come to that if the noble Lord can contain his patience.
Local elections should be about local issues and very often they are not. What I wrote down without having to be prompted by the noble Lord is that the first elections for anything tend to set the tone. There could be a debate about having elections every four or six months for different things throughout the year, although that might be going a little far.
This debate has referred quite a lot to the convenience of campaigners. I am sure that many noble Lords have gritted their teeth and hung their canvass sheets on radiators to dry throughout the year. The convenience of campaigners is the least of the factors in this. But decoupling the elections should help avoid the diversion.
Lord Clinton-Davis
The noble Baroness said that the first elections in November will set the tone. Why and how?
Baroness Hamwee
I thought that I had actually explained about decoupling them and I do not want to try the patience of the House by going over the whole thing again. Separate issues have been raised. We would have the same problem with May 2013 because there are county elections then. Other arguments have been made about November and I am not necessarily following them. This is a very particular argument.
I remain intensely concerned that candidates may stand on a simplistic platform of an officer on every street corner. I do not know whether that was in my noble friend's manifesto. It was a very telling manifesto. She left out of her critique of it that probably every crime has a victim: there is no victimless crime.
The issue of additional cost has been raised. To put it at its bluntest, we could probably wipe out the national deficit if we wiped out democracy.
It is a great pity that the opportunity has not been taken to defer the rearrangement in London to beyond the Olympics, because that will be a diversion.
With regard to the proposal for postponement until after a royal commission, there is of course a need for a continuing debate; but however straight the noble Lord’s face is—and he is very good at keeping a straight face—we all know how disingenuous this is. I have been among those who have used an argument for a review when it is really a euphemism for delay, which amounts to opposition. I agree with him of course on pre-legislative scrutiny, but we are rather beyond that on this Bill sadly.
Finally, with regard to amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, he knows that I have agreed with an enormous amount of what he has said about propriety and governance throughout the debates on this Bill. I am not sure whether four non-executive members is the right number or not; I am sure that I agree with him that it is those individuals who need that support who may be the least likely to want it. He talks in this amendment of a code of practice requiring something more than can be contained in his amendment. I trust—and I hope the Minister can respond to this—that the Government will consult on the code, and not just lay it before Parliament in its finished form. I think that the noble Lord has raised important points, but they have not quite worked in this form. We are at a point when we have to take a decision on what is before us, not something as we would like it to be.
I have to say to the House that I really did not expect to find myself in this position today. I have resisted so many blandishments for so long; but, as I said to my own party group about three hours ago, I persuaded myself overnight, given what we have before us to determine today. The basis of the decision, and the underlying proposals, may not be ones that I am hugely enthusiastic about, but we have to take a decision on what is before us today, and I can now see what my decision needs to be.
Lord Goldsmith
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I wonder if she can help me. I am somewhat confused by what she has said. I had understood from many of her remarks that she was very sympathetic to the points made by her noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond and that she found force in them, but ultimately was not happy because, in the end, not enough people supported other amendments proposed by the noble Baroness to make her proposal workable. We all know and respect the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, very much indeed, and she has huge experience. She has described this Bill as defective and dangerous, and something which will cause lasting damage to our policing. Does the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, agree with that assessment, and if so, what does she propose that we do about it?
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I hoped that I had made clear that it would not be to the benefit of our communities to seek to pass legislation today which does not have what I described as the “supporting infrastructure”. The debate will not finish today. Of course, hugely important points have arisen in minds which might not have addressed them at all until the August disturbances. Those debates have got to continue. I wish I thought that legislation was the answer to everything. I am afraid that I do not. It is the way it is done, and the way that we all conduct ourselves, that matters—the way in which this legislation is implemented, not just the words on paper. I have criticised every Government who I have had anything to do with since I have been in this House for thinking and saying that the latest Bill was going to be the panacea.
Lord Imbert
My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Condon to delay the introduction of the elected police and crime commissioners until after the year of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, to be held in London and other parts of the country during the next 12 months. Like my noble friend Lord Condon, I declare an interest. I, too, am a life member of the Association of Chief Police Officers and also have 40 years’ experience as a police officer, from being a bobby on the beat here in London—before many people in the other place were born—to my retirement as commissioner some years ago.
I join the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, in sending good wishes to Bernard Hogan-Howe for the formidable task ahead of him after becoming Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I know Bernard Hogan-Howe. He is a physically fit man—as he must be for that job. Indeed, until very recently, he played football for my son’s team, which is appropriately called Mid-Life Crisis. I am sure that all Members of the House would wish Bernard H-H well in his task.
I make no secret of the fact that I believe that to have elected party-political devotees given the awesome power to appoint, dismiss and suspend their chief constables, to set the budget, and, in fact, by definition, therefore to decide what police do or do not do and how they do it, is a dangerous move towards politicising the British police service. To disrupt the government of policing, and thereby the policing task as a whole, at a time when the pressures on the service will be unprecedented, is not simply unwise to the point where ordinary, daily policing would cease to exist at all but is a madness that would put at risk the safety and security of the Games themselves and the well-being of the athletes and many thousands of spectators and officials. To insist that the proposals in this unnecessary Bill should go ahead during 2012, when police numbers will have been reduced to a minimum, is, frankly, dangerous. However, even with greatly reduced strengths, we will still expect police to carry out their regular policing duties, whether policing riots, dealing with thefts, child abuse or physical abuse not only in Greater London but in towns and cities across the country. I plead with the Government to see sense and have the courage to change this unwise and enormously expensive plan for these elections.
To return to the Bill before us, I find it interesting, but frightening, that we have been consistently and firmly assured by the Government that we have no need to worry about the provisions for the election of police and crime commissioners; and that our fears that a holder of extremist views would be able to interfere with the proper administration of policing, or hinder the impartial service the police have been required to give since Sir Robert Peel—a Tory Home Secretary—laid down his strict principles for efficient, effective and impartial policing in 1829, are groundless. The Government have insisted that those fears are imaginary, but, after those verbal guarantees, we see them experiencing a distinct shiver of apprehension and doubt—I could describe it as a touch of the trembles. They are quickly shoring up the defences by publishing a draft protocol governing the respective responsibilities of, and the relationships between, the chief constable and the elected commissar. They have also discussed—as we have heard this afternoon from the Minister—making that protocol statutory. If those proposals in the Bill were, as we were assured, impregnable, why do we need a protocol at all; let alone to consider making it statutory? This can surely only be an admission that they have now realised that the boat was not so watertight after all and could have been in danger of capsizing. However, it seems that government Ministers have been prepared to take that risk. Will they be prepared to stand up and take responsibility if it all goes badly pear-shaped? Or will they find it more convenient to blame—dare I say it—the police?
Peel's principles have successfully guided policing in this country for 180 years. The style, accountability and governance arrangements here have been envied, admired, and emulated throughout the Commonwealth and, indeed, the world, for nearly two centuries. I am not a politician and owe no allegiance to any political party, so I hope I can say what I wish this afternoon. Is it not ironic that in order to save the police service and policing as a whole from the dangers of party political influence and likely interference, it seems one has to enter into the political argument? ACPO has commendably refused to be drawn into turbulent political waters, but those of us who have left the service need have no such inhibitions. So let me very briefly, taking no more than two minutes, enter the fray.
Prior to the last general election, I formed the view that a change of Government was urgently required. My Conservative friends—and they include some members of my own family—persuaded me that we needed a Conservative administration. So convincing were they that this would provide what they called intelligent and common-sense government, that I breathed a great sigh of relief when the votes were counted. I thought that we would now have our own John F Kennedy as our leader. I was wrong, of course. A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from an old friend, a former clerk to a police authority, now 80 years of age, who I knew to have been an unwavering Conservative all his adult life. He was clearly unsettled by the latest government reform proposals and we queried whether the new definition of “reform” can be found, in any dictionary, under the verb “to ruin”. No doubt thinking I would share his views, he said to me: “What on earth are they doing to us? They have tried to sell our forests and woodlands; started demoralising the National Health Service and its loyal and highly qualified staff; and now they are trying to politicise the police. What will they do next?”.
I am not going to ring him following the Government’s proposals over the relaxation of building restrictions on the green belt, because he is a country-lover. However, taking all these measures and so-called reforms together, one must ask, “Are this Government deliberately trying to alienate their traditional supporters?”. I would go further and say that I am coming to the conclusion drawn by some of my friends that somewhere in a back office in Whitehall, or nearby, is a small group of politically aspiring kamikaze suicide pilots, who, on a weekly basis, are loading Aircraft UK with self-destruct material. Is the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill the latest self-destruct consignment to be taken on board? It certainly will be if the Government are unbending and insist on going ahead with these proposals in the face of opposition and widespread wise and professional advice not to do so, particularly at a time of public unrest and unease with the government proposals for various so-called reforms and austerity measures—as evidenced by the recent student and trade union demonstrations.
This is not the time for political involvement in, or political direction of, policing. Police must not only be politically neutral; they must be seen and trusted to be so, and not seen as an arm of any particular political party or, indeed, government. We must take time to give greater thought to these proposals. For these many reasons, I support and would encourage noble Lords of all parties, and of none, to support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Condon.
Baroness Henig
My Lords, I will try to be extremely brief because I know the Minister is anxious to move matters forward. But Members of this House will be aware of my deep opposition to this Bill because it fatally undermines the principles on which policing has been delivered in this country for nearly 200 years. So the Minister will not be surprised to learn that I will be supporting the amendments that have been moved.
First and foremost, as we have heard—although the Minister did not acknowledge this—we are politicising policing. It is pointless government Ministers trying to deny this and pointing to the embryonic protocol that will supposedly regulate relations between commissioners and chief constables because the reality is that commissioners will be elected on party-political platforms and chief constables will, of necessity, have to acknowledge this and temper their actions accordingly. If they do not, we know from London experience what will happen; the elected commissioner will cite loss of confidence and, as a result, yet another chief constable will bite the dust.
The Minister argued that it would be key for independent candidates to contest these elections. But independents would have to be extremely wealthy to contest these elections. We are talking about very large, disparate police force areas. For an independent to make an impact across such an area, they would need to spend a lot of money. Inevitably, the reality is that there will be no more than a handful of independents contesting seats. Nor will there be many ethnic minority or female commissioner candidates because all the evidence from across the European Union on direct elections for mayors and similar positions is that the more power these positions carry, the more likely it is that white males between the ages of 35 and 65 will be chosen by their parties to contest winnable seats.
So I must say to this House that this is not a reform that will promote diversity. Quite the contrary because it is a big step back in terms of the fact that in the past few years there have been many female and ethnic minority police authority chairs, who have spent their time not sniffing out cameras at 100 paces or speaking to every available journalist, but establishing close links with their local communities. I want to place on record at this point my thanks to all police authority members who have worked so hard in the past few years because I think they have been unfairly vilified in the course of this Bill. I actually think they have done a very good job and I would like to acknowledge that.
We are taking a giant step towards an American model of policing, where—let us remind ourselves—police chiefs last on average two and a half years in office, where powers are wielded by “machine” party politicians, and where there are far higher levels of local corruption than we have so far experienced in this country. Bill Bratton, much admired by the Prime Minister, was sacked by Mayor Giuliani after two and a half years, not because his policing was a failure, but because it was so successful that it challenged the mayor, whom he was overshadowing in popularity. He had to go and he was sacked. I fear we are seeing the start of that in this country.
The stated aims of reform are to drive down crime and secure value for money, but how can a stand-alone commissioner forge the essential local partnerships that would deliver that? At the moment, partnerships exist and have helped to bring crime down to historically low levels. But the examples of elected mayors we have seen so far in this country indicate the commissioner will want to run his own show, on his own terms, sometimes capriciously, occasionally irresponsibly, but always with an eye to the media and to journalists, and always weighing up what needs to be done to secure re-election.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Henig who, along with my noble friend Lord Harris, are astounding examples of the work, service and commitment of non-directly elected former chairs of a police authority. They are not the only such members in this House, of course; the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, also held such a position. They illustrate very vividly the capacity of elected councillors to serve in that role.
In his thoughtful and reasoned speech, the noble Lord, Lord Condon, referred—as others have done—to recent events, effectively confirming the wisdom of avoiding the intrusion of politics into policing. We saw some of those dangers when the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary claimed to have instructed the police to increase the number of police on the streets. In fairness, those claims were subsequently withdrawn, but they illustrate starkly the risk of political interference. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary did not cross the boundary but who is to say that less experienced, less statesmanlike figures would not succumb to the temptation? It is a very real risk.
In the debate in the other place two days ago, the Police Minister, Nick Herbert, said:
“The coalition agreement pledged the introduction of directly elected individuals, subject to strict checks and balances, by locally elected representatives”.
In opening, the Minister made exactly the same comment. However, the reality is that those checks and balances are insufficient. What is surprising is that the Minister in the other place went on to claim:
“The Lords amendments do not try to increase the local accountability of the police. They do not even try to ensure that there are adequate checks and balances”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/9/11; col. 780.]
Only the word “effrontery” can describe that statement. If the checks and balances are not sufficiently strict, it is because the Government ensured in your Lordships’ House that they were not put in place. They were moved from various parts of the House and they were rejected.
The proposals for police commissioners owe much to the partial—although no doubt not the only—begetter of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, who in these matters is a sort of ermine-clad Mephistopheles to the Prime Minister’s Faustus. He is an enthusiast for American-style policing, of which he has experience. I defer to his knowledge of it. He is also an enthusiast for Bill Bratton. Indeed, if the noble Lord had his way, I hazard that we would have congratulated Mr Bratton on his appointment as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police today, instead of the gentleman whose appointment we have commented on and to whom we all send our congratulations. However, as has been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Hunt, Mr Bratton is vehemently opposed to the concept of directly elected police commissioners. The Prime Minister’s chosen adviser on policing, brought from across the Atlantic at no doubt considerable expense, is to be listened to in all respects save this rather crucial one—the direct election of police commissioners.
I support the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon. I bear in mind the observations of the Electoral Commission, which have not yet been mentioned. It has reported that it has concerns about the date of 15 November. It refers to problems with the registration of voters, which will be taking place at that time. It refers to the seasonal issues—the short period of daylight and its impact on turnout—and to cost. They are very strong arguments. The Minister says that an election in November will allow the new commissioner time to get involved in the budget. My noble friend Lord Harris has demolished that argument comprehensively. However, if the election takes place in November, there are other people who will be involved in the consideration of the budget. They will be—with whatever limitations, which will be substantial—the police and crime panel. Its members will presumably not be in place by November 2012. Therefore, there will be much less opportunity for the panel to perform the kind of scrutiny, limited as it is, that the Bill prescribes and for which the Government take credit.
However, if those appointments were to take place in May, of any year, both the commissioner and the panel would have an opportunity to be fully involved from an early stage in the process. It should be borne in mind that commissioners will come into an entirely new field, unless they have been involved as members of a police authority. Who is to say whether that will happen? They will have only a matter of weeks to absorb all that complexity and difficulty before passing a budget. They will surely not be capable of producing a police and crime plan, which you would have thought would shape and provide context for such a budget, in that time. It seems quite impossible.
Noting the reactions of the colleagues of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, in another place, I am irresistibly reminded of the Grand Old Duke of York, who marched his army to the top of the hill, only for them to be led down—in this case on the basis of an offer of only six months’ deferment of the election. The noble Baroness is of course a resident of the great county of Yorkshire. I hope she will not find herself in the position of—forgive me—a grand old duchess of York, leading her troops to the top of a hill, only to find herself abandoned by the self-same troops as they slide silently downhill. I fear from the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that that may indeed be her fate, which would be unfortunate.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, also referred to independent members. The Bill provides for very little in the way of independent members of the police and crime panels—many fewer than currently serve on police committees. Therefore, the independence argument hardly persuades one.
The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, are sensible and practical. They ought not to be voted down on the basis of a rather cheap deal whereby Liberal Democrats are bought off with, as I say, a temporary deferment of elections as part of an arrangement in another place. My noble friend Lord Hunt’s proposal for a commission clearly makes sense. The very powerful arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, should certainly carry weight in this House. I hope that the noble Baroness will, even at this late stage, see the logic of these positions and acknowledge that your Lordships have made substantial arguments, which should remain as the Bill goes back to another place.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, I understood the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, to say that our duty was to amend legislation where practicable. I did not hear her say that our other duty is to consider the need for that legislation, although I understood that she was not convinced of the need for this legislation. It is my view that our first job in any piece of legislation is to see whether the case for it has been made.
There has been much attack on members of existing police authorities. They are not high-profile; people do not know who or where they are. I have spent time looking at all the issues that were raised with me and would be considered by a single populist candidate. I raised none of them in public. I raised them with my noble friend who was chair of the police authority, the chief constable, divisional officers and community police officers over a long period. To say that police authorities are ineffective because they are not in the press every week and the newspapers do not know who they are is, frankly, not borne out by my experience. The issues included car crime and many other things. The real issue facing policing by consent and our police service is that of those for whom the system is broken. They do not give consent; they are not part of the consent. Those are the issues, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, that need to be looked at by a royal commission and the groups that are studying this. That is where the system is breaking down—not with the chief constable, police officers or members of the existing police authorities.
I suggest that the Minister should be awfully careful in using the argument that we ultimately have no right to intervene because the other place is democratically accountable. That does not appear to sit with her Government’s policy that, were we to be democratically accountable, we would still have to be quiet on issues that we did not agree with.
Lord Shipley
That form of politicisation will not occur, as the panel—which the noble Baroness supports—will be made up of elected local councillors with party-political labels, who will themselves elect the person who becomes the commissioner. In that sense, because there will be virtually no independent members of that panel, the person who is appointed will have a party-political background and role.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
The noble Lord was not present when I was congratulating the fine record of the noble Lord, Lord Howard. When he was Home Secretary, he had a better system than that now proposed. In Lancashire, my noble friend Lady Henig was re-elected by the police authority regardless of whether or not people shared her party-political allegiance. They voted according to ability. It is much better to have a balance from a group of people than a single populist politician.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, it has been suggested that police and crime commissioners will be focused on local issues to the exclusion of those which require a strategic response—in other words, that they will be too parochial and populist. Issues such as terrorism, riots, drug dealing and people trafficking all affect local communities. They are local issues that local police and crime commissioners will want to ensure are tackled effectively. However, it is important to acknowledge that these issues also have national dimensions, either because they require police forces to work together to identify and tackle a threat that is not constrained by force boundaries, or because the threat may be so significant as to require resources to be mobilised from several forces. We have seen an example of that this summer.
Police and crime commissioners will be responsible and accountable to the public for the totality of policing. To help them deliver this remit, the Home Secretary will issue a strategic policing requirement which will guide them on their responsibilities for serious and cross-boundary policing challenges, such as terrorism, organised crime, public order, cybercrime and responding to major incidents and emergencies. Police and crime commissioners and chief constables will be under strong duties to have regard to this requirement.
These issues already stretch and challenge the police service. The strategic policing requirement is about addressing these existing challenges, often referred to as level 2 gap, rather than responding to a new problem created by the introduction of police and crime commissioners. It is for this reason that, even though it will not have statutory effect until next year, the Government intend to publish a shadow strategic policing requirement later this year. It will support forces and authorities in their planning and allow time for further testing and consultation.
It could not be further from the truth that police and crime commissioners will be the sort of people who will just be on the periphery of serious issues that affect local and national policing and crime issues. They will be of a different calibre. Working with the chief constable or the commissioner, they will address these issues and ensure that they are contained within their local plan. I refute the idea that this is about populist politics, with candidates appealing to people just by saying how many police officers they are going to march up and down the high street each week. These are serious issues and they will require serious people of substance to address them.
We have had a lot of debate, during the Report and Committee stages, about the independence of chief officers. Much has been made of this. The protocol that has been negotiated has been put together and agreed with ACPO, the Association of Police Authorities and the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives. All parties have agreed on the text in general, and there are few amendments to be made following this consultation.
We put this on a statutory basis not for the sake of the fine detail, but so that the requirement for the protocol will have a statutory basis. This is to ensure that the important relationship between the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable will not overreach in such a way as to affect the operational independence and decision-making of chief officers. This was a matter of great concern in this House and we worked very hard with all parties to get the balance right. I welcome the contribution made by noble Lords in this matter.
The Government believe that a single accountable individual should hold the police to account, and that person should be democratically elected by the public in their police force area. The strength of this model is that local councillors will still be involved in the governance of policing while an elected individual takes executive decisions supported by a highly qualified team. The principle of one accountable individual being directly responsible for the totality of force activity is crucial to our vision. I pay tribute to those who have given up much of their time to police authorities, but policing governance by committee has meant that an unelected body has the power over the level of the precept. It has meant that no one is properly held to account for decisions or poor performance and no one is truly in charge. Even police authority chairs are first among equals, they are not decision-making leaders. That situation would continue and probably worsen under the proposals before the House tonight.
I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who spoke to his amendment. I do not believe that the lesson of the riots is as he described—that everything in policing is fine. The noble Lord persuasively argued in earlier stages of the Bill against the uncertainties of further delay. He admitted that in his remarks. He was right then, and it makes sense to bring this new form of accountability in good time.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned the fact that he believed that the country was not at peace with itself. I was struck by that remark, if I have interpreted it correctly.
Baroness Browning
I stand corrected—much of it was not at peace with itself. However, it has occurred to me that, despite our lengthy debate on these amendments, very little was said about the public and accountability, and the way in which the public can hold to account the policing in their force areas and local communities—something that is at the heart and core of this legislation. It is about the public. It is about accountability.
Last week I attended the meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Retail and Business Crime. One of the biggest issues that its members wanted to raise with me was that 40 per cent of business crime goes unreported. Although it was an all-party group, representatives from the business community were there, including the Federation of Small Businesses and many others representing that community. When we started to drill down as to why 40 per cent of business crime goes unreported, the general consensus seemed to be that there was not much point. That cannot be right. It cannot be right that crime on that level is regarded in this country today as being not worth reporting. One has to ask the question why, and the answer is self-evident. It is not the case all around the country—the figure varies from one place to another. Others take more interest. However, it is very important that the police are not only held accountable but that in their local force areas they have a clear understanding of what the policing needs and requirements of their communities are. That would apply as much to business as it does to the individual householder. At the moment that does not happen.
Baroness Browning
The noble Baroness says that it is not true. If that were the case the level of unreported business crime would not be 40 per cent. People would think that it was worth reporting and would be pleased with the outcome. Something different has to happen. People have to feel that they are represented. People feel that they have to be represented by someone whom they have chosen. I hear what has been said by noble Lords from across the House in this debate, but I have to say that democracy is actually about trusting the people to vote for the right person, and trusting the people to understand, which of course they do, that they then have a voice. I have to say that I am disappointed that no one—not once—in this debate has mentioned the need for the people to have a voice, which is what this legislation gives them. I give way to the noble Lord.
Lord Harris of Haringey
I am all in favour of the public having a voice, but what the noble Baroness has so passionately spoken about is the business community. Unless she is advocating a business franchise for the election of police and crime commissioners, that problem will not be solved by this. The reality is that the police service should be consulting the business community and listening to it, but this legislation does not require that because it places no such obligation on them. The only way that you would get that in terms of the noble Baroness’s arguments would be by the creation of a business franchise. I am pleased to see that that is not part of the Government’s proposals.
Baroness Browning
I have to say to the noble Lord that I observed with horror what happened to small businesses in the riots. I would not in any way dismiss the needs of small businesses. They are individuals; they are husband-and-wife teams running small shops and other small businesses up and down the country. One of the other messages that I received quite clearly at the all-party group last week was that these businesses and business organisations are already making plans to talk to people who want to stand as candidates to be police and crime commissioners, because those businesses want them to have a much clearer understanding of what their needs are in terms of law and order. It is not just about their businesses—whether they have had a shop theft or something such as that—but about the whole community in which they operate. They care about what happens on the pavements outside their businesses. They care about the wider community. These are people. These are voters. They need a voice and this legislation will give them that voice.
These reforms are essential to address that democratic deficit in policing, to end the era of central government’s bureaucratic control, to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour and to drive value for money. Chief constables will be liberated to be crime fighters rather than government managers—free to run their own workforces for the first time ever.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
The noble Baroness says that police chief constables will be liberated. How on earth can that be the case when they will come under the direct control of a party politician? Based on US experience, the average length of stay is no more than two years. How can she defend the situation that we already see in London, where in a single term the Mayor of London is now on his third police commissioner? That is not liberation. It is the political control of police chiefs that will be a disaster to our policing.
Baroness Browning
The noble Lord simply does not seem to understand the difference between control and accountability. I notice that the word accountability has not been used by him at all.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
With the greatest of respect to the noble Baroness, I used the word accountability. I said in my opening speech that I favour enhanced accountability.
Baroness Browning
Enhanced accountability, but not through the public, for the public and by the public. That is the difference between us. Let us make no bones about it, it is now very clear that it is accountability but on certain terms. The terms of the Bill are that the accountability is such that the public will elect the person who on their behalf will hold the police to account in their police area. That is the difference, and I am grateful to the noble Lord for having established the fundamental difference between his interpretation of accountability in this matter and what is in the Bill.
Police officers will benefit from a less bureaucratic system where discretion is restored and where the chief constable has a strong interest in driving out waste and prioritising the front line. Local authorities will benefit from a continuing say in the governance of policing, and district councils will have a role for the very first time. The taxpayer will see better value for money as commissioners, who will have responsibility for the precept, focus relentlessly on efficiency in their forces. Local policing will benefit from a strong democratic input, focusing attention on issues of public concern. The Home Office will be focused on its proper role, especially to address national threats and to co-ordinate strategic action and collaboration between forces. Above all, the public will have a voice in how they are policed.
Police and crime commissioners have the mandate to reflect public concern on crime. Democratic accountability in policing is needed and we agree on this. If so, there can be no question as to whether these amendments from the other place should be agreed. I ask that the House not agree to Motions A1, A2, A3 and A4. I agree with Motion A.
Baroness Harris of Richmond
My Lords, I have listened to my noble friend the Minister but with a very heavy heart. I have tried throughout this Bill to rehearse all the arguments around the construction of a police and crime commission. It is clear that I have not been able to convince the coalition Government or my colleagues—or most of them—or the other place, which makes the final decisions on our amendments, to agree with me. However, I would not be at all surprised if this legislation were to be amended again before it is ever implemented. I predict that elements of it will have to be looked at again in the police Bill that is due to be published next year on national police landscape proposals. If it is not dealt with there then another Bill will have to be brought before Parliament within the next three years. I will not relish saying “I told you so” at that point. It would be far better to provide a sensible corporate governance framework now. I will support the amendments of other noble Lords to delay the legislation—especially the Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Condon. I hope that this will provide adequate time for the Government to reconsider and see some sense. In that somewhat forlorn hope, and with great weariness and reluctance, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Lord Condon
Leave out “to 6D in lieu” and insert “, 6C and 6D in lieu, do disagree with Amendment 6B in lieu, do propose Amendment 6E in lieu thereof, do propose Amendments 6F and 6G to Amendment 6C, and do propose Amendment 6H as a consequential amendment to the Bill.”
Lord Condon
My Lords, I beg to move Motion A2 as an amendment to Motion A. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in favour of my Motion. I have also listened very carefully to the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect, but she has not convinced me that it is not in the national interest to delay this Bill by a fixed period of six months for the reasons that I set out in my arguments. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
As an amendment to Motion A, leave out “to 6D in lieu” and insert “, 6C and 6D in lieu, do disagree with Amendment 6B in lieu, do propose Amendment 6J in lieu thereof, and do propose Amendment 6K as a consequential amendment to the Bill.”
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
(12 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
20:27 - Division on Motion A1 - Ayes: 173 / Noes: 188 - Motion A1 disagreed.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That this House do not insist on its Amendments 1, 2 and 9, to which the Commons have insisted on their disagreement, and do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 9C in lieu.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, during the passage of this legislation it has been evident that the Government have been prepared to consider and, indeed, to support amendments which improve the provisions of the Bill. This Bill has been refined and improved by the scrutiny to which it has been subjected both in this House and in the other place. Most notably in this House, we worked with the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, on the amendment in his name, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the distinguished former Speakers, the noble Lord, Lord Martin, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, to bring forward a new version of Clause 2. We also implemented the recommendation made by your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. However, we have also consistently opposed amendments which would undermine what we believe to be the fundamental purpose of the Bill.
The Bill has now been scrutinised at length and there remains one outstanding issue to resolve: whether there should be a sunset provision. This House has now twice inserted a sunset provision, while each time the other House has voted to remove it. The Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, seeks to revitalise the amendments to achieve that, reintroduce them to the Bill and impose them on the other place for a third time. The Government agree with those in the other place who oppose the sunset clause—indeed, it has been described as a sunset and sunrise clause—and I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I briefly repeat our objections.
The purpose of the Bill is to remove the Prime Minister’s power to ask for a general election at a time that is most politically advantageous for his or her party. As has been expressed in our debates, a number of your Lordships believe that the Bill is simply a “fix” for this coalition, but I assure the House that that is not the case. The Government believe that there should be fixed terms and that it should be for the House of Commons to decide on the timing of an early general election and not a Prime Minister. I also remind your Lordships that the 2010 manifestos of both my party and the Labour Party included a pledge to establish fixed-term Parliaments.
In his speech when visiting the Scottish Parliament in May last year, less than 72 hours after taking office, the Prime Minister made clear how significant a transfer of power this is, remarking that he was the,
“first Prime Minister in British history to give up the right unilaterally to ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament. This is a huge change in our system, it is a big giving up of power … I have made that change. It’s a big change and a good change”.
I know that a number of noble Lords agree with that assessment. Indeed, at Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, remarked that this Bill is something of a collector’s item as it is an example of the Government surrendering a significant power to Parliament. My noble friend Lady Stowell also remarked that the Bill will ensure that the Government and the Opposition must face the electorate on a set date whatever way the opinion polls are pointing. In other words, the Bill creates a level playing field and will ensure that the electorate are not left waiting in limbo for a Prime Minister to decide when to call an election.
If this House were to support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I believe that it would be reintroducing exactly the kind of politicking that the Bill seeks to end. If each new Parliament had to resolve whether or not to serve for a fixed term—I understand that under the terms of the amendment it would be able to decide that at any time during the lifetime of a Parliament—that decision would inevitably be subject to political intrigue and made in a partisan way.
Should a future Parliament wish to move away from fixed terms, it would be free to do so by either amending or repealing the legislation—the way in which most Acts of Parliament are treated if a Government wish to overturn them. Such a constitutional change is no small matter but one that should be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny, as this Bill has been. By contrast, the sunset amendments would switch fixed terms on and off like a light switch. Parliament would default to non-fixed terms if a simple resolution failed to be tabled or if the two Houses could not agree on the matter. In our view, it is clearly not appropriate for constitutional legislation to be applied or disapplied simply as a result of passing or failing to pass, or indeed failing to table, a resolution.
I know that the members of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee had misgivings about the Bill. However, in their recent report, The Process of Constitutional Change, they emphasised the need for proper scrutiny of constitutional reforms. One of their conclusions stated:
“We stress the importance of proper parliamentary scrutiny of all bills, but we do not recommend that any new parliamentary procedures such as super-majorities should apply to significant constitutional bills”.
This legislation has been subject to considerable scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament. I rather suspect that if the Government had introduced in the original Bill the kind of provision that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, seeks to insert, the Procedure Committee might have given it pretty short shrift.
I do not believe that these sunset amendments would stand up to the scrutiny that one would expect if Parliament were to make an important constitutional change. They would take us into uncharted constitutional waters. They assume that it would be possible for the Prime Minister to regain the option of asking the monarch to dissolve Parliament. However, by failing to provide for the prerogative power to dissolve to be reinstated, we could be left in a position where neither the rules in the Bill nor the previous prerogative powers had effect. Indeed, it is not immediately clear whether it is possible for a prerogative power to be reinstated. Normally, once statute has “occupied the field” of the prerogative, the prerogative lapses and it is a long-standing judicial principle that new prerogatives cannot be created.
I know that many of your Lordships who supported the sunset amendments have genuine concerns about the Bill and about the concept of fixed-term Parliaments. I respect the views that have been expressed with great passion in a number of our debates. I accept that moving to a fixed-term Parliament is a significant change. Although I believe that this is a change for the better, as it transfers power from the Executive to Parliament, I acknowledge that it is a significant reform and that such reforms can often cause angst.
That is why the Government have brought forward an amendment in lieu of the amendments to sunset the Bill. It provides that the Prime Minister must make arrangements to set up a committee to review the operation of the legislation in 2020. Those arrangements would require the committee to consider the operation of the Act and, if appropriate, to make recommendations for its repeal or amendment. This would introduce a statutory requirement for post-legislative scrutiny, ensuring that the reservations that noble Lords have expressed could be considered again once we had real experience of the effects of the Bill. That is why we propose conducting the review in 2020, when we can ensure that the committee’s scrutiny is informed by the experience of one Parliament whose length is fixed from beginning to end.
A majority of the members of the committee would be Members of the other place, reflecting both the primacy of the other place and the fact that they would have contested elections whose timing was determined by the Bill. Nevertheless, the amendment still leaves open the possibility of Members of your Lordships’ House sitting on the committee. I believe that this will ensure that the committee’s deliberations benefit from the wealth of experience and expertise on constitutional issues that resides in this Chamber.
The amendment gives categorical reassurance that the legislation will be subjected to full post-legislative scrutiny. I hope that noble Lords will agree that this is a much better solution than the sunset and sunrise provisions, which would lead to a great deal of uncertainty with voters not knowing the length of the Parliament they were electing, which could leave the statute book in some form of disarray.
I close by reflecting briefly on the role of this Chamber, and in doing so I can do no better than to quote the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. During our debate in June on the proposed reforms to your Lordships’ House the noble Lord said:
“The House of Lords can and does suggest revisions of draft legislation, but it cannot in the end enforce those revisions against the will of the House of Commons. We are a revising Chamber and a debating Chamber, and valuable in both functions, but we cannot prevail against the House of Commons if it wishes to insist. The House of Commons is sovereign in the matter of law-making”.—[Official Report, 22/6/11; col. 1257.]
Noble Lords have raised with the other place the matter of a sunset provision on two occasions. The other place has now twice sent us a clear message that it does not wish for a sunset provision, both times by a substantial majority. If your Lordships again insist on including sunset clauses, we would again be challenging the clearly expressed will of the elected Chamber. We believe that it would be wrong to ask the elected House to reconsider this measure for a third time, yet in this amendment in lieu the other place is providing a compromise that will ensure that the Bill is subject to post-legislative scrutiny, but without the undesirable consequences and uncertainty that come with sunset amendments.
I therefore urge noble Lords to accept the compromise put forward by the other place in this amendment and not to insist on the sunset amendments. I beg to move.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
Leave out from “House” to end and insert “do insist on its Amendments 1, 2 and 9 and do disagree with the Commons in their Amendment 9C in lieu.”
Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, I will not take up your Lordships’ time by repeating the arguments for the sunset clause which noble Lords passed on two occasions before the Summer Recess, except to say to the Minister that it was a novelty to hear him accuse me of reintroducing politicking. I have rather been against politicking in my career. He referred to what was said by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee in its report on the Bill. I should like to remind the House of that. The committee said that,
“the balance of evidence we heard”—
the committee heard evidence from a number of very distinguished academics—
“does not convince most of us that a strong enough case has yet been made for overturning an established constitutional practice and moving to fixed-term Parliaments”.
The effect of the sunset clause passed by the House on two occasions was to give future Parliaments the power to decide whether they wish to make a permanent change.
Your Lordships will know that when this House has insisted on an amendment, the other place has to come back with some sort of modification to a Bill to prevent it from being lost. My noble friends and I had hoped that we might use the time during the Summer Recess to reach a reasonable agreement with the Government on a modification to the Bill. In August, my noble friend Lord Pannick had a meeting with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and Mr Harper, the Minister in the other place. My noble friend told the Ministers that, for our part, we would be happy to modify our amendment to meet criticisms that were made of it, including some of the criticisms made by the Minister tonight. Specifically, we said, first, that we would be content for a resolution to apply the legislation to be made only by the other place since it is the elected House. Secondly, we would be content for a time limit to be placed on the period within which such a resolution should be moved—within, say, three or six months of the meeting of a new Parliament. My noble friends and I were open to discussion on other aspects of the sunset provisions.
The Ministers made it clear that these modifications were not acceptable to them, but they put forward no proposals themselves. My noble friends and I then waited to see what modification the Government would propose. Last week, without any further consultation or notification, the Government put down in another place their modification to which the Minister has referred. That modification is now before us on the Marshalled List. It goes no way towards meeting the point made by noble Lords on two occasions. The key words of the modification are:
“The Prime Minister must make arrangements … for a committee to carry out a review of … this Act … Arrangements under subsection (4)(a) are to be made no earlier than 1 June 2020”.
As a former Cabinet Secretary, I have had experience of Governments fobbing people off by promising reviews that effectively kick issues into the long grass, but this is of a different order. Seriously, I have to say to the noble and learned Lord that if the Government’s amendment is intended to meet the point which your Lordships have legitimately made, it is an insult. It shows a contempt for your Lordships’ House and for the amendments we have passed.
There is still time to reach a reasonable agreement that will satisfy the point which this House has twice made, but I am afraid that this can happen only if noble Lords once more insist on the amendment and we can have sensible discussions. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. Your Lordships will not want to hear lengthy Second Reading speeches at this stage, but it needs to be understood that because this House and the other place have disagreed twice, the Government are obliged either to accept our amendments, lose the Bill, or produce a variation—what Erskine May describes as “alternative proposals”. The procedure is designed to ensure that the Government and the Commons cannot simply ignore what we have decided. Your Lordships have heard what the Government have produced by way of alternative proposals: that there should be a committee which will not begin its consideration for another nine years. That is not so much kicking the issue into the long grass, the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, as burying it in a time capsule. The authors of “Yes Minister” would have regarded it as lacking in credibility to suggest, even in a work of fiction, that a Minister should solve a problem by setting up a committee which would begin its work in nine years’ time.
The Minister suggested that there is some constitutional novelty in the provision approved by noble Lords, but many legislative provisions have attracted such a procedure: there is the need to consider each year whether to maintain the late and unlamented control order system; and Parliament requires that the Armed Forces Act be reconsidered every five years. The Minister suggested that the House should accept the views of the House of Commons and that we should go quietly into the night on this issue. He emphasised that we are a revising Chamber and that we cannot challenge the will of the elected House. But the relationship between this House and the other place depends on the other place and, indeed, the Government taking seriously the concerns we have expressed.
The response of the Government and the other place to our amendments is simply derisory, and it is intended to be so. The Commons and the Government are not listening to or engaging with your Lordships’ House, and I regret that. Just as the Government introduced this legislation without bothering to consult anyone or to adopt any pre-legislative scrutiny, they are now rejecting the views of this House without bothering to listen to and engage with us. We should ask the House of Commons to think again on this matter.
Lord Howarth of Newport
While I appreciate the constructive response that the Minister gave to the proposals by this House to redraw Clause 2, I have to say that the Government’s response to the Motion spoken to so well today by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, is not only inadequate, it is indeed contemptuous. Whether we talk of long grass, time capsules or the deep freeze, it simply will not do. The seriously considered advice of your Lordships’ House ought equally seriously to be considered by Ministers and by the other place. It should not be dismissed with reflex reactions. That is a matter of constitutional principle.
It is also a matter of constitutional principle that legislation that proposes constitutional change should be subjected to ample and early consultation, through a Green Paper, through full preliminary debate—debate outside this House across the country, as well as within Parliament—and then to a White Paper before legislation is introduced to Parliament, let alone being voted on in a whipped vote. I add that in my view it is questionable whether it is suitable for constitutional legislation to be subject to the Whip.
The Government actually agree, or say they agree, that pre-legislative scrutiny is a good thing. In its report on the process of constitutional change, the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House—the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, who chairs it, is in her place—described the process that is appropriate for the consideration of proposals for constitutional legislation, and explained the importance of that process being followed. Indeed, in its report it actually quoted its own report on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, in which it had said:
“Process is critical in terms of upholding, and being seen to uphold, constitutional values: particularly those of democratic involvement and transparency in the policy-making process. Moreover, we believe that a proper process is the foundation upon which successful policy is built: the lack of a proper process makes an ineffective outcome more likely”.
There was no good reason why a proper process was not adopted by the Government for this legislation. There was no genuine hurry to get this legislation on to the statute book. It did not need to be done in the first Session. But the Government neglected to follow due procedures. During our proceedings a very good case has been made by noble Lords on all sides of the House that legislating to introduce fixed-term Parliaments, and particularly Parliaments fixed for a term of five years—which means that general elections will occur less frequently in the future than they have in the past—contrary to the Government’s professed intentions, would reduce the accountability of the Executive to Parliament, not increase it. It would impair our democracy, not enhance it.
We should, therefore, insist on the amendment that we have already sent to the other place twice. This would be the third time. That is relatively unusual, but the Constitution Committee, again in that same report on the process of constitutional change, observed that,
“constitutional legislation is qualitatively different from other legislation”—
and I believe there is a very good case for this. As the committee also pointed out, there is a lack of checks and balances to prevent a Government armed with a majority in the House of Commons from changing the constitution of this country more or less at whim. This House should seek to act as a check and a balance, as well as we can, on issues of such importance as this.
An appropriate process was not followed by the Government. This constitutional legislation is highly contentious; it would introduce a major innovation into our constitution. It is the responsibility of your Lordships’ House to be vigilant to safeguard the constitution. It is entirely right, therefore, that we should adjure the House of Commons to think again.
The amendment that we have already twice sent to the other place provides a convenient and practical means whereby subsequent Parliaments should have the opportunity to judge whether indeed they wish each new Parliament to be fixed for five years, or whether they judge it preferable to revert to the historic arrangements that we have had in this country, of flexibility in terms of the date of the election within five years, which has enabled government and Parliament to be responsive to political reality in all its unpredictability, and to be more accountable to the people.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for quoting my words from a different debate and I do not resile from a single word of that. None the less, I join my noble friends Lord Butler and Lord Pannick in hoping that the House will insist on this amendment, which has now already been passed twice by this House, by a larger majority the second time than the first.
I will be a little kinder to the Government than my noble friends have been. This proposal by the Government, the Commons amendment in lieu, does at least agree that there should be a review. But it is a rather scrawny baby that they have delivered to us, and they will not allow us to turn the tap on for the bath until 2020—nine years. The baby will look very scrawny at the end of that time, and the water may be rather cold.
If it is right that this be reviewed, as we think it is, and as the Government and the House of Commons now seem to think, then why should we have to wait until after the election after the next election? Surely it makes sense that we should review it as proposed in the amendment which we have already agreed, and which my noble friend Lord Butler has reintroduced, and look at it again at the end of the current Parliament. It can then be passed on to the next Parliament if that is what people want to do at that time. But at least it should be reviewed at the end of the Parliament, to take stock, and see where we go from there.
Lord Grocott
I cannot understand why the Government could not have done the simple thing for this House, and for the integrity of our constitution, and simply said yes to this amendment. What on earth would the Government have lost by saying yes? They would have had the five-year Parliament that they, for whatever motives—we will not go into those—want for this Parliament. If there is a Conservative or a Liberal Democrat Government or a Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government elected in five years’ time, they could ensure that this legislation remained on the statute book and that there was another five-year Parliament after that. It would have cost the Government nothing. The Government would have lost nothing and they would at least have shown that they were listening to some of the advice from this House.
I am not thrilled by this amendment, although I thought it was very ably moved, because I just do not like five-year Parliaments, and I do not like acknowledging that the Government, with a relatively flaky coalition, should be able to legislate for themselves to survive for five years in this way. But the reason I very much hope that the House sticks to its position, requiring any future Government or Parliament to look again at this issue, is that I am convinced that, should this Bill go without any amendment now and become an Act, we will have five-year Parliaments ad infinitum and no future Government will repeal this legislation. This gives the lie to the oft-repeated argument that somehow or other this is a Government giving something away. Why on earth would any future Government want to give up the security of a five-year term of office? Of course they would not; it is very convenient to Governments; it is very convenient to the Executive. This is the last chance. I hope that my own party will win the election, and I hope that it will have in its manifesto the decision to repeal this legislation, but I rather fear that it would be as attracted to the idea of remaining in office for five years as this Government. This is the safety net—that it requires Governments to make that decision.
I make an appeal to the Minister. It really is worth listening to what this House has to say on constitutional issues. We are just seeing the first fruits—I should say the second fruits—of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, which was so strongly opposed in this House. It was strongly opposed on the ground of the unnecessary nature of a referendum on the alternative vote system, which, incidentally, I have just discovered in a reply from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, cost us £97 million in total, at a time when we are supposed not to have two pennies to rub together. I was very pleased with the result, but it was not worth £97 million for a few of us in this House and a few million people in the country to be pleased. We told the Government that it was a waste of time and a waste of money—we were right. We also said that reducing the number of MPs by 50 would not bring an advantage to our democracy and that it would be deeply destabilising. I would love the Minister to give me his assessment of what he thinks Members of the House of Commons would have to say now on a free vote in a secret ballot. Would they think that a Bill that has destabilised every constituency in Britain was a terrific one? If I were to write the Government a little resumé or memoir, which I will not, of the activities in which some of us have indulged in the past 12 months or so, I would have to call it “I Told You So” or “It’s Boring Being Right” or something along those lines. On constitutional matters—let me put it modestly—we are at least worth listening to. I do wish that the Government would listen to us on this one.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, very wisely did not mention among his justifications for five-year fixed Parliaments, or Parliaments of any fixed period, that they enable Governments sensibly to introduce legislative programmes over their period of office. I would like to challenge him to state that the Government are on course for doing that. Here we have five years, which is a year longer than any Government normally have for certain, and a two-year Session, but I would not say—again, I shall put it as kindly as I can—that we see a Rolls-Royce legislative planned operation going through. So I ask him not to use that as a defence of security of tenure and security of planning. But, above all, I ask the Minister, not with great hope or expectation, to acknowledge that we were not completely unworthy of being listened to over previous constitutional legislation and, even at this late date, not to commit the country to five-year fixed-term Parliaments ad infinitum as this legislation assuredly will—because that is precisely what any Government would want.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I wish simply to make one point which I consider, very humbly, to be a pertinent matter and one which constitutes a backcloth to the issue before the House. The point was tangentially mentioned in earlier debates that this was not a matter which could be made the subject of the operation of the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, but no one has argued in full as to its constitutional significance.
That Parliament saw fit in 1911 to make that so, and decided not to change the situation in 1949, is highly relevant to this issue. I would go so far as to suggest that it changes the whole balance of the relationship between the two Houses. I of course agree absolutely with what the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, said about the general primacy of the House of Commons as the elected Chamber over this place. My submission is that, in relation to this matter, all such conventions and all such inhibitions are totally removed. Section 1 of the Parliament Act 1911 excludes two matters from its operation. The first was money Bills, which of course did not come into it in the first instance, and the second was a Bill which prolonged to any degree the maximum life of Parliament. Clause 1(5) of this Bill does exactly that. It enables the Prime Minister of the day either to reduce the period of five years by up to two months or to add to it by two months. It does not matter, therefore, whether it is two months, two years or 20 years; a wall has been breached, a wall created by the House of Commons in protection of its own position and the position of democratic government altogether. It made this House the sentinel of that boundary. In other words, when we disagree with regard to this matter, it is utterly exceptional as compared with any other disagreement. We are far from challenging the authority of the House of Commons; we are abiding by it and making it real and entrusted.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
My Lords, several noble Lords this evening have referred—somewhat kindly, I must say—to the report of the Constitution Committee, which I have the privilege to chair, on the process of constitutional change. The Minister was kind enough to refer to it in his opening remarks. I look forward to the Government’s formal response to the report. It will enable the House to have a proper debate on the report, to which I equally look forward.
I suspect that the committee will be very surprised, as am I in immediate response to what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, to hear the content of the exchanges during the Summer Recess between the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in support of his original amendment. That seems to illustrate precisely, when we hear what the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, said, the inadequacy of process within the Government as related to constitutional matters. If it is the case that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, as he suggested and as was confirmed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, came forward with what sounded like rather appropriate substitutions and amendments to his original amendment, particularly regarding the question of when such a sunset clause could be introduced in the new Parliament as well as the other questions which he mentioned, I am very surprised that the Government did not respond to them in the way that has been suggested and, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said, simply put down the amendment in lieu that we have before us tonight. This is another illustration of precisely the problems about constitutional process to which the Constitution Committee’s full report tried to draw attention. As I have said, I hope that the report will be fully debated in the House.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I support the Motion of my noble and learned friend the Minister. Before I explain in brief terms why I do so, I want to say how much respect I have for the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. As I have said on previous occasions, he was the Cabinet Secretary when I was a civil servant in Downing Street. I know from first-hand experience what a wise, astute and reasonable man he is, but, on this occasion, I disagree with him. I can perhaps best explain why by answering the question asked by my noble friend Lord Forsyth in the previous round of ping-pong. He asked the Minister why he thought that the Bill was a step forward in restoring public confidence and trust in the political system. With all due respect to the Minister, I think that that was a challenge too far. It is a shame that my noble friend Lord Forsyth is not in his place, but to answer his question—this is my reason for supporting the Motion to accept the Commons amendments and not to introduce a sunset or sunrise clause—I think that five-year fixed-term Parliaments offer three things. The change proposed is real, relevant and a bit radical.
When I say real, I mean that the Prime Minister is giving up some real power so that the public will know that the Government and all political parties will have to face the electorate on a pre-determined date regardless of the political conditions at that time. It is relevant because that action is a direct response to the issue that we are responding to, which is the public’s distrust in this political system. It is a sad fact, but what the public told us following the MPs’ expenses scandal back in 2008 was that there was a lack of trust in our political system. The public wanted some evidence of us making an attempt to restore that trust. That we are giving up this power and making sure that in the future an election will happen in that way is a direct response that is relevant.
The proposal is a bit radical because we do not do that very often. We are not often enough real and we are not often relevant. It is also a bit radical rather than a lot radical because while we might see this as a massive constitutional issue, to the world outside it is a small concession. It means that we are providing certainty to the electorate. People will know every five years when the election will be. But it is important because it is tangible change.
Baroness Boothroyd
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I am sure that she was here when we had the Second Reading on the Bill. Perhaps she spoke on it: I think that I did. We have also had Committee stage where we dealt with amendments. Many noble Lords used Second Reading speeches at that stage. Today, we are dealing with a very specific area that is on the Order Paper. We have had a lot of Second Reading speeches during debates on this Bill and I think that we ought now to restrict our comments to what is precisely on the Order Paper before us.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I am about to conclude. It is important to make these points because I believe that the amendment that has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, affects the very heart of the Bill. That is why it is necessary for me to make these points.
If the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is accepted by the House, we will no longer be putting forward to the electorate change that is real, relevant and radical. We will actually be doing something that is quite predictable. On that basis, I support my noble and learned friend the Minister and I hope that we do not accept the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I have listened with some care to what previous noble Lords have said. It has been very thoughtful and I am not surprised that the noble Lords, Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Armstrong, take the view that they do. They are exactly the kind of recommendations that any good senior civil servant would give to the Prime Minister, which is, “Hold on to whatever power you have because it seems little enough at times”. I understand that.
But it is a mistake to suggest that the response of the other place is disrespectful. I do not think that it is. It is disagreement. There is a fundamental disagreement between those who take the view that a fixed-term Parliament is in the interests of the Parliament and of the people and those who take the view that it would be best to stick with what we have. Of course, this House and the other place felt it completely appropriate to have fixed-term arrangements in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Most other places around the world think that it is a good idea. It is not outlandish. Colleagues in the other place and noble Lords on the other Benches stood for election to the other place. It is not something that came suddenly out of the blue, like getting rid of the Lord Chancellor, for example. That was not thought through terribly enormously or consulted on. There is a disagreement. Some of us take the view that a fixed-term Parliament where you elect someone and say, “You will be elected for this period of time to do this job”, is the right way to do it.
The question that has now been raised is, “Is the amendment that has come back from the other place a fair and reasonable one or a scrawny child?”. It does not seem to me unreasonable that one should wait for the passage of two terms of Parliament, which is after all what we are talking about. To simply return to the question in a month or two tells you nothing about whether this approach is reasonable. Sometimes one has to take time to think one's way through and see if what you have is genuinely a change for the better or worse.
It is clear that there is an intellectually honest disagreement. Noble Lords here have understandable points, but it is not the case that the Government are seeking to be disrespectful. Rather, they are saying, “We do not agree with this and so, having listened to what the House of Lords has said, we have said that we appreciate that but we think that post-legislative scrutiny after two mandates is a reasonable way to address the issue”. I appeal to noble Lords to see it in that light and give the other place the primacy that is appropriate in this context.
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield
My Lords, I listened with great attention to the Minister a moment ago and I think that I detected an anxiety on his part that the royal prerogative on the dissolution of Parliament would somehow be thrown into confusion. Her Majesty the Queen graciously places her prerogative at the disposal of Parliament every time the question arises. She always has and always will. I hope that the Minister will elaborate on the anxieties if indeed I am right to detect them in what he said, but I cannot see the problem about the Queen's personal prerogative of dissolution being revived on a vote of the House of Commons if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is passed. There is no constitutional dilemma at all here. Perhaps he has better advice than I have and perhaps he could elaborate in a moment or two.
Lord Bach
My Lords, I do not intend to take up much time of the House. Our position remains the same. We support the amendment. It still seems to us to be a practical and sensible proposal that is generous to the Government and gives them their five-year term of this Parliament but takes account of the substantial concern and suspicion that there is about the Bill across both Houses of Parliament. Noble Lords may have seen that, last week in the House of Commons, at least seven Conservative Members of Parliament voted against the Government on this issue.
What is Her Majesty's Government's argument? Put by a junior Minister at the Cabinet Office, the honourable Mr Harper, last week, it is effectively that the Cross-Bench amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is unconstitutional. Anyone reading Mr Harper's speech from last week and looking at the ridiculous amendment proposed by the Government would be struck by the frankly patronising, even insulting, manner in which he addresses the Cross-Bench amendment. It is perhaps a little cheeky for a junior Minister to attempt to patronise two ex-Cabinet Secretaries, a very distinguished ex-Speaker of the House of Commons and one of our leading constitutional legal experts, but that is what he chose to do. That insult, or patronisation, pales into insignificance compared with the pure chutzpah in this Government protesting about the way in which constitutional change takes place. If the right reverend Prelate will forgive me, it is a bit like Satan preaching against sin.
Where, both in this Bill and in its now notorious predecessor, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011—whose absurd consequences we can all see this week, and the Liberal Democrat Benches more than most—was there, first, any pre-legislative scrutiny? Secondly, where was there any draft legislation? Thirdly, where was there any suggestion in the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the last election of supporting fixed-term Parliaments? Indeed, I recall—and I am sure the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—the Prime Minister himself, before the election, insisting that there must be a general election whenever a new Prime Minister took office. That is the complete opposite of what is proposed in this Bill. Where is there the search for consensus? Where, in short, is there any of that care, caution and concern for our past, present and future which should always be part of constitutional change? The answer of course is that there was none, and our country will pay the price for such hurried and careless law-making.
The Government criticise the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, saying that the sunset clause is not suitable in a constitutional Bill, forgetting, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, reminded us a few minutes ago, that, when in opposition, both parties demanded—quite rightly, in many cases—sunset clauses in constitutional matters affecting citizens’ civil liberties. In short, there is absolutely nothing unconstitutional.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
Will the noble Lord help me on this? Does he agree that this sunset clause is not just a sunset clause but also a sunrise clause, in the sense that the matter can be brought back in any subsequent Parliament, for the duration of that Parliament alone, so that effectively the difference between this clause and other sunset clauses—that is, the clauses proposed by the amendment—is to leave the country and the electorate in a state of permanent uncertainty, and to deprive the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, as it would be, of any force whatever to that effect?
Lord Bach
I disagree entirely with the noble Lord’s point. But I will ask why in that case he thinks that the Government that he supports did not support the suggestion that the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Pannick, made to the Government during the Recess. What was wrong with it, as far as the Government were concerned?
To sum up, there is absolutely nothing unconstitutional about this proposal. Frankly, there was much more unconstitutionality in the way this Bill was dreamed up by the two parties in the coalition as a way of protecting their own party interests—and if one wants proof of that, one only has to look at page 98 of the right honourable David Laws’ book 22 Days in May. For all these reasons, the House should not take any lessons from this Government on constitutional propriety. We will be supporting the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, anyone who had never known any of the history of this, listening to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, would probably be astounded to learn that the Labour Party supported the idea of fixed-term Parliaments in its manifesto, as far back as 1992—
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The argument that, because Labour lost, that devalues the principle is not one I have fully understood. The noble Lord seemed to suggest that the Prime Minister had completely set his face against fixed-term Parliaments. In a speech entitled “Fixing Broken Politics” which my right honourable friend the then Leader of the Opposition made on Tuesday 26 May 2009, he said:
“But I believe the arguments for fixed-term Parliaments are strengthening too. Because if we want Parliament to be a real engine of accountability, we need to show that it is not just the creature of the executive. That's why a Conservative Government will seriously consider the option of fixed-term Parliaments when there is a majority government”.
So I think it is wrong to say that this is something that the Prime Minister had totally set his face against in opposition. There was a commitment in the Conservative manifesto to look at areas of the exercise of the royal prerogative.
Can I start by picking up the points which my noble friend Lord Alderdice made? I think he put his finger on it when he said that this is not disrespect but disagreement. It is a genuine disagreement, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, would agree that when Mr Mark Harper and I met him it was quite clear that there was a gulf between us. Two propositions were put to us, which would have addressed what we had identified as some of the technical—indeed, more than technical—problems of the amendment, but did not actually address what we believed to be a fundamental problem with the amendment, which is that it undermines the actual core purpose of the Bill. This Bill is the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, in the plural. It is not a Bill to have a fixed-term Parliament for this Parliament, the one elected in May 2010, but rather one to have fixed-term Parliaments into the future, all this of course being subject to the right of any Parliament to repeal the legislation of a predecessor Parliament. That is why there is a fundamental difference.
Therefore it is not disrespect, and I can assure your Lordships that I would not wish to be disrespectful to genuinely held views. I think some people do not believe that having a fixed-term Parliament is right, but they will allow us to make some fix for this Parliament. In fact I think that what happens with the amendment is that it leaves us in the position of having the potential of a fix for every future Parliament. It is not putting this on a permanent basis; it is an amendment which could allow the powers to lapse, and then be revived again in a subsequent Parliament after 2020, or whenever—if the powers had lapsed, it might not necessarily last the full five years. The incoming Parliament following that election could revive the powers, or again, after a subsequent election, it could let them lapse. We do not believe that that is a particularly good way of legislating with regard to the constitution. It is literally switching the light on and switching the light off again.
That is why—if I pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—I have a concern about the nature of the royal prerogative. The existence of the royal prerogative would then appear to be dependent upon the resolutions of each House not being carried. It does not seem very desirable that the prerogative may sometimes not exist, and then sometimes be revived. That may not be the drafter’s intention, but it is not clear what he has achieved in the drafting. In particular, the presumption of Section 16 of the Interpretation Act 1978 is that where an enactment of temporary duration—which the provisions abrogating the dissolution of prerogative appear to be—expires, it does not ordinarily revive anything not in force at the time of the expiry. I think there is a genuine concern there. In matters so important as the royal prerogative, the idea that it can be revived, then allowed to lapse and then revived again is not particularly satisfactory.
I shall now pick up the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, about the Parliament Act. It is something we have always acknowledged and recognised. The reason why the Parliament Acts would not apply in this case is nothing to do with the concept of fixed-term Parliaments. As he rightly pointed out, it is a provision in the Bill: in response to this House we deleted the part that would allow the election to be brought forward by two months, but there was still a provision there to extend it by two months. That takes it over the five years—the arguments for that were debated well at the time—as happened also in 2001 with the outbreak of foot and mouth. It is also important to point out that your Lordships’ Delegated Powers Committee actually said that it thought it was a proper power, but recommended that we should have a Written Statement from the Prime Minister as to why the power was being exercised—a recommendation which we accepted. I do not think that is an issue about which there is any real dispute. It goes to the heart of whether or not we should have fixed-term Parliaments.
That takes me to the core issue; and, I say again, we are not being disrespectful. When one is proposing a review that will not take place until 2020, it is very easy to talk about long grass, time capsules or scrawny babies. However, it would be even more disrespectful—frankly ludicrous—to ask a committee to examine a fixed-term Parliament when there had not been one. I take the strictures and advice that I got from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, who said he was glad that I had not advanced the argument about the planning of government business. However, until this legislation is passed, this is not a fixed-term Parliament. Therefore, it is not reasonable to suggest that the example of this Parliament could ever be described as a proper, normal fixed-term Parliament. Many of us have advanced arguments during the debates as to why we think there ought to be a fixed-term Parliament; and, indeed, why they ought to be five years rather than four—an issue which no doubt a post-legislative review could finalise. We will only know whether the case for the beneficial effects has been made out when we have actually had the experience of one fixed-term Parliament elected as a fixed-term Parliament and seeing through its term; or, for that matter, had an early election because of some event that has triggered the mechanism in Clause 2.
I do not consider that an insult. If you are going to do proper pre-legislative scrutiny, make sure that you are scrutinising something that has actually happened—that you have actually got a piece of material, or evidence, on which you can actually base informed scrutiny.
Baroness Boothroyd
Is the Minister telling us that we do not scrutinise Bills before they come into operation? Is he suggesting that we have no pre-scrutiny now?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I look upon it as post-legislative scrutiny. You cannot scrutinise what you have legislated for until it has happened. We will not have had a fixed-term Parliament that has run its full course until 2020. It is as simple as that.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, how can it be a fixed-term Parliament unless Members were elected to it as a fixed-term Parliament? That is the point—
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, I am sorry, but the reality is it is not a fixed-term Parliament. Members were elected to a Parliament on the old system—quite a different matter.
Baroness Jay of Paddington
I ask the noble Lord, through the Minister, whether it is therefore the Government’s position that all the arguments and discussions we had about no-confidence Motions—as they related historically and as they will, presumably, be affected under the fixed-term Parliament legislation—will not apply to this Parliament before 2015.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That is not the case, as we know. I was making the point that this Parliament was not elected as a fixed-term Parliament. I am sure if the noble Baroness thinks about it, she will appreciate this. The arguments, I recall, when we debated the benefits of four or five years and whether it would affect the legislative plan of Governments coming into office, were that this would not happen with this Parliament, as that was not the basis on which it was elected. I am saying that you really need the experience of a full fixed-term Parliament to see whether the claims that have been made for it have been borne out. Therefore there is no way that is disrespectful—it is the only time you can have a meaningful post-legislative review, unless you are simply going to have an academic one rather than one based properly on experience.
I say again that I believe that this House has made an important contribution to this Bill and that its shape—in particular the trigger mechanisms for an early election—is vastly better because of the debates that we had. This Government are prepared to listen and have shown their willingness to do so. However, we cannot agree to something that we believe actually goes to the heart of the Bill and undermines one of its central purposes. For that reason, we cannot agree with the Motion as proposed, but we believe that it is proper and right to have a proper post-legislative review; one which, if the fixed-term Parliaments take their normal course, would have to be started within just over one month after the election or no later than six months after that. There is a set time limit under which the Prime Minister would have to make the necessary arrangements. On that basis, I commend that amendment in lieu to the House.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
I thank those who have taken part in this debate. I particularly say to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, that of course I accept that this is a disagreement—a disagreement on a very important constitutional matter, on which, I think, everybody agrees there has not been the normal preparation for a major change on a constitutional matter. That is the argument for allowing a sunrise clause, which will allow the next Parliament to take a view, in the light of further deliberation, consideration and consultation, and, indeed, of experience. Those who read the debate in the House of Commons last week will know that there are views on both sides of that House on this matter. As has been said, both on the government and the opposition side, there is concern about, and opposition to, the Bill as it stands.
The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, said, in his very eloquent way, that the House of Lords never has to give way to this Bill, strictly speaking, because it is not covered by the Parliament Act. I sincerely hope that it does not come to that but, in the House of Commons debate last week, it was a Conservative Member who—making the point that the Bill is not covered by the Parliament Act—said that the House of Lords can hold out indefinitely if necessary. I am not arguing for that at all but would like to have the sort of serious discussions with the Government on a serious constitutional matter that so far—I am sorry to say—the Government have not been prepared to have. In the House of Commons last week, the Labour spokesman said of the Member who pointed to the effect of the Parliament Act:
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: your lordships, stand firm”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/9/11; col. 592.]
I very much hope that the House of Lords tonight will stand firm, with a view to enabling meaningful discussions with the Government on this important constitutional matter. I beg to test the opinion of the House.
Localism Bill
(12 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Earl of Lytton
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, not having spoken previously at this stage of the Bill, I declare an interest as president of the National Association of Local Councils and as president of one of its county associations.
The intention behind Amendments 166 to 169 is simply to prevent Schedule 4 to the Bill repealing what I believe are useful parts of the Local Government Act 2000. It may be for the convenience of your Lordships and make for a more coherent debate if I do no more than move Amendment 166 at this juncture and then, with the leave of the House, speak to the detail of the amendments in the group after the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has spoken to his Amendment 175. I trust that your Lordships will permit that.
Lord Bichard
My Lords, I first thank my noble friend Lord Lytton for allowing me to lead on this group of amendments. The amendments that I shall speak to today go to the heart of effective and credible local governance. In others words, they are neither technical amendments nor desirable but non-essential. That is why they have obtained support from across the House. Without them there is a serious risk that the progress on standards of conduct that has undoubtedly been made in local government in recent years will be lost. If that happens, it will damage not only local citizens and the reputation of local government but the Government and Parliament.
As currently drafted, the Bill proposes placing a new general duty on councils to promote and maintain high standards. At the same time, it proposes to abolish the standards board for England and the national code of conduct. It proposes to let each council choose whether to have a code of conduct and, if they do, what to include in it. It proposes that the current requirement for standards committees with independent members should be removed. It proposes removing the powers to suspend members who have breached the code. Finally, it would introduce a new criminal offence of failing to register or declare a pecuniary interest.
The amendments before the House in my name do not seek to perpetuate either a national standards board or a centrally prescribed national code of conduct. I accept that a prescribed national code would run counter to the Government’s avowed intent to devolve more responsibility to local communities, which I thoroughly welcome. I also accept that the standards board, in spite of some excellent work and some very dedicated staff, has just not made a strong enough case for its retention. While I accept those changes, the impact of the other proposals will, I suggest, be seriously damaging. At a time when the public’s trust in politicians is at a low ebb, it is important that all public bodies have explicit standards of conduct, which make transparent how they will carry out their business and provide benchmarks against which they can be held to account. A sceptical public will otherwise assume the worst. This is all the more important as local councils are rightly and belatedly given more power through elected mayors and changes in the planning regime. It is absolutely essential in these circumstances that the public have confidence in the people who will take responsibility for those powers if those powers and that devolution are to be sustained as we all want them to be.
However, a discretionary system will have other dis-benefits. Inevitably, it will mean that standards are discretionary and that they are not a priority. As councils adopt different arrangements across the country, and they inevitably will, the public and business will find it difficult to understand what is to be expected from their particular authority or the authority with which they are doing business. Worse still, the authorities that do not take standards seriously will of course be least likely to adopt a code with any kind of rigorous content. That will result in damage not just to the reputation of that particular council, but to the reputation of local government as a whole. There will be some who argue that all councils would naturally and voluntarily adopt a code, so we really do not need a mandatory requirement. But in my recent research I have found a number of councils already showing great willingness to jettison any sort of code. We need to take account of that.
For all of those reasons, a national code of conduct is necessary. Not one prescribed by the Secretary of State and imposed on local government, but one developed by local government in accordance with the principles of public life and adopted by all councils. That is the purpose of my Amendment 175.
If we are to have a mandatory code, there does need to be some leverage to ensure that it is taken seriously. The proposal to remove the current requirement for a local standards committee with independent members, to monitor the implementation of the code and, where necessary, to suspend members who are in breach, will take away an important influence. In addition, it will further feed the scepticism of those members of the public who believe that councillors are, frankly, in it for their own good. Amendments 177 and 178 therefore seek to reinstate a local standards committee with a right of appeal for members found to have fallen foul of that code. There is scope for discussion of the precise nature of those standards committees, so as to reflect the particular characteristics of a local area or local authority, but standards committees must be reinstated.
My Amendments 179 and 188 concern the proposed introduction of a new criminal offence for failing to register or declare a pecuniary interest, which is also the subject of further government amendments. The problem with this proposal as it stands—and this is not resolved by the several amendments on the Marshalled List—is that it applies only to pecuniary interests, and covers only the elected member and their spousal partner. Consequently, councillors will only need to declare registered pecuniary interests where they or their partner directly benefit financially. If they fail to do that, no matter how minor the interest, they will have committed a criminal offence. However, elected members would not need to declare non-pecuniary interests or the interests of other members of their family. To put this in context, an elected member could vote for their son’s planning application with impunity. The proposals, as they stand, leave unregulated most of the previous examples of malpractice where there have been attempts to manipulate the planning, licensing and housing systems. One of the consequences of this will, I have no doubt, be that councils will run a far greater risk of legal challenge over decisions that are perceived to be biased.
I have been heartened by the widespread support that I have received for all these amendments—not just across the House but outside too—from the independent Liberal Democrat and Labour groups on the Local Government Association, the Law Society, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives of which I used to be a member, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors, the Society of Local Council Clerks and the National Association of Local Councils. Let us not forget that these same issues affect town and parish councils, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will I am sure remind us shortly. All those respected organisations support these amendments. However, they are also tellingly supported by Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, who said recently that the Government’s proposals as they stand,
“risk lower standards and a decline in public confidence”.
As I said at the outset, a great deal of progress has been made in recent years to improve the standards of local governance, but that is not to say there have been no transgressions—there have been—and none of us should ever be complacent. Thirty years ago I was the chief executive of the London Borough of Brent—not something that I widely advertise but many Members of the House will recall it. There I witnessed at first hand some of the most serious failures of conduct and behaviour. Of course, at that time they were not confined to the London Borough of Brent. None of us expects to see the return of such things, but explicit transparent codes are critical parts of the machinery to prevent that ever happening again.
You can—and I have long argued that you should—devolve decisions about the level of services. You can and you should devolve decisions about the cost of services and the way in which the needs of local communities are met. However, you should never ever devolve the question of whether probity is a priority. You should never make standards discretionary.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 170A, to which I shall speak in a minute. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, on his extraordinarily good presentation of the issues that lie behind his amendments. Like other members of the Liberal Democrats here I fully support them. I also thank the Minister and his colleagues, as well as the Bill team, for the amount of time and commitment that they have given to discussions—certainly with us and, I think, right around the House—on this and other issues, in order to try to find a compromise and a way forward that satisfies the wish of the Government to dismantle the national bureaucracy of the Standards Board for England. We all want that to happen without compromising the fundamental principles behind standards in public life in local government that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has ably set forward.
My amendment, which I shall speak to briefly, is about parish and town councils. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will follow up to talk about them also. I have not seen any statistics but all the anecdotal evidence from areas with a lot of parish and town councils is that standards problems at that level of local government take up a remarkably large proportion of the time of, and the cases that come to, local standards committees. The reasons are obvious: a lot of parish councils are only small, they have clerks who are very much part-time and they simply do not have the expertise or, very often, the authority to deal with what are sometimes leading local personalities who do not take kindly to being told what to do and how to do it. Whatever the reason—and I do not think that it is through a lack of willingness by parish councils to deal with this problem and to cope with it; the issue is their ability or competence to do so—they take up a lot of time and a high proportion of the time of standards committees. The proposals as put forward by the Government simply do not seem to recognise this, because they suggest that parish and town councils can simply look after their own standards regime and their own standards system as a freestanding authority. Unfortunately the truth is that this will simply lead to a collapse of any proper standards system in a large proportion of these councils. It may be that large town councils will, in many cases, be able to cope—and some others will cope—but there will be a serious problem.
My amendment simply suggests—and it is designed to fit into the Bill as it exists at the moment, unamended—that whatever system there is within a district or unitary authority should also apply to the town and parish councils within that area, which is the present system. That may not be the best way to solve the town and parish council problem, but a solution has to be found before the Bill leaves this House. I understand that the Minister will promise more discussions on parish councils, in particular, before Third Reading and if that is the case, I do not want to say anything more today, but it has to be sorted out and a solution found which will work in all town and parish councils, which vary from quite large town councils of, perhaps, 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 people right down to little parishes of 200 or 300 electors. I have nothing more to say about that; I look forward to discussions that the Minister is going to offer us at the end of this debate.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I have two possible speeches, upon which I thought I might seek the opinion of the House. One is the two-hour, scripted version and the other is the two-minute, unscripted version. I do not think that I need to seek the opinion of the House before I know which they would prefer, and it will be the shorter one.
My name is on this amendment and not by accident. I feel quite strongly about it, I support it, I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has said in favour of it. However, a number of little birds have whispered to me during the last few days that there has been a lot of talking behind the scenes—indeed, one or two people have even spoken to me—and I share my noble friend Lord Greaves’s understanding that there is a willingness to undertake discussions across the whole range of issues, including whether there should be a code, what machinery there should be and some of the detail and the nature of the points on the criminal offence. In those circumstances, I would not wish to make trouble tonight.
I very much hope, therefore, that my noble friend on the Front Bench will indeed offer such discussions on a wide-ranging basis, covering the whole breadth of the issue, bearing in mind that we are not looking for confrontation; we are looking for a satisfactory outcome without shutting off the possibility of raising matters at Third Reading should we find it not possible to achieve a reasonable agreement. If my noble friend responds in that spirit, I shall go quietly, certainly for tonight. If he does not, I am aware that I am slightly burning my boats because I shall not be able to speak again, but I can tell him that I will do my best to make life hell for him in his winding-up speech. I look forward to his conciliatory gesture in quick order.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I share the optimism of the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, that we are this evening going to come to some sensible consensus on the way forward. I particularly applaud those noble Lords who have tabled amendments this evening, because I think that they are extraordinarily important; they are the very heart of our local democracy and I hope that they are going to receive a very positive response from my noble friends on the Front Bench.
Lord Best
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the standards committee of Westminster City Council and as president of the Local Government Association, but I do not speak in either of those capacities. I just wanted to add, from my knowledge of the Local Government Association, that if there is to be a code of conduct—and the arguments for that have been very well put by noble Lords—I believe that the Local Government Association is extremely well equipped to draw up an entirely sensible code and to gain the approval for this from all local authorities. I, too, look forward to hearing the Minister’s ideas for taking this forward.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, if your Lordships will excuse a slight déjà vu and second time round, which I know is a trifle out of order, I will now, with the benefit of the excellent introduction given by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, to Amendment 175, drill down a little bit into the issues that I think are important, which specifically focus on parish and town councils.
To explain this, and my comments, it is necessary to go back to Section 53 of the Local Government Act 2000, which states at Section 53(1) that,
“every relevant authority must establish”,
a standards committee. However, Section 53(2) exempts parish councils from that duty. Why? For the very practical reason that the mandatory creation of 9,000 dedicated parish council standards committees across the country would be something of a nightmare, as well as a very considerable duplication of something that is already done via the standards committees of principal authorities. This would be disproportionate and unaffordable, especially to very small parishes. Parishes currently utilise the district and unitary authority standards committees to avoid just this problem and I am not aware of any suggestion that this does not work tolerably satisfactorily.
Paragraph 11(2) of Schedule 4 to the Bill removes the parish exemption. Therefore, the use of principal authority committees is lost and, as I see it, this gets us back to this mandatory appointment of the 9,000 parish committees. In fact, this creation of a mandatory committee would be a first because there is no other measure that obliges parish and town councils to create any committees. This would be something of a novel departure. I felt that that was not good, and so my Amendments 166 to 169 were intended to prevent that happening.
What happens at parish and town council level, as the tier that stands to be a major beneficiary under the process of localism espoused in this Bill, is of course very significant. As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has pointed out, this tier will potentially wield far greater powers, command much larger resources and have custody of greater amounts of taxpayers’ money and assets on behalf of the communities. The public generally will expect a seamless, effective and enforceable regime of standards, particularly given what we have all read in the media in recent months and years. In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, parish and town councils need to raise their game and this is going to take a little bit of time. I do not think that we can expect an instant fix.
I support the principle of clear, proportionate and enforceable standards that apply at parish and town council level. The National Association of Local Councils supports it. Together, we regard it as the basic hallmark of integrity and coherence, and indeed as the basis of public confidence in local government at all levels.
Therefore, I am extremely pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has tabled Amendment 175. I very much support it in its entirety and I can confirm that the National Association of Local Councils does as well. The fact that the amendment restates the Nolan principles is itself particularly welcome, and I do not think that anyone could argue with that. After all, we all sign up to principles that look like that when we take the oath or affirm on entering this House. However, sometimes I think that the rather basic aspects of motherhood and apple pie come in with the recitation of these Nolan principles. I know that a lot of this is contained in regulation elsewhere, but I do not think that it is to be found in any Bill and it is about time that it was stated. Sometimes one has to state these basics to avoid the problem of constantly trying to rewrite and amend legislation. You need an anchor point to go back to.
The amendment opens up a broader issue of how minimum levels of standards should apply, the manner in which they are to be observed and, ultimately, the criteria for their enforcement. It is all very well having standards but there has to be an enforcement process. If I have one slight objection to Amendment 177, it is that it appears to make standards committees mandatory for every relevant authority. As I see it, a relevant authority would, in this context, include parish and town councils, so we get back to the 9,000 committees that I am trying studiously to avoid.
Having realised that there is a general problem, the Government have tabled a series of their own amendments, which will come up later—Amendments 181 to 187. Although I have some reservations about those amendments—in some places they go too far and in others they do not go far enough—it is none the less a welcome affirmation that something needs to be done.
I finish by making a few suggestions about how I think standards should operate in practice for parish councils. First, they need the oversight of a standards committee, much as at present, and I think that we have to re-establish that. Secondly, the time has come for an accepted base line of generic standards to be stated in legislation, as I said earlier. I think that those standards need to be consistent across the board—throughout large and small parish and town councils. I do not think that we can get away from a need to have a consistent approach. They need to be based on a requirement both to register interests and to declare them at the appropriate moment—not one or the other. The requirement must not be weak or full of loopholes. Any family business or other interest—whether personal or relating to an associate and within a defined proximity which should be neither too narrow nor too wide—needs ultimately to be declarable. Just because a pecuniary interest has to be declared, I do not think it follows that the person declaring it should thereby be immediately excluded from all further discussion. He or she may be the one person who can throw some light on a complicated issue. However, I accept that it is almost certainly not appropriate for them to take part in any vote on the matter. I suspect that here a little discretion needs to be vested in the chairman, probably backed by some sort of standing orders. I just leave that in park for the moment.
A disproportionate cost in any of the administration of this is going to be a considerable enemy. As I pointed out yesterday in conversation with the Minister, undue complexity is the smokescreen for sharp practice, and I think that we want to avoid both those pitfalls.
I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, that standards in our procedures need to be enforceable and have sanctions that mean something. That said, I think that making a failure to register an interest an automatic criminal offence, regardless of circumstances, goes too far. I accept that some types of sanction will need to be subject to a right of appeal and I can see why Amendments 178 and 179 have been tabled in that respect. However, I enter a plea: can we keep all but the most exceptionable lapses out of the courts while retaining effective measures to ensure that an elected member complies? I have a pathological fear of things being tied up in court proceedings.
At present we have a statutory code made under regulations under the 2000 Act. I have not heard anything to suggest that this code is considered to be a bad one, but I accept that the imposition of a code by the Secretary of State sits ill with the ethos of the Bill. However, getting rid of the code in the interests of non-centralism, if I can put it in those terms, does not of itself make for the advancement of localism. We need to preserve what is good, even if it has somehow to be rebranded. Parliament should set the basic criteria for standards, of course, and that is the point being made here, but it does not need to make the detailed rules. I sympathise with the Government not wanting to hand down prescriptions from on high. We will not necessarily get a perfect solution, which touches on something mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, but with a bit of collective thought we can probably get somewhere quite close to it.
My final comment concerns one of detail in respect of Amendment 177. In so far as standards committees have under their consideration the affairs of a parish or town council, I would like it to be understood that in the interests of fair representation, at least one member of that committee should be from another parish council within the same district. If I have forgotten anything, I hope that others will pick it up, but I have said quite enough for an intervention and a half.
Lord Filkin
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and my other co-supporters of this group of amendments, I think we are pleased with the way in which this House has approached these issues. We have done so as far as we possibly could on a non-party basis, and that is why there are signatories to the amendments from all four corners. For obvious reasons, public standards matter too much simply to be treated as a party-political football issue. What is also remarkable is the depth of support that has been shown by local government for these amendments. The argument was put to me that local government want the changes being brought forward in the Bill. All I can say to that is: how is it that three of the four Local Government Association party-political groups have expressed explicit support for these amendments? Every single one of the major local authority professional bodies supports these amendments, as has the Law Society. It is almost inconceivable that such a strong coalition of support should arise for what to some would seem to be such an arcane and specialised issue.
The Government are not foolish and they can see what is at risk if these issues are put to a vote. Wise Ministers in this House always listen and are flexible, and therefore as a result of conversations that took place perhaps slightly late—but they did happen so we are grateful for that—there has been, as you can sense by the mood and the number of noble Lords in the Chamber, a willingness on both sides to move away from adversarial politics towards a proper process of seeking to try to improve the Bill and achieve the objectives that I believe most people wish for it. I thank Ministers for that and look forward to the response.
I would not normally go further because for obvious reasons it is bad manners to shoot people’s foxes, but I need to give a little hint of what I have total confidence the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is going to say. I do so because it bears explicitly on the issue that I want to do no more than signpost at this stage. A good standards regime requires four things. First, it requires some very clear principled and comprehensible standards. Nolan and his work gave us the foundation for so many codes in public life; we would be mad if we moved away from that. Most of us believe that such standards ought to be universal, albeit leaving the freedom to make local additions, but not subtractions, from those fundamentals. You need an appropriate process for addressing these issues. Clearly there is room for considerable debate and probably an improvement on the current systems. You then need appropriate sanctions, which is what I shall talk to. Lastly, if you have any significant sanctions, ECHR will say that you need some sort of light-touch and proportionate appeals process so that fairness can be seen to be done. Those are the four elements of an effective sanctions regime.
Let me test the patience of the House for a short while by talking about sanctions. One of the most surprising issues in the Bill is that it introduces a criminal sanction, when there has never been an explicit criminal sanction over and above how the criminal law already sits. I have looked high and low to find strong, genuine supporters for this. I have found only one I am certain of, and I will not mention who that is. I wondered why it was seen as so important that there was such a strong sanction—a criminal sanction—introduced, when nobody else seemed to think it was necessary.
I think it may go back to the wish energetically to sweep away as much as possible of the architecture and process, which may have become slightly baroque as a consequence of the years, and not to preserve even, to torture my analogy, some Romanesque purity underneath. One can envisage that a wish to get rid of any national code, and to leave local authorities totally free to decide whether they had a code or not—you could hardly make it up—would perhaps be seen as a step too far, and completely unwise, unless there was some signal that the Government were serious about this issue. Enter the criminal sanction.
But the criminal sanction is no longer needed. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, explained why it was inappropriate and ineffective, because it did not bear down on some of the most serious potential issues. That should worry us all. But it is inappropriate now because of what I believe we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. I believe we will hear a recognition that every local authority has to have a standards code, and every code must contain some mandatory elements. If he does say that, I think there will be general rejoicing around the House, and then we will work on the detail of what should be in the code, and who should make it. That is all good stuff. We will at least start from a point of sanity. It is surprising that one would actually celebrate the achievement of that, because to some of us it would seem to be the most blindingly obvious piece of common sense that you would not even spend five minutes arguing on. But putting that to one side, we are glad of where we are moving to rather than regretting where we have been.
If, then, every authority is to have a code, and to abide by at least some mandatory elements, why do we need a criminal sanction? The case for that has not been made. We need a criminal sanction because, as far as I can see—and I will have to probe on government Amendment 180 a little more, as this is in effect the first time we have seen these amendments, and I will raise a series of questions about that—it looks as though the Bill has removed all the other existing sanctions, apart from censure, that a local authority can have when it is applying a scrutiny process. Again, to some of us, who believe in localism, that seems to be strange, verging on bizarre.
Why would one not wish to have as much as possible resolved at the local level? It goes for good regulation and good government that, wherever you possibly can, you resolve issues locally. Therefore, a local authority must be able to retain the powers it currently has to sanction when, after a proper and fair process, a misdemeanour, large or small, has been found. If the existing sanctions are retained, the criminal sanction is not needed.
I would expect rejoicing around the House generally, that we could live without one more criminal act, particularly an unnecessary one. I will say no more on this for now, but will probe further on government Amendment 180. We do need to ensure that there are meaningful sanctions that operate at a local level fairly, so that, as much as possible, these issues can be dealt with sensibly and with a light touch in the locality. This is why we should restore the sanctions that local authorities currently have, when they have had a proper process against a complaint. I will come back, I fear, at government Amendment 180, on these other points.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am a thoroughgoing supporter of Amendment 175 and of the amendments proposed by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. We will get parish councils which have great power and influence in their neighbourhood. Politics at that level get very personal and intricate. Unless we have a national set of standards, nobody will know where they are from one of a discussion to the next. Where the acceptable ends and where the unacceptable begins need to be made clear. I therefore have complete sympathy with Amendment 175. What we need beyond that I do not know. At the parish level, I am unconvinced that we need a lot more, because of the referendum process that we are going through in order to get local powers over planning, which will make everything very open and obvious. It may just be that we need the code and that we do not need a lot of mechanism for enforcement. However, I am very happy that discussions should take place, and I am sure that something sensible will emerge. I am delighted that the Government are taking such a supportive attitude to the amendments.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I added my name to the amendments so comprehensively and ably spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, a little over three-quarters of an hour ago. The way in which the treatment of the issue has developed has been quite an object lesson in itself. As far as I am aware, it received little or no consideration in the other place. If I recall correctly, the only person in the Second Reading debate to devote their speech substantially to this issue was the noble Lord, Lord Filkin. It was at that point that I became very conscious that, in the midst of our general rejoicing at the proposed demise of the Standards Board for England, we were in grave danger of not thinking about what was going to be left later, which effectively was nothing: everything was going out—the baby and the bathwater.
When we got to Committee, we did not reach this issue until a Thursday evening, after the time when the Committee would normally have adjourned. I remember getting rather tired and emotional about such an important issue being addressed at such an hour. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who has known me for the best part of 30 years, is clearly astonished that I could ever get “tired and emotional”, but it sometimes happens late on a Thursday night, as it did on that occasion.
Lord Tope
It was an extremely serious issue. The Government seemed to be taking the view that this was a Localism Bill and that standards in public life could therefore be dealt in accordance with local diversity. I was pleased to see in the briefing from the National Association of Local Councils, much quoted in this debate, the matter put very succinctly. It stated that,
“there is no local diversity about what is appropriate conduct for councillors”.
There is no one keener on local diversity than me, but the one area where local diversity is particularly inappropriate, and where in the past we have had rather too much of it, is in standards in public life.
I am therefore delighted, although still a little surprised, that, at this very late stage in the Bill’s process, we are having a full and good debate on the subject. The Minister’s response has been so much heralded that it is in danger of becoming an anticlimax, because we have all said what we think that he is going to say. If he says it, it will be what we expected; if he does not, we are all in trouble.
I am delighted that we are now, at this late stage, coming to address the real issue, which is not whether we should have had the Standards Board and whether we are pleased that it is going—everyone accepts that it is going—it is what replaces it. There seems now, a little late but welcome nevertheless, to be a general acceptance that there needs to be a mandatory code, that it should not be imposed by central government and the Secretary of State, that it should be drawn up, as our amendment states, by “representatives of local government”—I think that it is generally understood what that means—and that it needs to be mandatory both in terms of its existence and of what is in it, although it may be added to.
Lord Wills
I support the amendment. I withdrew my own amendment, which was directed to much the same objectives, because I thought that this one was better. It was more comprehensive and generally much more effective than my own.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, so compellingly set out, the transparent setting of standards for elected representatives plays an important part in securing the accountability that is fundamental for the health of any democracy. With the greater powers conferred on local authorities by the Bill should come greater accountability. Yet as this Bill currently stands, it risks some elected representatives not being accountable in that way. It cannot be acceptable to run the risk of leaving any elected representatives so unaccountable.
Voters expect their elected representatives to meet certain standards. They will expect a code of conduct to be in place for their representatives on every local authority and this amendment will ensure that such expectations are met. I very much hope that the further dialogue about which there has been so much conversation in the debate already will produce an outcome that embeds if not the exact words in these amendments at least something that achieves their effect.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I feel obliged to pay particular attention to the need to declare interests as I reply on behalf of the Opposition to this debate, so I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council, as a recently appointed member of its standards committee and as an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association. I join other colleagues in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and his co-signatories on bringing forward these amendments. I fear that the tiredness of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, may account for the fact that he omitted to recall that several of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, myself and others raised the whole agenda of standards boards and committees at earlier stages of the Bill.
Lord Tope
My Lords, in no way would I wish to cast aspersions on the noble Lord and certainly not on my noble friend Lord Shipley. My point was that, if my memory is correct, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, devoted his entire speech, or pretty well his entire speech, to the issue of standards. He was the only one in the debate to have done so—not surprisingly, as it is such a big Bill.
Lord Beecham
Indeed, and I join the noble Lord in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on what he said on that occasion as well as this. A number of issues have been raised today. I particularly note the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I am probably alone in this Chamber in being prepared to shed a tear or two for the standards board. It perhaps started off in a rather cumbersome and bureaucratic way, but it did improve its performance over time. Nevertheless we accept that its day is done, and we have to find a suitable replacement for it.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made perfectly legitimate reference to the problem of trivial complaints designed to gag or in some ways punish or inhibit members. That is a perfectly legitimate concern, which can be met within the framework of the local committees that are proposed in the amendments, particularly when they include the involvement of independent members. That is a crucial issue and one which will need to be discussed with Ministers. Those committees offer an assurance of impartiality which might not otherwise arise in the sometimes highly charged atmosphere—not necessarily party-political atmosphere—that can exist within individual councils.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred in particular to the position of parishes. There is clearly a need to consider the substantial workload generated by complaints within the very large number of parishes that we have. It is sometimes difficult for principal authorities to cope with the volume of issues that arise. I endorse his view that, where the principal authority is to remain responsible, some representation from parishes within that authority would be helpful. That is certainly the practice in Newcastle, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will confirm. We do have parish members on the standards committee. I ought to say that, whatever happens in terms of the legislation, both political parties in Newcastle wish to continue with that committee, which is of course independently chaired. Incidentally, the independent members have written to say that they would very much wish to see an obligation on authorities to maintain those committees. However, I wonder whether it would be possible, in conjunction with the National Association of Local Councils, to which most, but not necessarily all, parish and town councils belong, to look at ways in which that burden might be moderated. For example, if the association in a county area were able to put together a panel drawn from across an area, rather than necessarily drawn from an individual council, which might find it difficult to man and support such a project, that might be an alternative to principal authorities having to undertake that work.
There is also the fundamental issue of what the purpose of this whole procedure is. The Bill puts the situation as effectively criminality or nothing. If there is a criminal offence, as defined by the Bill, then something happens; nothing else comes within the purview of the legislation. The criminality is based, as we have already heard, on a fairly narrow definition of financial interests. That in one sense is too narrow. But in any event there are other issues which are perfectly legitimate issues for public concern—for example, members’ relations with members of the public or staff, or the misuse of council property.
All these, I fear, occur and there needs to be a mechanism whereby complaints and issues of that kind can be dealt with and appropriate sanctions imposed. I concur that that would be better at a local than a national level. I hope, therefore, that we can carry forward those discussions. The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, is absolutely right: if you do not have sanctions, you do not have a mechanism that the public can have any confidence in. The Minister has indicated—I think to all and sundry—that the Government are prepared to move on these issues. That is extremely welcome, and I hope that we can have productive discussions that will lead to a more flexible and perhaps a more locally based system; but one in which the public in particular—whom it is there ultimately to serve—can have confidence. I very much welcome that change of mind and the positive attitude, which characterises Ministers in this House, at least in this department. I look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s reply and his anticipated undertaking to take this away and consider it, so that we might have an opportunity to see the position satisfactorily resolved at Third Reading.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, it is certainly clear that these amendments cover an important aspect of local government governance, and I acknowledge the strength of feeling around the House. It has been a very informative and well informed debate, and I think it has added a very useful stimulus to the discussions which have been well trailed but which I hope will follow as a result of this debate. I have to say that there is considerable common ground between us: we all want a vibrant and the strongest possible local democracy and we all want the highest standards of conduct in local government. The issue—and this is what we are trying to grapple with—is how we achieve that. The abolition of the Standards Board regime is a coalition agreement commitment. Whatever the original intentions behind the establishment of the regime, it has become a heavy-handed and costly vehicle for dealing with complaints, which can, in some cases, be petty, malicious, vexatious or politically motivated. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, in his very able presentation of his amendments, agrees with this judgment. My noble friend Lord Tyler did so most powerfully.
At the same time, it is evident that many noble Lords have significant concerns that what the measures in the Bill put in its place are too localist and do not deliver the outcome we all want. It is apparent that consideration of these issues will repay any time that we give between us to get it right. There are some difficult issues here, and there is clearly a discussion to be had on where to strike the balance between the local framework we have proposed and the framework proposed in these amendments. I am not going to claim that I have all the answers at this stage. I will not—as I would normally do—respond to many of the detailed points that have been raised, because I think it is perhaps best to deal with those in these discussions, and we should not try to pre-empt what we will say. I can perhaps give a steer as to how the Government are approaching the situation.
I think there is merit in some of the amendments that have been put forward. In particular, I am sympathetic to the proposal in Amendment 175 that there should be an obligation on local authorities to have a code of conduct, and that any such code should have some core mandatory elements to it. If the House is willing to give us space to consider this matter further, I am willing to take it away with a view to discussing it with noble Lords and seeing if we can come up with something suitable ahead of Third Reading.
Lord Bichard
I hope, before the Minister sits down, I could be allowed an interjection since I do not have the right to make a response after he has sat down—
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)
If the noble Lord moved the amendment, he has the right to respond.
Lord Bichard
But this noble Lord did not move the amendment. However, I think the Minister was happy for me to interject at this point before he sat down, and my interjection was merely to say how grateful I was for the constructive nature of the response. It was as much of a surprise to me as it was to the noble Lord, Lord Newton, and others that this offer was made this evening, but we are very grateful to accept it and I too look forward to those discussions. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that I would certainly enter those discussions saying, “Read my lips: no excessive bureaucracy and no Standards Board”. Finally, I would just like to say to noble Lords who have spoken this evening and supported this amendment how grateful I am for that. I think it is, as the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has said, a really good example of the House at its best.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, it falls to me to wind up and I shall be extremely brief given the lateness of the hour. For my part, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and I particularly pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Bichard and Lord Filkin, for the meticulous way in which they have looked at the Bill and the way they have been prepared to enter into dialogue with me. I feel certain this has borne good fruit. I feel very much like a minnow among giants beside those noble Lords who have spoken and have far greater knowledge than I have of local government, and I am grateful for their indulgence towards me—a mere Johnny-come-lately.
I thank the Minister for his willingness, and the willingness of his team, to discuss things. I am sure that it would be churlish not to take up his offer to look into this and to try to forge between us some workable solutions. I am mindful of the fact that various noble Lords have commented on the burdens that parish and town councils may place on standards committees of principal authorities. I take the point that was made in that regard by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and we must work to ensure that unnecessary burdens are not being added to principal authorities in this respect.
The lateness of the hour compels me to get to the point and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this group of government amendments is designed to formalise the arrangements for London. Amendments 171 and 172 take on board the representations that have been made to us by the mayor and the Assembly of the Greater London Authority, asking that the standards function be a joint function of the Assembly and mayor. I said in Committee that we would be open to considering that request as we could see the benefit of ensuring that the mayor and the Assembly were given equal roles and responsibility for promoting and maintaining high standards, rather than leaving that function to be discharged by the Assembly alone.
Amendments 176 and 189 allow the Assembly and mayor to delegate functions to a committee or a member of staff. This mirrors the powers that local authorities have to delegate the function to a committee or a member of staff. Amendment 173 defines Joint Committees and Amendment 170 is a technical amendment related to the definition. Amendments 245 to 247 are also technical amendments. I hope that these amendments meet with the approval of the House and I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I do not have an interest to declare in these matters and neither do the Opposition. We are happy to agree with them.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“(8) In this Chapter except section (Delegation of functions by Greater London Authority)—
(a) a reference to a committee or sub-committee of a relevant authority is, where the relevant authority is the Greater London Authority, a reference to—(i) a committee or sub-committee of the London Assembly, or(ii) the standards committee, or a sub-committee of that committee, established under that section,(b) a reference to a joint committee on which a relevant authority is represented is, where the relevant authority is the Greater London Authority, a reference to a joint committee on which the Authority, the London Assembly or the Mayor of London is represented,(c) a reference to becoming a member of a relevant authority is, where the relevant authority is the Greater London Authority, a reference to becoming the Mayor of London or a member of the London Assembly, and(d) a reference to a meeting of a relevant authority is, where the relevant authority is the Greater London Authority, a reference to a meeting of the London Assembly;and in subsection (2)(b) the reference to representing the relevant authority is, where the relevant authority is the Greater London Authority, a reference to representing the Authority, the London Assembly or the Mayor of London.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Register of interests
(1) The monitoring officer of a relevant authority must establish and maintain a register of interests of members and co-opted members of the authority.
(2) Subject to the provisions of this Chapter, it is for a relevant authority to determine what is to be entered in the authority’s register.
(3) Nothing in this Chapter requires an entry to be retained in a relevant authority’s register once the person concerned—
(a) no longer has the interest, or(b) is (otherwise than transitorily on re-election or re-appointment) neither a member nor a co-opted member of the authority.(4) In the case of a relevant authority that is a parish council, references in this Chapter to the authority’s monitoring officer are to the monitoring officer of the parish council’s principal authority.
(5) The monitoring officer of a relevant authority other than a parish council must secure—
(a) that a copy of the authority’s register is available for inspection at a place in the authority’s area at all reasonable hours, and(b) that the register is published on the authority’s website.(6) The monitoring officer of a relevant authority that is a parish council must—
(a) secure that a copy of the parish council’s register is available for inspection at a place in the principal authority’s area at all reasonable hours,(b) secure that the register is published on the principal authority’s website, and(c) provide the parish council with any data it needs to comply with subsection (7).(7) A parish council must, if it has a website, secure that its register is published on its website.
(8) Subsections (5) to (7) are subject to section (Sensitive interests)(2).
(9) In this Chapter “principal authority”, in relation to a parish council, means—
(a) in the case of a parish council for an area in a district that has a district council, that district council,(b) in the case of a parish council for an area in a London borough, the council of that London borough, and(c) in the case of a parish council for any other area, the county council for the county that includes that area.(10) In this Chapter “register”, in relation to a relevant authority, means its register under subsection (1).”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, we have tabled this group of amendments following consideration of these clauses in the light of points raised in Committee. We have made amendments to the register of interests provisions in order to ensure that the best elements of the pre-Standards Board regime are incorporated into the new system that will replace it. We have taken the decision to focus on pecuniary interests for the new regime for the declaration and registering of interests. This ensures that real concerns about ensuring that councillors cannot use their position for financial advantage are addressed and we do not recreate the current system, where petty complaints are rife and councillors are hauled over the coals for inconsequential matters.
It is right that these provisions should be about dealing with situations where there is a serious risk of a member seeking personal gain or acting corruptly. In such cases, the criminal law should be engaged. We are therefore ensuring that a councillor can be fined up to £5,000 and disqualified from office for up to five years where such criminal activity is found.
We have also taken the opportunity to tighten up the wording in these provisions that was originally included to ensure that councillors who are simply forgetful in the registering of their interests are not criminalised. This clarification ensures that a failure to declare or register pecuniary interests, or a councillor voting on a matter where he or she has a pecuniary interest, will be a criminal offence only where the councillor does not have a reasonable excuse or where the councillor deliberately or recklessly provides information that he knows to be false or misleading. To improve transparency, and so that noble Lords can be clear about how we intend the system to work, we have also moved the detail of the interest requirements and criminal offences from secondary legislation to the Bill. Noble Lords will have noted my previous comments about these matters. With the prospect of our decisions ahead, I beg to move the amendment.
Lord Filkin
My Lords, I would prefer it slightly if these amendments were not moved formally so that they could be on the table as part of our discussions. Nevertheless, we understand that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, wishes to do so and to get them into the Bill, while recognising that all these things are issues that we may wish to discuss and explore further and, if we can reach agreement, come back to. Even if we cannot reach agreement, we may come back to them by the usual processes that we know of. Having said that, I do not intend to move against these amendments tonight. I shall use the opportunity, as part of the process of probing on new amendments—we are almost in Committee—to posit several questions to the Minister. They are not for response now—it is too late and I would much prefer a considered response—but perhaps the relevant Minister could write to me afterwards.
As has been said, the criminal offence is serious and the defects, as we see them, have been pointed out succinctly by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. We could amplify those if necessary. It is unclear to us what sanctions are available beyond the criminal offence. If there is to be a code—we are now moving towards a consensus on that—there clearly have to be meaningful sanctions if it is to be effective. As drafted, the Bill seems vague about what councillors can do. Under the current system, they can suspend members for serious misbehaviour. The Bill currently simply says that councils may impose sanctions as they see fit. Does that mean that they can suspend members or even disqualify them, or can they merely censure them?
Previously, the Bill said that the Secretary of State would make regulations about available sanctions and would specifically exclude suspension and disqualification as options. That was extremely surprising for many of us. However, that regulation-making power has now disappeared from the Bill. Does that mean that the Government now think that suspension and disqualification can be imposed locally if a council chooses to do as it sees fit? When the Minister writes to me, will he explain what councils can and should do as proposed by the Bill in its current form, albeit informed by what he thinks in light of our debate? If a council can merely censure somebody for serious misconduct, clearly many of us would feel that that would not do. For example, putting persistent, excessive and improper pressure on officers behind the scenes to ensure that someone gets their own way occasionally occurs. Officers are there to have a degree of pressure put on them, as I know, having been one for many years. Clearly that is not caught at all by the new criminal sanction. Is there to be no sanction at all for that?
Without more ado, let me leave those questions about what the Government’s position on the appropriate sanctions and the sanctions currently in the Bill has been and will be. Those of us who have studied the Bill are completely at a loss to understand the current position. We have views on what it should be but let us start from what the current position is. We can then discuss what it should be.
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, I intervene briefly in support of and in the same spirit as the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, with whom I have worked closely on this. I, too, have some reservations. I just want to put them on the table—not for an answer now and not to pre-empt discussions, but because it is probably helpful to the Minister if I do so.
My perception is that all of this talk about criminal sanctions is over the top. It was intended as a fig leaf when there was a void in the standards and code regime. I cannot understand why we should have a criminal offence in this particular area when I believe that none exists in respect of either MPs or Peers.
There are farcical elements to the amendments now before us. For example, in one of these amendments it states that people who have a defined pecuniary interest cannot speak or vote or take any part in proceedings unless they have a dispensation. Such dispensation can be granted under Amendment 184 if it is thought that so many people will be prohibited that it would impede the transaction of the business, or that it would upset the representation of different political groups in a way that would affect the outcome, or that it would be in the interests of persons living the area to grant such a dispensation. That borders on farce. It means, particularly in respect to the first and second points, that in a literally hung council—such as a council of 60 with 30 of one opinion and 30 of the other—nobody could be not-dispensed because it would clearly affect the outcome.
Whoever wrote this lot of amendments needs to look at them again, and I hope that this will be considered in the discussions.
The Earl of Lytton
Following on from the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, and from what has just been said, there is one other point that I should like to flag up for the Minister. I refer to subsection (3) of Amendment 181 regarding the nature of disclosable pecuniary interests. This deals with elected or co-opted members of councils and it concerns an interest of that councillor, or an interest of their spouse or civil partner, or a person who is living with them as husband or wife, or a person with whom that councillor is living as though they were civil partners where they are aware that the person has an interest. I do not believe that subsection goes far enough. The point has been made to me—I am sure that the Minister will be aware of this issue—about the son-in-law’s development project or the sister-in-law’s application to the council. The objective test of external public scrutiny is what we have to meet here. I think that this really does need to be tightened up.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am fascinated by the notion of a literally hung council. I am not sure that I would wish to be a member of such a body—presumably it would be a very short life. That apart, I endorse the views of the noble Lords, Lord Filkin and Lord Newton, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. There is something to be discussed here. It requires a little more care and, perhaps, a little more legal input into definitions and processes. That said, the noble Lord has assured us that those discussions will take place and that we may be able to revisit, if necessary, at Third Reading. On that basis I am happy to accept that position.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, it has been useful to have this discussion. One of the ways forward for the discussions that we may well have between now and Third Reading is the provision of government position papers describing the factual information that noble Lords are seeking. The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, kindly let me off responsibility for replying in detail on the hoof this evening. Indeed, it would be far better to be able to put these matters to noble Lords at a point where we could commence our decisions. I hope that noble Lords will agree with that procedure. I thank them for their co-operation on this part of the Bill. It is important and I think the House is agreed on that.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Disclosure of pecuniary interests on taking office
(1) A member or co-opted member of a relevant authority must, before the end of 28 days beginning with the day on which the person becomes a member or co-opted member of the authority, notify the authority’s monitoring officer of any disclosable pecuniary interests which the person has at the time when the notification is given.
(2) Where a person becomes a member or co-opted member of a relevant authority as a result of re-election or re-appointment, subsection (1) applies only as regards disclosable pecuniary interests not entered in the authority’s register when the notification is given.
(3) For the purposes of this Chapter, a pecuniary interest is a “disclosable pecuniary interest” in relation to a person (“M”) if it is of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State and either—
(a) it is an interest of M’s, or(b) it is an interest of—(i) M’s spouse or civil partner,(ii) a person with whom M is living as husband and wife, or(iii) a person with whom M is living as if they were civil partners,and M is aware that that other person has the interest.(4) Where a member or co-opted member of a relevant authority gives a notification for the purposes of subsection (1), the authority’s monitoring officer is to cause the interests notified to be entered in the authority’s register (whether or not they are disclosable pecuniary interests).”
“Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member
(1) Subsections (2) to (4) apply if a member or co-opted member of a relevant authority—
(a) is present at a meeting of the authority or of any committee, sub-committee, joint committee or joint sub-committee of the authority,(b) has a disclosable pecuniary interest in any matter to be considered, or being considered, at the meeting, and(c) is aware that the condition in paragraph (b) is met.(2) If the interest is not entered in the authority’s register, the member or co-opted member must disclose the interest to the meeting, but this is subject to section (Sensitive interests)(3).
(3) If the interest is not entered in the authority’s register and is not the subject of a pending notification, the member or co-opted member must notify the authority’s monitoring officer of the interest before the end of 28 days beginning with the date of the disclosure.
(4) The member or co-opted member may not—
(a) participate, or participate further, in any discussion of the matter at the meeting, or(b) participate in any vote, or further vote, taken on the matter at the meeting,but this is subject to section (Dispensations from section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(4)).(5) In the case of a relevant authority to which Part 1A of the Local Government Act 2000 applies and which is operating executive arrangements, the reference in subsection (1)(a) to a committee of the authority includes a reference to the authority’s executive and a reference to a committee of the executive.
(6) Subsections (7) and (8) apply if—
(a) a function of a relevant authority may be discharged by a member of the authority acting alone,(b) the member has a disclosable pecuniary interest in any matter to be dealt with, or being dealt with, by the member in the course of discharging that function, and(c) the member is aware that the condition in paragraph (b) is met. (7) If the interest is not entered in the authority’s register and is not the subject of a pending notification, the member must notify the authority’s monitoring officer of the interest before the end of 28 days beginning with the date when the member becomes aware that the condition in subsection (6)(b) is met in relation to the matter.
(8) The member must not take any steps, or any further steps, in relation to the matter (except for the purpose of enabling the matter to be dealt with otherwise than by the member).
(9) Where a member or co-opted member of a relevant authority gives a notification for the purposes of subsection (3) or (7), the authority’s monitoring officer is to cause the interest notified to be entered in the authority’s register (whether or not it is a disclosable pecuniary interest).
(10) Standing orders of a relevant authority may provide for the exclusion of a member or co-opted member of the authority from a meeting while any discussion or vote takes place in which, as a result of the operation of subsection (4), the member or co-opted member may not participate.
(11) For the purpose of this section, an interest is “subject to a pending notification” if—
(a) under this section or section (Disclosure of pecuniary interests on taking office), the interest has been notified to a relevant authority’s monitoring officer, but(b) has not been entered in the authority’s register in consequence of that notification.”
“Sensitive interests
(1) Subsections (2) and (3) apply where—
(a) a member or co-opted member of a relevant authority has an interest (whether or not a disclosable pecuniary interest), and(b) the nature of the interest is such that the member or co-opted member, and the authority’s monitoring officer, consider that disclosure of the details of the interest could lead to the member or co-opted member, or a person connected with the member or co-opted member, being subject to violence or intimidation.(2) If the interest is entered in the authority’s register, copies of the register that are made available for inspection, and any published version of the register, must not include details of the interest (but may state that the member or co-opted member has an interest the details of which are withheld under this subsection).
(3) If section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(2) applies in relation to the interest, that provision is to be read as requiring the member or co-opted member to disclose not the interest but merely the fact that the member or co-opted member has a disclosable pecuniary interest in the matter concerned.”
“Dispensations from section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(4)
(1) A relevant authority may, on a written request made to the proper officer of the authority by a member or co-opted member of the authority, grant a dispensation relieving the member or co-opted member from either or both of the restrictions in section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(4) in cases described in the dispensation.
(2) A relevant authority may grant a dispensation under this section only if, after having had regard to all relevant circumstances, the authority—
(a) considers that without the dispensation the number of persons prohibited by section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(4) from participating in any particular business would be so great a proportion of the body transacting the business as to impede the transaction of the business,(b) considers that without the dispensation the representation of different political groups on the body transacting any particular business would be so upset as to alter the likely outcome of any vote relating to the business,(c) considers that granting the dispensation is in the interests of persons living in the authority’s area,(d) if it is an authority to which Part 1A of the Local Government Act 2000 applies and is operating executive arrangements, considers that without the dispensation each member of the authority’s executive would be prohibited by section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(4) from participating in any particular business to be transacted by the authority’s executive, or(e) considers that it is otherwise appropriate to grant a dispensation.(3) A dispensation under this section must specify the period for which it has effect, and the period specified may not exceed four years.
(4) Section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by single member)(4) does not apply in relation to anything done for the purpose of deciding whether to grant a dispensation under this section.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
(a) fails to comply with an obligation imposed on the person by section (Disclosure of pecuniary interests on taking office)(1) or (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(2), (3) or (7),(b) participates in any discussion or vote in contravention of section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(4), or(c) takes any steps in contravention of section (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(8).(1A) A person commits an offence if under section (Disclosure of pecuniary interests on taking office)(1) or (Pecuniary interests in matters considered at meetings or by a single member)(2), (3) or (7) the person provides information that is false or misleading and the person—
(a) knows that the information is false or misleading, or(b) is reckless as to whether the information is true and not misleading.”
“(8) The Local Government Act 1972 is amended as follows.
(9) In section 86(1)(b) (authority to declare vacancy where member becomes disqualified otherwise than in certain cases) after “2000” insert “or section 19 of the Localism Act 2011”.
(10) In section 87(1)(ee) (date of casual vacancies)—
(a) after “2000” insert “or section 19 of the Localism Act 2011 or”, and(b) after “decision” insert “or order”.(11) The Greater London Authority Act 1999 is amended as follows.
(12) In each of sections 7(b) and 14(b) (Authority to declare vacancy where Assembly member or Mayor becomes disqualified otherwise than in certain cases) after sub-paragraph (i) insert—
“(ia) under section 19 of the Localism Act 2011,”.(13) In section 9(1)(f) (date of casual vacancies)—
(a) before “or by virtue of” insert “or section 19 of the Localism Act 2011”, and(b) after “that Act” insert “of 1998 or that section”.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
“Delegation of functions by Greater London Authority
(1) The Mayor of London and the London Assembly, acting jointly, may arrange for any of the functions conferred on them by or under this Chapter to be exercised on their behalf by—
(a) a member of staff of the Greater London Authority, or(b) a committee appointed in accordance with provision made by virtue of this section.(2) Standing orders of the Greater London Authority may make provision regulating the exercise of functions by any member of staff of the Authority pursuant to arrangements under subsection (1).
(3) Standing orders of the Greater London Authority may make provision for the appointment of a committee (“the standards committee”) to exercise functions conferred on the Mayor of London and the London Assembly by or under this Chapter in accordance with arrangements under subsection (1).
(4) Standing orders of the Greater London Authority may make provision about the membership and procedure of the standards committee.
(5) The provision that may be made under subsection (4) includes—
(a) provision for the standards committee to arrange for the discharge of its functions by a sub-committee of that committee; (b) provision about the membership and procedure of such a sub-committee.(6) Subject to subsection (7), the standards committee and any sub-committee of that committee—
(a) is not to be treated as a committee or (as the case may be) sub-committee of the London Assembly for the purposes of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, but(b) is a committee or (as the case may be) sub-committee of the Greater London Authority for the purposes of Part 3 of the Local Government Act 1974 (investigations by Commission for Local Administration in England).(7) Sections 6(3)(a) (failure to attend meetings) and 73(6) (functions of monitoring officer) of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 apply to the standards committee or any sub-committee of that committee as they apply to a committee of the London Assembly or any sub-committee of such a committee.
(8) Part 5A of the Local Government Act 1972 (access to meetings and documents) applies to the standards committee or any sub-committee of that committee as if—
(a) it were a committee or (as the case may be) a sub-committee of a principal council within the meaning of that Part, and(b) the Greater London Authority were a principal council in relation to that committee or sub-committee.(9) Arrangements under this section for the exercise of any function by—
(a) a member of staff of the Greater London Authority, or(b) the standards committee,do not prevent the Mayor of London and the London Assembly from exercising those functions.(10) References in this section to the functions of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly conferred by or under this Chapter do not include their functions under this section.
(11) In this section “member of staff of the Greater London Authority” has the same meaning as in the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (see section 424(1) of that Act).”