Local Government Finance Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, this particular amendment finds me echoing the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, that the Secretary of State is being required to get involved in minutiae. If one looks at the five regulations in paragraph 3(5), one almost finds that local authorities are being required to photocopy both sides of every piece of paper, put first-class stamps on everything and so on, and this is mollycoddling of the greatest degree. If we are talking about localism, the idea that the Secretary of State can suggest to any local authority that they should do things in this manner tends to assume that it is made up of idiots who cannot run anything. That really is the opposite of localism.

This is little more than a probing amendment, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, said, but one that goes very much to the heart of localism and the Secretary of State’s tendency to get involved to a completely unnecessary degree.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, Amendments 84 and 87 stand in my name, but I shall first address the issues in Amendment 83ZA, which has just been spoken to. It goes without saying that I support Amendment 88 in the name of my noble friend Lady Sherlock.

As far as Amendment 83ZA is concerned, we are not enamoured of the Secretary of State having a raft of central powers, but we have to balance this against our concerns about a fragmented system. With the prospect of hundreds of different authorities adopting hundreds of different schemes, all with different criteria, some standardisation of approach has merit. For example, the form and content of documents to be produced raises the question of what distributional analysis should be included and what the requirements should be for a general impact assessment and indeed an equality impact assessment. Having some central guidance on these matters may help to head off problems of potential judicial review for some councils.

Amendments 84 and 87 continue the theme of the default scheme which, as we have discussed, has now been produced in all its glory—all 155 pages of it. Despite its lateness, it has moved us on. It has been difficult in the time available comprehensively to absorb its content and to read across the existing council tax benefit provisions, and we have an outstanding question to the Minister from our earlier amendment about where the default scheme has not been able to replicate existing arrangements. However, given that Amendment 84 is just a probing amendment, I am content to proceed on the basis that any discrepancies or differences are minimal, and that the first part of the amendment has been addressed.

That being so, we are seeking from the Government their view of the protection that their scheme provides to vulnerable people. What, on the basis of 155 pages of regulations, is included in the default scheme for vulnerable people and how does the default scheme address their needs? In this age of austerity, we presume that the Government would not sanction any scheme that provides superfluous or excessive relief, so we are simply asking them to spell out how they are providing for vulnerable people in the default scheme and which aspects of the scheme provide particular support for which groups. Given that the Government have made judgments about who should be protected by the default scheme, they should have a view about who should be considered under local schemes. The amendment does not require any local authority to follow the Government’s view on this; they can exercise their own judgments, but should be able to do so armed with the knowledge of why the Government have made certain decisions.