Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014

Lord Smith of Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, the regulations were laid before this House on 3 April. They are part of a series of measures, founded on the Localism Act 2011 and the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014, which this coalition Government have taken to protect local democracy, enhance local scrutiny, and create 21st-century local accountability. Specifically, these regulations enhance the rights of the press and public to report council meetings in digital and social media. They also enhance the rights of people to know what decisions are being taken by council officers on behalf of elected members.

That the public can readily know what those they have elected to represent them are doing is the very lifeblood of democracy. This is fundamental and has long been recognised. It was my late friend Lady Thatcher who introduced the right for the press and public to attend and report council meetings back in 1960 through a successful Private Member’s Bill, which she first mentioned in her maiden speech in the other place. A well functioning democracy, however, is not something set in stone. It must keep pace with the way people live their lives, and the way they communicate and share and discuss information.

Use of digital and social media now runs through daily life. The rights which were given to people in 1960 to report and access council meetings now need to be updated to encompass the digital world of today. I know that when we debated the provisions of what is now the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 there was a general welcome across the House for the kind of changes I have just outlined. I also know that a number of noble Lords had concerns about how precisely we could implement these changes, and at the same time avoid creating circumstances in which the good conduct of business in a council could be put at risk, or where those using the digital media might inadvertently put themselves at risk through breaching laws on defamation.

We believe it is possible to give the public modern 21st-century rights of access and of reporting, and equally to address the concerns such as those that have been raised. The principal means of doing this will be through our plain-English guide that we are developing with local government. I will say more on this in a moment, but through it we envisage dealing specifically with issues such as defamation, disrupting a meeting, or inhibiting the free exchange of views among the council members.

When we sought views about these regulations, the Local Government Association stated that it does,

“not believe that further central government regulations are needed in this area”.

We agree that many councils are already opening their meetings to digital reporting. But sadly there have been occasions where councils have sought to prevent this, even in a few cases ejecting members of the public from meetings for trying to report them using the digital media of today. I am sure that if this can happen, it is not the modern democracy we all want. The regulations before us today will ensure that this cannot happen in future. They will ensure that local democracy everywhere in the country is on a modern footing. We want ordinary people to be clear about their rights.

Turning to specifics, the regulations will amend existing legislation to put beyond doubt the rights of the public to film, audio-record and use social media to report public meetings of their council or other local government bodies, their committees, sub-committees and joint committees. To be clear, these regulations apply to all principal councils—county councils, London borough councils, district councils, unitary councils, the City of London and the Isles of Scilly. They apply also to local government bodies such as fire and rescue authorities, Transport for London and the Greater London Authority.

The regulations apply equally to parish and town councils. I know that there was some concern about how this will work in practice, particularly for small parish councils, or indeed the parish meeting. The practicalities will be covered in the plain-English guide. It will specify, for example, that while the public can film, they can do so only from the area that the public normally use and that none of this requires the council to make equipment available or to provide special electronics or lighting.

In essence, where today a council has to provide access to the public, in future, those exercising that right of access will in addition be able, from that same public area, to use their own equipment to film, or to tweet from their own devices, such as an iPhone or iPad. In the interests of impartiality and to demonstrate that I am digitally savvy, I should say that they could also use tablets or Androids.

In every case these regulations give people the right to film, blog or tweet at meetings of the council or body and at meetings of any of the council or body’s committees or sub-committees. These same rights apply to meetings of a council’s executive and any committee or sub-committee of the executive.

Nearly two years ago we made the Local Authorities (Executive Arrangements) (Meetings and Access to Information) (England) Regulations 2012, which for the first time opened up the meetings of an executive to filming and reporting by social media. The regulations before us today now extend what we have achieved for council executives in 2012 to all the meetings of a council.

The 2012 regulations also gave the public rights to see a written record of decisions officers take on behalf of the council’s executive. The regulations we are considering today likewise extend these rights to decisions that officers take on behalf of the council or any of its committees or sub-committees.

Specifically, where a council or one of its committees delegates to officers decisions that affect the rights of individuals, grant a permission or licence, or that relate to incurring expenditure or awarding a contract that would have a material impact on the financial position of the council or local government body, there must be a record of the decision the officer takes. The record of the decision will include the reason for the decision, any alternative options considered and rejected and any other background documents. That will mean that there is transparency and openness in the way these bodies make the decisions that significantly affect the lives of those in their communities.

As I have explained, these are important rights which will ensure that our local democracy is fit for purpose in the world of today. To ensure that these rights are smoothly and effectively introduced and recognised everywhere, my department is working with the local government sector on publishing, if Parliament approves these regulations and they are made, a plain-English guide about what these rights mean for the public, for members and for officers. This will incorporate and extend the plain-English guide we published in 2013, Your Council’s Cabinet—Going to its Meetings, Seeing How it Works, following the 2012 regulations.

As I mentioned, a draft version of the plain-English guide has been published and deals with such issues as defamation and disruption. It contains guidance for the public on libel and the responsibility they must take for the comments they tweet or the videos they publish.

Regarding disruption, the guide will make clear that nothing in these regulations will impact on the chairman’s power to exclude members of the public in cases of genuine disruption, while explaining the clear legal position that the act of filming and using social media in itself cannot be considered as disruptive.

Turning to the timing of the coming into force of the regulations, the regulations provide that they will come into force on the day after which they are made. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments did not find a compelling justification for this timing of coming into force, and accordingly reported that the provision appeared to make an unusual use of the power conferred by Section 40 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.

The Government accept that it is important that there is a smooth introduction of the new rights which the regulations will give the press and public, and accordingly they have undertaken not to make the statutory instrument until at least 28 days after the day on which any parliamentary approval for the statutory instrument is given. In taking this approach the Government have had careful regard to the report of the Joint Committee.

In conclusion, these regulations will mean that in future local government everywhere is more open, more transparent and more accountable. People will more readily be able to see and know what those who they elected are doing. That is good for democracy, it is good for elected members, it is good for our communities and it is good for local government and the vital services that councils provide.

I commend the regulations to the committee.

[Lord Smith of Leigh (Lab)]

My Lords, before I start, I need to declare my interest as leader of a council, chairman of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and a vice-president of LGA. I commend the Minister for the competent way in which she introduced the regulations today. I am sure we all agree that openness and transparency are as important in local government as anywhere else in public service.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McKenzie for pointing out that I am mentioned in dispatches today. I am mentioned in the appendix of the first report of the 2014 session by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments in evidence provided by the Department for Communities and Local Government. I hope that the rest of the evidence is more accurate than the bit that quotes me. The very famous news source is the Daily Mail. How reliable does anybody think the Daily Mail is in providing stories about Labour in local government? What it says is entirely untrue. It says that a member of Wigan council was ejected by the police for tweeting. He was ejected because he would not obey the order of the mayor. It was to do with me as leader of the council. The mayor asked him to behave. He refused to do so. What does one do? He just would not follow instruction. That is the basic rule in any form of organisation. If the Deputy Chairman of Committees were to instruct us, we would obey. That is a basic law.

The fundamental question about these regulations is: why? Why are we spending today debating these regulations? There are more crucial issues in local government that we ought to be talking about. Yesterday, the LGA produced a report stating that local government spending is probably underfunded by just short of £6 billion, caused by cuts to government services and increasing demand. Sir Merrick Cockell, the Conservative leader of the LGA, said that local government funding is on a knife-edge, yet all we are doing is passing regulations that increase unnecessary spending in local government, even if only in a small way. Councils should be left to determine how to tackle these issues.

Whatever happened to localism? In 2011, we passed the Localism Act with grand claims about what it would mean for local government. The Secretary of State who introduced the Bill said:

“The Bill will reverse the centralist creep of decades and replace it with local control. It is a triumph for democracy over bureaucracy. It will fundamentally shake up the balance of power in this country, revitalising local democracy and putting power back where it belongs … they managed to fulfil the wildest dreams of both Sir Humphrey Appleby and Mr Joseph Stalin. That strangled the life out of local government, so councils can barely get themselves a cup of tea without asking permission”.—[Official Report, Commons 17/1/11; col. 558.]

Those were strong words from the Secretary of State. I supported them then, and I still support them, but here we are introducing legislation about openness in every council.

Councils will have different ways of solving this problem because, as anyone who goes to different town halls knows, different town halls will need different solutions. There is no issue about whether members of the public should be allowed to do it. I am very pleased that people want to come and record me and film me. I would be very flattered if that were to happen as a regular thing, but I am sure it will not be after the first couple of meetings. We are stretching the point when we go into such detail about what each local authority will need to do to solve the problem about where people can and cannot film meetings effectively.

It is right that local government publishes what decisions are made, but to make non-compliance with some of this a criminal offence is perhaps going a little bit over the top. This is unnecessary legislation. We are back to the old days when anything that local government does is being determined not in each and every town hall but in Whitehall. I am sorry that we have reached that pass again. I hoped that we had gone beyond it, but, unfortunately, these regulations demonstrate that we have not.