Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Best and Lord Newton of Braintree

Monday 20th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, having already declared my wife as an interest, I will not repeat that. However, in view of the contents of Amendment 14, I should mention that I am in possession of a disabled person’s blue badge and that I chair a mental health trust.

I wanted to join in on this debate partly because of puzzlement and partly because I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, moved his amendments—in particular Amendment 14—with rather more diffidence than I had expected, and certainly with less vigour. By the time you have got through five of these clauses, your mind begins to glaze over, to be honest. However, as I read the provisions as a mere layman, what is being said here is that local authorities can do anything they like, subject to some broad qualifications, and the Secretary of State can allow them to do anything they like if he likes what they want to do; but if he does not like what they want to do, he can do whatever he likes to stop them—and all this with a limited piece of secondary legislation, possibly altering primary legislation, and on the basis of a negative resolution. I think that is it in plain English—I hope that it is, and I see some nods.

At the end of the Public Bodies Bill, I said that I thought that Henry VIII had suffered a major setback but not a terminal defeat and had gone off to regroup somewhere. Well, I now know where—it was in the Department for Communities and Local Government. Here is Henry VIII, on his charger, writ larger than ever before.

I have reservations about this, to put it mildly. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, used a telling figure in the Second Reading debate, that there were over 1,200 pieces of legislation that could be amended by this Bill, using these powers. He has picked out some of them, and I think that he has done us a service, but I want to know the justification for this. If it is secondary legislation that is being changed, I can understand it, but if primary legislation, which has been duly and thoroughly debated and passed by Parliament, can be swept aside in this way, there is a real question about what we are all doing here. I note that safeguards have been written in, but I am not sure that they are on a parallel with the safeguards written into the Public Bodies Bill. At the very least, if the House is expected to acquiesce in these proposals, it needs at least a similar level of safeguard as we have in the Public Bodies Bill. I rest my case for the moment.

[Lord Best]

I have not spoken in the Committee stage, so I declare my interest as president of the Local Government Association. In that capacity, let me say that the earlier remarks from the Minister on shadow mayors and mayors acting as chief executives will be extremely well received at the LGA this evening.

I wanted to say one or two things in support of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Newton. The underlying intention is honourable—that if the general power of competence is inhibited by any other legislation, the Secretary of State has what could be rather draconian powers to overrule other legislation. But that clearly needs to be hedged around with some safeguards. A number of us have received representations from an alliance of disability groups, which are particularly concerned that some of the legislation that relates to their rights and entitlements might be diminished. That came to us from Age UK, Scope, which is involved with people with cerebral palsy, the National Autistic Society, the RNIB and Mencap. All these organisations are deeply concerned that some of the protective legislation that surrounds the world of disability might be done away with for the possibly good reason that it got in the way of the power of general competence —but that would seem a lesser priority. So we need reassurances here, and I support this bunch of amendments.