Localism Bill
Lord Beecham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 133ZC and 133ZE. They are all about the maximum and minimum periods by which local authorities have to deal with expressions of interest and the rules and regulations that the Secretary of State will be able to make in relation to those. I can only underline what my noble friend Lord Shipley has just said.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I also have an amendment in this group. First, I endorse what the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Greaves, have said in speaking to their amendments. My Amendment 133ZEA is effectively to replace the Secretary of State’s regulatory function—again we come across the Secretary of State’s regulations—with the relevant authority being allowed to determine and publicise the relevant periods between accepting an expression of interest and beginning the procurement exercise. That really ought to be a matter for local circumstances and local decision and not something prescribed nationally.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, Amendment 133ZC would remove the Secretary of State’s power to specify minimum periods for the submission of expressions of interest. Amendment 133ZEA would require relevant authorities to set and publicise minimum and maximum periods between an expression of interest being accepted and a procurement exercise starting. Amendment 133ZE would remove the Secretary of State’s power to specify these periods, which would have a similar effect. We have taken these powers to ensure that power really is pushed down into the hands of communities.
The power to specify minimum periods for submission of expressions of interest will ensure that relevant bodies have sufficient time to prepare and submit them. The power to specify a minimum period between an expression of interest being accepted and a procurement exercise starting will, in particular, ensure that employees, where they are not the challengers, have sufficient time to decide whether they wish to organise themselves to bid, and do so effectively. This will support the Government’s commitment to give public sector workers the right to bid to take over running the services they deliver. It should also help smaller and newer voluntary and community bodies. The power to specify a maximum period will prevent a procurement exercise from being unnecessarily delayed.
The majority of relevant authorities will, of course, act within the spirit of the right, but these powers will prevent a recalcitrant authority from specifying periods that are so short that they stymie relevant bodies wishing to use the right. However, following our recent consultation, we are carefully considering whether some discretion could be given to relevant authorities on the timescales associated with the process to enable them to take account of local circumstances.
Clause 69(2) gives discretion to relevant authorities to specify periods during which expressions of interest could be submitted in particular services. Amendments 133ZA and 133ZB would instead require relevant authorities to specify periods during which expressions of interest in a particular service would be considered, changing the emphasis of this provision. Relevant bodies would then be able to submit expressions of interest at any time. However, this amendment could result in expressions of interest being submitted so far in advance that they would be out of date by the time the relevant authority considered them. The time within which a relevant authority must notify a relevant body of its decision on an expression of interest, provided for in Clause 71(4), is intended to provide time for consideration of expressions of interest. I trust that, in the circumstances, noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
This amendment, and the other amendment in this small group, Amendment 133ZEB, relate to the situation where the challenge is made by two or more employees of the authority under the provisions of the Bill. The first amendment requires the consent of the majority of the workforce likely to be affected before the authority is obliged to accept the expression of interest. That seems a sensible precaution.
A previous amendment would have raised the number from two to five but, if I may say so, that is almost irrelevant. It would be wrong for a very small group of employees of an authority to have an expression of interest accepted without the support of people in the authority who might be affected by the decision to proceed with the challenge. I hope that the Minister would agree it would be essential in those circumstances for a majority of those who would be so affected to endorse the proposition, even if it were made by a relatively small number. It would not be a cumbersome or difficult exercise to test the opinion of the relevant workforce, and it would clearly be a sensible precaution.
The other amendment is based on concerns about the operation of EU competition and procurement law, particularly in the case of a service that had been carried out by the authority becoming outsourced. This is legal territory into which I venture with trepidation. It has never been my area of legal specialism; it is not an area in which perhaps many in my profession are all that confident. There seems to be a risk in these cases that when an undertaking has been carried out by a public body and outsourcing takes place with the relevant workforce, that may expose the procedure to the rigours of the competition and procurement laws that might then lead not to a community organisation taking over but a private enterprise, which is quite outside the intentions of the legislation.
The amendment would require the authority to take a view—and take advice, of course—about the potential problem. If it was not a problem, of course, the expression of interest could go ahead. If it were to be a problem the amendment would allow the authority to reject the expression of interest on the grounds of a serious risk of the intention of the expression of interest being frustrated by some entirely extraneous body being able to enter into the procurement procedure and win the contract. This is not intended to be a destructive proposal. On the contrary, it is intended to help the legislation fulfil its intentions, and I hope that the Government, if not tonight, will be prepared to look at these two amendments to see whether they can be adopted in the interests of their own position on the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, Amendment 133ZDA would require that a majority of the workforce affected by an expression of interest submitted by employees of the relevant authority consented to a procurement exercise before it went ahead. We agree that employees affected by an expression of interest submitted by their colleagues should be engaged in the development of the proposal and we are looking at how this might be reflected in the requirements for an expression of interest. The face-to-face meetings, intranet updates and staff clinics undertaken when some 1,200 staff from the Hull Primary Care Trust transferred to a social enterprise under the NHS right to request scheme is a good example of how employees have been engaged in a proposal. However, when a local authority decides to undertake a procurement exercise for services outside the community right to challenge, there is no requirement to secure the consent of the majority of the workforce affected by it. This amendment may therefore act as a barrier to services being provided differently and better. Of course, the requirement for employers to inform and consult representatives and employees affected by a prospective transfer of employment will continue to apply.
Amendment 133ZEB would enable a relevant authority to reject expressions of interest when EU procurement or competition law is likely to apply. The Public Contracts Regulations 2006, which are part of our domestic law that implement EU procurement law, set out requirements in relation to procedures for advertising, tendering and awarding contracts when the value of the service is more than £156,000 for relevant authorities or the service is not otherwise exempt. Authorities will already need to comply with these requirements in deciding what kind of procurement exercise to carry out for a service, and will need to continue to do so following a successful challenge under the right. The amendment would enable relevant authorities to reject an expression of interest in all but the smallest services, dramatically reducing the scope of the right. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
I will first deal with the rather strange analogy that the Minister has drawn between this situation where a small number of employees can precipitate a process and a situation where an authority decides to outsource. The noble Lord identified a case involving several hundred employees but it might well be even more than that. The trigger in that case is the authority; the trigger in the case in the Bill is potentially a handful of fellow employees making an approach under the provisions of the legislation, affecting substantially more. That seems to me to be quite a different situation. While one would hope that there would be a process of consultation along the lines that the Minister referred to in the case of Hull Primary Care Trust, there is nothing in the Bill that would require it. So I hope that the Minster will have another look at that.
In so far as the competition requirements are concerned, with respect, I think that the Minister is slightly missing the point that I am making, which is not about the general provision for procurement but about the particular circumstances that might apply to an undertaking of a public authority being outsourced by its workforce under the provisions of the Bill.
I understand that the Minister is not prepared to accept either amendment tonight, but I reiterate my request that these matters be looked at between now and Report. Otherwise, it may well be that we will have return to the issue at Report and potentially test the opinion of the House. However, at this stage I will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, we now move on to Chapter 4 of Part 4 of the Bill, which relates to assets of community value and the compilation of lists of assets of community value by local authorities, the definition of community land, the procedures for including the land in the list, and so on. This is an important chapter. It is entirely new legislation, with new ideas and a new procedure. As with the right of community challenge, this House has, I believe, a duty to ensure that the legislation is workable.
I shall speak also to six other amendments in the group, which are in my name, and there are many other amendments in the names of other noble Lords. Amendment 133D, which leads the group, seeks to change the definition of what is to be in the list which the local authority maintains. Clause 74(1) states:
“A local authority must maintain a list of land in its area that is land of community value”.
We seek to change that to,
“a list of businesses in its area that are businesses of community value”.
This is a probing amendment to probe the meaning of “land”, “businesses” and “buildings”, which are all referred to in this part of the Bill. There is also something more fundamental behind it, which is the question of what, in a community, is of value to people. As far as this proposal is concerned, is it land, or is it what people do with the land; in other words, the businesses? There is a fundamental distinction and it is worth debating. There is also the matter of whether land, as such, should be maintained on the register or whether it should be dealt with in some other way. We will come to those amendments in due course.
Amendment 136ZAB—
Lord Beecham
Does the noble Lord have a view on the utility of Clause 74(2) which reads:
“The list maintained under subsection (1)”—
with which the noble Lord has just dealt—
“by a local authority is to be known as its list of assets of community value”.
Does he think that is useful or would he have in mind a further amendment about that?
Lord Greaves
I do not know. If the local authority is maintaining a list of land or businesses of community value, it will no doubt be known as the list of assets of community value. Whether the words are required in legislation is something I have long since stopped wondering about. I am sure that some of us could get round a table and reduce the size of this Bill considerably just by omitting stuff that appears to add nothing. I am not sure that that is our job. I would love to go through deleting stuff, but the Government would not accept it. When I do, they do not accept it. I have no real comment on that.
The Bill refers to a building or land specified in regulations, as a definition of the buildings and land which perhaps ought to be in the list of community assets. Again, it refers to a building or land, and appears to refer to a particular building or particular land, but it seems to me that it ought to refer to a class of building or land or a category of building or land.
Amendments 136ZB and 136ZC go together and are rather more specialist. Amendment 136ZB is quite long. It states:
“For the purposes of this section “land of community value” does not include … an allotment, common, open space, nature reserve or playing field in the ownership or management of a national or local authority or a charity whose purpose includes the management or conservation of that land for the public benefit … access land, or … land governed by an approved estate management scheme under section 19 of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 or section 69 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development act 1993”.
Amendment 136ZC defines the terms. As defined in the amendment, access land is land defined as such under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. It covers very large areas. For example, the whole of the Lake District is access land, either because it is urban common or because it has been described as access land. Very large areas of the uplands of this country are access land, and many places have commons that are access land. Clearly this is land of community value, which is why it has been defined as access land on which people can engage in what I believe is termed “recreation on foot”. However, it would be ludicrous if all that land were to be included in this legislation. These amendments exclude it.
The list of allotments, commons, open spaces and so on removes from the Part 4 procedure land already reasonably protected by statute, and land where the present owners should not be encouraged to believe that they can offload it on other people or perhaps on public authorities. It is also desirable to simplify the creation of the lists. Many areas, large and small, are defined in this way and might be included. However, if they were it would be likely to lead to a large number of disputes that would be difficult to resolve.
The definitions of allotment, common and open space are similar to those in Clauses 163(3) and 183(10) in the London sections, which repeat definitions from previous legislation over the years. It should be noted that the definition of “allotment” does not include the normally understood meaning of allotment, which is either a statutory allotment under the Allotments Act 1922 or a council or other allotment probably let on an annual garden tenancy. These allotments are the specialist fuel and field garden allotments under an Inclosure Act, which some of us will remember discussing during the passage of previous legislation.
The amendments do not seek to prevent the transfer or leasing of any of these excluded classes of land to appropriate charitable organisations—by agreement and after full consultation with the public and those affected—but it should not be under the pressure of this procedure. These classes of land have protection that is long established and rather specialist, and it should remain.
Amendment 133E questions the five-year time limit for land and buildings that are included—
Localism Bill
Lord Beecham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, perhaps I can speak briefly to Amendment 105 but before doing so, I pray the indulgence of the Committee if the debate is prolonged, as I have amendments to the Education Bill in Grand Committee. I mean no offence if I have to withdraw at some point. I should also say in preamble that, having seen the news yesterday on the transparency of Transport for London and given the matters we will be considering in Clause 206, I wonder whether “a relevant authority” might include Transport for London within the meaning of these clauses.
I am grateful for my noble friend’s remarks, but my concern is about politically inspired resolutions put to local authorities, particularly in the run-up to elections. I accept that the wording of my amendment may not be correct. I am not someone who has argued for extensive regulation but we have seen, even from such an august person as the Secretary of State, that public comment on the level of senior officers’ pay attracts the attention—often very approving attention—of the press. My fear is that, notwithstanding the niceties of employment law and the effective risk of constructive dismissal, in the approach to an election it would be unbearably tempting for a minority party in a local authority to lay a resolution calling, say, for the reduction of chief officers’ pay by 10, 15 or 20 per cent. Why stop there? “Vote for us and we will cut senior officers’ pay”.
In those circumstances it is politically quite difficult for the governing party in a local authority to resist such a proposal if put as a resolution to a council. Any member of a council can put forward a resolution just as any noble Lord can put forward a proposal here. Clause 23(4) makes it absolutely clear that, including after the beginning of the financial year in which a senior officer’s pay statement has been laid, it is perfectly in order for a local authority to seek to change that pay statement. So while I am not calling more regulation down on the heads of local authorities, I warn my noble friend that there is an extremely high risk in the six months before elections of competitive resolutions being laid to reduce the pay of members in authority, which might have pernicious effects and could, in some cases, be contrary to employment law.
Having asked my noble friend to consider the matter, I am grateful for the consideration he has given so far and I am reassured by some of the things he has said on the point, but I hope that, in considering any guidance, he will take very seriously the points that have been made. It would be a great pity to see a rash of resolutions coming out of local authorities asking the impossible of senior officers, who are in most cases distinguished public servants doing their best for local people.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I understand the noble Lord’s point, but I have to say that it would be a huge infraction on the responsibilities and rights of elected members of councils to indicate what might go on a council agenda and what might not. That is going much too far. Although I expect members to behave responsibly, if they are irresponsible, it would be the task of those answering such a resolution to make the case. We ought to have the self-confidence to do that, so I do not think, with all respect to the noble Lord, that his amendment should progress.
I seek some assurances from the Minister, to see whether I have understood him correctly, apart from anything else. Later—many, many hours later—we will come to the question of the community infrastructure levy and whether or not it should be a material consideration in determining planning matters. There will, I think, be quite strong views about that. I wonder, having heard the Minister, whether it will be permissible for councils to take into account the factors referred to in my noble friend’s amendment as a material consideration in the awarding of contracts. If I understood him correctly, the noble Lord indicated that that would be permissible, although it should not be prescribed, and I can understand that position. Perhaps he will confirm or disabuse me of that notion.
I also ask the noble Lord whether he has a view on the living wage, which has been espoused—I think before an election but certainly after an election, to revert to the point of the noble Lord, Lord True—by no less a person than the Mayor of London, who has adopted the concept initiated by his predecessor of promoting the living wage. Does he accept that it is right for councils, if they choose, to adopt such a policy in respect of their own authorities and to seek to reflect that in the conditions upon which they let contracts?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this has been a short but very useful debate on a very important aspect of local government policy. I assure noble Lords that the guidance which will be issued will take note of issues raised in this debate. While we may not agree on all aspects, there appears to be a good deal of consensus that the Government’s approach on senior pay is to be welcomed as, indeed, are the requirements of our amendments for a pay policy statement. I am grateful to the noble Lord for lending his support to that concept.
Our amendments build on that approach and will increase accountability for local decisions about the lowest paid in the local government workforce. I say local decisions deliberately. The Government are quite clear that these decisions on pay and reward must remain ones for local determination. I hope that noble Lords opposite will acknowledge that the Government have fulfilled our commitment to reflect on discussions around low pay in the other place and brought forward appropriate amendments, as, indeed, we do today.
The Government did not undertake at that time to consider measures to increase duties on local authorities with regard to their relationship with bodies with whom they can contract. We believe such proposals would be burdensome. Charities, the voluntary sector and business have called for regulation around contracting to be reduced. There is general consensus that in order to achieve greater participation of the voluntary sector and small businesses in local government contracting, we need to make the process of contracting as simple as possible.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I expect your Lordships will be familiar with the provisions of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, and specifically all the requirements laid down in Chapter 1. On the off-chance that all its details do not immediately spring to mind, perhaps I might be forgiven for outlining the relevant chapter.
The duties referred to relate to the promotion of democracy, and the Act sets out a number of issues upon which councils have a duty to promote understanding. They include the democratic arrangements of authorities: that is,
“(a) the functions of the authority;
(b) the democratic arrangements of the authority;
(c) how members of the public can take part in those democratic arrangements and what is involved in taking part”.
The duty also includes:
“a duty to promote understanding of the following among local people—
(a) how to become a member of the principal local authority;
(b) what members of the principal local authority do;
(c) what support is available for members of the principal local authority”.
This is obviously designed to encourage greater participation and greater willingness on the part of people to stand for election and to serve as elected councillors.
In addition, the Act requires councils to promote the understanding of and information about a range of other organisations with which local councils are connected: for example, monitoring boards, courts boards and youth offending teams. The Act also requires councils to promote understanding among local people about the magistracy:
“(a) the functions of a lay justice;
(b) how a member of the public can become a lay justice;
(c) what is involved in being a lay justice”.
These are fairly simple tools with which to promote the involvement of people in local governance—using the term broadly—with both local authorities and, as I have indicated and as the Act makes clear, a range of other local institutions that impinge upon the life of the community and are very often dependent on the voluntary participation of members of that community. They are examples of engagement with society which any Government, including the present one, would presumably wish to encourage very strongly. I therefore do not understand why this Bill seeks to remove that duty. This Bill purports to be about localism and local government, about involving people in the decisions affecting their lives and those of their community, about encouraging wider civic responsibility, so why does this clause remove a basic, not particularly elaborate or expensive, duty to promote exactly that? What is this clause doing in this Bill?
Lord Tope
My Lords, the noble Lord began by suggesting that we might not remember the provisions of the local democracy and everything else Bill. Some of us in this House remember it only too vividly. The noble Lord had the good fortune, if I might say so, not to have been a Member of the House then, but I remind your Lordships that we spent many, many hours on this part of that Bill.
The short answer to the noble Lord’s question as to why my noble friends and I rejoice at this clause is prescription. We spend many hours in this House, including on this Bill, complaining about central government prescribing in detail to local government what it should and should not do, what it can and cannot do, and even more particularly how it should do it. That is what Part 1 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill did in enormous detail. I am sure my noble friend Lord Greaves will remind us exactly how many pages, words and possibly even letters it took to do this. That Bill started in your Lordships’ House and we spent a long time trying to improve that part of it, arguing that it was not the business of central government to prescribe exactly what local government should do and how they should do these things. Of course we should promote democracy. Of course we should encourage all these things. All good local authorities of whatever political control are already doing that. They have been doing it, in most cases very successfully, for many years and will carry on doing so whether there is an Act of Parliament requiring them to do so or not. So I, for one, rejoice at this clause, and this might be one of the few times I say that during this Committee.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I entirely agree with noble Lords who reject the notion of overprescription in this or any other part of the Bill. However, removing a duty to promote democracy altogether sends an unfortunate signal. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, seemed to admit that he wanted to add to prescription when the Bill was originally debated because he wanted to include bodies to which reference is not made, which is a slight inconsistency.
Lord Greaves
In my defence, I should say that there are two lines of attack for Governments, although I should not use that phrase at the moment. The first is that the whole thing should not exist. The second is that if it does exist, we should try to improve it, which is our view on a lot of this Bill. If this was such a wonderful thing, why did the previous Government spend two years after the Bill was enacted not commencing this part?
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord will be aware that, no doubt for good reasons, I was not a member of the previous Labour Government and I cannot answer for them. They did not do everything that we would have wished in local government. Perhaps this matter did not achieve the priority that some of us would have liked. In replying, the Minister is right to point out possible costs of the detailed guidance that his civil servants are so ready to produce. Of course, that does not mean that that degree of prescription is unnecessarily desirable and that the costs will necessarily have been incurred.
If we want to encourage participation in local government and voter turnout, the people standing for election or seeking to serve their community as magistrates need encouragement and information. The community as a whole needs to be informed about what its local authority can and cannot do, and how it might be influenced. Much of the Bill is about those processes going on in different ways at different levels. The duty would have reinforced the thrust of the Bill. With respect, I still do not see why it is being removed.
I note that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is not in his place. Perhaps his two colleagues have taken him to one side because he subscribed to my amendment.
Lord Beecham
Indeed, but had he been here, I assume he would have supported the amendment to which he has ascribed his name, and with his long experience of local government—including as leader of the council in which we both serve—I would have thought that might carry some weight with his colleagues, but apparently not.
However, I hope it will be recognised that all of us have a responsibility in public and political life to encourage greater participation. If we are not going to do it under the auspices of a duty, let us at least in our various capacities endeavour to do it more broadly, because local democracy needs that kind of support.
The Bill proposes a different method, which I consider to be less satisfactory and which I believe the noble Lords may also consider unsatisfactory, which is the system of local referendums. We will debate it later today, no doubt. This is a much more elaborate system in a different context, because in that case one is seeking the opinion of a community on a simple proposition, subject to a referendum with little authority, given that there will hardly be a significant threshold to call a referendum, let alone in respect of turnout. This is a much more elaborate and expensive way of doing things than dealing with petitions properly and encouraging them to come forward.
Again, I do not understand why the Government feel it necessary to remove these provisions, accepting, again, that the prescriptive element is otiose and could be dispensed with. Petitions are a better way for the public to draw attention to matters with which they are concerned, and for the public to get a response to those concerns in a reasonably structured way. It is true that in some councils there is a process for public petitions—certainly, in my council there is, and no doubt others as well—but it is not universal, and it is not something which is sufficiently developed. In terms of local accountability and transparency, petitioning is a good method, and preferable to the alternative which is enshrined in the Bill. I ask the Government to reconsider this clause. Even if local referendums remain, which will be debated later, and perhaps a view taken on report, it is not mutually exclusive, and the petitioning process could be left as it now stands in the Bill.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I do not want to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and I will not do so. Once again, I rejoice at this clause and very much wish it to stand part of the Bill, unlike my noble friend, Lord Shipley, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. We spent many hours—I have a recollection that it was probably many days—on this part of the Bill. We discussed pages and pages in extraordinary detail, debating how to collect, submit, and process petitions. When the Bill started in your Lordships’ House, the debate seemed to be based entirely on the premise that a petition to a local council was of the same format and standing as a petition to Parliament. In fact, all of us who have been councillors will have seen petitions to councils, and know that they are not usually the most formal documents you are likely to come across. They are of their nature at their best, because they are collected by and within the local community and do not have any formal standing or, often, any formal wording, as was originally suggested in the Bill.
We asked for evidence during all of this that local authorities were not dealing properly with petitions. I find it hard to believe that there can be a local authority of any size in the country that does not receive petitions. I wanted evidence that they were not dealing with them properly. The one merit of our hours of debate was that we discovered that quite a lot of local authorities, including the local authority of the then Secretary of State, did not adequately describe their procedure for dealing with petitions on their websites. The fault was not so much with the procedures of the council as with the adequacy of their websites. My own authority, and I am sure many others, improved their websites considerably as a result. That was a useful outcome, but it justified neither the hours that we spent on it nor the fact that it was all laid down in such prescriptive detail in a Bill.
The other useful factor of the debate was that it addressed the rather more modern issue of e-petitions, to which some local authorities probably had not then given sufficient attention. As a result of the Bill, and subsequently the Act, some authorities, including my own, probably gave them more consideration and put them on their websites.
We do not need an Act of Parliament to do that; we do not need pages and pages of prescription to do that; it is quite simply good practice, which could, possibly was and certainly should have been disseminated by the Local Government Association, in which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, played such a leading part. I shall not disappoint the noble Lord: I once again rejoice at this clause.
Lord Beecham
I thank the Minister for this reply. His council’s example is one that many councils follow and would have followed without the legislation and if the legislation goes will continue to follow it. However, that does not necessarily mean that all councils will do that. This ought to be the general practice. The Minister referred to consideration at a meeting or referral to an overview and scrutiny committee. These are examples of good practice which ought to be universal not optional. Again, taking the point about overprescription in terms of the details of how things are to done, I am sorry that the principle of a universal approach to enhancing local democracy, which the Minister and his noble friends will undoubtedly endorse, will suffer as a result of the removal of this duty. It is of a piece with the inconsistent approach that the Government are adopting in this Bill which, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has confirmed, we will be discussing later and in a form which is certainly worse than the worst allegations that could be made about the section which the Government propose to amend and delete from the 2009 Act.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this is a different matter. We are now on to a substantive issue which the Government seek to introduce into the law of the land and to bind into the practice of local authorities.
I understand that John Major as Prime Minister was a great devotee of the novels of Trollope, regularly reading them, and I think his predecessor Harold Macmillan was much the same. I am wondering whether the present Secretary of State, Mr Pickles, has become a devotee of Dickens. He seems to be metamorphosing into a fusion of Dickens’ characters—a combination of Wackford Squeers, Mr Bumble and Gradgrind, leavened by a dash of Mr Pickwick. However, he is now developing, and has for some time developed, an obsession with waste and refuse collection. This seems to add Boffin, the golden dustman, to the cast list of Dickens’ characters which he is absorbing into his persona. I have never understood the Secretary of State's obsession with this issue. He has, to put it mildly, irritated local politicians of all parties, including the then chairman of the relevant board of the Local Government Association, Paul Bettison—a leading member of the Conservative Party and a leading figure in Conservative local government circles—by suggesting that charge and waste reduction schemes should not be implemented. He has, of course, opined many times about the number of refuse collections that should take place nationally.
First, this obsession seems inappropriate in any event for a Secretary of State. Secondly, one has to ask: what is a specific provision on a particular service doing in a Bill about localism? The Bill makes considerable play of giving councils a power of general competence and talks about the role of local government generally and of local communities, while Ministers frequently refer to the need to avoid prescription—we have heard that more than once this afternoon already. What could be more prescriptive than banning local authorities from a proposal to deal with waste problems, especially since the prescription that the Secretary of State would apply takes no notice of differences in localities or the implications for environmental issues such as recycling?
It is not as if the proposals about charging schemes were prescribed in their turn or as if councils had to embark on such policies. That would have been equally wrong because, again, different circumstances apply to different places. Even within an individual authority, there are areas where particular schemes would be appropriate and others where they are clearly not. It is obviously a matter for local decision but this Secretary of State, in his obsessive regard to this topic, seems to be intent on ruling out something that not many authorities have actually chosen to do. That is their choice. I do not think that many have gone in for those schemes so, again, the question has to be asked: why is this being inserted into the Bill? If it is to be a matter of political debate, should it not be debated rather than prescribed?
Noble Lords opposite have rejoiced at the abolition of prescription in the two areas which we have debated so far this afternoon. I hope they will join me in rejecting this considerable area of prescription that the Secretary of State wishes to impose on local government with absolutely no warrant at all, on the basis of evidence or of the public good.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the noble Lord is persuasive in his arguments by suggesting that what is happening here is that the Government are removing the freedoms of local authorities, but it is not quite like that. The freedoms that he is talking about are very prescriptive and if he reads the particular part of the Climate Change Act, he will discover that. These waste reduction schemes are all nonsense, really. I keep using that word but I remember that this is another part of a Bill where I made a nuisance of myself in your Lordships’ House by detaining the House for probably too long while it was being debated and discussed.
The Bill refers to schemes relating to the amount of waste, the size and type of the containers and the frequency of collections. There was what was colloquially known at the time as the chip-in-bin scheme, where a chip in a bin would in some magic way measure the amount of waste being provided. There was the big bin and little bin scheme, where if you had a little bin you were okay and got it for free, but if you had a big bin you had to pay more for it, which affected large families. There was the pound-a-sack scheme, where you had to go and buy approved sacks for a pound each and fill them up—a scheme which was reported to have worked extremely well in Maastricht, but probably nowhere else. There was also a frequency of collection scheme, where you had a weekly collection, but if you wanted it more frequently you had to pay—the pay per day scheme. So these four schemes took on an iconic quality as far as the last Government were concerned, but they have never been brought into effect because they are not the way to go about it.
Rather unusually, what the Secretary of State is doing is championing a waste collection service that is a universal free service. That is what he is championing and I thought the Labour Party used to believe in such things. But not now, it wants the chips-in-bins and the pound-per-sacks schemes and all the rest of it. I am delighted to see this go. I wish we had been able to persuade the last Government that we should not have wasted all that time on legislation that was never introduced.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, Clause 30 removes powers that enable local authorities to run pilot waste reduction schemes. We announced our intention to remove these powers in June 2010. We believe that rewards rather than penalties are the best way to encourage people to reduce the amount of waste they produce. We wish to see local authorities helping householders to do the right thing with their waste, rather than punishing them for doing the wrong thing. We also consider that schemes which include fines based on the weight of residual waste left out by householders are likely to result in fly-tipping and other anti-social behaviour.
This Government are clear that rewarding householders for recycling or for reducing waste is to be encouraged; we want to help them to do the right thing. Removing these powers in the Climate Change Act will free up local authorities to use their broader well-being powers or general powers of competence, as appropriate, to provide rewards for waste reduction. Since their introduction there has been little appetite for using the Climate Change Act powers. No local authority has yet applied to take up a charge-and-reward scheme and no schemes will be dismantled as a result of their removal.
This clause simply removes Sections 71 to 75 of Part 5 and Schedule 5 from the Climate Change Act 2008. This will remove the provisions for waste reduction schemes but have no wider effect on the powers of, or burdens upon, local authorities. It is interesting that Royal Assent was on 26 November 2008, two and a half years ago, and no one has sought to bring this in. I therefore beg to move that these clauses stand part of the Bill.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this is another case of local authorities having the power to do anything they like except what the Secretary of State decides they should not do. It is on a simple point of principle that this amendment is moved. I regret very much that the Minister and his noble friends do not seem to grasp the inconsistency inherent in their position, but so be it.
Localism Bill
Lord Beecham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, not for the first time Newcastle is united in connection with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. A working figure of 10 per cent is probably about right. The figures suggested in some other amendments are on the high side; 25 per cent is more than half the average turnout in a council election. It is asking a lot to postulate a requirement for a petition to have as high a signature rate as that.
I tabled amendment in this group in relation to the areas from which a referendum might be called. The Bill provides for the whole authority or one or more electoral areas, provided they are contiguous within it. That sounds plausible, but if you take, for example, Birmingham, you have wards with an electorate of about 20,000. That argues a population of something like 30,000. It is in effect a small town. That is big enough to contain more than one discrete and substantial community. My amendment simply suggests that in addition to the two criteria laid down in terms of area in the Bill, there could be a further provision, namely,
“such area as may be determined by the authority”.
An authority could say: go and petition the area, we acknowledge it is not the whole of the ward, but we are prepared to accept a smaller area than an electoral division. It gives a degree of flexibility which I think might be reasonable. That is the effect of Amendment 120J.
I was interested to hear the observations of the noble Lord, Lord True, who was emphatically endorsing the principles of petitioning as an alternative to referendums. I wish he had been here to support me and the absent noble Lord, Lord Shipley, when I proposed this afternoon that the provision that would strike out the petition procedure should not be supported and that the provisions of the 2009 Act should continue to apply. Be that as it may, he is right to prefer petitions to referendums; they are undoubtedly better. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, for his analysis of the defects of referendums, taken at large, and his reference to the report of the Constitution Committee last year.
He and other noble Lords are right to point to some of the dangers that can arise and the mischief that can be made. In the next group of amendments, we shall come to the point about members of councils calling referendums. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about that and support his amendment. However, one can clearly see a variety of difficulties. For example, in my own ward there is currently a proposal for a historic building, which has been acquired by the Muslim community, to be made into a school and community centre. The BNP is already stirring up hostility to that proposal. It is not just a planning proposal; it is a proposal for a school and so on. The amendments on planning would cover the planning side but it goes beyond that. One can clearly see the difficulties that could arise from the referendum process, a public vote and so on.
I put another case: tomorrow we shall debate elected police commissioners. If you wanted to stand to be an elected police commissioner and were building up your campaign, it would not be difficult to orchestrate a series of referendums across the area—which might be a single county or an area bigger than that—in the run-up to the election. A local election does not have to be a straightforward party political contest. There are all sorts of ways in which the system could be used and manipulated, which underlines the need to be very careful about substituting plebiscitary democracy for representative local democracy. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said at some length and with some eloquence in our first debate on the Bill, the core principle in a series that he enunciated is that of support for local representative local democracy. There is danger even in non-binding referendums. There may then be pressure for binding referendums, although not from the Government, except in one particular. You can see that outside the major political parties, there could a build-up of pressure for binding referendums to be held on the Swiss or Californian models, nether of which are very persuasive as instruments of good government.
With the characteristic generosity that marks the political approach of the Opposition, we support most of the amendments proposed by the Liberal Democrats in this group. However, with respect to the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and the noble Lord, Lord True, their proposed figure is too high and difficult to justify.
We shall probably just have time to move on to the next group of amendments. I note with some alarm one amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, which would reduce the percentage to 1 per cent and fix it at that, which strikes me as going much too far. We shall come to that this evening or on Thursday. We are not voting tonight but I invite the noble Lords to continue to convey to the Government their concerns about the way in which these proposals have been made. I hope the Government will take another look, particularly at the threshold figures if they are not prepared to depart from the principle of promoting referendums. I look forward to our debate on Report and to a response that reflects the views that have been expressed tonight.
Lord Greaves
Before the noble Lord sits down, will he comment on the view that in many cases, whether or not a referendum is mandatory, if it has been high-profile and hard-fought, it will be very difficult—certainly for a district council—to go against the decision? In practice, and in political reality, they will have to abide by it.
Lord Beecham
It will be a real test of political leadership to withstand populist pressure of that kind. One of the concerns expressed by many of us during discussions on the Bill is that it gestures too much in the direction of populism and will make life more difficult, particularly, as the noble Lord says, for smaller local authorities that are likely to come under greater pressure than those in bigger urban areas or counties.
Earl of Lytton
My Lords, as this is my first contribution at this stage of the Bill, I declare an interest as the president of the National Association of Local Councils, which noble Lords may know as the national body for parish and town councils. I am also president of the Sussex Associations of Local Councils. I will limit my declaration of interest to those two because they are most relevant.
I appreciate the way the noble Lord, Lord True, introduced this particularly important set of issues. He started off with the question of triggers. That led the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, to comment on triggers for parish and town councils. It may save time if I deal with an aspect of that by way of illustration. We will later get on to a question in relation to paragraph 18 to Schedule 12 of the Local Government Act 1972. Subsection (4), which relates to parish councils, states:
“A poll may be demanded before the conclusion of a parish meeting on any question arising at the meeting; but no poll shall be taken unless either the person presiding at the meeting consents or the poll is demanded by not less than ten, or one-third, of the local government electors present at the meeting, whichever is the less”.
As one can readily see, that is a very low trigger. I am aware of a situation where a coastal parish council considering an extension to its village hall found the process hijacked by a small group of people who raised the 10 minimum. As the matter then proceeded to a parish poll, they were faced with the cost of something approaching £4000 for conducting that, because it had to be dealt with by the principal authority under the normal rules.
One gets a sense that this is devoid of proportionality. We have talked about the gravity of the subject, but there has to be some sense of proportion. I know that there is an amendment in the Minister’s name about this. There are other issues concerning overlaps. I think the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to this, sort of, in code. By overlaps, I mean the possibility of a referendum being used to countermand the other duties of a principal authority. We cannot be having that many bites at this particular cherry. Mayhem lies down that route.
Regarding the cost-benefit and cost-burden, if there is no proportionality, it is a free bet in economic terms and we will have free riders, people who have an agenda and who want to take charge. This could be the moneyed who have moved into an area or whatever it happens to be, or some particular cause célèbre. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves—or it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—referred to the fact that the run up to an election might be a good time to trigger something that would get in the local paper, or whatever it happens to be. Democratic coherence is at stake here. We are talking about localism and about having the elective democracy, to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred. We cannot bypass that by a process of sectoral interests.
Why do I mention this? It is because I strongly believe that when it gets down to the parish pump level, it is important to have something that is proportionate, cannot unduly fetter the operation of parish or town councils’ affairs, and respects the principle that when you elect a body of people to represent your interests they must to some extent be given a free hand. The test is at re-election. That is not to say that there are no matters that lie outside the normal voting pattern, but there must be a clear way of making sure that they do not cut across one another.