Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I welcome the Minister’s reply but I would like to go away and reconsider what she is suggesting. In my own personal experience, open competition or advertisement has been made for independent chairs of a number of committees on which I have sat in South Yorkshire, including for the fire authority. It turned out that the independent members—when further scrutinised after appointment by the majority party—all, interestingly, had a link back to that majority party. While I appreciate that what the Minister is saying is reasonable, in practice I have on at least three occasions seen it not to be reasonable. I ask her to really consider the whole process relating to independent members and how, in a one-party state, to stop such members being linked to the majority party—either the mayor’s party or a combined authority party.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

I remind noble Lords about the rules on Report: we should not introduce new matters and nobody should speak after the Minister, except for matters for elucidation.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, for his comments; I certainly will go away and think about them. In making these amendments, we hoped that they would deliver the intention that both he and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, sought to achieve. No matter how the legislation is done, we could all point to examples where it is not quite perfect, no matter how good the intention and no matter how tight the legislation is—though I take the noble Lord’s point.

I turn, finally, to opposition Amendment 43, which seeks to give greater statutory force to the guidance about overview and scrutiny that may be issued under paragraph 2(9) of new Schedule 5A. As the Bill stands, that guidance is already statutory guidance in the sense that due regard must be given to it. I do not think that further statutory requirements about guidance would be right. As the House will appreciate, if the Secretary of State draws up any such guidance, he would of course want to seek the views of those who are expert in the field of overview and scrutiny.

I turn to some specific points and, first, to the point made by the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie of Luton and Lord Shipley, on why a combined authority should agree to the overview and scrutiny arrangements. It is important that scrutiny arrangements are agreed by the combined authority—though it need not be unanimous agreement—so that the authority embeds scrutiny into its arrangements and the culture of the organisation. It is certainly not a clause to be used to weaken arrangements; rather, it is to ensure a culture of scrutiny throughout the authority.