Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 Report

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Shipley

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

That is the great challenge for government and public sector organisations. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is leading on a resilience review, and that is the kind of issue that should be brought forward. Unless you are joining the dots on this, we will hear this same theme. As has been mentioned already today, whether you are looking at Hillsborough, Covid—as the noble Lord mentioned—or this incident, in every single case, people gave warnings and were not believed. That is often compounded afterwards because trying to get to the truth is made harder than it ever should be.

In this case, the last Government did the same, setting up the inquiries. Getting to the truth is the first part of being able to take the action needed. It then needs that determination to see it through. When the Prime Minister made the Statement in the House of Commons, he acknowledged that just words are not enough; we have to see this through with actions. The resilience review is part of it but we also need to learn the lessons. Sometimes when we are looking across government at what needs to be done—Covid is an example again—we may think, “Everything’s okay at the moment; there is no problem”. You have to prepare for the worst-case scenario to ensure that if there is a difficulty or a problem, we have the resilience and the resources in place to deal with it.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister just mentioned resilience. The Statement itself does not say very much about emergency planning and resilience, yet Sir Martin Moore-Bick says at chapter 113.73 that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

“was not able to provide an effective response to the emergency”,

and he therefore recommends that

“local authorities train all their employees, including chief executives, to regard resilience as an integral part of their responsibilities”.

This is pretty basic. Can the Minister ensure that the Government take steps to enable resilience and emergency planning to be seen as a central duty of local government?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. I can remember from a time when I was a county councillor that the emergency planning committee was quite a central committee of the council; we do not see so many of those around these days. Unless we address the issue of resilience and preparedness at every level of government, we will not be in the right position to deal with problems, as I said in my previous answer. Yes, work is ongoing across government on that issue now.

Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Tax Billing, Collection and Enforcement Functions) (Amendment) (England) Order 2013

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Shipley

Thursday 28th February 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I shall comment on this one and on the next, too, so I need speak only once.

I have a desire for a reassurance that in all the contracting out of existing functions of local authorities, whether they have been previously contracted out or may be in future, exactly the same standards will apply on matters concerning data protection and in the duties, obligations and service standards of those to whom work is contracted out. I am thinking in particular of the role of bailiffs and what standards of service they will be required to work to. There has been a discussion and things have been done about this in the past year or two, but I seek the Minister’s assurance that exactly those same standards, or perhaps even better standards, will apply in future.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for speaking before me, because it has reminded me to say that I am also a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which I may have forgotten otherwise. The points that he made are ones that I would also have wished to make, and I will not repeat them. I refer particularly to the point on bailiffs, which was very well made, and I look forward to hearing the response from the Minister. I will come back to the freedom of information point.

I thank the Minister for her explanation, as it was good to have such a detailed explanation of the instruments. It answered a couple of the questions that I have, although I have others. Obviously, we support measures that would prevent fraud, detect it and take action against it, and any system of enforcement should be effective and fair. We entirely concur with those principles. My questions are on points of clarity, because I was not 100% clear. Legislation can sometimes be opaque, and it would be helpful to have some more information.

As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was saying, when services are contracted out, particularly in this case, very detailed confidential financial information can be provided to a private company or organisation. I understand that under data protection legislation, the responsibility would remain with the local authority, but would the DCLG give any guidance to local authorities on how they may enforce their responsibilities to organisations to which they have contracted out those services? What redress would remain available to an individual who felt that their confidentiality had been breached in any way? Would that remain a matter for the local authority, or would responsibility lie with the company that held the information and had inadvertently or wrongly released it?