Localism Bill

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

129LZZZA: Schedule 5, page 263, leave out lines 9 to 29

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I hope that I will be able to deal with these amendments quite shortly. Last Thursday my noble friend Lord Shipley made an admirable speech on the clause stand part debate before the amendments came up, and advanced all the arguments that I would have made in support of this group. The main difference between my noble friend and me was that he expounded his objectives—eloquently and adequately, I thought—and I have tabled the amendments that would give effect to them.

I do not intend to take the House through each of these several amendments. However, I can say that the amendments have four main purposes in relation to the possibility of a referendum on the council tax in an area where it is thought that the council tax increase has been—to use the word in the Bill—excessive. It should not be for the Government to lay down what is excessive. There has been a lot of talk about this being a new form of rate-capping. I know something about that, having dealt with that in an earlier part of my political life. This is intended to be a protection for council tax payers against an increase in council tax which goes beyond what they feel to be fair.

The first point that I would like to make is that it should be for local people to determine whether they find a suggested council tax increase excessive. Therefore, my amendments in a sense come under four groups. First, there are amendments which would delete the Secretary of State’s powers to determine what constitutes an excessive rate of council tax—this is likely to be very different in different circumstances in different areas around the country. Secondly, it should therefore also be for the local authority to decide when a referendum should be held. That should not be determined by central government. If localism means anything, this is exactly what it is supposed to mean. Thirdly, it should be the councils, rather than the Secretary of State, which should decide how the referendum is going to be conducted. Finally, there are amendments which would delete powers for the Secretary of State to make a whole raft of regulations, on, among other things, setting out the question to be asked in a referendum, the allowable publicity accompanying a referendum, and how votes ought to be counted.

I have dwelt on this issue before. The rhetoric of Ministers in this Government has been that this is a brand new start, a real decentralisation of power from Whitehall to town hall and county hall, and that it is going to be a rejuvenation of local authorities. Yet one only needs to look at the size of the Bill to realise that, while that may be the objective, it is certainly not being produced in this Bill. The Bill is full of detailed directions, and powers to make regulations to give further detailed directions, as to how local authorities are to use what is supposed to be their new freedom.

I am not going to say more than that, or go through all the details. I hope that Ministers—who are going to have an unusually long gap between this Committee stage and the Report stage, which will come after the Recess—will have a good, hard look at this Bill, to see whether some of this centralisation and central direction, and this business of telling local authorities how to have their freedom and how to behave themselves, can be removed from the Bill. I can assure my noble friends on the Front Bench that it will be extremely popular among the local authorities, which have had their hopes raised that they are at last going to have freedom from central direction, and then find that this Bill does nothing of the sort. I beg to move.

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness Hayman)]

I have to inform the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to I cannot call Amendments 129LZZA to 129LZZF by reason of pre-emption.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I am not certain of the details, and I hope we will come to a suitable amendment to debate that.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked that specific question last Thursday, and my noble friend gave this very specific answer:

“The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked whether authorities can campaign for the proposed increase in council tax. No, it is intended that they cannot. They must put the facts to the electorate and leave them to decide but individual councillors will be free to campaign”.—[Official Report, 30/06/11; col. 1971.]

Is he saying that that stands, or is that not right now?

[Earl Attlee]

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for refreshing my memory. He is absolutely right; that is the current situation.

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[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, I think it would be extremely unlikely that we did not take advice from the Electoral Commission.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, we have spent more than half an hour on this amendment, following the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on Thursday. I think the Government have got the message. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Attlee for undertaking to cogitate on these matters between now and Report. I understand some of the difficulties that his officials have put before him, but I was very encouraged to hear him say that he read from his own handwritten notes in response to the noble Baroness opposite when he said he would look at all these matters again. In the light of that assurance, I hope the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, will forgive me if I do not go into detail about what the results of this might be. I do not regard these amendments as an infallible way of achieving the overall purpose of less top-down government control and more control by devolved local authorities. They are accountable to their electors and I suspect that my noble friend Lord Attlee really will look at this, as he said he would. I shall be happy to help him, and I shall perhaps bring along some of those who have been advising me on these matters. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 129LZZZA withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

130: Clause 68, page 57, line 31, leave out paragraphs (a) to (d) and insert “any public body, including, but not limited to, local authorities, government departments, government agencies and non-departmental public bodies”

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 131 and 132. No doubt other noble Lords will speak to Amendment 130ZC. We have discussed the question of challenges to local authorities by local communities and other bodies that wish to run their services. I am looking for a more ambitious community right to challenge. I support what is in the Bill. It is a very useful expression of bringing forward one aspect of the big society so that local people can become involved not just in yapping at the heels of those who provide a service but in putting forward suggestions for how they could do it better. I like that—but why does it stop at local government services?

My right honourable friend Greg Clark, the Minister of State for Decentralisation and Planning Policy, recently gave a lecture on the subject to the Local Government Association. He was on the right lines when he stated that Ministers are considering inviting councils and their partners to bid to manage a range of public services using devolved budgets. This recognises that government services or services provided by non-departmental bodies at national level may be run better and with more sensitivity to local needs and circumstances if they are run at local level. They do not all have to be run nationally. That is the point of the amendment. I am trying to provide a way in which my right honourable friend’s aspirations could be put into practice across the public sector.

If we are going to get this whole process going—I admired the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, when he spoke of what was necessary—we need to generate enthusiasm for, and understanding of, what is being offered. This should be across the board and not limited to local government services. Therefore, my amendment extends the right to challenge across all public services, not just those guided by local government. Local authorities should be able to express an interest in running devolved national public services on behalf of their communities, which should be able to offer to run the services. They may need help, which local authorities are best placed to deliver.

Looking at it again with rather greater reluctance, I have to say that the suggestion that local authorities should provide a list of the services that they might be interested in devolving smacks of bureaucracy and I am not particularly enthusiastic about it. I ought to withdraw the amendment; I speak to it with no enthusiasm at all and I am grateful to see that that view is shared.

I will concentrate on the other amendments in this group, which propose extending the measure to services provided nationally by central government and by non-departmental public bodies and so on, and giving local authorities the right to bid and the duty to help local communities to do this. If you take London as an example—I declare my interest as one of the joint presidents of London Councils—the figures show that in 2009-10 central government spent over £47 billion in London. Local authorities actually spent much less than that—about £29 billion—so only 40 per cent of the total is spent by local authorities. By extending this measure, you are opening up a substantially larger pool from which one could get services provided locally. Of course, not all services can be delivered locally but a great many are. I shall give some examples in a moment.

Extending the community right to challenge and to apply it to a wider public sector would effectively address a lot of the problems that are inevitably caused by national bureaucracy. That often stands in the way of operational efficiency and, in particular, local sensitivity. A council could say, “If we did it for you, we would have to do it for everybody”. How often has one heard that excuse? What we are looking for in this Bill is a greater opportunity for public services to be run locally, where they can be responsive to local needs and circumstances. I will give some examples in a moment.

One possibility is to have cross-departmental services that could be run effectively from a local level. Another is to empower local authorities to support local aspirations. Research commissioned by London Councils last year identified over 150 non-departmental public bodies that spend more than £100,000 a year that have an influence in London. If one takes account of even the Government’s recent efforts to try to reduce the number of these bodies, as in the Public Bodies Bill, London Councils estimates that at least 120 of these organisations remain active in the capital. Many of them are responsible for the delivery of public services for which local communities have no statutory ability to hold anyone to account. This is the target one is aiming at, the substantial number of bodies that deliver services locally but are not in any way locally accountable. Therefore local authorities should be able to help them.

The third point is that, if you are going to have a community right to challenge, for that to be a genuine one, it should be open to all regardless of the local community’s expertise or experience. It will need help and the local authorities are best able to give that. If you can achieve that, you will be achieving a degree of local accountability for the services that are there for local people. Not only communities but the local authorities themselves should have the ability to challenge national services on behalf of their communities and alongside other agencies, and to run services delivered by national public bodies within their area. This would ensure that communities have some local control and that there would be some local accountability.

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[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question. I have a great deal of sympathy for the noble Lords’ amendments. I am not sure what my Front Bench is going to say, but this sounds like a very useful discussion to have about how to extend local rights. My question, because I am a champion of social enterprises and the voluntary sector, is whether they, too, will be able to challenge for those national services that might appropriately be delivered at a local level. That would seem appropriate.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Immediately, exactly the same bodies and people, including local charities and voluntary bodies, should be able to challenge these national services, in the same way as the Bill provides for them to challenge local services.

[Lord Patel of Bradford]

My Lords, I shall be very brief. I have listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, said, and I have read his amendment carefully. The basic principle of the proposal is exciting and warrants further investigation and explanation, although I agree that a list would be completely bureaucratic. As for the idea that we could take this a step further, I am excited by the community right to challenge aspect but would want to be assured that the amendments would not in any way, shape or form dilute the local community right to challenge.

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[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have been hugely encouraged by the amount of support all around the House for the fact that we should pursue this more ambitious right to challenge. I am very grateful in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for what she said, and for the enthusiasm and excitement of the noble Lord, Lord Patel. Turning to my noble friend, I have already indicated that I am not interested in the lists, and perhaps I should have withdrawn that amendment. However, it was encouraging to hear him say that the Government are keen to explore and that he would have to involve Ministers in other departments. If the localism ambitions are to be achieved then every department will need to be involved in this, not just the DCLG.

From what my noble friend Lord Attlee said in relation, for instance, to the discussions we had earlier about EU fines, I am aware that he now has to discuss this with all the other departments concerned, which is a good thing. If our amendments achieve that and nothing else, that would be worth while. My noble friend Lord Shutt has offered grounds for hope. A few weeks ago, when I discussed this with the Secretary of State, his reply was fairly brief. He said, “Really, we have got to be able to walk before we can run”. My noble friend used the phrase “before evaluating”.

I should like to feel that this is part of the Government’s ambition, something which we can look forward to as an extension of the right to challenge, and something which can be seen to be very much part of the coalition’s policy. Recognising that it might be difficult to put this provision into the Bill at this stage—it was not considered, I think, in the other place—we have to recognise that there are problems. However, I hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench will start consulting now with the other departments that will be involved. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 130 withdrawn.

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[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I want to assist, in a sense, the noble Lord, Lord Newton, by clarifying the description of one particular—

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, but for those of us who rely on the loop, the microphone is rather important.

[Lord Beecham]

I shall be very brief. My Amendment 131AA looks at the definition that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to in Clause 68(7). It seeks to tighten the reference to the surplus by saying that the fact that a body’s activities generate a surplus does not prevent it from being a voluntary body for the purposes of the section. The original clause says:

“so long as that surplus is used for the purposes of those activities”.

With my amendment, it would say:

“so long as that surplus is required to be and is used”.

In other words, it is not a casual use; it is a prescribed use of the surplus in the way that you would find in a charitable organisation. I hope the amendment is not unhelpful and that it just emphasises the nature of the organisation and that the surplus is required to be used—as well as, in practice, that it may be used—for the purposes outlined. I hope the noble Lord will think about that and perhaps take the amendment back or accept that it strengthens the intention of the clause.