Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Lord Beecham Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I have no wish to reopen, especially at this time of night, the debate on Clause 39 which was so rudely interrupted on Monday evening when we might well have concluded it. In moving the amendment, which is of course a sunset clause, I am following the wisdom of the current Secretary of State, who described sunset clauses as being:
“In line with best practice on public policy”,
because they limit,
“changes to three years and a review of the benefits from the policy at that point”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/1/13; col. 17WS.]
I am sure that those of us who worked so assiduously on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will remember those wise words from the Secretary of State, and that is the effect of this amendment.
The LGA would like to see the removal of the clause altogether because it believes that it is,
“a significant threat to both local government’s financial stability and infrastructure investment”.
On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, when he spoke earlier on Report, wanted the clause removed, or at least not implemented, because he thought that the Government had overreacted to what he described as,
“a pretty small problem in terms of the number of authorities and the cash affected”.—[Official Report, 15/7/13; col. 607.]
Time will tell who is right, and that is the purpose of the amendment. The Government are clearly unwilling to remove the clause altogether, so if it has the unforeseen and negative consequences that some fear, it could be removed without the need for primary legislation. As the Secretary of State has said, that accords with best practice on public policy, so I am sure that the Minister will be keen to accept this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the sun has already set; none of us wants to be here when it rises in the morning. I concur with the amendment moved by the noble Lord and I trust that the Minister will accept it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, I can be very brief. The Government cannot accept the amendment. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that council tax payers should have the final say on excessive increases and that the case for the inclusion of levies in the referendum legislation is compelling. The Government intend that, once made, the change to the legislation should remain on the statute book and that council tax payers should be protected from excessive increases permanently—not just for a few years. Local authorities and levying bodies would not appreciate the prospect of further change to legislation in three years’ time.
It may be helpful to the noble Lord if I also mention a major practical issue raised by the amendment. In 2016, as in all years, local authorities must set their council tax by 11 March. Any authority triggering a referendum must begin preparations almost immediately, so the referendum will be scheduled for the first Thursday in May 2016. The sunset clause would take effect on 30 April 2016, right in the middle of local authorities’ preparations to hold a referendum. Furthermore, if the amendment is accepted, by that time, the provision would have disappeared from the statute book and rendered regulations relating to the conduct of the referendum and its effect in direct conflict with the legislation on which they are based. That is because they would be based on the definition of the relevant basic amount of council tax, including rather than excluding levies. That would be a recipe for confusion and would not be fair on local authorities or council tax payers. So, for reasons of principle and practicality, the Government are unable to support the amendment, and I hope that the noble Lord is willing to withdraw it.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I will add a brief comment about this, because from the perspective of the general public it is a very important issue. I understand that the Secretary of State has made a statement, published in the Local Government Chronicle, that a change will be effected in two years’ time. However, we need to be a bit clearer about what this might mean because of the rights of people to know what statutory notices are being placed that they might be interested in.
As I understand it, newspapers can still be used, which I welcome because newspapers in many parts of the country still have a role in publishing statutory notices. However, that will become a matter for a local council to decide. Let us also note that in the second part of this amendment my noble friend Lord Tope is saying that a local authority has to use a means of publicity that will bring it to the attention of the greatest number of people in the area. I hope no local authority thinks that that means it need not advertise on local lampposts and notice boards. If you are going to get to the greatest number of people, using local lampposts is a very effective means of achieving that.
I think the Secretary of State was quoted as saying that he prefers websites to be used in future. However, I will make three proposals to the Minister that might be thought about when the time comes to issue guidance. It is very easy for information to be lost on websites. There has to be a link to statutory notices from a council’s main page, and the website has to be easy to navigate to get the information off it. I also ask the Government to introduce an automatic postcode search facility so that someone who wants to inquire, as they do on a planning matter, can input a postcode, as they can in most local authorities, and get a straightforward list of current planning applications in that area. I propose that the same thing should happen for statutory notices.
Other than that, the world is changing around us. While I quite like to read statutory notices in newspapers, I understand the need to move with the times as long as the interests of the general public are protected and information is not hidden from them when lampposts, newspapers and the web could all be used in relevant ways as decided by local authorities.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, far be it from me to seek to mediate between the coalition parties on this matter, although of course I cannot resist the temptation to do so.
The noble Lord’s proposition is in many ways sensible. Even under the present law, councils certainly have the right to advertise in ways additional to publication in newspapers if they choose. Eventually, no doubt, that will become pretty much par for the course. The Government could facilitate the process by at least reviewing now rather than at some definite point in the future the list of items that have to be publicised, because frankly it is ridiculous. Planning matters are clearly important. However, when it comes to dog control orders or their revocation, the licensing of buskers, charges for street trading licences, abandoned shopping trolleys and charges for public baths and wash-houses, one wonders whether a formal statutory notice of any kind is desired. It is certainly not required, and certainly not in paid publications.
If the Minister were to indicate that the Government will address this matter—it is not that complicated; after all, there are only eight or nine pages of these things to work through—a sensible accommodation could be achieved that still leaves a statutory requirement for publication in newspapers. That should remain as part of a new framework, given that not everyone can look at the website, and there will at least be the opportunity to read a printed version. I hope that that would alleviate some of the concerns of the Local Government Association and, indeed, of the noble Lords who have already spoken. It would not be acceptable for the Government simply to reject the Motion and do nothing about this ridiculous list of notices that have to be published in a paid-for publication at the present time. A gesture from the Government in that respect, other than the normal gesture that one tends to get metaphorically across the Dispatch Box, would be helpful.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for those rather contrary views. Only three people have spoken, and their views were all different, so that is a pretty good start and leaves me with a fine path through.
The purpose of a statutory notice, as everybody clearly knows, is to inform the public about decisions that affect their lives, their property and their amenity. That is especially the case for issues where the public have a limited period in which to respond.
The Committee was in broad agreement that notices should be easily available for local people and that they are vital for local transparency and accountability. The noble Lord has highlighted the cost of statutory notices and suggested that local newspapers are one of the least effective ways to convey information to people. We do not agree. Research by GfK for the Newspaper Society found that the reach of local newspapers was much greater than council websites: 67% of the respondents to that survey had read or looked at their local newspaper for at least a couple of minutes within the past seven days, compared with 9% who had viewed their council website. Some 34% of adults questioned had not accessed the internet at all in the last 12 months.
The most recent internet access quarterly update from the Office for National Statistics, published in May, shows that 7.1 million adults in the United Kingdom—14% of the population—have never used the internet. Two-thirds of over-75s, a third of 65 to 74 year-olds and 32% of disabled people, as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act, have never used the internet. There are quite a lot of people, therefore, who do not, would not and could not use the internet for these notices.
The GfK research for the Newspaper Society showed that local papers are spontaneously cited as the way in which most people—that is, 39%—expect to be informed about traffic changes, for example. My noble friend Lord Shipley will be interested to know that the next placed source of information is street signs, at 26%—they come immediately to notice. When prompted, 79% of all adults responding said that they expect to be made aware of traffic changes in their printed local paper, second only to street signs and ahead of any other communication channels.
Undoubtedly, the requirement to publish some notices in newspapers comes from an age when there was no access to other means of communication. Under present conditions it could perhaps be removed, but the requirement to ensure that these notices are available easily remains as valid today as it always has.
As I said in Committee, the last Administration consulted in 2009 on removing the statutory requirements to publish planning notices in newspapers and found that that was not well received, as noble Lords opposite will remember. Some 40% of respondents to that survey were against the proposals, with a further 20% giving only qualified support. I acknowledge, of course, that that was four years ago. Things have moved on a bit. However, the party opposite concluded that some members of the public and community groups relied on the statutory notices in newspapers, and was not convinced that good alternative arrangements could readily be rolled out. A recent debate in the other place on alcohol licensing notices showed the strength of cross-party feeling against repealing the requirement to publish the notices in newspapers.
In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that statutory advertising should not go altogether—I think he repeated that today—and that it was more a question of which statutory notices should be reformed and which should continue to be advertised in newspapers. That can already be done, because departments can put forward particular statutory notices for consideration under the Red Tape Challenge, and that provides opportunities to review a statutory notice. The amendment gives little consideration to which statutory notices are important to local people or where there is a case for retaining publication in a newspaper, and that of course would have to be looked into.
In the internet age, it is clear that commercial newspapers should expect less state advertising over time, as my honourable friend Brandon Lewis has made clear, as more information is syndicated for free online. We accept that newspapers need to develop new business models rather than relying on revenue from statutory notices. However, the newspaper industry is very clear that competition with local authority newspapers, for example, can be damaging.
It would be unfair to remove statutory notices in the blanket way that is being proposed while independent newspapers still face unfair competition from local authority newspapers. We must stop this first before looking at other issues. We acknowledge that the DCLG Select Committee’s recommendations a couple of years ago for a review of publication requirements of statutory notices cannot be ignored in the long term.
I hope that with those explanations the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, in response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report on the Bill, we have amended Clause 38. Provisions for compliance with the code now include the power for the Secretary of State to make a direction requiring individual authorities to comply with some or all of the code, and that the exercise of the power to ensure compliance with the publicity code in relation to classes of, or to all, local authorities should be made by an affirmative statutory instrument. As a consequence of this, we are required to amend the Long Title of the Bill to accurately reflect that a requirement to comply may not be the result solely of a direction. Our amendment makes this clear in the Long Title of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, we have spent some time debating the requirements on local authorities to comply with the code of practice. I suppose this is our last opportunity to comment before Third Reading and the eventual passage of the Bill to the House of Commons. It is an opportunity to reiterate the problems that many of us envisage in the Government’s approach.
I suppose we ought to be grateful to the Government for clarifying the Title of the Bill, but the Title is almost irrelevant to the substance with which councils will have to contend. The further accretion to the Secretary of State of powers to direct individual councils is not a concession from the original proposition that a direction can be given to all councils. In replying to this short debate, will the Minister indicate exactly how the Secretary of State intends to go about giving his directions, whether to individual local authorities or to categories of local authorities? Would he envisage doing so after consultation and, if so, with whom: individual authorities or the Local Government Association?
Who else might the Secretary of State involve in the consultation process? For example, before making any direction, would he consult the local print media, which he purports to be most concerned about? How would he do that, particularly if he is issuing a general direction? Has the Secretary of State consulted at all, with anybody, about this proposal, thus far? It would be interesting to know whether he has had meetings with, for example, the Newspaper Society, if that is the correct name of the outfit in question, assuming that it has time to indulge in such consultations while the Leveson report remains undetermined.
There is a fundamental problem with the Government’s approach, which largely depends on what I have described —accurately, I think—as an obsession of the Secretary of State and has very little to do with the reality on the ground. I had the opportunity today of a brief conversation with representatives of the National Union of Journalists who were ensconced in Portcullis House. I do not know whether any other Members of your Lordships’ House were invited to meet them, but they stressed again their opposition, as members of a union that represents journalists both in local government and in the print media—
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I wonder whether my noble friend can help me before he leaves this subject. I refer to the change in the Title of the Bill, for the reasons that were outlined. By tweaking the Title further, as we have just discussed, might there be a way of facilitating the desire of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, in respect of parish polls? Does my noble friend think that that could that be accommodated by changing the Title of the Bill?
Lord Beecham
I certainly do, but it would be more relevant to know whether the Minister will accept that point. In a moment or two, I shall give him the opportunity to make his position clear.
As I said, the National Union of Journalists, representing journalists across the piece, feels very strongly that the Government’s stance on this is entirely unjustified. Having said that, it would be remiss of me not to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that the NUJ has great reservations about the amendment that he moved. However, I will be interested to hear what the Minister says in reply before the debate ends.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for those points. Many of them deserve further conversation in the Corridors and elsewhere. The Bill is part of a long process by which we hope to devolve more power to the cities and local authorities of England—an objective that I know the noble Lord shares. There are many difficulties in doing so, particularly during a recession when there are insufficient funds to do everything that one would like to. However, that is the objective, which I hope is shared across the House, and which I hope we will have the opportunity to explore further in future debates.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Lord Beecham Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Hanham
My Lords, in June, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published its report on the Local Audit and Accountability Bill. The report made a recommendation regarding the provisions in the Bill to prevent local authority newsletters unfairly competing with local newspapers. We have considered the recommendations in this very useful report carefully, and this group of amendments is the result of those considerations.
The committee said that in certain circumstances it is inappropriate for powers to make the code mandatory to be exercisable by directions rather than by statutory instrument, and subject to no parliamentary procedure. The committee recommended that, where the Secretary of State wishes to exercise his power to issue a direction to all local authorities in England or to a specified description of authorities, the affirmative resolution procedure should apply. While recognising that there can be circumstances where it is appropriate for the Secretary of State to be able to give directions to a class of, or to all, local authorities, we accept the committee’s recommendation that the exercise of this power in relation to classes of, or to all, local authorities, should be by affirmative statutory instrument.
We also agree with the committee’s implicit view that, where the power is exercised in relation to a single authority that the Secretary of State believes is not complying with the code, it would be appropriate for this to be by way of direction. However, we do not agree with or accept the committee’s recommendation that, where the power is exercised in relation to a single authority otherwise than where the Secretary of State believes the authority is not complying with the code, this should be by negative statutory instrument.
Our aim is simple: to be able to take effective action against those authorities that are giving rise to concern about their publicity, particularly relating to the publication of newspapers. Above all, in the case of such authorities, quick and effective action needs to be taken. These amendments ensure that the Secretary of State can continue to take that quick action against individual authorities. In cases where groups of authorities or all local authorities in England are being required to comply with some or all of the publicity code, we agree that this should be by order, subject to the approval of both Houses of Parliament. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, we are now coming to that part of the Bill that reflects several of the obsessions of the Secretary of State, not necessarily of the Minister. It is interesting that the draft Bill committee had, of course, no opportunity to consider these matters because they were not part of the original Bill; they were tacked on to the Bill at a later stage. I suppose we should be grateful that at least the Delegated Powers Committee has had an opportunity to comment on it. In fairness, I am grateful to the Minister and to the Government for accepting at least part of its recommendations, the part that referred to directions given to all local authorities. However, I find it difficult to follow the reasoning for the rejection of the second recommendation about directions to an individual authority.
The committee indicated that a power does not merely afford a specific and targeted enforcement mechanism but could—and would, if the relevant subsection is relied on—have the character of a legislative power. It took the view that it is inappropriate for powers of this kind, to make the code mandatory, to be exercisable by directions rather than by statutory instrument. Hence the two recommendations it made; in fairness, the Government have accepted one of them, although they did not accept the other. That decision was communicated to the committee and is reported in its sixth report, which was printed as recently as 11 July. In fairness, the report was written in June, but it does not indicate exactly when. However, it was considered by the committee only a matter of a few days ago—or at least, its report was published only a few days ago.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, I willingly gave my name to the amendments in this group. Like the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I did not feel that this was the right stage of the Bill to argue about whether Clause 38 should stand part, although I am aware of the LGA’s concern on that. It leaves hanging the question of justification, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred. The rule seems to be designed to deal with the very few, to the potential disadvantage of the many. That is a questionable approach. The purpose of Amendments 25 and 28 is to address this.
On Amendments 30 and 36, the period of 14 days is manifestly too short for the sort of notification and response that is required in this situation. I am advised that 28 days is regarded as appropriate and the norm. Will the Minister be kind enough to explain why the norm must be cut in half?
Amendments 33 and 35 concern the basis on which the Secretary of State will inform an authority—perhaps he might choose to do so by text message to the chief executive, or something like that—and the clarity of the procedures for that confirmation, which are worthy of being tightened up. I hope that there will be a favourable response to that suggestion as well.
On Amendment 37, it seems that the present code allows for latitude in what the authority shall “consider” or “have regard to”. It might be a value-for-money consideration or something like that. The question is whether, in transition from the current voluntary code to the proposed statutory code, the latitude will continue to be there. That is the nub of the question, and the bit that has not yet been answered satisfactorily. Having said that, I very much support the thrust of the amendments in this group.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, as I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, moving his amendment—which, given an opportunity, we would support, faute de mieux—I was reminded of the remarkable film of the man who walked on a high wire between the Twin Towers in New York. It was an extraordinary experience. With this amendment, the noble Lord is navigating the gap between the Bill and the coalition agreement. I do not recommend that he emulates the high-wire artist, because he is very likely to fall precipitately to the ground, judging by what he has advanced tonight.
To begin with, the noble Lord assumes—he may be right—that the Government’s proposals are directed at unfair competition. That is the term used in the coalition agreement. It may be the case, but what constitutes unfair competition is far from clear. What the evidence is for unfair competition existing is even less clear. I will quote, as I did in Committee, from material supplied by the National Union of Journalists. One might have thought that it would be fairly sympathetic to the Government’s point of view, since journalists’ jobs are presumably more at risk if there is unfair competition in the newspaper industry than are the jobs of a handful of local government press officers. The NUJ pointed out:
“The last select committee charged with investigating the matter, observed that there was no evidence of a link between high-frequency local authority publications and the decline of ad revenue, circulation etc of the local press in the local authority catchment area”.
It also pointed out that the Audit Commission—perhaps this is one of the reasons that it is being abolished—in 2010,
“effectively debunked the assertion of newspaper proprietors that local authority publications represented unfair competition and were commercially damaging to other local newspapers”.
The Audit Commission found that the money spent by councils was not unreasonable, that few council publications were published sufficiently frequently to be a viable media for most local advertising, and—a matter to which no doubt we will return—that the current accountability framework would ensure that any misuse of public money could be dealt with.
Those are fairly strong views by an interested party that, one might have assumed, would be sympathetic to the Government’s position but is not. Its evidence is substantial in that respect. It also points out that the press began reducing its workforce many years ago, and that already something like 61% of local newspapers in the area it contacted had closed or struggled. One reason was the decline in advertising revenue, but it was not to be attributed to local authorities including advertising in their publications, because, as the Audit Commission pointed out, in almost all cases the publications were too infrequent to have that impact. Some 55% of newspapers cited competition from the new media.
It does not stop there. There are free newspapers in circulation. The Evening Standard is a free newspaper. I am not sure about the new paper launched by the Independent. It may be free, or cost a nominal amount. Some of the newspaper groups themselves publish freesheets. Metro is published by a newspaper group and carries advertising. Therefore, the notion that somehow local authorities are responsible for the difficulties is ludicrous.
Even if local authority publications constituted competition, to what extent would it be unfair? Is it unfair because the publication is free, or in some other way? Are advertisers not able to make a commercial judgment about what would suit them better? I should have thought that that was central to government policy. The proposal to dismiss the Government’s suggestions here would not constitute a breach of the coalition agreement because there is no evidence that the unfair competition part is at all relevant to what the Government are trying to do.
There is another issue. The Government’s proposals would apply to the code, but the code can change. We do not know what restrictions the next code will bring in. Most of the code, as it stands, is fairly reasonable and acceptable. I dispute the necessity to limit titles to four publications a year, but most of the rest is fairly balanced. What is to stop the Government tightening the code and deciding on a range of things beyond those that they now say should not be published—or, conversely, should be published—in local newspapers? This would give a blank cheque to a Secretary of State to tie the hands of democratically elected local authorities in terms of how they communicate to their electorate, who, after all, should have the final say in what is done locally.
Of all Secretaries of State, the present one is the last person I would like to see entrusted with those powers. I would be quite happy, or relatively happy, for the noble Baroness to have that power but I would not be at all happy to have the present Secretary of State exercising it. Nothing in the Bill would prevent him tightening up the code and using this mechanism to ensure that it is enforced. My preference is for the whole clause to go. I am anticipating what may be said, perhaps rather more briefly, in a subsequent debate. The noble Lord’s amendment would moderate the damage but in my view he should have stuck to his guns and his party’s principles and recognised that he would not breach the coalition in so doing. Then we could have perhaps exercised a bit more leverage on his coalition partners, for the time being, and improved the Bill rather than allowing it to go forward to the statute book in its present form.
Lord Beecham
“(3) In section 4 of the Local Government Act 1986 (codes of recommended practice as regards publicity) after subsection (8) insert—
“(9) In respect of the characteristics set out in section 4 of the Equality Act 2010, nothing in section 38 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2013 shall restrict the rights of authorities in pursuance of their obligations under section 149 of the Equalities Act 2010 to publish at any time factual material by way of correction or rebuttal of inaccurate statements which promote discrimination, harassment or promotes or constitutes other unlawful acts.””
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this amendment stems from concerns raised at a meeting of the all-party group inquiry into electoral conduct, to which I referred in Committee. Doubts have been expressed about whether it would be possible for local authorities at any time, but even during elections—perhaps especially then—to correct mis-statements of fact that could give rise to problems in relation to the Equality Act, such as racist or discriminatory statements that might apply to particular groups.
The noble Baroness said that she would look into this and write to me to clarify the position. I am grateful to her for doing that. She confirmed that it is permissible for local authorities to do exactly that, even during an election period, which is probably the most urgent time, provided that it is a factual statement. The purpose of the amendment is simply to allow the Minister to repeat for the record and Hansard the assurance that that is the position. That would be of some comfort to electoral officers and local authorities that might be confronted with this situation. Given some of the things that are being said up and down the country by various groups, it is likely that at some point local authorities will feel constrained to issue material of that kind, perhaps during an election period. It would be good to have that assurance on the record. I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness and indeed to the Government for acknowledging that perhaps there was a doubt and for clearing it up so comprehensively.
Baroness Hanham
I am happy to confirm what I have written to the noble Lord and I will read it out. The publicity code explicitly provides for a local authority to correct or rebut misinformation, making explicit provision in the sections about objectivity and care during periods of heightened sensitivity. Moreover, it contains provisions about equality and diversity, specifically allowing local authority publicity to seek to influence the attitudes of local people or public behaviour in relation to matters including equality, diversity and community issues.
During an election period, for example, local authorities may publish factual material. A local authority should take care when issuing publicity and should not be issuing publicity that seeks to influence voters. However, this does not prevent an authority from fulfilling its role in seeking positively to influence people in terms of equality and diversity. Hence if there is disinformation in circulation promoting harassment, a local authority may take action to correct it at election time or indeed any other time. The provisions in the Bill do not change the contents of the publicity code that have been agreed by Parliament. Rather they give the Secretary of State the power to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not being wasted by local authorities by disregarding the publicity code. Nothing in the publicity code prevents local authorities addressing issues of discrimination or harassment and tackling them head on. No local authority can claim that the provisions in the Bill to tackle non-compliance with the publicity code prevent them complying with the Equality Act.
In short, this amendment is not necessary and I hope that, with the reassurance that I have given the noble Lord and what I have said in the House today, he will be willing to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
Indeed, I am, and I repeat my thanks to the Minister for making the position clear. Now it is on the record. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, in the parallel universe occupied by the Secretary of State, Pulitzer prize-style municipal correspondents can no longer haunt the corridors of town halls, rigorously holding local authority leaders and councils to account. They have now been supplanted in his imagination by what he describes as “town hall Pravdas”. To adapt a phrase, it seems that the local authority devil wears Pravda. In so doing, the local civic newspapers disseminate propaganda at public expense.
As I have demonstrated, there is very little evidence to support any of that, still less that the effect has been damaging to the local media. On the contrary, local media have very consciously and over many years withdrawn from reporting local government. I remember in the early 1980s, when I was leader of Newcastle City Council, urging the BBC to appoint a local government correspondent. They had a very good reporter there who has now made a national reputation, Mr Michael Blastland, who covered local government and much else. That was rather unusual for a local television and radio station, but it was not by any means a full-time job and the idea did not seem to catch on.
Furthermore, at a later point, the local papers in Newcastle, the Journal and the Evening Chronicle—which, strange to say, my constituents and those of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, when he was a councillor and leader of Newcastle City Council, were able to distinguish from the city council newspapers occasionally distributed, contrary to what the Government appear to think happens in the real world—apparently decided that they would reduce the amount of coverage of local affairs. They attended meetings and contacted members of the council, me and others, less frequently.
I raised the point with them and made it nationally as well. The Journal in Newcastle, the morning newspaper, said that it had conducted a survey and its readers were not interested in local affairs. Therefore, it ceased to be to any extent a paper of record, which is what good newspapers ought to be. It did this not because of competition from half a dozen issues of Newcastle City News but because, in its judgment, the readers were not interested. Some of us like to think that the virtue of local media is that they seek to educate and inform the local community. They have abdicated that responsibility; they have done it of their own volition and it is ridiculous to suggest that that has been caused by local authorities.
The conflation of a variety of issues that have been adduced to support the Government’s position on the whole issue of a code of publicity is entirely unconvincing. There is no significant cost to local authorities. There is no evidence, as I have already reported, via the National Union of Journalists, that it has had an impact on the circulation of local papers and the decline of revenue. On the contrary, there are many other explanations, which I will not rehearse again. As for the other main argument, that there is a danger of political abuse by some of these papers advocating a party line or support of the authority in control of the local council, of course that can and should be dealt with without a code, because it would be unlawful as matters stand to conduct propaganda in that way.
We have debated at considerable length the role of the auditors. The auditors have a responsibility in this and other matters. They are entitled to look at whether council expenditure, in the area of publicity, for example, is lawful and appropriate. In addition, there are other sanctions that can be applied, including, in extremis I suppose, judicial review. Therefore, both props of the Government’s case fail. It is not necessary to emulate the man on the wire to deal with these matters. It is simply the case that the Government are overreaching themselves.
I have to comment on the hypocrisy of a Government who allow, possibly promote, their Civil Service spokesman to make statements using the personal pronoun. Therefore, government spokesmen—not Ministers, or even MPs or Peers—in the form, presumably, of press officers or civil servants are all too often quoted as saying, “We are taking action on it”. It might be on welfare benefits or whatever. That is a politicisation of the Civil Service that is a step too far. It happens all too regularly. I do not say that it did not happen under the previous Government. I cannot recall such events, but it may still have happened. Under any Government, it is wrong for that to happen. If that were to happen in local government, there would be a legitimate outcry. It would be quite wrong for a chief executive or an officer of an authority to use the personal pronoun on a political issue, as opposed to saying that it is the council’s policy.
In addition to all the other grievous sins of omission and commission that the Government commit in this area, this is something that they ought to look at on their own account before they descend on local authorities in the way that they propose in the Bill. Again, I remind your Lordships that the draft Bill committee was given no opportunity whatever to discuss matters of this importance. It is not surprising that the Local Government Association is completely united across the political divide about this, hence my amendment opposes that the clause should stand part.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, the trouble with clause stand part debates is that they tend to come after everything else has been said. The danger is that one says it all over again. As I said, three groups of amendments have all covered more or less the same ground. I must ask the Chamber to forgive me if I cover some things that have already been said. It is clear that the Government do not see the situation in quite the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has laid out tonight, nor as the Local Government Association has seen it in wanting all these provisions removed. We do not believe that should happen. We accept, as I said, that the great majority of local authorities will never breach the code. They will always do, and be guided by, the right thing.
I shall not say which local authorities we already know are breaching the code. I have them. I could do it, but I think it is probably not helpful. I hope noble Lords will accept my assurance that at least a dozen are breaching it at the moment. Either they are publishing publications, very frequently, outside the terms, or they are including propaganda or their own political statements. It is there and it is wrong; that is not what was meant to happen. As I say, with legislation the opportunity comes to try to put that right. Once again, it is putting it right for a minority—I totally accept that—but put it right we must. The Secretary of State is not taking very draconian powers. If the Secretary of State would have to put a broad direction out to a whole lot of authorities, we would be very worried about what local authorities were doing. That provision is there in case it is needed, but we are much more concerned at the moment about the individual authorities doing individual transgressions.
There are two elements of this, as I have said right from the outset. The provisions are necessary to make sure that taxpayers’ money is not abused; to see that local authorities produce publicity, not propaganda; and to ensure that local newspapers—which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, slightly downgrades—hold local government to account. They are often full of what is going on; they are the proper means by which that should be done. The provisions do not change the publicity code itself; the guidance remains the same, allowing local authorities to communicate effectively with their communities. However, the clause provides the Secretary of State with the power to direct one or more authorities, as I have said. The clause also sets out the procedure to be followed, as we discussed—14 days’ notice in writing—and provides for a direction to be modified or withdrawn in writing.
Lord Beecham
I thank the Minister for her reply, of course, but I simply do not recognise the world she describes. I am in my 47th year as a councillor in Newcastle and have seen very successful journalists, now on the national stage, cutting their teeth as municipal correspondents on both the morning and evening papers in Newcastle. I have seen them coming to council and committee meetings and telephoning and speaking to members of the council, leaders and opposition leaders over the years. There was then a gradual decline, from about the late 1980s. Journalists now very rarely attend council meetings and hardly ever attend a scrutiny meeting—a function that ought to be made more of in local government and in the local media. As I understand it, they rarely contact officeholders.
We all agree that the local broadcast and print media should be informing people and helping to hold local government, and indeed other public organs, to account. However, the fact is that they are not doing it and they are not doing it because they are facing a cyclical decline as they are overtaken by other forms of media, to which I fear most of us are contributing these days on our BlackBerrys or iPads. The world has moved on, which is unfortunate, and it seems entirely wrong that the Government should seek to restrict what councils themselves can do to explain what is happening to their communities in the way that is being described. It would of course be wrong for them to use these publications for political purposes; as I have already indicated, that can and ought to be dealt with under existing audit procedures or otherwise. However, it is clear that the Government are not going to move on this—the entire Government, as the coalition partners are unfortunately united—and, in that case, there is no prospect of this amendment carrying. I therefore beg leave to withdraw it.
Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this amendment refers to the Government’s proposal—which, again, was not subjected to scrutiny by the draft Bill committee—to introduce, effectively, an element of retrospection into the question of whether a referendum should be held. The Bill affects councils that have set council taxes for 2013-14 that would have been excessive if the clause becomes law, by virtue of the change that the Government are imposing in relation to levies by other organisations. Fortunately, it turns out that only a small number of authorities would be affected by the Government’s proposals. Those authorities are Wandsworth—an authority well known to the noble Baroness and other noble Lords—Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport and Tameside. There is clearly a clutch around the Greater Manchester area, which presumably relates to some joint organisation in that area which collects a levy. Why Wandsworth should be affected, I really cannot say, although that does not really matter.
In Committee, the Minister indicated that councils had been notified by, I think, 31 January, that this might happen. However, that is a very late stage in the budget-making process, and it would have been very difficult at that stage to have reduced their council tax to the level which, if the Government were to apply the new rules, would have been operative. I repeat that the problem is not about the council’s own budget, it is about the levy imposed by other organisations. Had it been a precepting authority, the precepting authority itself could have had to call and finance a referendum on its own budget.
Many of us are extremely unhappy about the whole concept of these compulsory referendums, which of course do not apply when the Government increase taxes, with a considerably greater effect on the household budget than a corresponding increase in council tax. A 2% VAT increase takes a lot more out of people’s pockets than a 2%, or even slightly higher, council tax increase. Be that as it may, the effect is curiously different between a levying body and a precepting body; a levying body simply passes the cost on. The total amount of money is not enormous and would seem to amount to some £7.3 million. If the councils had been able to reduce their council tax to match the levy that they have had to impose, that would have been the cost to them, to be taken out of services. Nevertheless, it is a significant encroachment and, of course, if that were now to trigger a referendum—because the referendum limit becomes lower in future and councils may feel that they have to go for one—the cost of that, across these authorities, is likely to be pretty much the amount of the total levy across all those authorities. It is a bizarre situation. Given that it is now clear that it applies only to a very small number of authorities, in one particular cluster—in what, by the look of it, must be the special circumstances of Greater Manchester—I hope that the Government will reconsider this matter.
I suppose the Government do not have to apply the provisions of the Bill. If they do not want to amend the Bill and they want to reserve the power, so be it, but I strongly urge the Minister to think again about imposing this. It is wrong in principle, and it is an unnecessary reaction to what turns out in any event to have been a pretty small problem in terms of the number of authorities and the cash affected. It would be a statesmanlike move on the part of the Government to accept that perhaps, in the circumstances, they rather overreacted, fearing worse than has actually transpired, and to indicate that at the very least they would reconsider whether to proceed with the implementation of the clause, if they insist on its standing part of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 43, and will be brief. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I think it is bad policy to backdate the definition of an excessive council tax rise so that it includes a levy from April 2013. I understand that in January this year letters were sent out to local authorities suggesting that the Government might take this course of action. I will say two things about that. The first is that it is simply not enough notice. Council tax-setting takes much longer than just a few weeks. There is a requirement that council tax is effectively set by the beginning of March, so that bills can be sent out. In my view, given the lengthy periods of consultation that local authorities are required to undertake, a period of six months would have been more reasonable.
My second reason for objecting to the Bill as it stands is that one should have respect for the law at the time at which the law is applied. I believe that councils and levying authorities abided by the law at the time. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, quite rightly pointed out, it is a comparatively small problem. Retrospective change, whether or not there was a warning, seems to me to be wrong in principle, and should therefore be resisted. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that he felt that the Government were overreacting. I concur with that, because I believe that it is an overreaction to backdate in the way the Government propose.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, it comes to this, it seems to me: you have a system which takes no account of levies, you change that system weeks before the statutory date for the budget so that the levy in that year can be taken into account in settling a referendum limit for the following year—and yet that is not considered retrospective. I seem to speak a different language from the Minister and the Government, and the dictionary speaks a different language as well. It is simply a semantic quibble to say that it is not retrospective.
It is a complicated matter for authorities. The noble Baroness referred to the city deal in West Yorkshire. This was entered into months before the budget. The Minister, with respect, rather airily dismisses the impact of the potential application of the principle in terms of the referendum limit. She quoted Bradford. Leeds is the largest authority in the area. It will gradually build up a contribution until it reaches £15.5 million. That represents a council tax increase of 0.2%, then 1% in 2015-16 and 0.7% per annum right up to 2022-23; 0.7% is a third of the referendum increase threshold. That is quite a substantial chunk, given the pressures that we all know are—and will continue to be—visited on local authorities, as envisaged by the LGA. The Minister’s successor by one or two as leader of Kensington and Chelsea is, of course, the LGA’s chair. As a percentage it does not sound large, but as a percentage of what is committed by way of an increase, it is very large; and that is in the case of a group of authorities of roughly comparable size, function and budget.
It gets worse than that if, for example, one looks at the position of the Lee Valley Park area. This runs along the Lee Valley, through east London and the Hertfordshire-Essex border. It gets its money from 32 London boroughs, the Corporation of London—which will probably not miss a few bob here or there—Hertfordshire County Council, Essex County Council and Thurrock unitary authority. So there is a vast number of authorities there, not all of which are represented on the board.
In fact, the riparian authorities are limited to Essex, Hertfordshire and other councils and only one member from six of the London boroughs—whereas the total cost is met by 32 London boroughs. Two of their representatives sitting in this Chamber tonight can confirm that. So here is a levying body which individual authorities cannot really influence, yet what it does will have an impact on their referendum.
That is objectionable in principle, but I urge the Government to realise, particularly in relation to the levies that accrue as a result of a deal entered into by the Government—the city deal proposal—that a transitional arrangement would be desirable. I hope that the Government will revisit that. They may not need legislation to do it—I would not imagine that they would—but I hope that they will look at this again. It seems unfair that an arrangement with the Government could precipitate difficulties of that kind. However, in the light of tonight’s debate, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Lord Beecham Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am a vice-president of the LGA but I am not sure that I will retain that position after what I have to say. I am afraid that I do not entirely concur with the sentiments and positions taken by the two noble Lords who have spoken thus far. I said in a previous Committee sitting that I had a concern that, although the Audit Commission was, in fairness, asked by the previous Government to over-regulate, overprescribe and over-report, it nevertheless performed a valuable role in looking particularly at the interface between services and the comparisons between different types of authority. Actually that information, contrary to what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, should inform local debate. It does not supplant it. It should help to facilitate the citizens to hold their local authority to account, because they must have some comparative data to see how well or badly they are doing in relation to other authorities. That will be one of the things that we will miss. I express a hope—or, put another way, a fear—that with only six value-for-money studies to be carried out by the NAO, which I understand is the position, we would lose that independent assessment of what local authorities are doing.
I am a great supporter of peer review and of the work that the LGA has done in promoting improvements across the sector, and it has done very well in that regard, but when it comes to an objective assessment, the perception will be that that is an in-house job. It is better in my view that there should be a role for a body like the Audit Commission was—and currently still is, temporarily—or the National Audit Office will be. That is something that this amendment would very much restrict. Yet the formulation here depends on a division of resources, and whence comes the money? Of course, increasingly we will see national organisations, be it in the health service or other bodies—the Chancellor again mentioned what was called “total place” and is now called whole community budgeting—
Lord Beecham
Yes, whole place. It is playing with words, and of course Labour words such as “total” are not acceptable. Within these areas there will of course be collaboration, and the proportion of funding will vary considerably. For example, in public health, less than 50% of government money will be coming in, so the Audit Commission would presumably be prohibited from taking a look at the effectiveness of that. It is not an audit job in that sense, but it is particularly desirable that it should address the issues of effectiveness and outcome, not purely in financial terms but across the piece as well, and that in itself should facilitate the work that the LGA and individual local authorities are doing, particularly in their scrutiny functions, to see how they are faring relative to others, and for that information to be communicated to the people who elect them. So I certainly could not support these amendments. I understand what the noble Lords are saying, but I think that a mission creep has overtaken their amendments as well. They were going too far in the interests of local democracy and the effectiveness of local government.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, like my noble friend who was unable to support these amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I understand that—apart from the issue around this 50% funding—the Bill does what they are seeking to achieve. If you look particularly at paragraph 117 of the Explanatory Notes to the Bill, it says:
“These powers do not enable examinations of individual relevant authorities and are not designed to produce assessment of the performance of individual relevant authorities or comparative analyses in the form of published league tables”.
Unless that wording is defective—doubtless the Minister can help us on that—it achieves what the noble Lords want. As my noble friend says, whether it achieves what we want is another matter.
In relation to the other test in Amendment 18ZA—that is, an authority,
“who receives more than half their income from government funds”—
I can see that, for certain bodies, it is a test that is currently relatively straightforward to determine. However, if you seek to apply it to a local authority you can imagine the sort of criteria that you would have to unpick and examine. Presumably it is not part of government funds to take account of its income which comes from council tax. What happens when you come to the business rate? Is it part of its income? Do you look at the gross amount or the 50% under business retention that goes to central government and then comes back? Is that still government funding? Does it originate with the local authorities? All the issues around how tariffs, top-ups and safety nets work just from that regime itself could make that particular test in the context of local authorities extremely difficult to apply. It would be easy in some cases where either they would be clearly in or clearly out but I would be surprised if there were not a whole range where it would be extremely problematic.
The test at the moment, as I understand it, is that the Auditor-General can carry out examinations of bodies when more than half of their income comes from public funds and where they are appointed by or on behalf of the Crown. I am not quite sure how you translate that into the local authority context but it seems to me that the basic proposition which the noble Lords are seeking to achieve in terms of avoiding mission creep and certainly league tables is already in the Bill.
If that is right—and for that reason some of the comparative stuff to which my noble friend was referring is not available—it raises again the question we discussed earlier about the value-for-money profiles, the guardian of which is currently the Audit Commission. We discussed who was going to maintain those profiles, which I think would be part of the data that my noble friend and I would be looking for. We do not yet know where that is going to end up and how those profiles are going to be maintained, but I think that that is a slightly different issue from the one pursued by the noble Lord, Lord Tope.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I have a certain sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord. It is a long time since I recall seeing a notice about the provision of a cattle grid, a busker’s licence or even acupuncture, which feature among the interesting series of regulations which apparently apply, and it seems that an overhaul of the requirement is long overdue. However, I do not completely follow the line he has taken. We must not forget that a significant proportion of the population are still not involved with modern communications and are therefore not able to log on to a council website, for example. Moreover, if you log on to a council website, generally speaking you are looking for something, whereas if you are perusing a newspaper you are more likely to come across things. The question is: what things ought to be included in this provision? That is a perfectly legitimate point which the Government need to address to reduce substantially the scope of the present requirement.
However, I do not have too much sympathy with local authorities which complain that they are being charged a differential rate as the answer is in their own hands. They should threaten to withdraw the relevant advertising from the local paper if they do not get better terms. I should think that that would be a pretty powerful sanction. I think that my authority spends £88,000 a year on statutory notice advertising. There is ample scope to reduce that with a more sensible list but I would not like to see the requirement go altogether. Certain other things also have to be published by way of statutory notice—for example, in the realm of probate, licensing matters and things of that kind. Certain things in this enormously long list ought to be retained. I am with the noble Lord in hoping that the Government review this issue and come forward with a much reduced list which would make more sense and perhaps reduce the cost. However, I would not go all the way with him and support the amendment as it stands.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, I will follow what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, in the same vein, because I think that getting rid of the requirement altogether would create all sorts of difficulties, which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has referred to.
I cannot help commenting that for all the money that is spent on these things, they seem to be reproduced in the smallest print and in the most insignificant parts of the relevant newspaper. One always wonders whether a local authority chooses its moment to stick in an important announcement when the local football team has been moved up to the next division or whatever it happens to be, and nobody is going to read the small print in the public notices part of the paper. Maybe it is because they are being charged so much that the print is so small so they need to cram it into a smaller number of column inches in order to get value for money—but that is speculation on my part.
I agree that better and more efficient ways should increasingly be used to disseminate this information. Very often I hear about things not through the pages of the press, where they are carefully hidden, but because the parish council or some other organisation sends a round robin e-mail and I happen to be on the circulation list and that is how I get to know about it. I think that must be the experience of many noble Lords and many members of the public. So I support the general purpose here. Certainly, I would not necessarily support the removal of public advertising in the press for every single thing that is on the list of the noble Lord, Lord Tope.
Lord Beecham
“(3) In section 4 of the Local Government Act 1986 (codes of recommended practice as regards publicity) after subsection 8 insert—
“(9) In respect of the characteristics set out in section 4 of the Equality Act 2010, nothing in section 38 shall restrict the rights of authorities in pursuance of their obligations under section 149 of the Equalities Act 2010 to publish at any time factual material by way of correction or rebuttal of inaccurate statements which promote discrimination, harassment or promotes or constitutes other unlawful acts.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this rather intimidating-looking amendment is a probing amendment. It arises somewhat curiously from my membership of a committee set up by the All-Party Inquiry into Electoral Conduct, which is preparing a report on material produced in elections that might be racist or discriminatory in one way or another. In the course of discussions, some doubts were expressed about whether, under the present code of practice, it is possible for authorities to publish statements of fact correcting statements of that kind. I put it no higher than that there is a doubt about that. There is a legal opinion that it is perfectly legitimate to do so but certain reservations are held in the world of community relations and local government that it may not be permissible to make clear that what other people are saying is wrong in particular areas.
The reference here to the characteristics set out in the Equality Act cover the following areas: race, gender, age, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, and religion and belief. The concern is that particularly—but not exclusively—around the time of elections we may get significant misstatements which can be calculated to mislead people and may indeed in themselves be unlawful. The amendment seeks to clarify the position. The Minister may be able to say today or subsequently that, having taken advice from government lawyers, the position is okay and authorities are able to correct such misstatements.
To illustrate the kind of problem that one might face, a ludicrous urban myth is currently developing around the infamous bedroom tax, purporting to say that if you are a Muslim householder, you can describe one of your rooms as a prayer room and that will avoid the bedroom tax. This is complete nonsense but one can see how statements of that kind can cause considerable problems and, in the context of an election, be influential.
Therefore, the amendment seeks simply to sanction or confirm, if it is indeed the case, that it is permissible for authorities to publish,
“factual material by way of correction or rebuttal of inaccurate statements that promote discrimination, harassment or promotes or constitutes other unlawful acts”,
in the areas to which I referred. It is particularly important that it be made clear that that is permissible during the purdah of an election period because that is precisely when it may be that those with a particular axe to grind will be most likely to produce such material. It is important that it be rebutted, not in a party or political sense but in a purely factual sense, as quickly as possible in order that the situation should not be inflamed.
I hope that the Minister can assure me that the advice is that such publicity is permissible, including during an election period. If not, I invite the Minister to consider the position further and see whether the amendment or something along the same lines can be incorporated into the Bill. It is an area where, particularly given present tensions, councils acting responsibly can correct factual misstatements, thereby helping to promote community cohesion and avoid any discrimination or harassment of any of the groups identifiable within the characteristics listed in the Equalities Act. Of course, authorities have a duty under that Act; the question is whether we can confirm that that duty will allow them to take the steps to which I referred. I beg to move.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I just want to check for the noble Lord the exact position regarding elections because that is probably the most salient purpose of the amendment. Perhaps I may first reply in general.
As the noble Lord has acknowledged, Section 149 of the Equity Act 2010 places a duty on local authorities to tackle discrimination in all the areas that he mentioned. The Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity, to which local authorities have a statutory requirement to have regard, sets out the seven principles that local authorities must abide by when producing any publicity. Publicity must be, lawful, cost-effective, objective, even-handed, appropriate, have regard to equality and diversity, and be issued with care during periods of heightened sensitivity.
The publicity code, in its guidance on the principle of publicity about equality and diversity, is clear that local authorities may seek to influence the attitudes of local people or public behaviour in relation to matters including race relations, equality, diversity and community matters. The provisions in the Bill relating to the publicity code allow the Secretary of State to make a direction requiring a local authority or group of local authorities to comply with some or all of the publicity code. As I understand it, the amendment is intended to ensure that any direction about compliance with the code would not prevent a local authority from exercising its obligations under Section 149 of the Equality Act. The code makes provision for just this sort of publicity; a direction to comply with the code would serve only to put the guidance on a statutory footing.
Paragraph 35 in the current code states:
“It is acceptable to publish material relating to the subject matter of a referendum, for example to correct any factual inaccuracies which have appeared in publicity produced by third parties, so long as this is even-handed and objective and does not support or oppose any of the options which are the subject of the vote”.
I think that that clears up the matter as regards being able to respond during elections, in particular.
Lord Beecham
Is an election to be treated the same as a referendum because a referendum is putting an issue? I am not sure that that is right. If that is the intention and that can be confirmed, that would be sufficient.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, this is an important point. If the noble Lord withdraws the amendment, perhaps we can discuss this further before the next stage and identify whether, in parliamentary terms, a referendum would cover elections. If that is so, the noble Lord is right—the issue is not covered. Is the noble Lord happy to withdraw the amendment with that assurance?
Lord Beecham
Yes. I am grateful for the assurance and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, perhaps I can give the Minister a few more minutes to assemble her thoughts.
Once again we are dealing with one of Mr Pickles’s little obsessions. It is unfortunate that so often our parliamentary time is taken up with dealing with these notions of his. I entirely support the amendment and the sentiments with which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has moved it.
It is interesting to look at the justification—perhaps that is the wrong word; the explanation—for the proposals in the government document, which describes their objectives in revising the code. The code speaks of competition but of course it does not deal with competition, which can and should be dealt with by the appropriate legislation. The department, however, considers that the publicity code is,
“the right vehicle for imposing tougher rules to stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers”.
That is quite extraordinary. It goes on to say:
“The Department’s view is that the proliferation of council newspapers can have the effect of reducing the impact of independent local newspapers. A healthy free press is important in providing information to the public to hold their local authority to account”.
I could not agree more. I deplore the decline in the coverage of the affairs of my council and many others, which has gone on now, to my certain knowledge, for 20 years. Those sentiments are quite right but the statement goes on, risibly, to suggest:
“Council newspapers, issued frequently and designed to resemble a local newspaper can mislead members of the public reading them that they are local newspapers covering council events and give communities a biased view of the activities of the council”.
So the residents of Newcastle are so dim as not to be able to distinguish between the Evening Chronicle or the Newcastle Journal and the occasional distribution of the council’s Citylife? This is a ludicrous proposition.
The suggestion that somehow the terrible decline in the newspaper industry, local newspapers in particular, is the responsibility of local government is just absurd. I can quote some figures about that. Trinity Mirror, which runs papers in my part of the world, employed 6,000 production and editorial staff in 2004; the figure is now fewer than 2,700. The Daily Mail has shed a quarter of its 3,000-strong workforce since 2010. This is not because people are rushing out to get hold of a council newspaper, or waiting eagerly for it to arrive through the door, and therefore no longer need to read these other papers, it is because of the changes in the industry; it is because we now have the internet and social media; and it is perhaps because people are less interested in news.
Certainly, in my experience, local newspapers are much less interested in covering council affairs than they ever were. That process is still going on and I regret it. When I was leader of the council—this is going back a long time—I used to get daily calls from a newspaper correspondent. That stopped before I finished as leader, which was in 1994. They do not come to council meetings and never cover scrutiny meetings, because the industry is in an altogether different position now.
One of the more useful briefings that some of us have received has come from the National Union of Journalists. It opposes this government stance and this clause. As it puts it:
“The NUJ has no difficulty with additional guidance being issued to local authorities and councils. However, the new publicity code ‘includes specific guidance about the frequency, content and appearance of local authority newspapers, including recommending that principal local authorities limit the publication’”—
well, we know about that. The journalists go on to say:
“We do not believe that this element of guidance reflects the needs of many communities, nor the practicalities of providing prompt, accurate advice and information to communities”.
That is, of course, right. They also make the point that it is perfectly possible that if authorities stray into the area of political propaganda—which they should not—they can be,
“referred to the appropriate body for investigating improper use of council funds for political aims”.
Proper officers of the council should be keeping an eye precisely on that sort of area. If they do not, perhaps the auditors should be doing so. They presumably will be getting copies of any civic newspaper while they are about their business.
The Audit Commission itself, three years ago, rebutted the suggestion by newspaper proprietors that local authority publications represented unfair competition. It found that the money spent by councils was not unreasonable, that few council publications were published sufficiently frequently to be viable media for most local advertising—which is where the press think that they are being deprived of revenues—and that the current accountability framework is adequate. That seems a pretty unanswerable case. The position that the Government are adopting bears no relationship to the reality.
However, that is only publications and the press. There is another aspect to this code, which the noble Lord has not mentioned—the question of lobbying and the effective injunction against councils employing firms to lobby on their behalf. Again, if there were any suggestion that the lobbying was of a political nature, that would be caught in exactly the same way as any political material in a newspaper. But why should a council not seek to use lobbyists—preferably registered ones, which I hope will come, even if we have not got round to it yet—to develop an argument with Members of this House or the other House, or to influence government or public opinion? There is nothing wrong with that provided it is not a political exercise. However, that is also excluded under the revised code of practice.
Again, too much power is accruing in the hands of the Secretary of State, who in this case is being set up as a censor or inquisitor prepared to put something on the index of prohibited publications. That is not the function of the Secretary of State. This is an intrusion into local democracy under the specious argument that somehow local council publications are undermining the press. It is an absurd proposition and I support the noble Lord.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, will be pleased to know that the National Association of Local Councils supports the thrust of what he has advanced here. It does not believe that there is a problem, nor does it see a need to change the present code status. It is not aware of a single instance of the Secretary of State intervening in a parish council publicity matter. It says that the taking of additional powers by the Secretary of State is distinctly non-localist, and there are some concerns at the potential longer-term implications for parish newsletters. It certainly does not think that this is a legislative priority. I am at one with what has been said on this.
I have a separate concern that I expressed at Second Reading on the suitability of the present code to become a statutory code at all. When I put this to the Local Government Association, it agreed with me that the current drafting appears to be less than precise and said that it was a matter on which the LGA had taken some advice. However, that is not to say that the general thrust of the code is wrong. It actually contains some good principles but is qualified by all sorts of terms, mainly prefaced by the word “should”, and includes phrases such as “likely to be perceived”. There are also imperatives about there being no,
“commentary on contentious areas of public policy”,
and positions being presented “in a fair manner”. Authorities should not do anything,
“designed to influence members of political parties”.
Paragraph 13 of the code states:
“The purchase of advertising space should not be used as a method of subsidising voluntary, public or commercial organisations”.
That begs the question: when is a subsidy merely part of a cost contribution? I note also that the definition of what might be unreasonably partisan, contentious, sensitive or likely to have an influence if not even-handed is probably not a constant between Parliament at this level and the parish pump at that level. I certainly question whether it applies in equal manner to everything in between. How would making this code statutory improve things? Would it be simply an avenue for contention whereby the matter would have to be thrashed out in the courts—the Secretary of State versus some borough, parish or other?
Is that a profitable way to go forward, bearing in mind that there do not seem to have been any substantial problems? It is said there have been one or two in some London boroughs but I do not know whether they are regarded as being typical or whether those boroughs that have had the finger wagged at them have failed to observe the wagging finger. Other noble Lords may know more about than I do, but it seems to me that the case for the clause is not made.
Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, with the leave of the Committee, I will speak to both this amendment and the following one, Amendment 19BC, since they both relate to council tax referendums, which is a highly contentious issue—to use the noble Baroness’s phrase—about which no doubt several authorities would be only too pleased to be able to lobby. I do not think a telephone call would suffice to deal with this issue.
Amendment 19BB deals with a particularly objectionable part of the Government’s proposals. I remind your Lordships that the ad hoc committee on the Bill had no opportunity of considering these amendments, or indeed the code of practice that we have just discussed, because these matters came very late in the day and were added to the Bill as a convenient vehicle for the Secretary of State’s obsessions, to which I have already referred. In terms of the council tax referendum, what is particularly objectionable is that there is a potentially retrospective effect here, because decisions already taken in the past can be used as the basis for requiring a referendum in the future. That is particularly objectionable where the decisions might have been taken by a body that is not actually the individual local authority. If it is a precepting authority or, as this Bill is seeking to require, a levying authority, that is even more objectionable. There is no justification whatever for this element of retrospectivity and I hope that on reflection the Government will see that it is a departure from normal practice and one that cannot be justified except in the most exceptional circumstances. In my submission these simply do not arise.
Amendment 19BC acknowledges—as do both amendments—the fact that we are living with a provision about council tax referendums. Many of us opposed them when they were inserted into what is now the Local Government Act but they are there and we have to live with that. What this amendment deals with is the position that might arise as a result of not simply a decision in the past but a decision in the past with a continuing effect on expenditure. So, for example there are authorities—I understand that Leeds has raised this—with city deals that have entered arrangements which would require expenditure over a period which, if the current referendum provision is applied, might severely impact on the schemes to which the Government are party.
The city deal, which one welcomes, is an opportunity for the Government, local government and private sector partners to work together. It involves a commitment of expenditure on all parts. If such decisions are not to be thwarted, given the ever tightening situation affecting local authorities, at the very least the Government should be making transitional provision to ensure that decisions fairly recently arrived at, but which will have a continuing impact, will not merely be on the finances but on the economic state of the area with which these arrangements are very largely concerned. The Government’s proposed changes could cause very severe problems, whether they are over transport—which I think was the case in Leeds—or about city deals such as that in which my own authority has been involved. No doubt we shall hear from my noble friend Lord Smith about Greater Manchester Combined Authority and its arrangements.
Referendums are both costly and unpredictable in their outcome. You cannot have that situation when you are dealing with third parties and have entered into arrangements that could be disrupted as a result of the change which is now being proposed. I think that the Government should take both of these matters back. The first point is really a matter of principle about retrospective legislation and requirements. The second is to deal with what appears potentially to be a significant issue for a number of authorities which are endeavouring to do their best in many respects to work with government on agreed programmes that could be rendered difficult—no doubt unintended—as a result of the provisions. I beg to move.
Lord Smith of Leigh
My Lords, before I speak on this matter I shall declare my interests. I am a vice-president of the LGA and also, as my noble friend indicated, the chairman of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Greater Manchester is one of the areas where the Secretary of State was somewhat upset by the level of council tax rises which were entirely consistent with the law as it stood. Before I begin I would like to quote from a document published by DCLG on 12 January 2012 on council tax referendums.
“The definition of ‘relevant basic amount of council tax’ . . . is essentially an adjusted Band D amount which is derived from a calculation of the authority’s basic amount of council tax. This amount is modified by omitting local precepts issued to or anticipated by a local authority, and levies issued to or anticipated by an authority, from the calculation. This is to ensure that increases in levies, over which authorities have minimal or no control, are not a factor in triggering a council tax referendum”.
Those were the words of the department in issuing guidance on council tax. As my noble friend indicated, levies come in to local authorities in a number of different guises. In Greater Manchester last year, two particular things impacted on the levy situation. First, not quite like Leeds, we had an agreement between authorities on transport expenditure, which will put a 3% increase above the day-to-day spending needs of the transport authority to invest in transport infrastructure. That programme began in 2009 with the commitment of the 10 authorities in Greater Manchester—which took some getting, I assure you, but we got there—to put that money in for six years. When we went to the Government and negotiated our city deal—we were the first conurbation to get a city deal—this transport expenditure was seized upon by the Government as an innovative way forward for local authority spending. It has taken some time, but we have devised an earn-back model and have now agreed that the Treasury will reallocate some of the increased taxation back to Greater Manchester. We will be able to spend that money on future investment. It is a good deal, and I understand that it will be part of the announcement on the public spending review.
Last year, the increase for the Greater Manchester transport levy was 3.6%. In other words, it was 0.6% for day-to-day transport needs—the cost of fuel and other things; this meant that there were big impacts on costs. The other 3% was that commitment made back in 2009, which continues to roll forward in future years—a contribution to investment and transport. We can prove that the transport investment is taking place. If noble Lords go to Manchester, they will see that the new Metrolink system is up and running, and new bus ways beginning in my area. There are all sorts of things going on which meet our commitment, and government commitments, to reduce greenhouse gases and all sorts of things. We thought that we would agree that with the Government but, obviously, they pushed up the levy.
I step back slightly from the second impact because Wigan is not part of the Greater Manchester waste disposal authority. The waste disposal authority signed a new PFI deal a couple of years ago because it did not have the facilities to deal with modern waste and needed expenditure on a new facility. So often with PFI deals, the early years have a really high cost which inevitably falls over future years. The effect on the waste disposal levy was 4.5%; obviously a very big increase for those authorities. A number of authorities in Greater Manchester therefore raised their council tax by more than the 2%, which the Secretary of State said would trigger a referendum. This was entirely legitimate within the rules of council tax referendums as they then were. In fact, the ironic thing was that a number of authorities, including those which seemed to have the biggest increase, actually reduced the proportion of the council tax take for their own services to meet the needs of external levies. That means that if this clause goes through, then the threat of the Secretary of State—the revenge of Eric Pickles—will be that any authority which raised its council tax by, say, 3.5% while the guideline figure remained at 2% can only increase its council tax next year by 0.5%. The rules have changed.
Who knows what would have happened if the council had known that that was the situation last year? Different decisions might have been made. How can we predict the mind of the Secretary of State and the mind of the department when it wants to change the rules in this manner? It is grossly unfair that some authorities, in addition to the awful amount of cuts that they are taking on board, will have to make savage cutbacks in services to cope with this part of Clause 39. This is bad and retrospective legislation and the Committee should think very carefully before it commits to Clause 39.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, as I understand it, the noble Lord has grouped together Amendments 19BB and 19BC. Amendment 19BB challenges the Secretary of State’s power to determine categories of authority and to set excessiveness principles which apply to them accordingly. Subsection (15) makes it explicit that, in doing so, he may differentiate between authorities on the basis of past council tax decisions. The amendment would remove subsection (15) because of concerns, as raised in our discussion, about retrospection and about it providing much wider powers to the Secretary of State when setting excessiveness principles.
I am happy to confirm that subsection (15) does not apply referendum principles retrospectively. It does not make any changes to the setting of council tax in previous years or change the referendum limits that applied. The Government were clear before council tax and levies were set for 2013-14 that they would take into account the decisions taken by local authorities on council tax in setting future principles. As already stated, no changes will be made to those principles that applied in 2013-14 or, indeed, to any other year. Both authorities and levying bodies can continue to plan accordingly.
In light of the fact that local authorities have had a pretty clear indication that their decisions for 2013-14 would be taken into account—what they did, where and why—in setting future principles, there is no argument that authorities were not aware of the Government’s intentions or justification for accusations of unfairness, given the Written Ministerial Statement of 30 January 2013, followed by an information note sent to all to local authorities on 8 February. Decisions taken on council tax increases for 2013-14 were taken in full knowledge of those warnings. Subsection (15) does not radically extend the Secretary of State’s existing powers. It clarifies those powers and removes any doubt as to whether they allow him to continue to take into account past council tax decisions when making decisions on the following year.
Amendment 19BC would provide that during a transitional period specified expenditure could be exempt from inclusion within the calculation on whether a council tax increase was excessive. The noble Lord will be aware that the excessiveness principles, which are set annually, already allow for different principles to be set for different categories of authority. For this reason, I assume this amendment is intended to press the case for the additional flexibility that we have been talking about.
It is intended that the detailed excessiveness principles for 2014-15 will be made later in the year. However, the principle will remain that local taxpayers should be protected from unwanted excessive council tax increases. It is local residents who should have the final say on whether to accept an excessive increase. We recognise that there may be specific reasons as to why a particular local authority may wish to set an increase above that level; the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to the city deal in Leeds, and the noble Lord, Lord Smith, referred to Manchester. The city deal with Leeds on private sector investment has been predicated on increases in levies from the West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority. It is right that the levy set by the 22 elected councillors from the five district councils that manage the authority should be treated in exactly the same way as the costs of every other local authority investing in local transport projects. The Government accept that neither this nor any other city deal is dependent on setting an excessive council tax increase, nor that excessive increases in levies were agreed as part of the deal. The chair of the West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority put it well himself. He said that,
“transport will be managed locally rather than from Whitehall, with decision making to suit local needs, accountability to Council Tax-payers and creating a transport network fit for purpose”.
Local decision-making and local accountability to council taxpayers are what the current clause would provide by extending the transparency of decisions taken by bodies funded from council tax receipts and ensuring that local residents have their say when those decisions would require larger increases. In summary, the Secretary Of State already has flexibility to set referendum principles that address particular situations and the right to take into account the 2013-14 council tax level. With those explanations, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendments.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, of course I am not going to seek to test the opinion of the Committee today, but this is a matter to which I and other noble Lords from different parts of the House will want to return. I confess that I used the word “sophistry” to my noble friend to describe some of the assertions made by the noble Baroness—assertions no doubt made at the behest of those in somewhat higher positions within the department. This is not a satisfactory position. We will clearly need to look in detail at what she said but the reality is that decisions were taken in good faith, along with the Government, to establish a range of agreed policies without the expectation that these would somehow be affected by decisions of the kind to which the noble Baroness referred. If those agreements reached with government and other partners are to be sustained, it will, on the basis of the Government’s announced policy, be at the expense of core services. That was not envisaged at the time these deals were entered into, and it will make councils extremely reluctant to enter into any further arrangements with government when that could have the impact that it appears is now facing a number of significant authorities that are doing their best to work with government. It is an unsatisfactory position to which we will no doubt return on Report, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Smith of Leigh
My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl about the problems of the electoral cycle. It was a bit disappointing that this is the fallow year for metropolitan authorities so we did not have elections. Noble Lords may recall that Wigan won the FA Cup and the feel-good factor was particularly good; obviously there have been fantastic comments on social media, but unfortunately we did not have any local elections to take advantage of that.
It was really interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, read out the views of the director of finance from Bradford. The answer that the Minister gave to the earlier amendment was that, under Clause 39, the current provisions of the Localism Act, which define the relevant basic amount of council tax increase, will change from being what the council itself sets to include levies and other charges. Therefore, decisions that were entirely within the law as it stood earlier this year in March will be affected.
We had a debate earlier on the council tax referendum principle. The Government say they are not capping but actually they are. In my long experience of local government, I cannot believe that once the Secretary of State sets out the guidelines to which a referendum will apply, any local authority would want to set an amount of council tax increase above that guideline. If it does, it is on to an absolute loser. There is no way it will win a referendum on that. Which council tax payer is going to vote for higher council tax? They are not asking, “What services are being cut?”. It is a simple referendum on the increase in council tax and nobody wants it. The Secretary of State may want and need that part of it but effectively it is capping local authorities.
Capping does not always have the longer-term political impact that Governments may think. When capping was first introduced, my authority was one of the 22 Labour authorities that were all capped at once; no Conservative authorities were. We set a budget, but the Government said we could not and that we had to reset it and make significant cuts. When we came to the elections that May, we had a really big increase in our majority, so it did not have any negative political impact. I have great sympathy with the noble Earl’s position. Do we need this clause? I do not think so.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I shall be brief. The position is a curious one in relation to what the Government regard as an area of excessive increases and what they regard as something else. An increase of more than 2% in council tax is excessive but an increase of 5.8% in social housing rents is acceptable. Indeed, the Chancellor has said today that social rents will increase by CPI plus 1% a year for virtually a decade. That actually will be rather less than the increases imposed in this past year but whichever way you look at it, it means that what is an unacceptable increase for council tax payers is well below what social housing tenants will be expected to pay. It is an interesting anomaly.
However, on the referendum point, it should be noted that three sets of organisations are involved in local government finance at the local level—the council, the levying bodies and the precepting bodies such as police commissioners. Several police commissioners increased their levies by significantly more than the 2% figure. That was acceptable because it did not raise the overall increase significantly. On the other hand, technically, their regime is rather different and rather more generous in terms of potential increases. However, if they breach the limit for precepting authorities, I understand that they would have to have a referendum. Therefore, there are two referendum systems here, as it were. It is odd that there are in effect two external bodies—some bodies, admittedly, comprise a combination of local authorities, but many do not—which can, by means of a levy, potentially force the council to have a referendum on its overall council tax levy, whereas precepting authorities are in a different category. That anomaly certainly raises questions to which we may want to return on Report.
I anticipate that the noble Earl will not seek to test the opinion of the Committee tonight. Given the fact that referendums are now, unfortunately, part of the system, despite the opposition of many of us when the Local Government Bill went through, I am not sure that we will get very far in that regard on Report. However, in this curious area of anomalous situations and differential rates of what is acceptable and what is not, we might at least provoke the Government into thinking about the system they are creating and the degree to which it is being made more elaborate, complex and, ultimately, less accountable to people with every successive announcement.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I shall try to deal with one or two specific questions at the end of my remarks. I shall lay out the purpose behind Clause 39 and pick up some of the questions as I go along.
Clause 39 amends the calculation that authorities must make each year to determine whether their council tax increase is excessive and therefore requires the approval of local people in a referendum. It changes the definition of excessiveness from an amount that excludes levies to one including levies. It will ensure that people get the final say over an excessive increase in the total council tax charged by an authority. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, properly drew attention to the fact that precepts are already part of the local government charge. Currently, the excessiveness calculation is based on the relevant basic amount of council tax, defined so as to exclude changes in levies raised on an authority by levying bodies. The level of levies varies in different areas, but can make up more than 50% of an authority’s council tax requirement. This year, many council tax payers have seen their total bill increase by a higher percentage than they might have expected due to the impact of levies, with the overall increase appearing to be above the referendum threshold set by the Secretary of State and approved by the other place.
In short, a levy is a demand for payment by a levying body on a local authority. A large number of organisations and bodies have historically been granted the power to issue levies. Some of these are relatively small organisations but others are much larger. We have discussed more recent creations such as integrated transport authorities and joint waste disposal bodies, which carry out substantial functions across cities or regions.
Combined authorities can bring together a number of others to pool their resources and make savings, removing duplication and giving them an opportunity to make sure that the levy is not as much as it would otherwise be. However, we are clear that levying bodies are part of the local government landscape; they are funded to varying degrees by local council tax payers. We discussed the levies briefly. They were removed from the provisions of the Localism Bill, and it is partly an attempt now to exempt certain types of expenditure from the excessiveness calculation, such as that which has been approved by a local referendum. I have missed a page and shall go back.
Baroness Hanham
I was trying to be brief; it is always a mistake.
I want to make it clear that the Secretary of State is able to set excessiveness principles which compare council tax figures in 2013-14 with 2014-15, using the methods set out in this clause, and now including the cost of levies. This remains consistent with current arrangements, where the Secretary of State takes into account all relevant factors, including previous council tax levels. Noble Lords will be aware that the effect of the clause is to reinstate the model for council tax referendums contained in the Localism Bill when it was introduced to Parliament in 2010. Not one objection was raised to the inclusion of levies during the consultation or the parliamentary debate on council tax referendums. The concept of taking account of those is familiar, having been part of the consideration of the excessiveness under the old capping regime, to which reference has been made.
Levies were removed from the provisions of the Localism Bill as part of an effort to keep certain types of expenditure from the excessiveness calculation, such as expenditure which was approved by referendum or which was not under the direct control of the authority. However, since the passing of the Localism Act, there have been two developments. First, the rate of levy increases has outstripped the national increase in council tax. In total, the levy increased by 4.1% in 2011-12 at the time of an overall council tax freeze. The coalition Government have been clear from the outset about their wish to protect people from excessive council tax increases, and the inclusion of levies in the referendum legislation supports that. Secondly, authorities have shown themselves to be consistently capable of working with levying bodies in setting them and considering the cumulative pressure on council tax. Local authorities are well represented on the majority of boards of levying authorities, and there are hundreds of examples of councils and levying bodies already meeting the terms of the schemes which require a freeze or reduction in the overall council tax bill.
The Government do not accept that local councils will simply have an excessive increase forced on them by levying bodies. We have had representations that this clause could constrain authorities that have already come together to collaborate and pool resources. We must be clear about this, too. In many areas, transport and waste disposal are run by local authorities—the noble Lord, Lord Smith, drew attention to that—and are funded through the council tax, which is subject to referendum principles. In larger metropolitan areas, these functions are carried out by joint waste and transport authorities, funded by levies that are not currently subject to the referendum principles. It is right that the spending by these large organisations, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of pounds, should be subject to the same scrutiny and accountability as happens elsewhere in the country.
I should like to make it clear that a number of authorities lobbied for this change. One was Liverpool City Council, which approached the department last year, making the case for increased consistency in the treatment of different classes of local authority. That council may be alone, but it has been done.
The question was asked about elections, including those for thirds. Decisions on council tax and on the amount of council tax charges are taken in March and local elections take place in May. If there was a referendum at the same time, local electors would be very clear what the situation was and what they were voting on. I hope that that will, if not satisfy noble Lords, clarify the points raised, and as a result I beg to move that this clause stand part of the Bill.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the noble Earl has made a compelling case. We seem to be moving from the high politics of Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire to Clochmerle or Eatanswill. There is nevertheless a real issue here, of which I was certainly unaware. The ridiculous numbers involved to call a poll, the non-binding nature of the result and the financial cost all seem to add up to a pretty lethal cocktail which ought to be addressed. I hope that the Minister will give the noble Earl an indication that the Government will look at this and seek, either on the basis of his amendment or in some other way, to deal with what looks like a highly anomalous situation in which a tiny handful of people—even fewer than voted in police commissioner elections—can wreak havoc in a local community.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I was unaware of the parish poll dimension. I say from the outset that, although we are very much on the outer edges of the scope of the Bill, the noble Earl’s points are clearly of importance for the modernisation of parish polls, which has rather fallen through the net. The questions of the threshold for triggering the poll and what a legitimate subject for a poll should be are issues to which we would be happy to give further consideration. We would happy to meet the noble Earl to discuss this further. I am rapidly turning over in my mind the question of how one deals with that. Even though this is a relatively limited area, it might be the sort of thing that is appropriate for a Private Member’s Bill in a future Session, which might be given a fair wind. It is a relatively self-contained set of issues.
We are aware of the issue of whether one could institute postal or proxy votes. Certainly, we should be lengthening the time during which a vote could be cast and modifying regulations about the threshold for triggering a parish poll. All those issues really need to be considered.
I understand that the provisions of the regulations limit the content of polls to matters which have been considered by the parish meeting, which means that the person chairing a parish meeting could rule out of order any attempt to discuss matters which are not parish affairs and so prevent parish polls on, for example, EU referendums, or whatever it may be. However, we are all conscious that different parishes and local communities are often dominated by different small groups. This is one of the problems we have with getting back to community self-government. I am often conscious that I am extremely lucky to live in the community of Saltaire, which has far too many people who are highly educated. We are overstuffed with activists, and there are other areas around Bradford which are not so blessed with local activists willing to turn up to lengthy committee meetings in the evenings and take part in local community activities. With that assurance and that offer to talk further on this small but important issue, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Lord Beecham Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Wills
I am very grateful. My noble friend reinforces the point about the pathetic nature of the Government in accepting these arguments about increased audit fees. They really need not be there. These auditors are getting access to a very lucrative new stream of work and they should pay the price to the public in making information available.
Lord Beecham
Before my noble friend withdraws the amendment, what is the present position when a contract is let by the local authority for a particular service in terms of the audit? What is the relationship of the district auditor to a council-commissioned contract in relation to its own service? Does he have access and is he subject to the same disclosure requirements that my noble friend seeks as if the council itself were directly providing that service?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My clear understanding is that auditors do have access to the relevant accounts of the contractor, but that would probably differ a great deal from one contract to another. I therefore need to make sure that in saying that they have access I am talking about all the cases rather than some. It may well be that a number of contracts differ one from the other.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I understand that; we have been through that before. I can see that it would not be the norm, but if there is no ability to give indemnity on some basis, what if we have a repeat of risks of the Westminster council sort, and 14 years of litigation? I accept that we are in a different era, but on technically complex issues, will that not discourage auditors from issuing that report?
Lord Beecham
If I might add to my noble Friend’s question, will that not deter smaller firms from engaging in the tendering process?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am not sure that the Westminster case is very helpful now. We are a very long way down the line. As others will know, it was not a straightforward case by any stretch of the imagination. The legal action was taken to recover the surcharge, so it was not only to do with the report, but with trying to surcharge the councillors.
If the company concerned appoints an auditor, it has to stand behind them as well. That would be the expectation of indemnity in this case. I am sure it will not be unique to a company to have to do that. With regard to small auditors, the situation would remain the same. They would presumably cover themselves for the risks.
I hope the explanation is sufficient. If not, and the noble Lord has other points that I have missed, perhaps we can pick them up by correspondence.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Lord Beecham Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this amendment addresses the question of the appointment of local auditors, covered by Clause 7. The procedure requires the local authority to appoint an auditor. Clause 7(2) provides that an auditor may be appointed,
“to audit its accounts for more than one financial year”.
Clause 7(2)(b) states that,
“the authority must make a further appointment of a local auditor at least once every 5 years”.
The amendment would remove the following subsection, which states that the paragraph to which I have just referred,
“does not prevent the relevant authority from re-appointing a local auditor”.
The object of my amendment is to ensure that there is a change after a five-year period. In my submission, it is possible for the auditor and the local authority to have too cosy a relationship. As I read it, there is nothing in the procedure for appointments set out in Clause 8 even for a tendering process to be entered into by the local authority, although I may be incorrect in that regard.
Clause 8 provides that:
“A relevant authority must consult and take into account the advice of its auditor panel on the selection and appointment of a local auditor”.
If a panel did not recommend a competitive tendering process, or even if it did, as long as the local authority had regard to that it would not necessarily follow that there would be such a process.
I agree that five years is a sensible sort of period for a firm to be engaged. However, it seems unfortunate, to put it mildly, that people could be reappointed for a substantial period of five years and then be reappointed with, or particularly without, a tendering process. That would be an invidious and unfortunate position to have arrived at. We are aware, of course, that the market for the larger authorities is likely to be dominated by a handful of firms. That was one of the reservations expressed on Second Reading and during our previous day in Committee, and I think that most of us, possibly including the Minister herself, are not entirely comfortable with that. To see such a process as a repeat appointment, particularly in the context of these large national outfits, is anti-competitive, if I might put it in that way. It also raises an issue about the kind of relationship that might develop when a firm is anxious to retain the contract.
For those reasons, in my submission it would be better to require not simply a reappointment process but a process that excluded the original firm. There might have to be a backstop position in case nobody else presented. That matter might require, for example, the agreement of the panel and the authority or even, potentially, of the Minister or the department. I suppose one might need that safeguard, but the important principle is that there should not be indefinite appointments of the kind that, as I see it, the Bill would facilitate. I beg to move.
Baroness Eaton
I find it somewhat surprising that there is this perceived idea of auditors being too cosy with their client, a local authority, because all the probity and requirements of audit mean that they would be being professionally negligent if they did not do the job they are supposed to be doing. I really do not think that this is quite as much of an issue as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is suggesting.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am struggling to understand the implications of what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is proposing. I think we all share his concern—I accept that it might not always be a widespread concern—that sometimes, maybe after five years, it could become too cosy. I hope we would all accept that a tendering process after five years is certainly desirable; whether it should be mandatory is something that we can debate. However, in such a tendering process, would the existing auditor be precluded from taking part in that process, or, if it was to take part in it and was clearly to submit the best value tender, would the authority then be prevented from reappointing it on that basis? That is the point I struggle to understand.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps I might respond before the Minister replies, since we are in Committee. My preference would be for exclusion but as a fallback, at the very least, to have a proper tendering process, as I have explained.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for raising this interesting point, but I am bound to say that I have the same scepticism about this as the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and my noble friend Lord Tope. It is scepticism about whether it is necessary.
The Bill currently requires local authorities or local bodies to make a new appointment every five years, as the noble Lord said. In most cases, this will require them to go through a full EU tendering process. We expect that most authorities would have that as a requirement, if not in their code of procedure then in their code of conduct. They will also have to go through the process with the independent auditor panel, which will have to manage the tendering process so that it is both independent and transparent. The independent auditor panel will also look regularly at the quality of the audit from the auditors currently doing the job. If they are not doing the job, it will not recommend that they are allowed to proceed. The Financial Reporting Council has ethical standards as well, and will require that key audit staff are rotated on a regular basis. The Government believe that the requirements for a maximum five-year term and the rotation of key staff provide sufficient assurances, along with the other measures on auditor appointment and removal, to safeguard auditor independence and the local bodies’ independence of view in taking on their auditors.
I know that there have been wider discussions about, for example, a recent Competition Commission report on the need for mandatory auditor rotation. However, we understand that the evidence that mandatory rotation supports improved auditor independence and auditor quality is inconclusive. Bearing in mind what my noble friend Lord Tope and the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, said, sometimes there is benefit in the continuation of an auditor, not on a cosy basis but because of the mere fact that, particularly with bigger authorities, you have somebody who understands the processes and what has been happening during the past five years. In any event, I think it would be wrong to exclude them from being able to tender, to bring down the barricade and say, “No, you can’t do that”.
There is sufficient professional involvement to ensure that auditors are not reappointed where they are unsuitable, where they have not done the job properly or where the local body thinks that they could do with a change of auditor and makes that clear. I do not think we need to make it mandatory that they cannot go beyond five years; that would be too draconian. I am satisfied that we have the processes in place to ensure that a full appointments system takes place every five years. If the current auditors were seen to be the most successful, they should be able to be reappointed.
I hope that that explanation will satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and that he will be able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, as the noble Baroness knows, I am not easily satisfied, and I am not completely satisfied by her reply, although I am grateful. In particular, there is still an issue about market share and the domination by large firms, which I fear will not be addressed by allowing the system outlined in the Bill. However, having heard the debate, of course I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Tope
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, began by describing this process as overly bureaucratic, but then I think he went on to say that, since it is overbureaucratic, let us have an amendment that makes it even more bureaucratic. That is not the most compelling argument that I have ever heard from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, as I suspect he knows very well.
The amendment certainly seems to describe what is good practice and what I hope would happen in practice. I am moderately confident that that is what would happen, certainly with any good authority. Whether we need to have an even more bureaucratic process to enshrine all this in legislation, I am very doubtful, and whichever Minister is replying they will no doubt tell us that we do not want to make it too bureaucratic.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps I may just ask whether it would remain open to authorities to combine in placing audit contracts. The Audit Commission identified substantial savings having been made by central commissioning, and it anticipated that if extended to the remaining 30% of contracts, a significant further saving of some £400 million over five years could be made. I am not necessarily saying that that is the way to go but, under the provisions of the Bill and this whole appointment process, would it still be open for such an approach to be adopted by authorities coming together, for example, in a particular region or a particular class of authority, obviously with the support of their independent panels? Would it still be open to them to move in that direction, getting a sort of bulk purchase by agreement rather than it being imposed externally? It would be helpful to have some assurance on that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am happy to give that assurance. That is entirely acceptable and to be expected within the Bill. Often small authorities in particular will find it convenient and useful to combine how they approach this matter. However, as the noble Lord has just said, this is by voluntary co-operation rather than by imposition from the centre.
I have to reprimand the noble Lord, Lord Tope, for making exactly the first point that I was going to make, thus cutting down on what I have to say.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
The Government understand and support the intentions behind the amendment—to ensure that there is transparency over the appointment of the auditor—but they are not convinced that this is the sort of thing that needs to be in the Bill. The Bill already includes a requirement for the notice to include the advice of the auditor panel, which is required to advise on the selection and appointment of the auditor. This might cover issues such as the length of the appointment and the process for appointment. Under the Bill, auditor panels must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State on their functions. We expect that such statutory guidance, or wider guidance on best practice, might cover the sorts of issues that should be included in any advice from the panel.
With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has just said about the principle, which my noble friend also referred to, of combining these two roles. It does not seem at all necessary to have panels on the one hand and a committee on the other. As the noble Lord has reminded us, most authorities have established audit committees. I ought to declare an interest again as a member of Newcastle City Council and as an elected member serving on the audit committee, which is independently chaired and has a majority. It works very well and it seems to make absolute sense that that body should also have oversight of these appointments.
Perhaps I may refer to the noble Baroness’s observations. Although technically the noble Lord, Lord Tope, is right that it is not for this amendment, as the remarks have just been made I shall endeavour to rebut the thrust of the argument. This is really a matter of perception. It is important that the public are convinced that in the matter of the propriety and regularity of an authority’s financial transactions, the oversight of the process—not just the appointment process, but the whole job of audit—is carried out without the conflict that might arise from, for example, a controlling group in an authority having a majority of members on a committee.
Whereas of course in many cases there will be a mix of members, in some councils the political position is that there is no opposition, or there is insufficient opposition to be represented on the committee. It is desirable that we should go that further step, to which we will no doubt address our minds shortly. The cardinal point is that the Government are right that there should be audit committees, but they should do the whole job, including the appointment process. I very much welcome my noble friend’s amendment.
Baroness Eaton
My Lords, I failed to declare that I am also a member of the audit committee of my council.
Baroness Eaton
Perhaps I may raise one small issue about the independent members of an audit panel. I do not see, unless I have missed it, how the process is expected to take place, and I have some concerns about the clarity of the job description and expectations. In some local authorities, particularly in the appointment of people such as coroners, these have not always been as transparent as they should be. It would be helpful if we knew what process is expected for authorities to achieve the genuine independence and quality suitable for the needs of the panel.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps I may add some more questions. I am sorry that they come so late. While paragraph 2 of Schedule 4 deals with a number of issues, it helpfully defines what is meant by a “relative”. Although seven categories of relative are referred to at page 40 of the Bill, there is no definition of the words “close friend”, which appear in paragraph 2(2)(c). Is it possible to define what is meant by “close friend”? If it is not, I suggest that the words should be taken out of the Bill, because this could lead to a ridiculous situation.
What is the rationale for dealing with health service bodies in a different way under paragraph 3 of Schedule 4? It seems to be a parallel process, and I wonder why it is regarded as separate. Why is the process not the same for the two bodies? In particular—I should know, but I do not—what are the current audit arrangements in health service bodies? We know what they are in councils—they either do or do not have an audit committee—but I do not know whether, at the moment, health bodies have audit committees as such. If they have, just as many of those who argued for the panel concept to be incorporated in the audit committee would argue for the same in health. At least my noble friend and I think that these two bodies are one more than is necessary, and if that is true for local government it is also true for health bodies. I am slightly puzzled by the potential parallel structure here.
Government’s New Approach to Consultation: “Work in Progress” (SLSC Report)
Lord Beecham Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I congratulate the chairman on his appointment. I take particular pleasure in the fact that I think he is now the only Member of your Lordships’ House from the north-east to occupy such a position, and I am very glad on that account. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, and the committee on the report.
Before I joined this House nearly three years ago, I spent 50 years in politics in one form or another, 43 of them as a local councillor. In my innocence, though, I was quite unaware of the degree to which the scrutiny conducted, particularly at the other end of the Palace of Westminster, was so inadequate. It is undoubtedly better in your Lordships’ House. Having said that, though, it is clear that the process of scrutiny is not as good as it should be, and that is partly a function of the consultation process. This first came to my attention when we discussed the changes that were to be made to the Public Bodies Bill. It was quite clear that decisions had in fact been made and that the consultation, to the extent that it did occur, was something of a sham.
I think that I coined the term “pre-legislative implementation” for some of what happened under the aegis of that Bill, and I am glad that the Constitution Committee is looking into that. I recall particularly the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach—I do not blame him personally for this—giving constant assurances that there would be consultation in connection with the regional development agencies, and that each would be considered on its merits. In the event, there was no consultation at all and they all went. I do not blame the noble Lord for that; the decision was clearly taken somewhat above his pay grade.
The noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, referred in his speech to contributions from Mars. I can reassure him about that; one item that has been subject to consultation is the reform of the Outer Space Act. On page 26 of the committee’s report it will be seen that 14 weeks were devoted to possible consultation on that, in contrast to four weeks for the statutory instruments concerning the delivery of structural funds—a matter of more immediate concern, it might be thought, to all save those particularly interested in astronomy and the like. Equally, when looking at the Department of Health, one sees some strange discrepancies. Page 32 of the report points out that making nursery milk schemes more effective had an 18-week consultation whereas consultation on the membership of Healthwatch England, a matter that itself particularly concerned scrutiny, took only five weeks. Clearly, something is amiss with all this.
I respectfully differ somewhat from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, on the assumption that we should deal only with secondary legislation. Experience of the Crime and Courts Bill in particular underlined that consultation took place very late; indeed, material was introduced into your Lordships’ House halfway through the passage of the Bill on the basis of consultation that had taken place after the Bill had been launched. In another context, on transforming bailiffs, months elapsed between the end of the consultation and a government response being provided, well into the course of the Bill. So while in many respects secondary legislation would be the prime area, it is not the only one about which we should be concerned.
The difficulty that many of us see is that there is an increasing reliance on secondary legislation to fill in the details not included in primary legislation nor debated during the passage of what, too often, is in effect becoming enabling legislation. I strongly support the committee’s recommendations and hope that they can be implemented in relation to consultation at whatever point it is initiated.
Israel and Palestine
Lord Beecham Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-chairman of the New Israel Fund UK, which supports a wide range of civil society organisations in Israel, including ACRI, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner. My late wife was heavily involved in and I support an organisation called Windows for Peace, which brings together young Jewish and Arab Israelis and Palestinians. It is precisely the kind of joint venture involving young people that, as others have said, can contribute so much to the future. Finally, I declare an interest as a member of the UK Task Force on issues relating to Arab citizens of Israel. On Sunday, I will be joining a third mission from that organisation. This year, we will look at mixed towns and cities and how the two communities and the political structures around them can work together, often with the support of local civil society.
The Israeli Declaration of Independence proclaimed unequivocally the right of equal treatment for all the country’s citizens, irrespective of gender, ethnicity or religion. Ten years on from the Orr Commission report following the second intifada, it must be said—and successive Governments in Israel have acknowledged—that there has been insufficient narrowing of the gap between the two communities. It is right to say, as others have said tonight and on other occasions, that in general the condition of Arab citizens in Israel is probably better in many respects than many of their brethren, but of course that is not the comparison that they make. They make the comparison with their Jewish fellow citizens. It is right that they should do so and that those gaps should be narrowed, not least in the interests of Israel itself.
The Palestinian minority in Israel is potentially a valuable economic force. The Palestinian diaspora has shown in many parts of the world that it can contribute significantly to economic and other developments. Moreover, it is inconceivable that a lasting peace, which we all seek, can be established on the basis that Israel treats its Arab citizens as in any way second-class. That is not what the Declaration of Independence proclaims and, in fairness, even the present Government have taken some steps towards narrowing the gap, although a great deal more remains to be done.
Last year the task force spent some time in the Negev in the south of Israel looking at the Bedouin community. We were disturbed but also in some respects encouraged by the activities that we saw there. I recall one particular visit to a co-operative run by women—and it is often women who take the lead in these matters—which is now one of the main providers of meals on wheels across the country, to the extent that the Ministry of Education has contracted with them to supply many other places. That is an example of a community-based organisation making a significant difference in its own community and beyond.
My noble friend Lady Ramsay referred to the trade union movement. It is sometimes forgotten—in this country, never mind in Israel—that trade unions are part of civil society. The Histadrut is very active on behalf of its Arab members—of which there are many—and also supports the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. I find it disappointing that some trade unions in this country seek to boycott the Histadrut. They should be supporting the Histadrut and the Palestinian federation in their joint work.
Another civil society organisation, or NGO, is Friends of the Earth Middle East. Last year, in what passed for our summer, I was pleased to host on behalf of the New Israel Fund a reception and discussion with Friends of the Earth Middle East, which is the only joint organisation embracing a Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli component. Of course, it looks in particular at environmental issues, touching very much on the issue of water, particularly the state of the River Jordan, which brings in all three components. It is another kind of organisation which certainly needs the support of the UK Government. Some concern has been caused by moves within Israel by the unreconstructed right to limit donations to civil society organisations from outside the country. I hope and assume that the Government will urge Israel not to do so.
Two years ago I was privileged to visit the amazing Bialik-Rogozin school in Jaffa, which has both Jewish and Arab students but also about 40% of its pupils are children of refugees or migrant workers. It is an amazing place—children of a rainbow range of colours and different languages all get along famously with the most wonderful staff. I have a strong visual memory of this fine example of Israel at its best. I was being shown round the playground and saw some structures about three foot high scattered around. When I asked what they were, I was told they were the vents from the air raid shelters beneath the school. Civil society in Israel has a great part to play, with support from inside and outside the country, in ensuring that those vents will one day be removed.
Electoral Registration
Lord Beecham Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, in congratulating my noble friend Lord Wills on raising this important issue. Like many Members of your Lordships’ House, I spent many happy hours, extending to 50 years, using the electoral register for the purpose of canvassing. As my noble friend has said, the keystone of any working democratic electoral system is, of course, that there should be an accurate and comprehensive register. As he said, all political parties have subscribed to the view that individual registration is desirable, albeit that that necessarily involves much more work and perhaps more cost to ensure its efficient administration than the situation hitherto.
The electoral register primarily serves as a function of democratic politics but it also serves other purposes. We may well hear in this debate about the uses to which the register can be put—for example, in relation to jury service, the avoidance of fraud through the use of the register by credit agencies and the like. On the downside, there is legitimate concern about the use of the register by commercial organisations for the purposes of marketing and so on, but that is a subsidiary question to the one that we are addressing in your Lordships’ House today.
Democracy ultimately depends on participation, and the attitude of the Government appears to be that inclusion on the register is to be voluntary—a sort of lifestyle choice. I suspect that most of us in your Lordships’ House would take the view that inclusion on the register is in fact a civic responsibility. Many of us would go further and say that voting is a civic responsibility. Some of us might be tempted to say that voting should be compulsory, but that is not within the province of this debate and would no doubt be a more controversial proposition.
It is clear that there is a real risk of a significant decline in numbers registering under the present proposals. My noble friend has referred to the Electoral Commission’s estimate of a 65 per cent effective register. The numbers have been declining in any event over recent years; 65 per cent would put us at less than the United States, whose record in these matters generally is regarded as pretty deplorable. In evidence to, I believe, the Electoral Reform Society at an event that it staged, the returning officer for Hackney predicted a reduction of 25,000 to 30,000 from an already low base of an electorate of 165,000. That is a very significant reduction.
Of course it is right, as noble Lords have already said, to create barriers to electoral fraud, but as my noble friend rightly points out, fraud essentially has been pretty minimal. There had been concerns around postal voting, but I have to say that postal voting has substantially sustained turnout in local elections. In my own authority in Newcastle, one of the experimental policies in 2004 was to have 100 per cent registration for postal votes. Since then, the turnout in local elections has resulted in 70 per cent of those with postal votes actually voting, with only a 15 per cent turnout among those not using the postal vote. There has been no evidence or even any suggestion of postal vote fraud in that authority. So postal voting, properly administered, can certainly help sustain turnout.
Making registration voluntary is surely a mistake. It is necessary to have the sanction of a possible fine—although very rarely, if ever, used. I think that perhaps a few more cases would engender more people registering now. If voluntary registration appears to be the order of the day, it is likely to engender a significant further fall, as has happened in Northern Ireland, as has already been said. When a few years ago the poll tax was a hot political issue, we saw a substantial decline in registration. People effectively sought to evade the poll tax by keeping their names off the electoral register at a time when there were potential sanctions to be applied. Without sanctions, there may very well be an even worse level of registration and therefore turnout. As my noble friend has indicated, this is particularly likely to be the case with young people, with people from ethnic minorities and with private tenants. When one goes canvassing, as I was doing last weekend, it is striking how in areas of private-rented housing one comes across a significant number of properties where there is no name on the electoral register; it is much less the case in local authority housing or in owner-occupied areas. That constitutes disenfranchising—admittedly by omission on the part of the residents—of a significant proportion of the population.
This has effects beyond just the turnout in individual seats. Potentially it influences hugely the drawing of parliamentary boundaries. Clearly, under registration, it could significantly distort the pattern of parliamentary boundaries that was determined under the legislation passed last year. The boundaries are now to be reviewed every five years instead of approximately every 10 years, and that could, of course, significantly affect the political outcome.
One area that has not really been touched on is the position of voters who, like Members of your Lordships’ House, are entitled to vote in local elections but not in national elections. That includes EU residents. I do not think that their position has been canvassed—to use an appropriate phrase—at all in these discussions. It is perhaps a matter that ought to be considered. They are entitled to vote and there is no reason why they should not vote, since they are paying local taxes. It seems to me that it ought to be part of the responsibility of the electoral registration process to ensure that EU citizens in this country with the right to vote in local elections are included in the register.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons considered these matters and clearly took a strong view that the offence of failing to co-operate with the electoral registration officer should be retained; that the Electoral Commission should promote a public information campaign on a regular basis to inform people of their rights and responsibilities in this respect; that there should be, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, confirmed, a full canvass in 2014, which will be critical as we approach the next general election—assuming that we have to wait until then; and thereafter that the register should be adequately maintained.
There is a resource implication. Local authorities’ budgets are under huge pressure and it is tempting to dispense with the necessary investment in keeping a register up to date. However, the temptation should be resisted and resistance would be facilitated if a grant were specifically ring-fenced for this purpose. I am not normally in favour of ring-fencing grants to local government, but this has implications for our whole political system and is a case for which I certainly would be prepared to make an exception. A project of data-matching is also under way, and that should also be evaluated.
The Welfare Reform Bill, which has occupied the House —and will continue to do so—for some time, threatens to take us back in certain respects to the 19th century Poor Law. I hope that these changes in the electoral system do not take us back to a 19th century electorate.
Baroness Rawlings
Perhaps I may remind noble Lords that when the clock shows seven, they are already in their eighth minute.
Palestine
Lord Beecham Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we certainly recognise that the case for progress on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has become more urgent as the pace of change across the region has quickened. The quartet issued a statement at the end of September in the context of the call for a vote in the UN, calling for negotiations to be resumed within a month. That, of course, has not succeeded. The quartet will meet again in a few weeks’ time. The possibility that negotiations will in effect end raises some very difficult questions for both parties in this conflict. Palestine remains an occupied territory. It has, however, with a great deal of support from the United Kingdom and others managed to build a number of the basic aspects of the framework for statehood. We welcome that, we have supported it, and we wish negotiations towards a two-state solution to resume as soon as possible.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, what support will the Government give to encourage states in the region to recognise the state of Israel, which has of course been a member of the United Nations for 62 years?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not entirely briefed as to which states recognise Israel and which do not, let alone what the implications of changes in regime might mean for that, but I promise to write to the noble Lord.
Anti-Semitism
Lord Beecham Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on securing this debate. The date is perhaps a little unfortunate, but at least we are in the right Room, because the picture on the wall is actually of the event that the festival celebrates.
Anti-Semitism has variously been described as the oldest hatred based on religious differences and as the socialism of fools, with its appeal to the far right and to the far left. Now, as has been said, it is often linked to anti-Zionism. Martin Luther King said:
“When people criticise Zionists they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism”.
Actually, that is too broad a generalisation, although certainly the two can overlap and, as we have heard, moral relativism is all too frequently found in these arenas.
A few months ago, I met a delegation from the Union of Jewish Students who relayed to me the concerns that other noble Lords have expressed about what they have to face on campus. As a result of that, I tabled a Question for Written Answer that, among other things, asked the Government what representations they had made to university authorities concerning invitations to speak, and what steps they would take to protect Jewish and other students from anti-Semitic, Islamophobic or other racist behaviour on campus. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, the Minister replying, did not really take matters very much further than to refer to guidance already issued. I hope that in replying the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, may indicate an intention to take this further, because the response of university vice-chancellors has been, frankly, rather feeble in this respect, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has pointed out.
There are real grounds for concern about what is happening in various parts of the country—not least, rather surprisingly, in the Greater Manchester area, which appears to have been the scene of about 30 per cent of the recorded serious incidents investigated by the Community Security Trust. The trust finds about two-thirds of the complaints to be justified. They are not finding every complaint to be justified, but they take a serious look at these matters. It is extraordinary that Greater Manchester appears to have such a high proportion. Perhaps that is something that the Minister might ask her department, or a department, to look into.
At election time, there is sometimes a temptation for people to stray into this rather dangerous territory. In 1967, when first a candidate for the ward I represented for longer than I care to remember, I was subjected to some anti-Semitic campaigning by the Conservative candidate. In fairness to the Conservative Party, they very publicly and very rapidly repudiated him and his actions. This May, another Labour candidate in another ward, opposed by a Muslim candidate for the Conservative Party, was also subjected to an anti-Semitic campaign, partly conducted on the internet. It was a little odd because the Labour candidate was not actually Jewish, but nevertheless anti-Semitism was deployed. Again, in fairness, the local Conservative Party has taken up this matter and I have no doubt will deal with it very seriously. However, it indicates that the same disease can still abound, perhaps in different circumstances.
Apart from these domestic issues, some wider issues are of concern. For example, I understand that Press TV, the Iranian Government’s broadcasting outfit in this country, has been guilty of repeated breaches of the Ofcom code—not least latterly in giving airspace to publicity for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I am not asking the Minister to give an immediate response to this, but I wonder whether the Government might look again at making representations about whether Press TV’s licence should be continued in circumstances where it so frequently breaches the code.
Another matter arises from the tendency in some countries of eastern Europe—I think notably of Latvia and Lithuania—to present an equivalence between the Nazi occupation and the subsequent Soviet occupation, which entirely leaves out the question of the treatment of those countries’ Jews. I recall visiting the Riga museum and seeing a great deal of suffering portrayed under both regimes, but there was no mention at all of what had happened to Latvia’s Jews or, indeed, to other Jews who had been deported and killed.
However, there are some positives in the situation. Reference has been made to the Holocaust Education Trust and I am grateful to the Government for continuing the financial support for its work, which is to bring home to young people in particular the terrible period of the Holocaust. There is also the Anne Frank Trust UK, of which I declare an interest as a patron. Drawing from Anne Frank’s experience and her very moving diary, the trust goes beyond referring simply to the Holocaust and works in schools and prisons more generally to promote tolerance, encourage community cohesion and to help young people in particular to deal with instances of bullying and behaviour management. I hope very much that the trust’s work will be supported. I am sure that the Government will continue to support it and perhaps even slightly increase their support.
It occurs to me that we have in this country many councils of Christians and Jews but not many organisations embracing the three Abrahamic faiths. That is not a matter for the Government, but as we will have had, once the noble Baroness speaks, a representative of each of the three main Abrahamic faiths speaking in this debate. A message to encourage that kind of interfaith co-operation would be very helpful. I am glad that the present Government are continuing the work of their predecessors and look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s reply.