Voter ID Pilot Schemes

Debate between Jim McMahon and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jim McMahon]

I do not want to explore this cyclical argument too much, but let us say that we learn from this experience and voters become used to it, so that instead of 0.2% the figure falls to 0.1%. Does the hon. Gentleman believe, even so, that it is proportionate for 45,000 people to potentially be excluded, when only 28 allegations of voter fraud were made in the last general election?

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Before we hear the answer to that intervention, I must say that we shall start the wind-ups at 10 minutes past 5, and I would very much like to get another speaker in.

Draft Dorset (Structural Changes) (Modification Of The Local Government And Public Involvement In Health Act 2007) Regulations 2018 Draft Bournemouth, Dorset And Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018

Debate between Jim McMahon and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 16th May 2018 General Committees

[Jim McMahon]

I am grateful for that clarification.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my hon. Friend—the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim McMahon]

In the interests of balance.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The hon. Gentleman certainly is—I hope—a friend of mine, because he is listening and that is healthy. I inform him, if he does not know already, that in response to a point of order on 10 May on the business question, Mr Speaker said:

“Some people might think…that it is perhaps less than collegiate, kind or courteous on the part of the powers that be knowingly and deliberately to exclude the hon. Member for Christchurch from the Committee.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2018; Vol. 640, c. 925.]

[Jim McMahon]

That is noted. I was in the Chamber for that point of order and Mr Speaker’s response, so I was aware of it. There is clearly a difference of opinion, and Christchurch Council has been robust in its position. However people want to view that, the council went out to its local population and those who took part were clear that they were against reorganisation—84% were against the proposed merger. I am not saying that that in itself is reason alone to block any reorganisation or merger, but simply to put that to one side as if not important, or to try to decry such public involvement, is not the spirit in which to go about it.

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[Sir Christopher Chope]

There was a meeting of officials from Dorset councils with the Department in June 2016, before the consultation papers were finalised. That meeting has been confirmed in answer to a parliamentary question that I tabled. I have been told that the minutes and notes of that meeting no longer exist, if they ever did. I have been told by the section 151 officer at Christchurch Borough Council, who was present at that meeting, that, in response to representations on the big council tax gap between Poole and Bournemouth, and Christchurch—more than £200 at band D—the officials said that the Government would agree to a 20-year harmonisation period. It was on the basis of that statement made by Government officials, presumably with the knowledge and support of Government Ministers, that the consultation document was drawn up, using figures based on a 20-year harmonisation period. As my hon. Friend knows, if there is a 20-year harmonisation period, that means that the figures look a lot more attractive than they do for a much shorter harmonisation period.

Indeed, I questioned council officers in Dorset about that at the time. They explained that although the shorter harmonisation period would benefit my constituents in Christchurch, it would drive a coach and horses through the financial prospectus that had been produced, because it would eliminate almost all the savings from the reorganisation. The reorganisation was presented in the consultation on the basis of net savings, but a lot of those savings were increased income from the people of Christchurch, to the benefit of those in Poole and Bournemouth. This is a long answer to my hon. Friend’s intervention, but the short answer is that the Government did know and encouraged this.

[Jim McMahon]

rose—

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I will finish the answer in a minute, but first I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Jim McMahon]

I would be interested to know whether the Government indicated any intention during that discussion to have a property revaluation for council tax purposes at any point in the transition period, because if it were taken to its 20-year extreme, the property prices would be 47 years out of date.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Exactly. I obviously was not party to the conversation, but as I understand it, nothing about potential changes to council tax or business rate valuations was discussed.

Subsequently, last October the Government indicated to council officers across Dorset that they were no longer content with a 20-year harmonisation period, and that the period would be much shorter. That was confirmed to me by the chief official at the Department—he is in the room today—when I met him on 7 November at the behest of the Secretary of State. I was told then that the Government thought that the maximum period for harmonisation would be five years, but in practice it has never been more than two years in the past, and a maximum of two or three years is likely. A harmonisation period of two or three years would completely transform projections on savings, yet there has been no update from the councils to show what the impact would be in practice.

The issue of harmonisation is fraught. The Government invited all councils in Dorset to make submissions on harmonisation in time for the 8 January deadline. I know that Christchurch did that, but not whether other councils did. Unlike with the Government’s decision to go ahead with the two unitary authorities proposal, which they announced on 26 February, they have not yet said where they stand on the fraught issue of harmonisation. Their criteria for judging the issue are so broad and vague that it gives them absolute discretion over what answer they provide. As the issue has now been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West, I hope that when the Minister responds he will say unequivocally what harmonisation and equalisation period the Government will set in the event of these orders going through.

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[Sir Christopher Chope]

I will go along with that, yes. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, who is a betting man, knows exactly how to bet on two-horse races.

Let me return to the issue of consent. Neither my hon. Friend the Minister nor others drew the Committee’s attention to the 26th report of the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which was published in April. That Committee drew specific attention to these instruments—particularly the draft modification regulations, which we are discussing at the moment—and to the local advisory poll in December 2017,

“in which 84% (numbering 17,676 votes) of those taking part voted ‘no’ to the changes.”

It reports in its conclusions at paragraph 11:

“MHCLG has told us that Ministers have made clear that they will apply the criteria for local government restructuring ‘in the round’ for the area subject to reorganisation, rather than considering whether the criteria would be met in relation to each individual council area.”

It goes on:

“However, given the scale of opposition to the proposal expressed both by Christchurch BC and by its residents, we consider that these instruments give rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House.”

I hope that, in looking at this issue, hon. Members will indeed have regard to what that Committee said and to the appendix to its report.

That draws attention to the outcome of the poll. My hon. Friend the Minister said that some councillors from Christchurch had written to the Government saying that they rather fancied the idea of being councillors in a new unitary authority and thought it would be in the best interests of Christchurch residents that that should happen. When that was debated and voted on at the Christchurch Borough Council meeting in January, not a single councillor raised his hand to vote against what was proposed—in contrast to what happened a year previously. The reason was that they knew that if they did so, the electors in their wards would have been completely at a loss to understand how they could be insulted by their elected members.

Remember that at the borough council elections in Christchurch in 2015 there was no talk whatsoever of any structural change. Indeed, at that time there were plaudits all round for the savings, extending to several million pounds each year, being achieved as a result of Christchurch and East Dorset working together in partnership with one chief executive, one set of chief officers and one headquarters premises. As a consequence of what is proposed today, that partnership will be broken, with all the dis-economies of scale that will flow from that. That joint working will be undermined, and one part of the partnership will be set against the other. The Government have not faced up to that, which is another reason to be concerned about the proposals.

I would also bring the Committee’s attention to this point, which the Minister anticipated I would make. The background is that, under section 2 of the 2007 Act, the Government have the power to invite proposals for local government reorganisation from two tier to single tier. That is indeed what the Government recently did in Northamptonshire. The 2007 Act also gave the then Government the power to insist that proposals be brought forward, but that power was time-limited and has expired.

There was no power in that Act for councils to make their own proposals to the Government where there was not consent. That is where the regulations are problematic, because they say that the 2007 Act shall be changed retrospectively to operate in a way that allows councils to put submissions to the Secretary of State without their having invited such submissions. As the Minister said, the regulations being used to try to achieve that require the consent of at least one councillor in a particular category.

However, during the passage of the 2016 Act in December 2015, the Government said they would give a guarantee that powers to override the democratically expressed will of an individual council would not be used for that purpose. The background to that was a Back-Bench amendment to the Bill that was considered on Report, which is now reflected in section 15(5) to (8). I and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), along with one or two others, expressed concern during the debate on that amendment that, if literally interpreted, the power it created could be used against a council against its will. I sought various undertakings in that debate, but the junior Minister was tied to his brief and unable to satisfy either me or my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough that the powers would not be used in the adverse way that we feared.

Then—this is relevant, because it is how this came about—my hon. Friend and I spoke to the then Secretary of State during another Division on Report and said that if he did not give a stronger undertaking on Third Reading, we would divide the House. The Secretary of State told us that he would give us the undertaking that we sought. It was on that basis that I asked the Secretary of State this specific question on Third Reading:

“Will my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that amendment 56”—

the one that changed what is now section 15(5) to (8)—

“will not be used by the Government to force change on any local authority?”

The Secretary of State replied:

“I will indeed.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 822.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough then pressed the point, citing his fear that the power would be used to impose changes in Lincolnshire that he and his people did not want. The Secretary of State went further and said that the powers were designed to bring councils together into discussion and not to impose the will of the Government on one council, as compared with another, against its consent.

I have since spoken to our former colleague, the junior Minister at the time, who told me of his horror when he heard what the Secretary of State said in response to the questions that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough put to him on Third Reading. Our erstwhile hon. Friend, who sadly was defeated at the general election, took the view that what was being said was thoroughly misleading—that is what he says. What we have is a situation where I and my hon. Friend, and the House, were misled by the Government—I am not saying deliberately—and made to believe that the Government would not introduce changes against the will of elected councillors.

[Jim McMahon]

I, too, seek clarity on this matter, because there is a difference between the Secretary of State devising a scheme and then effectively forcing councils to accept it. That is not what is on the Order Paper today. During the discussions that took place, was there any conversation that would effectively give any component council a right of veto?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the whole context of this debate and the whole Hansard report, I think that he will reach the conclusion that a clear undertaking was given by the Government.

Perhaps I can pray in aid the written opinion—it was referred to earlier—from Nathalie Lieven QC at Blackstone Chambers in response to a request from Christchurch Borough Council. In it, she says:

“I was shown…various passages from the Hansard debates where the Minister appeared to assure Sir Christopher and another concerned MP, Edward Leigh, that the power would be used to persuade Councils to have a conversation about merger rather than to force them to merge against their will.”

Nathalie Lieven QC goes on to say:

“Debates in Parliament are only admissible”—

that is, in a court of law—

“where the meaning of the statute is unclear and ambiguous. In this case s.15 is perfectly clear on its face, so what the Minister said is not admissible to seek to prevent him from acting under s.15. The correct forum for holding the Minister to account, for arguably giving an assurance that he is now reneging on, is in Parliament itself. The courts will not enforce an assurance given to Parliament, and will be clear that this is a matter which should be raised in Parliament. On the face of it there does seem to be an inconsistency between what the junior Minister was telling Parliament”—

that was in November last year—

“and the decision of the SoS in this case, but this is a matter…to raise politically, rather than giving rise to a legal argument.”

So we have a situation where leading counsel takes the same view as I take, and took, and indeed relied upon during the consultation period in the autumn of 2016.

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[Sir Christopher Chope]

Thank you, Sir Henry. We are not at the end, and the reason is that there is a legal challenge to all this. We have had the letter before action and I understand that another letter before action has been issued by a resident in my constituency against the Government. It is interesting that, with the full knowledge of the legal opinions that have been floating around and the correspondence between the council in Christchurch and the Government, very little attention has been paid to that this afternoon.

We are talking about a constructive solution. I hope that my hon. Friends will ensure that nothing is done that will make for a complete shambles if and when the courts decide that these orders are ultra vires and are quashed, if they are indeed passed by both Houses before then. I would like the Minister to comment on the practicalities of all that, and on how easy it will be for those decisions to be rowed back on, if that is the will of the courts.

I have looked at the Government’s response to the letter before action from Christchurch Borough Council, which is centred around the use of retrospective legislation, and the main arguments put forward seem to be that Christchurch is a bit late in the day in raising that point, despite the regulations being laid only on 29 March. The first two or three pages of the response centre around that point—“You missed your chance and it’s all too late.”

The second part says that the presumption against retrospectivity is not engaged. The argument is not that retrospectivity is not engaged—of course, Christchurch Borough Council believes it is—but that the presumption against it is not engaged. There seems to be a recognition that retrospectivity is engaged. In the light of that, and of quite a lot of the decided cases, it seems that there is every prospect that, far from this being resolved this afternoon, as some of my right hon. and hon. Friends think it will, this will continue—and quite right too. We are a rules-based democracy and at the heart of all this is local democracy and localism.

What is the point of introducing proposals to abolish Christchurch Borough Council and replicate it with a new parish council that will effectively be a new bureaucracy with fewer powers? In other parts of Dorset, there are already parish and town councils, but not in Christchurch.

I was encouraged by some of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West, who seems to speak in a rather different way from the leader of his council. The leader of his council is on record as saying that he is against the creation of any town or parish councils within the new urban authority.

This afternoon, the leader of Christchurch Borough Council, the immediate past mayor of Christchurch Borough Council, the president of the Christchurch and East Dorset Conservative association, another Dorset county councillor and a prominent younger Conservative from Christchurch have sat and listened to this long debate. I do not think that they will have been impressed by the talk of wanting all this to have been sorted out, of local democracy being overridden, or of bottom-up processes.

Paragraph 8.7 of the Government’s explanatory memorandum says:

“During the period of representation”—

following the then Secretary of State’s “minded to” announcement in November—

“210 representations were received from members of the public, local councillors, businesses and community organisations. Submissions from members of the public”—

in other words, the real bottom-up submissions—

“were more likely to be opposed to the proposal”.

That is right across the whole of Dorset—we are not just talking about within Christchurch. Right across Dorset, more people were opposed to what the Government announced in November than were in support of it, yet some of my hon. Friends have the gall to suggest that that is not correct and that there is general support for all this.

I hope the Minister will tell us in his response how people in Christchurch, for example, can be protected against new borrowing being taken out by Bournemouth and Poole. I referred earlier to the £70 million of borrowing. Why should the people of Christchurch want to go along with that, when they have been prudent and run a debt-free council?

I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset accepts the decision of the joint committee that there should be an immediate move, on the creation of the new rural unitary, to equalisation and harmonisation. Why should there not be a similar move within the urban area? Surely actions speak louder than words. What action could be stronger than for everybody to accept that from day one they should all pay the same council tax, rather than people in the most rundown part of Christchurch having to subsidise the people in Sandbanks?

[Jim McMahon]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s passion and to the way he is representing the views of his constituency. I agree with him on the majority of the points he has raised, but there are elements I disagree with. His point about equalisation is very important. The statutory instrument says not that the councils will merge, but that the existing councils will be abolished and new councils will be created. At the point when new councils are created, surely it makes sense that all households in the new area are treated equally.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. I hope that the Minister will agree with the hon. Gentleman. What better way of setting up a new council, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West was saying, than by having a new culture, a new agenda, new vision and all the rest of it? It is very difficult to achieve that if we do not start off with everybody paying the same council tax at band D. I hope the Government will come off the fence and declare their hand, because I think behind their hand is hidden a proposal to introduce a notional council tax system, which would presume that the council tax in Poole, for example, had been raised by more than the threshold that triggers a referendum. I think that that will happen over a period of time, rather than immediately. I share the hon. Gentleman’s vision that if there is to be a new unitary authority, everybody should pay the same.