Earl Cathcart
Main Page: Earl Cathcart (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Local Government Bill [HL]
Earl Cathcart Excerpts
Baroness Hanham
It looks as though it would be about six years before the savings came about. There have indeed been references to ongoing savings of £6.5 million being forgone in 2015 and 2016. We have never said that those savings would arise from the unitary solution, but we believe that savings on a greater scale are possible from sensible collaboration between the county and the cities—something that every other authority is beginning to have to do. All across the country, local authorities are having to begin to co-operate with each other. They are having to make reductions in costs and they are not spending money on restructuring.
I do not see any point at all in bringing forward such a report, as it would have no virtue. If it were brought forth in three or four years’ time, I am not sure whether it would have the slightest effect on the coalition Government, if they were still here, and I do not think that it would be of benefit to anyone other than perhaps the proponents of unitary status in both these areas.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about Mr Justice Ouseley’s transcript. It is not available, as I believe the noble Lord knows. I do not know whether he was trying to put me on the spot but I do not have it. He does not have it and my understanding is that no one has it, although I am sure that it will be available at some stage. However, it is absolutely clear that his judgment quashed the orders in their entirety. That is the message that we have and that is where we are at the moment.
In all this, we do not want to lose sight of the fact that the path started on by the previous Government was unwise, illegal and totally flawed. If anyone now tried to shore up and perpetuate the proposals, that would be very unwise and would not get anywhere.
Earl Cathcart
My Lords, I was not intending to speak on this amendment but I think that I have Mr Justice Ouseley’s judgment, and I believe that one or two other noble Lords have all 106 paragraphs of it as well.
Earl Cathcart
The final paragraph, number 106, says:
“However, for the reasons which I have given”—
those are his words—
“the orders are quashed”.
Therefore, the judgment is available.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Perhaps I can help the noble Lord. We have a copy of the judgment but what we do not have is a copy of the transcript of the oral evidence that was given on 5 July. I was not trying to score a point when I said that. Our understanding is based on the information that we have received via the Minister. We have not had a chance to look at it at source. That was the only point I was making.
Baroness Hanham
That backs up exactly what I said which was that the orders were quashed. I do not have much more to add. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made a very powerful speech, as did the noble Lord, Lord Tope. It is time for this to be put aside, so that the two authorities can get back to business, working as they should with their counties and other local authorities to ensure that they provide the best service possible. I reject the amendments.
Lord Howarth of Newport
On the contrary, that is exactly my argument. I have asked the noble Baroness why she is simply relying on the High Court to quash the decisions of Parliament rather than having Parliament exercise its own authority to quash the decisions that it previously took. That is precisely the point at issue. I suggest that this is part of a pattern that we are beginning to see emerge in this coalition Government of an habitual disrespect for Parliament. If I may, I shall give one other instance.
Earl Cathcart
I thought that it was for Parliament to make the laws and for the judiciary to judge on them. In this instance, the judge said that what the Secretary of State did in coming to his decision was illegal and so he quashed it.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I understand that that is what the judge said, but my question is whether it is within the competence of a judge, whether a Supreme Court or a High Court judge, to overthrow orders that have been duly made by Parliament. Parliament was fully aware of all the arguments that moved Mr Justice Ouseley to arrive at his judgment, but the fact is that if Parliament is the sovereign law-making body in this country, its authority ought to prevail. That is my opinion.
I will briefly illustrate what I take to be part of an emerging pattern of disrespect on the part of the Government to Parliament. On 29 June, this House voted to approve a Motion, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, that called on the Government to table Motions to enable the House to approve or disapprove of four specific reforms that would enable this House to be more credible and effective. However, a week ago, on 7 July, the Leader of the House informed the House in a Written Statement that the Government do not intend to respect the will of the House in this regard and,
“do not consider it appropriate to table Motions”,—[Official Report, 7/7/10; col. WS 13.]
that the House has called upon them to table. He cited as justification the irrelevant fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has set in hand work on a draft Bill for an elected second Chamber. Why are the Leader of the House and the Government treating the House with this contempt?
The Deputy Prime Minister arrogantly breezes around declaring that our parliamentary institutions are not fit for purpose. This arrogance is particularly unbecoming in a Government with no mandate from the people and in a coalition that has been cobbled together and is tempted to use its majority to bulldoze this House in ways that this House has not tolerated and not expected from Governments for many years. The vote yesterday in this House on the Academies Bill on which the Government were defeated is a very salutary indication to them that they cannot simply take it for granted that they now have a majority in the House of Lords that entitles them to treat this House of Parliament with the same contumely with which Governments habitually treat the House of Commons.
We see this attitude in the big declarations and the small actions, and here in this amendment, which casually endorses the subordination of considered decisions of both Houses to an adventurous decision by a High Court judge that happens to suit the Government’s self-indulgent political agenda. How does the noble Baroness defend it?
Lord Rennard
In our debate on the orders put forward on 22 March, I pointed out that the only effect of approving those orders may well be to deny people in Exeter and Norwich the right to elect their councillors in May, when they would normally have done so, when many other local authorities did so and when they were also voting in the general election. Of course, it would have been much cheaper to have held those elections together on that day. That is why I continue to think that it would have been better if those orders had not been approved and the fatal amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Tope had been carried. However, because those orders were not blocked and because, as so many people predicted, they were struck down by the High Court, additional costs and additional stresses are now being unnecessarily incurred.
I would be interested to see what a report on costs incurred would show. It does not seem right to me to legislate for the Secretary of State to lay such a report before Parliament. No doubt the issue of costs will be raised in the future and there will be many attempts to apportion blame for them. My conscience is clear on the matter of costs. We need to move on and this is an unnecessary amendment. The sort of information that such a report would lay before Parliament should be available to all of us anyway, but in relation to costs and having listened to the recent contributions, I feel that some apology should be forthcoming from those who were responsible in the Department of Communities and Local Government, who got us into this mess at the time.
Earl Cathcart
So far, I have intervened twice without declaring my interests. I live in Norfolk, I have been a district councillor for more than 10 years and I am chairman of my parish. Although I was brought up overlooking the River Dart in Devon, most of what I say will concern Norfolk.
I have a letter from the leader of Norwich City Council saying:
“It had been our desire to have the Judicial Review hearing heard before the draft Orders were debated in Parliament; however Norwich, Exeter and the Treasury Solicitors argued against this on the basis that they would have insufficient time to prepare their case”.
When it was pointed out to them that this might lead to complications with the elections, they replied that it did not concern them. Their main concern was to prepare their case. I find this a curious amendment—that the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report on the costs incurred. That is all it says. Norwich City Council holds an election for one-third of its members each year. It knows only too well how much each election costs and would have budgeted for it. So if the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Rosser, wish to find out the cost, no doubt a quick telephone call would do the trick, rather than bothering the Secretary of State.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
As this is Committee stage, not Report, perhaps the noble Earl would allow me to intervene. The point was that the election took place on general election day, therefore the costs would have been subsumed in the votes for a general election and, therefore, a negligible additional cost would have fallen on the local authority for the councillors then standing. When those elections did not take place, we had not heard either the judge’s JR nor the verdict of the electorate, resulting in the coalition Government.
Earl Cathcart
The noble Baroness makes a good point, but that is not what the amendment says. It says only that the Secretary of State has to lay before Parliament a report as to the costs. It says nothing about repaying costs or additional costs because this and that has happened. It just says that the Secretary of State has to lay before Parliament a report as to the costs. That is all it is saying and that is all I am speaking to. The noble Baroness has indeed been making many other points, but I am trying to talk to this amendment.
As I was saying, I suggest that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, picks up his telephone. In any event, these elections will, I believe, be no more onerous than the elections that Labour postponed until 2011. Any additional cost could have been avoided had the then Labour Government not forced their orders through against all their own rules and advice. Therefore, I find it a bit rich to cry now about costs that could and should have been avoided.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, perhaps I may comment on what the noble Earl has said. I ask the indulgence of the House, but it is Committee stage—it is not Report stage procedure—and there is ample opportunity for discussion.
On the elections, the noble Earl is of course right. However, the point was that if the orders had not been quashed by the High Court, and had the Bill not followed as the result of a general election, this tranche of councillors would have stood for election or re-election next May, when the other year’s worth would have done, too. There would have been two years’ worth of elections in the one year, so again no additional costs would have fallen.
Either, as we had expected and hoped, there would have been elections associated with the general election, in which case there would have been no additional costs, or there would have been elections after 12 months, in which case there would have been no additional costs because elections would have taken place in any event. The additional costs that we are talking about occur because these by-elections are being called in the middle of the electoral year.
Earl Cathcart
My Lords, I will try to stick to the amendments rather than be tempted into going off at tangents. Amendment 5 says that,
“this Act comes into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by order appoint”.
That is unnecessary, because Clause 3(2) already says:
“This Act comes into force on the date on which it is passed”.
The Secretary of State has already decided that the Act will come into force when it is passed.
I find Amendment 6 strange, as the Secretary of State is not required to lay before Parliament a statement about arrangements for co-operation between district councils and county councils for any other two-tier system, so why now? In any event, the spending plans are a matter for local councils, not for Parliament. The leader of Norfolk County Council acknowledges in a letter to me:
“The economic climate is such that there is an even greater need for local councils to co-operate and share at this time, if we are collectively to protect vital public services in Norfolk”.
I have no doubt that the county council intends to co-operate fully with other councils.
Secondly, Norwich City Council already has two twin-hatters, by which I mean members of both the city council and the county council. Surely these twin-hatters can scrutinise the spending plans and financial statements and raise issues on behalf of their constituents. That is why they are there. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, talked about decisions made by cabinet. However, those decisions have to be passed by a full council on which these two twin-hatters sit, so they should know what the arguments are and put the case for Norwich City if they think it appropriate.
As for the police authorities, the police are a county council responsibility and, as such, and quite rightly, the authorities comprise a number of county councillors—eight in all—and independent members: in other words, non-councillors. Of the eight councillors, one is from Bowthorpe, Norwich, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, referred, and one is from Thorpe St Andrew in greater Norwich. Having a quarter of the appointed councillors—
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
The Bowthorpe councillor speaks, basically, for the south Norfolk area, which is not the Norwich City area, on the police authority.
Earl Cathcart
We may be splitting hairs, but he lives in outer Norwich. In any case, I think that there is city council representation on the police authority. The amendment is extraordinary in that no other council is required to report in this way through the Secretary of State. It is also unnecessary, because all the things for which the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is calling already happen.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold
Does my noble friend not agree that the force of this amendment is to ask the Government to get Norwich City Council and Norfolk County Council to get on? Is that not rather overegging the power of the state? I hope that the opposition spokesman will bear that in mind when summing up.