Local Government Finance Bill

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 16th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I have not participated in proceedings on the Bill so far, but we have now come to the clauses on disability. I refer the Committee to my interests in the register, particularly in respect of autism. I want to add to the initial remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I hope that the Committee will forgive me for singling out autism, but it is the only disability that has the benefit of statute, through the Autism Act 2009. I believe that that is the only piece of statute that relates specifically to a particular disability.

I have to inform my noble friend that I am becoming rather disconcerted as various pieces of legislation that relate to disability, particularly on the question of council tax benefit, come forward. I worry that Ministers are not consulting, particularly with the Department of Health, which has responsibility for the Autism Act. It is a relatively new piece of legislation on the statute book. The will of the House was to be taken forward in what Parliament intended to be an improvement in the lives of autistic adults in particular. At its heart, the Autism Act was to enable more adults with autism to lead independent lives. It is worrying that, through legislation such as this part of the Bill, there may well now be problems with localism to the degree that certain councils may not be fully aware of—or may ignore—their need to take account of the autism strategy that is associated with the Autism Act.

My first question to my noble friend is: what discussions have his department had with the Department of Health in drafting the clauses on disability and local authorities’ ability to implement and make progress on the autism strategy? I draw the Committee’s attention to the strategy Fulfilling and Rewarding Lives, which states that adults with autism should live in accommodation that meets their needs. That is what we hope the strategy will bring forward. It states:

“Local authorities are required to take account of the needs of adults with autism when considering housing provision”.

It also states that local authorities need to fulfil the equality duty by taking account of the needs of adults with autism in respect of housing.

I seek reassurance from my noble friend that the Autism Act has been discussed and will, even with the choice of localism, continue to be implemented by local authorities that now have that statutory duty under a different piece of legislation. I hope that my noble friend will accept that, while I single out autism because it has the protection of other statutes, I share the concerns outlined today by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, over disability in general. The people who are in receipt of disability benefits—who are already subject to a lot of change and disruption—will find council tax eligibility being added to quite a long list of changes in their lives. Not only will the process cause them distress but it will affect them financially, which could ultimately affect that very important ability to live independently.

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Council tax discount should go to those in need, who may be unattractive, invisible or concealing mental health or learning difficulties, and are thus labelled as scroungers by their neighbours. It should not just go to those whose need is visible and acceptable. That is the point of national rules and a national bureaucracy. You do not have to be appealing or attractive to get the help you need. Without such laws, I suspect that local voters would often prefer donkey sanctuaries to get more cash and support than troubled families. That is the nature and the limitation of localism. That is why I urge the Secretary of State in all fairness—because that is what this is about—to define eligibility so that some vulnerable people are not denied help in the name of the postcode lottery that has falsely been called localism, just because they happen to live in the wrong locality. I beg to move.

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment because it is a very reasonable request to the Government. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, has made a compelling case to do with the individual, as opposed to the locality. If we are about anything in this place, surely we are about how legislation affects the individual. The consequences of not taking the impact on the individual into account are profound, not least in an area where there is, as we have discussed, a lot of other legislation and the cumulative effect could have unintended consequences.

I was very grateful that the Minister’s office sent me a paper, Localising Support for Council Tax: Vulnerable People—Key Local Authority Duties, which I have studied. I was rather concerned to see from the introduction that the Government, despite having,

“been clear that, in developing local council tax reduction schemes, vulnerable groups should be protected”,

none the less go on to explain, in paragraph 1.3, that, with the exception of,

“applicants of state pension credit age … the Government did not intend to prescribe the protection that local authorities should provide for other vulnerable groups, but would consider what guidance was needed to ensure local authorities were able take into account existing duties in relation to vulnerable groups in designing their schemes”.

It would be helpful to hear how the Government intend to put that promise into practice and to have a better understanding of how the Government define vulnerable people, particularly those who come under the category of disability. The Government have prayed in aid the equality duty by which all local authorities are bound. The relevant protected characteristics are covered by the equality duty. Disability is just listed as “disability” but there are other vulnerable groups there. It is important to get more clarification of that vulnerability.

I say to the Committee that you could write my knowledge of local government finance on the back of an envelope; it is very much based on my 18 years as a Member of Parliament, dealing with constituency casework. There are certain things that I spent a lot of time dealing with but others that are quite a mystery to me. However, one thing that is clear throughout the country is that you have district authorities that will administer council tax, as will unitary authorities, but a lot of the vulnerability of the individual is not actually dealt with by a district council but by a county council. You could argue that unitaries should have an overview of the whole shooting match and a better understanding of it, but as regards disability and the individual’s needs, a social services department will have a lot of knowledge and awareness of what those needs are, but you could not expect the district council administering the council tax to have very much knowledge of them at all. I cannot see an obvious tie-up between the two.

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[Baroness Donaghy]

I must admit that I enjoyed that. I even agree with one or two points that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, made. I look back to the days when local government had real power and it would be good if that happened again. Given the more centralist-inclined Governments that we have had during the past 30 years, that is probably not very likely.

As your Lordships will see, my name is attached to the amendment. That was a mistake; it was a case of mistaken identity. When the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, went to table the amendment, my name was put down instead of hers. I cannot imagine why, but I was very happy to keep my name on it even though I did not put it there. Incidentally, on the same day, having sorted out that one to our satisfaction, I sat down and found that my name had been added to a debate in the main Chamber on the misuse of alcohol. I was considerably more worried about that.

[Baroness Browning]

I would have been very happy to have had my name added to the debate on the misuse of alcohol.

[Baroness Donaghy]

I thought that there might be some misunderstanding, so I went to the office to sort it out and realised that it was the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, who was supposed to be on the speakers list and not me. However, since then, my post box has been full of mail from organisations urging me to carry on my campaign against misuse of alcohol. That was to add a little to the fun.

I understand that the amendment, to which my name is attached, is to some extent a contradiction in terms, which is what I accused the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, of doing earlier on. If we get a national description of vulnerability, it will go against the spirit of imposing these varying cuts on different people. However, the whole point of the amendment is to show how difficult it will be to make judgments about who is vulnerable in different areas of society. I come from a town where, in the case of some kinds of vulnerability, people are treated very badly in the streets, being knocked over, booed, spat at and all sorts of things. There is not much understanding there. The local council may well attract quite a bit of support if those people are all cut from local council tax benefit.

Making judgments about what I would regard as a human right is a serious issue and should be compared with making judgments about, for example, the right of a local person to vote in or vote out their council. There is a worry there. What we are expecting at the moment is that councillors should do more and more for less and less resource, which is very much what Governments have been doing for quite a long time. This is the basic Hobson’s choice, with councils being asked to do an impossible job impossibly. They are going to be making decisions about work incentives, as I said earlier; they are being told to exempt pensioners, who in some areas are the majority of those who enjoy this particular benefit, and they are being asked to identify those considered vulnerable but given no guidance about it. All I have to say is that I am very glad that I am not a local councillor. It must be a horrible job to have to do. But if we are going to have a debate about centralism versus localism, let it at least be a comprehensive issue and not just a rather enjoyable debate of this kind. It should be one where we can genuinely ask where those decisions should be taken. When they interfere with people’s basic human rights, I think that there is a difficulty.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I would not agree that being a local councillor is a horrible job, but it is quite often more difficult than people imagine. I have two fundamental questions that I want to raise arising from the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis.

In relation to what my noble friend Lady Rumbold said—

[Baroness Browning]

I am alive and well.

[Lord Greaves]

My noble friend Lady Browning, I am sorry. The noble Baroness is being mixed up with everybody today. I have been mixing them up for many years. I am coming to the view that perhaps we should close down this Grand Committee and go home, but we shall struggle on.

On the points that my noble friend Lady Browning made about local councillors, I believe that they will be able to make a good fist of this, but the problem is, as the amendment says, they will be making it on the basis of different criteria and views in different places. The question is whether that is a legitimate argument in favour of localism so well put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, or whether it is a step too far.

The noble Lord attacked the postcode lottery, and I, too, cringe when I hear that phrase. It is an attack on localism and local decision-making by centralists everywhere, whether they are in the Daily Mail, the Labour Party or anywhere else. It is not a phrase that I would ever use, and it is something that I attack all the time. However, we do not want everything done at parish council level. I can imagine a situation in which the next time this country decides to go to war and invade a country such as Iraq the Army will be raised in a traditional manner by people going round and rounding people up whom they find in the fields and streets. Each parish council will be allowed to decide whether people should be rounded up from its parish, or not. That may be the way in which the Army is going with its cuts—that is the future—but I doubt it.

I am making a very important point, which the noble Lord, Lord Deben, made, that there are levels of government. I am a passionate localist and believer in subsidiarity, but I am also a federalist in the sense that there are different layers of government. The important thing is that each layer of government and democratic control should be responsible for those things appropriate to that layer. The noble Lord mentioned the European Union and Westminster, local authorities and parishes. The principle should be to push things down to the relevant levels. That is what I believe in. The argument is not whether everything should be done at parish level or even district council level—although I would be delighted with that, as long as we had the funding. The argument is what the appropriate level is to push things down to. The argument we have here is whether the council tax reduction—the council tax benefit, as it is now—should be a national benefit under which people in the country are all treated the same or whether that itself is appropriate to localism. On balance, I come to the view that it should be a national benefit decided at national level, precisely for the reasons that noble Lords have put forward. I do not think that that makes me any less of a localist.

The problem with the amendment was raised by the equally passionate speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, in moving it. She was speaking to the question of the level of the council tax reduction which will take place, whereas the amendment is about something more fundamental. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, explained the difference: it is about eligibility, not the level of the benefit. None of us have any hope of persuading the Government on the level of the benefit. I think that they are absolutely determined that it will go ahead on the basis that local authorities will make their own decisions. However, it ought to be possible to persuade them that the amendment has merit, particularly if the guidance was made on the basis not that it was government guidance of the traditional sort, which is actually an instruction which you disobey at your peril, but genuine guidance, where local authorities could improve the protection for disabled people—in other words, if the government’s guidance was an accepted minimum. Discussion might take place around that idea.

My second point was to go back to the 1930s. I am conscious that when I picked up the point made by the noble Baroness about the 1930s last week, Hansard thought that I had said the 1830s. Let me make it clear that I am talking about the 1930s, but the system was very much the same in the 1830s. The reason why the system of benefits was nationalised and the old localised Poor Law was abolished is that too many places were being too mean. The local position with the workhouses, and so on, was in some places unacceptable and therefore had to be raised to a standard level for everyone. The danger is that if you allow local authorities to decide on the level of benefit or, as we are now discussing, eligibility, some will behave in an appalling manner. That results in the wheel turning and rules and regulations having to be set out to prevent them doing that.

However, that was not always the case. There was at least one instance in the London Borough of Poplar in the 1920s, when it was run by a man called George Lansbury, when the local authority started to behave in a very generous manner and, in particular, started giving out relief—in other words, benefits in cash and kind that meant that people did not have to go into the workhouse but could continue to live in the community. The local authority was taken to court and to judicial review and was prevented from being too generous.

I say to the Government: be careful what you wish for, because the time will come, when economic growth resumes in this country, when it is easier for local authorities and other bodies to develop new schemes. Local authorities will have been given a power of general competence and at some time—who knows when?—there may be resources for local authorities to do things that central government think are outrageous because they are being too generous, not too mean. As I said, be careful what you wish for.