Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

159: After Clause 70, insert the following new Clause—
“Councillor conduct: suspension of a parish councillor(1) The monitoring officer of a local authority in England may suspend a parish councillor where that monitoring officer has determined through an investigation that the parish councillor has breached the parish council’s code of conduct.(2) In subsection (1) a “local authority” is defined as being a—(a) district council;(b) unitary council;(c) London borough council;(d) metropolitan borough council.”Member's explanatory statement
This new Clause would introduce a new sanction of suspension to the ethical standards regime which applies to parish councils in England.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I have six amendments in the group that we have reached and they are each different in nature. While I will be as economical with my words as possible, I need to make a brief case for each of them. Collectively, they are to do with strengthening the position of town and parish councils which, we have all agreed, play an important part in our local government system. I again put on the record my interest as president of the National Association of Local Councils.

First, Amendment 159 deals with councillor conduct and the suspension of a councillor. At this level, it is true that most parish councils are very well run. The clerks, council staff and councillors all work together very well and maintain high standards of conduct. But, sometimes, the impact of poor and disruptive behaviour by councillors, clerks and, occasionally, residents can overshadow proceedings and communities and make civic life very difficult indeed. We are concerned here with a small minority of councillors who engage in unacceptable behaviour such as harassment and bullying, including racist, sexist and ableist abuse. Such activities would be grounds for suspension and dismissal if they were in an employment setting, which is why NALC is arguing for stronger sanctions than the current ones.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life published a review in 2019 which made a number of recommendations to strengthen the current standards and conduct frame- work and the safeguards that apply to it. It argued that the sanctions currently available to local authorities are insufficient and that this lack of robust sanctions damages public confidence in the standards system and leaves local authorities with no means of enforcing lower-level sanctions or addressing serious or repeated misconduct.

Amendment 160 is on the position of those with caring responsibilities. Again, we can agree that it is essential that councils of all levels contain representatives from a wide range of circumstances and backgrounds. Underrepresentation of certain groups is very bad for democracy. NALC has carried out research that identified that an important barrier to achieving this wider representation is lack of help with the costs of dependant care. Unlike every other councillor in England and Wales, members of a parish council are specifically precluded from being able to access help with dependant care. I hope that, if the Government are setting their face against virtual meetings, they will consider the impact on this group and perhaps agree to changing the allowances situation.

Amendment 161 is around the governance review, which was a commitment in the White Paper to launch a review of neighbourhood governance in England to look at how it could be made easier for local people and community groups to come together to set local priorities and shape the future of their neighbourhoods. The review would also look at the role and functions of parish councils and, crucially, at how to make parish councils quicker and easier to establish.

Communities covering two-thirds of England’s population are being left behind in taking this community- led action because they do not have a parish council. Onward’s social fabric index shows that areas with full coverage of local councils score significantly higher than those without local councils in all the key measures of community strength. We heard earlier this evening about the considerable success of neighbourhood plans in delivering more houses rather than fewer. Partly as a result of that, in the past decade more than 300 places have created new councils in response to community demand, yet barriers still exist, which are partly lack of awareness by communities that they could have a local council, lack of support, a process which is very complicated and the attitude of some principal councils, which can be quite resistant. The Government are yet to publish any further details or timescales for taking the White Paper forward. It is a real pity that this Bill is again missing that opportunity.

Amendment 162 relates to the power to pay grants. Neither the levelling-up White Paper nor the Bill includes any reference to funding for the 10,000 parish councils in England. These councils do not currently receive government funding. Their services and activities are almost entirely funded by their small share of council tax. They do not receive revenue support grant or a share of the business rate and, despite the growing role of parish councillors in responding to the social, economic and environmental needs of their communities, they are not eligible in their own right for any of the government growth funds, such as community renewal, levelling-up, the towns fund or the UK shared prosperity fund. They are also excluded from the community ownership fund.

I agree with my colleagues, and I share the distaste for this handing out of money through central pots but, if that is the way it is going to be done, then it seems very unfair and counterproductive to exclude parish councils. They are not going to be able to play the full role they can in levelling up if they are simply funded by local residents. There are other opportunities coming up in which parish and town councils would like to participate, for example, a net-zero trail-blazer or—heaven forefend—any more national emergencies or the delivery of government priorities. This amendment would level up the list of local authorities in England to which Ministers of the Crown could pay a grant. It would provide Ministers with an additional power and flexibility and not be a requirement.

My penultimate amendment, Amendment 163, is around clarification of the legal power of parish councils to fund repairs to local churches. I will not dwell too long on this because there is Amendment 485 later in the Bill, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and others. The fundamental problem is that parishes which wish to fund local churches now find themselves with a grey area of the law. Section 8 of the Local Government Act 1894 says that parish councils cannot give funding to ecclesiastical charities, but Section 137 of the Local Government Act 1972 says that they can. This amendment is not saying that they should be giving grants—it is neutral on that—it is simply that parishes which might want to give a grant are deterred because the law is unclear. I should make it clear that it is not always a church building. In my parish, for example, we have no community room. The only building we have is the church room, and that is really our community centre, but the parish council does not feel it can give a grant. The advice that NALC gives to its members is that the accepted legal principle is that, when interpreting an Act of Parliament, a specific provision overrides a general one. I have a lot of detail about the legal provisions—which noble Lords will be pleased to hear I will not go into—but they certainly need to be clarified. That was held out in 2017 by The Taylor Review: Sustainability of English Churches and Cathedrals, which confirmed this confusion needs to be cleared up.

The Minister wrote to us a few weeks ago on this matter, and her letter essentially said that this would need to be taken up with the courts. I respectfully suggest that if Parliament has legislated in ways that are contradictory, it really should be for Parliament to sort it out, not the courts. In practical terms, it is absurd to think that parish councils will voluntarily take themselves to court. This is an appeal for clarity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate today, and I am particularly grateful to both Front Benches on this side for their support—and particular thanks go to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for having the courage to stand up and admit that he was wrong. For a brief moment, when the Minister started to say such warm and wonderful things about the town and parish council sector, my hopes started to rise—but they were sadly and very quickly dashed.

I am bitterly disappointed about the carer’s allowance. Having set their face against allowing virtual meetings, it feels particularly cruel for the Government not to allow town and parish councils to make a decision for themselves as to whether they would like to pay a dependant carer’s allowance. That feels to me quite petty and rather indicative of a mindset that says, “We want to try and devolve, but actually not really if you’re going to do something we don’t like”.

The governance review will be welcome if it takes place in the next year, but we have been waiting a long time for this. It was promised in the White Paper, and it is again disappointing that we will have to go through this process—and then, if there is legislation, they will have to find time for another Bill. It is such a pity that this opportunity was lost.

Finally, on being able to bid for grants, I gently remind the Minister that there are many large town councils that are significantly bigger than district councils, and they are getting grants while the towns are not. So the idea that there are too many of them and they are all too small really does not hold. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 159 withdrawn.