Lord Tope
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(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I associate myself strongly with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. I know from conversations that Ministers are gaining some private amusement from the number of times that local authorities are asking them when guidance will be issued. They are saying that local authorities cannot get hold of the idea of localism—that they will be allowed to do what they want to do and guidance will not be issued. The reason for this is that local government has for years and years become increasingly used to detailed guidance and regulations being issued. It has come to expect it and at times to require it. It will take a little time to adjust to a change of culture—if, indeed, there is one.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 40 and 43 and, in doing so, endorse very much what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said. This is another example of what Tony Blair might have described as “regulation, regulation, regulation”. It is certainly well over the top. In particular, new Section 9EA(2) of the Local Government Act 2000, which he read out, is as classic a piece of Civil Service gobbledegook as I have seen for some time. I guess that, as I go through the Bill, there would be further examples.
Amendment 40 would delete that clause, and Amendment 43 would deal with the prescription as to the size to be covered by an area committee, limiting it to two-fifths. In principle, I would like to see that matter left entirely to the discretion of local authorities. However, if the Government were not disposed to take that view, my amendment would reduce the size of the committee to something which is less like half the total size of an authority and more like what most of us would regard as a manageable area in which it is possible to reflect the views of local communities and members. If the Government wish to have some guideline on this, I invite the Minister to opt for something lower than the proportion indicated in subsection (5) as it now stands.
Lord Tope
My Lords, briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Greaves. He certainly has more experience of rural areas than I do, but I speak from the perspective of what he referred to as a “compact urban area” or, more accurately, a suburban area: a fairly small—in terms of area—London borough. We have six local committees on the council as a whole. There are 43 Liberal Democrat councillors and only 11 Conservative councillors. However, because of the political demography, one of those six local committees is still controlled by a Conservative majority.
Each of those local committees has limited executive powers, which we hope will be extended further, and each operates in quite different ways, partly because of the councillors on them and the way in which they choose to react, and partly, and more particularly, because of the nature of the areas that they represent. All of the councillors for those areas are members of those local committees, to a varying extent, and the local residents in those areas come to those meetings certainly to a far greater extent than they attend meetings of our executive. They take part in those committees and, to varying extents, they feel that they are part of the deliberations.
As a council we have not felt it necessary to prescribe in great detail what each of those local committees shall, or shall not, do or how they will, or will not, behave. They behave sensibly, even the one run by the Conservatives behaves moderately sensibly. We demonstrate, in a very obvious way, the difference between a Conservative-run committee and a Liberal Democrat-run committee. That is what democracy is about; it is what we ought to be doing. As a council, we have not felt the need to prescribe it, nor have we ever thought that we should have prescribed it. I commend to the Government the fact that they too should trust local authorities in this case, as we trust local committees.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, on this debate, I hear what noble Lords say. I shall reflect carefully on what has been said and I shall ask noble Lords to withdraw their amendments for the time being.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 84DA in the same group, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. My noble friend would certainly have wished to move this amendment but, unfortunately, she cannot be here. It is suggested to us by the Centre for Public Scrutiny, on whose advisory body she serves, and it follows a theme of today's discussion in Committee. The effect of Amendment 84DA is to remove the right of the Secretary of State to make detailed guidance on scrutiny issues. It would remove the statutory force from existing guidance that the department has produced but, of course, local authorities would still be able to use that existing guidance to get some idea of the legislative intent of Parliament.
The centre believes, and I certainly agree with it very strongly, that the maximum possible discretion should be given to local authorities about how they operate their scrutiny function, with primary legislation providing general enabling powers which are interpreted intelligently by councils, councillors and their officers. Scrutiny is a member-led function and, therefore, it seems inappropriate that Government should provide detailed prescription of its operation. That is the same theme with which we have been dealing all day today and I suspect that we shall continue to do so through much of this Bill.
Where a specific need for guidance is identified, advisory information can be developed by the sector which can incorporate the views of the Government but which would be prepared independently and based on the needs and interests of local authorities and their residents. The justification for omitting this paragraph on guidance is a combination of practical reasons and reasons of principle. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, I do not wish to prolong proceedings, but I have not had an opportunity to say how much I agree with the general thrust of many of the things that are being said. It may be that, at a later stage, it will be possible, through Amendment 84DA, to leave out a “must” and put in a “may”. Those who advise the Secretary of State, and who have the pleasure of writing all sorts of guidance for local authorities, could continue to do so and we could pay due respect to the importance of that guidance and to guidance that came from other sources. Then perhaps everyone would be delighted and a little localism might reign.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for what I interpret as a very positive response. I am sure that we will discuss further how we can best approach this subject and I am sure that the Centre for Public Scrutiny would be pleased to engage in that. As I say, the theme that has run through our discussion today is the necessity to have more control and influence over what local authorities do and the extent to which they should be enabled to have the freedom that the Bill purports to give them. There is a distinction between guidance which has statutory force and disseminating good practice, which good local authorities would be well advised to adopt but should not be required by statute to do so. I hope that when we come to the next stage of the Bill we will be able to reflect that in a more appropriate way. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord True
My Lords, I understand where the noble Lord is coming from but there are obvious difficulties with the amendment quite apart from whether or not it is tending towards prescription. For example, I recall a not very happy election in 1986 when I was one of three members of my party on our local authority—
Lord True
It may have been for others. I did not know that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, was there. In those circumstances, had there been a scrutiny system with four scrutiny committees, under this amendment a member of the opposition would have found himself or herself chairing two scrutiny committees. The principle behind the amendment is a good one but in practice it simply would not work. In my humble view, the so-called “cabinet” system that was imposed on us by the previous Administration has tended, as many of us involved in local government know, to create a potential gulf between the executive members and the back-bench members of the governing party and local authorities have had to work against that all the time. It is vital that back-bench members of the governing party have full involvement—often very sceptical involvement—in the operation of the authority. It is desirable that they should also be given the opportunity to take a leading role in challenging the authority and scrutinising it. This is often the case in many authorities that I know and have visited. It would be outrageous for the opposition party to be excluded from chairing scrutiny committees but equally, as well as being impractical in certain circumstances, it would be undesirable to exclude the back-bench members of a governing party from being involved in taking executive decisions and playing a leading role in scrutiny. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and his colleagues for changing the system that we operated in Newcastle when they took office in 2004. I will let the noble Lord and your Lordships into the secret that prior to that date I had tried to persuade my colleagues at least to emulate the system in another place of a balance of chairmanship of such committees, but with my usual lack of cogency I failed to persuade them at that time. However, they have now been converted by the noble Lord and his colleagues, so things move on.
I entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord True, has said about the impracticality of the suggestion behind the amendment. I can give a better justification. The borough of Newham has 60 Labour members and no opposition members at all—or at least no overt opposition members—so clearly the amendment would not work there. The Labour Party advice about scrutiny committees is that the relevant duty should be shared. That is national Labour Party advice and I hope that the same is true of other political parties as well. It would make a great deal of sense.
If I differ from the noble Lord it is because, as has rather often been the case, he has tended to view scrutiny as something retrospective and as a case of holding an executive to account for decisions that it has made or is about to make. That is part of the job but it overlooks the forward programming of an authority and the development of policy. One of the great advantages of properly resourced scrutiny is that it allows members to develop policy free of the operation of the whip, which should not apply in scrutiny.
After 24 years chairing committees and leading a council, I was eventually voluntarily dispatched to my Siberian power station; that is, the arts and recreation committee in Newcastle. I found that being a back-bencher was very different from chairing a meeting. As the chairman of a meeting, you had an agenda and if you were any good at it you knew what you wanted, you had a discussion and you got it through. In Newcastle’s case I would have a pre-meeting with 15 Labour members for an hour. That represents an average of four minutes each. The dialogue was not Socratic in its nature. It was not the highest level of political debate and many members were simply concerned to get through the meeting as quickly as possible. By contrast, scrutiny actually allows people to think. Some people found the transition to be rather difficult, but it is welcome.
The whole thing can be summarised for me by my moment of revelation, which came when, having missed a meeting, I went to a meeting of the arts and recreation committee—a very worthy committee with a big agenda —and I read in a minute that a member had raised the question of birds eating grass seed on the Leazes Park allotment. I thought, “Has it really come to this? This is not really an effective way of running things”. I therefore support in principle the executive scrutiny split, provided that scrutiny is adequately resourced.
Subject to those reservations, I generally support scrutiny. I will refer briefly to Amendment 48 in this group relating to new Section 9FC and the guidance being proffered. New subsection (3) states that in exercising the power to refer matters to a scrutiny committee,
“the member must have regard to any guidance for the time being issued by the Secretary of State”.
The notion that 20,000 councillors are going to consult the bible on scrutiny issued by Eland House before they are able to refer something is, frankly, ridiculous. I anticipate that the Minister will acknowledge that this could be excised from the Bill without damage. I invite her so to indicate.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am sure that we will all forgive the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Shipley. It was a well deserved tribute. Perhaps I may also help him with the problem he enunciated about the London Borough of Newham. Of course, it would make it very much easier for Newham to implement my noble friend’s proposals were we to have proportional representation in local government. For the past 25 years, the first past the post system in local government has very ill served the Conservative Party; it has, throughout pretty well all those 25 years, been most unjustly served by our current electoral system. None of that was what I intended to say. In fact, I rose to speak to Amendment 46 and 47 in this group. My noble friend Lord Greaves will speak to Amendments 49 and 49C.
Amendment 46 is self-explanatory. Its provisions recognise the reality of a situation that in many authorities it is not a single officer who alone has the scrutiny function. That person will inevitably, in most cases, need other officers in the discharge of those functions. That speaks for itself and my amendment is a better way to reflect reality in most authorities.
Amendment 47 is rather more serious. Its purpose, if we are to have this part of the Bill, is that the scrutiny provisions should apply also to district councils. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Greaves has far greater experience. I have no experience of district councils because I am in an inner London borough. I know of no reason why—albeit with lesser functions—district councils should not be treated in exactly the same way as all other local authorities of whatever type in the country, as far as the scrutiny function is concerned. That is why Amendment 47 seeks to remove from the Bill the new subsection that excludes district councils from these provisions.
Lord Tope
My Lords, in moving Amendment 45A I will attempt to speak to the other 31 amendments in this group. I feel sure that your Lordships will be grateful if I do not list each of those 31 amendments to which I am speaking.
These amendments have come from the Centre for Public Scrutiny and would have been spoken to far more eloquently by my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who serves on its advisory board. I shall endeavour to cover them myself. I share the centre’s concern that in some places scrutiny has got a rather bad name. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said earlier, this is partly because it is seen as simply a post-hoc thing, looking back at what was done and might have been done differently rather than as part of a policy development framework, and also because of some of the effects of the rather strict executive/scrutiny split that we have had for the last 10 or 11 years.
Success in scrutiny is about culture and personal relationships, not processes. As it stands, the law makes unrealistic and unreasonable demands on scrutiny councillors and scrutiny functions to act in a certain way. The law is internally inconsistent, causing frustration to members and officers, who feel that they are constrained in what they can and cannot do for apparently no good reason. At no point have these policy constraints been explained by government. They are the result of 10 years of piecemeal changes to the legislation without any coherent thought having been given to the way that scrutiny operates across the piece. The Bill provides an ideal opportunity to take a broad look and make changes that are supported by practitioners in local government. That is what this raft of amendments seeks to do. Again, I can explain in some detail what each of the 32 amendments seeks to achieve. I can see from the expressions around me in the Chamber that your Lordships are keen and eager for me to do exactly that but I will not. I simply say that they seek to cover two key areas where it is considered that scrutiny needs additional freedom to become more effective.
Lord Tope
My Lords, as always I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. I rather wish now that I had gone into each amendment in a little more detail, because they are worthy of discussion. I do not accept entirely the responses of the Minister, but now is not the opportunity to discuss them in detail. However, I am grateful for her willingness at least to consider the issues further. As I said, the amendments were suggested by the Centre for Public Scrutiny, which has considerable experience, and an obvious interest, in ensuring that scrutiny, by whatever system, works more effectively and that we learn from the experience of previous years in order to improve it. That is the sole object of my amendments, which I am sure that all noble Lords will share.
We will certainly take the Minister up on her offer of further discussions, not just on the specifics of the amendments—she is sympathetic to some and clearly not to others—but to try to ensure that the Bill achieves what I hope it seeks to achieve, which is to grant local authorities more freedom to conduct scrutiny, to do so more effectively and to do so in respect of other organisations with whom they share services, help to deliver them or play an important part in local communities. Given the assurance from the Minister, I beg leave to withdraw the first in this raft of amendments and will try to keep up as we go through the rest.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am conscious that Amendment 56 is possibly not now the most important or interesting in this group, but we tabled it as a probing amendment with a view to asking the Minister to explain more clearly than is apparent in the Bill itself new Section 9H(3) and (4), which deals with the nature of a mayor and his or her relationship with the council. While I am on my feet, I shall refer to some of the other amendments in this group and, indeed, to others that are yet to come. Again I congratulate the Government on recognising that the whole question of shadow mayors and mayoral arrangements really has no place in a Bill that is about localism. As we discussed at Question Time yesterday, I know that it will be said by some that this is a sensible move by a listening Government, and said by others to be a U-turn. I do not mind very much what it is called; I just feel that the Government are to be congratulated.
I thank in particular the Minister for bringing the decision forward at such an early stage in our consideration of the Bill, which no doubt will save many hours of debate in this Chamber. With that, I beg to move Amendment 56 and I look forward to the debate on the other amendments in the group.
Lord True
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, and I want to follow on from what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has said by thanking very sincerely my noble friend for the leadership and responsiveness she has shown on this matter. Those of us who have been present in the Committee today will also have noted the openness, warmth and positive way in which she has responded to a number of the points that have been put forward. We are all grateful for that.
I am slightly confused by the groupings, which have changed a little overnight, perhaps for reasons related to pre-emption or to a number of other points. By the way, I should pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who played a big part in raising this issue at Second Reading. There was unity across the House that to create shadow mayors before the electors in the cities concerned had had an opportunity to have their say was not a good idea. The Minister then came forward at the earliest possible opportunity to say that the Government had accepted the arguments, so the principle does not need to be debated at any great length, and I do not propose to do so. However, I should give notice, in speaking to the large number of amendments within this grouping, that it should be taken that I have also spoken to Amendments 74A, 77A, 77B, 79A and 81A. They are not in this group, but they relate to the same subject. Even if I have it wrong, I hope that the Committee will accept that I shall not come back to those amendments later, and I repeat my thanks to my noble friend for taking up the point in the positive way she has.
Baroness Hanham
I thank the noble Lord for that. Unless I have not done something that I ought to have done, I ask that the amendments that I have listed be accepted and that the noble Lord withdraw Amendment 56 for the moment.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I guess that I am grateful to some extent for the Minister’s explanation, but I am not sure that her telling me that the provision is taken from a previous Act, which I already knew, necessarily explains more fully the issues which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has referred to. I do not think that we will get very much further with this matter today, but we will need to look at it again.
We have a raft of amendments which the Government are supporting. They are in various different groups, which I think the Minister is struggling with—certainly, I am; I admit to that. I think that we are all struggling with it; we were all dealing with it in the middle of the night last night trying to understand it. When the Bill is eventually reprinted on Report, we will inevitably have to look at what is left in it and at what some of the consequences may be. We will undoubtedly return to it if necessary. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 56.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, perhaps I may give a very short introduction to this group of amendments. I say at once that my noble friend has been as good as her word and put her name to the main amendment in the group, Amendment 57. She will no longer press the case for mayors and chief executives to combine their role. With this having been virtually outlawed in public companies, and with the idea of an independent chairman and a chief executive being quite separate, having become very nearly standard in major quoted companies, it would seem very odd that local authorities should be moving in the other direction. I am delighted that the Government have seen that that is not a very sensible way to go. I have the same difficulty as my noble friend Lord Tope in trying to find out exactly where we have got to. In moving this amendment, I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to make all things clear. I beg to move.
Lord Tope
My Lords, my name, too, is on this amendment like that of my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market. Unfortunately my noble friend is unable to be here today—which I think she particularly regrets given the other names that have now been added to the amendment. I echo all that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has said, and I am relieved to know that even with all his experience, he is possibly nearly as confused as I am about exactly where we are left with this, except that it is certainly in a much better place than it was a few days ago, which is welcome.
I understand now—in the proper spirit of localism, I suppose—that those mayors who are minded also to become chief executives, as I think is intended in Leicester, are at liberty to do so. I said at Second Reading that localism must mean the right to make the wrong decision. Therefore, I have to defend the right to make the wrong decision. There should be a clear difference between the role of an elected political leader and the role of a chief executive—I realise that we still have a head of paid service. A chief executive is usually, in theory, apolitical. There is a clear distinction and I regret the extent to which that is becoming blurred.
Once again I thank the Minister not only for her support for the amendment but for being willing and able to come out and say so at an early stage in the Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, I look forward to a clear exposition of exactly where we are, and what is and is not in the Bill, as we go forward.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join this love fest with enthusiasm and congratulate not only the Minister on working this small miracle but other noble Lords—particularly the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, whose long experience and stature have no doubt contributed to bringing about a change of mind on the part of Ministers generally—on achieving this very satisfactory result to what would otherwise have been a very unfortunate situation. I am happy to endorse everything that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in thanking all those involved.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I hope that we might be able to get back on track again without me having to swing round to make sure that I have done all the right things. We are happy to accept Amendment 57; I made clear my support for that previously in Committee. We recognise that there is great concern about the combination of the mayor and chief executive under the shadow arrangements and are content to support the amendment.
We are not quite so happy with Amendment 58 and I am going to reject it—I cannot see why, but I am. By the time we get round to the next stage I will have recovered my composure. I think that I was so taken by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, being so nice about me that I completely got underneath this. No doubt he will return to the issue at the next stage if he feels it necessary. In the mean time, I am not going to accept that amendment but have spoken to all the others.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. I am not sure that I can accept her reasoning for rejecting Amendment 58, which is also in my name—not least because I have been nice to her and about her for at least 21 years; she should be very well used to it by now. That is not a reason for being unable to give the reasons for rejecting the amendment. However, as I am moving Amendment 57 in this group, I beg leave to withdraw that amendment. No, I am sorry. I am so unused to this. I beg to move.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
I have already moved Amendment 57. I had originally hoped that my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market would be here to move the amendment. We have had an exchange of e-mails and I am sorry to see that she is not. In those circumstances, I moved the amendment. I repeat, this is not so much a love fest as a return of common sense, and we are all delighted with that.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this group of amendments relates to still more regulatory powers conferred on the Secretary of State, this time in connection with the mayoral position, however derived, in respect of terms of office and the like. The schedule gives the Secretary of State power to regulate the term of office of an elected mayor. I am asking, through the amendment, whether “the term” is used in the sense of a four-year or five-year term, or whether it also gives the Secretary of State power to limit the number of terms. For example, under the police reform Bill, there is a limit to the number of terms that a police commissioner can serve—if that cataclysmic proposal should reach the statute book—to two terms of four years. There is nothing in the Bill to suggest that that is the Government’s intention this time, but it would be welcome if we could have an indication that it was not intended to limit the number of terms for an elected mayor. I say that having served what would have been four and a bit terms, had that term applied to the leadership of the council in Newcastle. But I declare no interest whatever in being elected mayor of Newcastle. I make that very clear.
Amendment 65 refers to the wide-ranging powers in regulations and would restrict those necessary for the purposes of this part of the Bill. Amendment 66 relates to a curious provision on elections and their administration. Under subsection (5) of new Section 9HN, the Secretary of State may make regulations,
“exercisable … on, and in accordance with, a recommendation of the Electoral Commission”,
with a curious exception which I do not really understand. Perhaps the noble Baroness can help me, if not today then subsequently, because it goes on to say,
“except where the Secretary of State considers that it is expedient to exercise that power in consequence of changes in the value of money”.
I do not understand to what that relates. It might relate to election expenses, but it is certainly not clear from the section what it relates to, and a little elucidation would be extremely welcome.
Amendment 67 seeks to ensure that the exercise of the Secretary of State’s powers to regulate in this whole issue of elected mayors and their elections is subject to approval by the Houses of Parliament. These are matters going to the heart of the exercise of local democracy, and they should be subject to affirmative resolution.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will speak to Amendment 86. One particularly odd matter is covered by Amendment 87ZA, which curiously has the Secretary of State involved in the appointment of mayoral assistants. I cannot think why that should be the case. I recall once in Newcastle, when we had a twinning relationship with a city in China, their mayoral delegation came over and the mayor addressed the council. He went up to the dais and one of his retinue came up with his spectacle case, opened it and handed the mayor his spectacles. That seemed an interesting position to hold, and I thought I would indent for a spectacle bearer to the leader of the council, but in the end refrained from doing so. Presumably the Secretary of State would now get involved in such an appointment. It cannot be right, can it, for the Secretary of State to be making regulations for the appointment of a mayoral assistant? Perhaps the Minister can explain. If she cannot do so today—and I would not at all blame her—perhaps she might write to me and others of your Lordships on that point. I beg to move.
Lord Tope
I shall speak to Amendments 86 and 87 in this grouping. My noble friend Lord Shipley has unfortunately had to leave for an hour for another very important engagement, as things would have it at exactly the moment when his amendments come up, so I find myself once again in that position.
The amendments are fairly self-explanatory. They deal with the appointment by the elected mayor of a deputy mayor. Amendment 86 says that such an appointment should be subject to agreement by a majority of the executive. That is certainly desirable; the amendment would say that it was essential, and that would be quite proper given what the role of the deputy mayor could be.
Amendment 87 deals with a situation when there is a vacancy in the office of deputy mayor and the elected mayor has to appoint another person to be deputy mayor. There is no provision that that other person need be a member of the executive; therefore, it is even more important in those circumstances that the other person appointed by the deputy mayor should meet with the agreement of a majority of the executive. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham said earlier in a slightly different context, any sensible mayor, like any sensible leader, would make sure that they did that. On the other hand, it is still a little easier to remove a leader if it is necessary than, quite rightly, to remove an elected mayor. Therefore, we feel that this provision should be in the Bill for the sake of good government.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I move the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and speak to Amendments 71 and 72.
The Bill will enable local authorities to return to a committee structure and, indeed, to be more free than they have been for some time to determine what governance structure they wish to have, and which best suits their particular circumstances. That is wholly to be welcomed. It is clear that the Government rightly believe that that should be a matter for the local authority in a local area rather than central government.
A number of local authorities are already working in anticipation to improve, in their eyes, their decision-making structure, particularly to enable all councillors to play a more effective part in decision making than many of us feel has been possible with the executive/scrutiny split. Indeed, I have for the past couple of months been chairing a working party for my own local authority, looking at exactly that. It proved rather more difficult than I had expected because most of my colleagues in my local authority do not remember the old committee system. They have grown up believing —rather mistakenly, in my view—that the executive/scrutiny split was the natural and normal way of doing things; whereas the old dinosaurs like me believe that there was once a rather better way that would leave them less frustrated than many of them are in their role on the local committees.
All of that is to be welcomed. On Monday evening, I will present these proposals to my council group in the hope that they will be acclaimed. However, I think that they will initially be met with some puzzlement: “Are we really there to make decisions?”. “Well, yes, there were another 44 of you elected who ought to have a part in the decision-making process, because that is what you were elected for”. Hopefully all of that will happen but, as things stand, I then have to break the news to them that, desirable though all this is, and much as though the Government are happy for all of this to happen, none of it can happen for another three years. The Bill says that none of this can be introduced until after the next elections. In the case of London boroughs, that is 2014. For those authorities that have only this year had whole-council elections it will be a further four years.
If the Government believe it is right for these things to happen, I can see no reason why, once an authority, through the proper process, has agreed what it wants to do, it should not implement that now. I hope that we shall have a sympathetic response from the Government. I shall not challenge the Minister to explain why she feels that in London—in her own authority perhaps—there needs to be a three-year gestation period, or in other areas a four-year period, while we all wait.
Some authorities, some quite well known to the Minister and some certainly known to me—it will possibly happen more so in my own authority—have de facto set up a committee system already. The committees meet and de facto make recommendations, but in fact the executive, as it is legally required to do, meets immediately afterwards for no more than five minutes simply to rubber-stamp decisions made by the committees. That must be a nonsense. At the moment, it is a necessary nonsense, as that is what the law requires, but for us to continue in that ridiculous state for another three or four years makes no sense at all.
I hope that the Minister will be able to accept our amendments—it would be an unusual victory for me to achieve—or at least be able to express sympathy with them and say that she will come back on Report with something to give effect to them. It is quite important that we get an indication that this will happen on Report, or that it will not happen, because many of us will be looking to implement the changes from the next annual council meeting in May. It so happens that my authority is well advanced with this but others may perhaps only just be starting to think about it or may not even yet have realised that they can think about the changes. I beg to move.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we have sympathy with these amendments and look forward to the Minister's reply about why there should be this proposed three-year wait. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, talked with some affection about the committee structure. I was leader of Luton Borough Council at the time when we went from a committee structure to a leader and executive structure. My experience was that when you are in control, the leader and executive arrangement is particularly helpful. In 2003, we ended up with a hung council and, although we were the largest party, there was a Lib Dem-Conservative coalition which appointed Lib Dems to the executive. Being on the receiving end of that, we were somewhat less enthusiastic, but I still remain committed to it. I think that the best route is to have a leader and an executive.
One thing that was lost with the committee structure was the opportunity for new councillors, particularly younger councillors, to get involved with the cut and thrust of political debate because the structure and role of scrutiny committees are different. I think an opportunity to learn through that route and to have that debate was missed. We support the right for councils to choose and to revert to a committee structure, if that is what they want. On that basis, it seems that there is no great justification in waiting three years, but the Minister may be able to convince us. Subject to that, we support the amendments.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, that was a short debate and I can probably give a reasonably short answer. We have some sympathy with the points that have been raised, particularly about the time that has to elapse before the changes can be implemented. I will not accept the amendment today but I am happy to take it away and consider whether those provisions are as good as they can be.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I think I am grateful for that reply, which I think was an encouraging one. I spent 13 years as leader of a council under a committee system. I stood down on the day that we adopted the executive/scrutiny split—not for that reason, but it was a convenient time to do so—and spent the subsequent 12 years as a member of the executive, so I have experience of both.
I am sorry that I led us into a debate on what the best system is. It was probably inevitable that we would have a debate on what the best system is and what our personal experiences are, but the noble Lord, Lord True, was absolutely right to remind us that that is not our business to debate today. Having rightly left local authorities to determine for themselves what system they want, the only decision for us on these amendments today is the date on which that can be implemented. That is the sole purpose of my amendments, whether they are perfectly drafted—as I am sure they must be—or whether there is something more or different that needs to be done.
I hope very much that the Minister can be as clear as possible that when we come back on Report we will have amendments, moved in whoever’s name, that will make absolutely clear that there is no need and that it makes no sense for local authorities which have whole-council elections to wait three or four years before implementing the changes that we say they should have the right to do. In hopeful anticipation, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Tope
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Shipley wished to move this amendment but, as I explained earlier, he has unfortunately, from my point of view, had to go to another engagement and will be there, I think, for another 15 minutes or so.
At a later stage of the Bill, we will probably spend a considerable amount of time discussing local referendums and the many issues that arise in connection with them. This is the first, and perhaps in some ways slightly premature, time that we come to this subject. Amendment 73 would raise the threshold for calling a referendum from 5 to 10 per cent of local government electors. We believe that 5 per cent is too low a figure. When we get to the later provisions, we will have a lot more to say about what the threshold should be and how we should get there, as well as other issues.
My noble friend Lord Shipley would have said that, if the need for a referendum is strong, there really should be more signatures to demonstrate that, and they should be easy to collect. I think we all recognise that the cost of a referendum, wherever it is conducted, is significant—it is not something that is simple to carry out. A whole range of matters has to be dealt with in conducting a referendum and, if it is to be done at significant cost, the need for it must be truly demonstrated. Public demand for it should be there, and 10 per cent—I would say at least 10 per cent—is a better figure because it balances the right to have a referendum, which is conferred under this legislation, with the need for it to be held and the implications of doing so. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this is another example of possible misplacement in the groupings, for which I do not blame anyone. It is very difficult to get a perfectly rational system. In fact, I pay tribute to the officer of this House who works so hard, so long and so late in trying to make sense of my and other noble Lords’ belated efforts to table amendments. She does a wonderful job and I have every sympathy for her. At least she does not have to read my handwriting, which would make the task impossible and not just difficult.
In relation to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I certainly concur, as, I think, do these Benches, with the proposal for a higher threshold. However, I want to address the rest of the amendments in this group, which go to the critical question in relation to governance of whether there should be compulsory referendums at the diktat of the Secretary of State. The amendments that follow essentially relate to that.
The Minister has fortunately helped us by removing the conflation of the position of mayor and chief executive, and she has dealt with—perhaps liquidated—the position of shadow mayor. We are now left with this element of the compulsory referendum. In that respect, it is necessary to look at the whole question of the mayoral system—its provenance and development.
I was present at the meeting about 15 years ago when Tony Blair launched on an unsuspecting Labour Party, and an even more unsuspecting shadow Secretary of State in the person of Frank Dobson, the notion of an elected Mayor of London and, following that, the possibility of having elected mayors elsewhere. I took his motivation at face value. He thought—and others who have advocated this in the past have thought and currently think—that it would invigorate local democracy, improve turnout at local elections and enhance the accountability of local political leadership because the elected mayor would have a mandate from across the whole authority. That was the theory; let us look a little at the practice.
Bearing in mind that until now, and until the legislation changes, only 5 per cent of the electorate in any authority has been needed to requisition a referendum, there have been, I think, only 41 referendums, if one takes Leicester into account, in the 10 years in which this option has been open. One area has had second thoughts and has terminated its adoption of the system. Of the 40 referendums, 14 were in favour of an elected mayor and 26 against.
What is perhaps more significant is the turnout in the referendums and the turnout in the local elections. This, after all, was going to be the great advantage to local democracy of this new system. There have only been two referendum turnouts greater than 40 per cent and both of those took place on a general election day. Some referendums had turnouts of less than 20 per cent, 10 had between 20 and 30 percent, and 17 had between 30 and 40 per cent. The upper thirties is probably about average for a local election—by no means satisfactory, but self-evidently at least no worse, and in many cases better, than the turnout in these referendums. It is quite significant that the turnouts were also very low in the ensuing elections. Some of the referendum turnouts were abysmally low: Bedford had a turnout of 16 per cent; Lewisham had a turnout of 18 per cent; among the best were Hartlepool with 34 per cent and Torbay with 32 per cent. However, this does not give any grounds for saying that this is an enormously popular reform that people are rushing to adopt.
Nor has the turnout in elections been very much greater, even in London. The turnout in the first mayoral election in London was 37 per cent. In the second, there were two—how shall I put it?—charismatic or certainly very visible candidates, and an election that seemed to run for a year, such that every time I stepped out of a Tube station in London and saw an Evening Standard banner, it was always proclaiming something about Ken or Boris. It was impossible, even if one wished to, to escape the fact that there was a London mayoral election. However, even then, the point seems to have eluded 55 per cent of the London electorate. Again, there does not seem to be much evidence for the initial inspiration of this change: that it would improve—whether dramatically, modestly or even at all—the turnout in local elections or interest in local government.
The other arguments were about visibility and effectiveness. Many of the elected mayors have been capable people. In London, I can certainly cite three of them: Robin Wales in Newham; Steve Bullock in Lewisham, albeit with a referendum there of only 18 per cent and, I think, a mayoral election turnout of about the same, when he was first elected; and Jules Pipe in Hackney. All of them, incidentally, had been council leaders before they became elected mayors. However, what sort of alchemy is it that is necessary to transmute a council leader into a mayor? Or is it—and I hope the right reverend Prelate will not take exception to my analogy—some process of transubstantiation that transforms a less visible and accountable leader into an all-singing, all-dancing mayor with much enhanced visibility and effectiveness?
It was interesting that, in promoting the idea of elected mayors, the Labour Party saw fit to send a delegation to the Netherlands to see how this wonderful system was working. They slightly overlooked the fact that, in the Netherlands, mayors are in fact Crown appointees and not elected at all. Similarly, those who pointed to very successful continental mayors, such as the mayor of Barcelona, seem to overlook the fact that he was not personally directly elected—he was the leader of the largest group or faction in the Barcelona council. He was a very able—in fact a brilliant—local politician and extremely effective, but he but not directly elected. In our own politics, although I remember Tony Blair saying in a television broadcast, “The people of Britain elected me Prime Minister”, actually they did not. They certainly have not elected the present Prime Minister. That is not to disparage him; it is just a fact. Why should it be assumed that it is necessary to have that direct personal mandate to be a legitimate leader?
It is said that if authorities adopted the mayoral system, extra powers would be given and a certain amount has been given to mayors in that position. Yet the question arises that we discussed briefly at Second Reading and earlier in Committee: why should those powers be confined to the directly elected mayor, as opposed to the leader and executive model? There seems to be no particular rationale on that. One thinks of great local government figures of the past, from all parties: of Joseph Chamberlain in his initial, Liberal incarnation; of Neville Chamberlain, who was slightly dismissed by Lloyd George as a good mayor of Birmingham in a bad year but who nevertheless had a considerable local government reputation and, it is fair to say, did a lot for it as a Minister; or of Herbert Morrison, a great leader of local government; or, perhaps slightly more controversially, of one of my capable but slightly flawed predecessors as leader of Newcastle council, Dan Smith, who was nevertheless a hugely influential and creative figure, in the best sense, during his surprisingly brief period. People in all political parties have also been extremely effective. Why should it be assumed that council leaders are necessarily less visible, accountable or effective than elected mayors?
There are problems stemming from the system as it has been created, not simply because of the accretion of powers in a single pair of hands but because of the structure around that. It takes a two-thirds majority to overturn an elected mayor’s budget. Yet you can have a situation with an elected mayor from one party and a majority of the council from another. It has happened twice in the authority adjoining mine. It happened with a Labour mayor and a Tory council and it is now exactly the other way round, with a substantial Labour majority in North Tyneside and a Conservative mayor. That highly anomalous situation raises two questions. First, what is the other councillors’ role in that kind of situation? It has to be a substantially downgraded role from what we are used to and what is appropriate. Secondly, will there not come a day when people wonder, “What is the point of electing councillors at all, or of voting for a particular political party, if you are required to have at least two-thirds of the council to vote down a proposition from the mayor”? Most particularly, there is the most crucial decision of all: that about the budget. There are, it seems, real difficulties inherent in the system.
There is also a suspicion, certainly on this side of the Chamber—it may be in certain parts of the other side of the Chamber—about the current political motivation for this decision to take the power to require referendums to be held. I refer in particular to a speech made by the Member for Grantham and Stamford in another place, Nick Boles. He is, I suppose, a Tory intellectual. There are people unkind enough to think that term a bit of an oxymoron but I would not allege that in the case of Mr Boles, who is an extremely bright, intelligent and articulate man. Yet he said some time ago, apropos of this position about elected mayors, that it was the only way in which there would be a ladder back into power for the Conservative Party in places where its chances were pretty minimal. I think that he cited Manchester and other places where Conservative representation has been minimal, if not nil, for some time. I hope that is not the Government’s motivation and I would not for a moment imagine that the Minister would subscribe to that motivation, but others elsewhere might.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I will be very quick; we would not want the Minister to be late. She is quite right: I am totally off message on this issue as far as the coalition agreement is concerned. I am not off message as far as the coalition is concerned. The Government should learn. They have had a huge car crash, as people say nowadays, with the AV referendum; I voted loyally for that on every occasion and now I wish I had not. This will be another, in the modern phrase, car crash.
Whatever has been in coalition agreements and manifestos, there are times when, politically, Governments have to consider what is likely to happen. In most if not all these places, it seems likely that the Liberal Democrats will be campaigning vigorously against having an elected mayor—alongside the Labour party in many cases, and, I suspect, the Conservative party in so far as it still exists in some of these places; it certainly exists in some of them.
I am grateful for the information on the cost. I did not quite catch who was going to bear it. Was it central government? Yes. Well, a waste of public money is a waste of public money, whoever pays for it. I wonder whether the Government can direct me to some serious evidential basis for the view that having elected mayors provides better local government than would otherwise have been the case. I have not seen that evidence. There is lots of political and other argument about it, but I have seen no serious evidential basis for that proposition. If the Government have it, I would be grateful if they would make it available.
Lord Tope
My Lords, the Minister has warned me not to allow my noble friend Lord Greaves to let me stray off message. I have actually said nothing at all on the subject yet, and that might well be a message in itself. I am rather too mindful of the Minister’s immediate appointment elsewhere to take more time with this. I am struggling hard to resist the debate that has been held about the benefits of a London Mayor. Having been a member of the London Assembly for the entire reign of the first London Mayor, I can say that any strategic government for London has to be better than no strategic government for London. What none of us can know—so I will not bother to argue it—is whether another system of strategic government would have been as good, worse or better. At least, there could have been an alternative to an elected mayor, which has not been considered.
Lord Greaves
Perhaps my noble friend would pay attention to the point that having an elected mayor for Liverpool does not provide strategic government for Merseyside, and that having an elected mayor for Manchester does not provide strategic government for Greater Manchester, and that the same applies to Leeds and Bradford.
Lord Tope
He refused and it was one of his wisest decisions, because the person who requested him to do so did not distinguish himself in the interests of the Liberal party within a few years of that. I refer to our then party leader. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is probably too young to remember such an occasion in the 1970s.
I must get back to the point. The amendment relates to the threshold, and I am grateful that, in the end, the Minister paid some attention to it, because no one else has done so throughout the entire debate. Therefore, I have very little to reply to, except to say that we shall be returning to the issue of thresholds for referendums and so on at a later stage. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, the coalition has considered the whole issue of standards boards and standards committees. We must recognise that there are different arguments in this case between the Benches opposite and ourselves. Amendment 96A seeks to remove the amendments that the Government are proposing to the Local Government Act 2000, which are needed to remove the requirement for local authorities in England to have standards committees. Of course, this applies only to England.
Rejecting the coalition’s changes to the standards board regime will remove local choice and retain a key aspect of a costly conduct regime which, as my noble friend Lord Shipley has said, has led to vexatious and politically motivated complaints against councillors. However, my noble friend would admit that if we are going to instil a full sense of responsibility in local government, we need to vest in those local authorities the responsibility for the standards of their members. Local authorities may well wish to adopt a voluntary code of conduct for members and co-opted members and determine for themselves what should be in that code; or they may choose to ensure high standards in another way, for example, through a statement of clear principles against which members can be judged by the electorate. The key element is that the choice about how to promote good conduct should be for local authorities to make, rather than for Government to impose on them the requirement for a code of a conduct or standards committees if they do not wish to go down that route.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will disagree with this because he disagrees with the purpose of this amendment but I have to state the position of the coalition, which is quite clear, that this is a matter for local authorities themselves.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I hesitate to intervene at this stage. This is almost the first time in a very long local government career that I actually think that central government should be imposing something. I share the views that have been expressed that it must be a statutory requirement that each local authority must—not may—have a code of conduct. There is a separate issue concerning how that code of conduct is drawn up but I think that it would be nonsense for each local authority to have a different one. There should be a uniform code. I believe that the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors—we used to call them legal officers—is drawing up a code of conduct that could be adopted. That is good and right, and I do not suggest for a moment that central government should draw up the code and impose it; I am saying, and I believe quite strongly, that Parliament—central government, if you like—should say that a code of conduct is mandatory, not voluntary. Good local authorities—the vast majority—will adopt a code of conduct, but the ones that most need, and should have, a code are probably those least likely to have one. That is why it should be a mandatory requirement.
The code does not have to be drawn up by central government; it could be drawn up by the association that I mentioned or by the Local Government Association. However, I believe that it needs to be a uniform code so that we do not have different standards wherever they happen to suit particular local interests, usually because it is those local interests that are most in question.
My other question relates to the standards committee. Again, I feel that in the general, although not universal, rejoicing at the departure of the Standards Board for England we are in danger of throwing out a baby with the bath water. We are in danger of moving to a situation that is worse than the one we had before the Standards Board was put in place. Therefore, I believe that it should be mandatory for each local authority to have a standards committee. I say that as one who will constantly argue against prescription, but this is one area where it is particularly important. My noble friend Lord Shipley has proposed a way in which standards committees might be constituted. There are lots of discussions to be had around that, and they could well be had within local government and not necessarily involve central government. However, again, the mandatory requirement to have a standards committee is fundamental.
Those are two issues where, unusually for me, I argue that there should be at least a minimum requirement of a mandatory code of conduct and a standards committee, the composition and nature of which could be subject to further consultation and discussion. Those two requirements should be in the Bill.
Lord Beecham
I endorse everything that the noble Lord has said. I could not have put it better myself. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
(a) the Mayor’s joint exercise of those functions may be delegated under section 38 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999; and(b) the Assembly’s joint exercise of those functions may be delegated under section 54 of that Act.”
Lord Tope
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 98A, 98B, 98C, 98D and 98G. All these amendments refer to the Greater London Authority and they have been proposed by the GLA, of which I was a member for the first eight years of its life, although I no longer am. They seek to iron out two small anomalies relating to London—in particular, Clause 16(7)—and to build into the Bill’s national provisions for standards the flexibility that I think is key to them working now and in the future.
Amendment 96B is a technical amendment to Clause 16(7). It would ensure that the Greater London Authority’s future standards regime was shaped by both the mayor and the Assembly, as is currently the situation, rather than just by the Assembly, as proposed in the Bill.
Amendments 98A, 98B, 98C, 98D and 98G amend Clause 17 to provide the Greater London Authority with the ability to delegate the relevant standards functions, which do not include decisions on whether or not to establish a standards regime and the nature of any such regime, including the potential ability of the monitoring officer to investigate relevant complaints and to take action as necessary depending on the outcome of any such investigations within the terms of the regime as may be established by the elected members of the authority.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I can perhaps offer a slightly more friendly response to my noble friend Lord Tope’s more recent speech than I did to his previous suggestions. The proposal in Amendment 96B and the consequential Amendment 98G—that the new standards function set out in Chapter 5 of Part 1 of the Bill should be a joint duty of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly, as it now is—is one that we are open to considering and seems to have common sense behind it. I can see the benefit of ensuring that the mayor and the Assembly are given equal roles and responsibility for promoting and maintaining high standards.
On Amendments 98A, 98B, 98C and 98D, we see that there is a specific issue here for the GLA in terms of the delegation of decision-making by the Assembly to employees of the authority and we are happy to consider it further. I am not convinced that the same issues apply to other local authorities that have the benefit of Section 101 of the Local Government Act 1972, so perhaps it is not necessary for the amendments to be drafted in quite such wide terms. I am therefore happy to undertake to further consider all these amendments with my fellow Ministers and we can return to our discussion on Report.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for what I hope was a favourable reply. I am certain that the GLA and my noble friend Lady Doocey, who is still a member of the London Assembly, will wish to join me in saying that we seek a common-sense and rational solution to a particular issue that applies to one particular authority, the Greater London Authority. On that constructive note, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am not sure we have had a may/must amendment yet on this Bill, but perhaps we have and I have missed it. This is an important amendment. I rise to speak to my amendments in this group: Amendments 97A, 98E, 98F and 98H. I will also speak to the other two amendments in the group, if I may.
There is widespread concern within local government that the Government have not got this exactly right. At the very least, it needs some fettling and a number of probably quite major changes if it is going to work fairly. As my noble friend Lord Tope said earlier, there is a widespread feeling in local government—it is not universal—that the demise of the Standards Board for England is to be welcomed. The Standards Board for England’s regime has turned out in practice to be expensive. It has been arbitrary in too many cases, and therefore it has been seen to be unfair. It has been open to abuse, and it has been open to attempted political manipulation, not by Standards Board members or its staff, but by people trying to use the system in order to do down opponents.
In our judgment, the removal of the Standards Board for England is a good idea, and we congratulate the Government on doing it, but something has to replace it. We cannot simply go back to the free-for-all situation we had up until about 20 years ago when standards codes and sanctions against councillors were hardly known. The system then seemed to work. There did not seem to be any more rogue councillors than there are now, and people did not seem to step out of line more than they do now, but the world has changed. We are now in a world in which standards in public life have come in and are accepted right across the board of everybody who takes part in public life. We have even had to grapple with these matters and come up with solutions here in the House of Lords. Local authorities are no different, and to pretend that local authorities generally, or some local authorities in particular, can be excepted from this situation is not the world that we are now living in.
The Government’s proposal in the Bill is that there will be no national system, no national organisations and no bureaucracies; it will all be left to local authorities. In our debate on a previous amendment, my noble friend Lord Taylor said that it will be up to local authorities to behave sensibly and do what they think is best in their area. There will be no uniform or national standards code, so each authority will be able to adopt its own code or not have one. It can keep, amend or do away with the present code. If any of my description of the present system is wrong, I hope the Minister will intervene and tell me, but I do not think it is.
Authorities will be able to choose whether to have standards committees. Since local authorities all have them at the moment and are institutionally fairly conservative bodies, most of them will probably keep them in one form or another, but it will be open to an authority not to have them, so there will be a hotchpotch pattern; they will be able to invent their own rules for how standards committees work within their own codes of conduct.
In addition, for the offence of failing to declare appropriate interests, either by not entering them on to a register of interests or by failing to declare them in meetings at appropriate times, the only real sanction left is the criminal law and, subject to the Director of Public Prosecutions’ agreement, people will be arraigned before a magistrates’ court if the DPP thinks it is serious enough. Meanwhile, parish councils will be left in some sort of limbo. They might be able to have their own systems or to continue to be part of a district council’s standards committee and system of standards, but if the local district council does not have one or decides to do away with it all, the parish councillors will have the choice either of doing it themselves, which might be rather difficult for small parish councils, or not doing it at all.
That seems to be the regime that is on offer. Perhaps the way I have presented it suggests that I am not terribly impressed with it. Nevertheless, I think my presentation of it is factually correct.
We have been here before and had something similar to this. When standards committees were first brought into local authorities, local authorities were left to do their own thing. Many of them did it very well, but in some places it was not done well. It was done either inefficiently or in an arbitrary, uneven or unfair way. In a small minority of places—it is always a small minority—it was not a good thing. It was fairly dreadful. Some authorities used it to victimise individual councillors in order to conduct campaigns against opposition groups on the council and to conduct witch-hunts against individuals. That is always the danger if local authorities in an area like this are left to their own devices, because there will be some places where malign, malevolent politics gets in the way of a fair system. Therefore, we propose in amendments in this group, and in the next group, which I will speak to later, a system in which every authority must have a standards committee. It seems ridiculous that someone could be dual-hatted or triple-hatted, and on three different authorities at different levels, some of those authorities having a standards committee and some not.
Equally, we are suggesting a uniform, standard, national code of conduct. We are not talking about local diversity. There cannot be local diversity about what is appropriate conduct for people in public life. We are talking about standards in public life. While standards and rules for councillors may be different from those for Members of the House of Lords, Members of the House of Commons, people on national quangos or whatever, the organisations are different. Nevertheless, they should be based on the same principles and underlying standards in public life.
There does not seem to be any reason why, if I am a member of a district council, a parish council and a county council, which I have no intention of being except for one of them, there should be a different code of conduct on each council. Surely, that cannot be right. Nor can it be right that of the 11 or 12 district councils in Lancashire, some do not have a code of conduct and some have a very different code of conduct from the adjoining council. Codes of conduct should be laid down nationally.
We are saying that the drawing up of the code of conduct and its approval should be done by local government and not by the Secretary of State or national government. It should be the responsibility of representatives of local government and, in terms of legislation, the LGA obviously is a key representative. We want systems for appeals and we want to sort out parish councils. We want to look at criminal offences, but they are in the next group so I will not talk about them any more at the moment.
On something like this there has to be protection for the public against rogue councils. Much as I have an underlying, innate aversion to national uniformity in anything, some things are so important and fundamental that they underpin everything else. This is the right way forward.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I have to say that I am profoundly disappointed with the position we find ourselves in. I was warned earlier on, before I had said anything, to stay on message, but I am bound to say that I cannot understand how a Localism Bill can impose referendums on cities that have had the opportunity for the past 10 or 11 years to hold a referendum on a mayor if they wanted to and say that that is localism, but cannot recognise the need for a standard, mandatory code of conduct. The Bill says that it should simply be left to local authorities to decide how they should behave or, indeed, if they should have a code of conduct at all. I do not understand that, and I have to say that for this part of the coalition Benches, it is a fundamentally important issue.
I welcome the offer of further discussions, but I have to say, and I will put on the record now, that for the Liberal Democrat Benches it is important to recognise a mandatory code of conduct—as I said before, how and by whom it is drawn up is open to discussion—that applies to all local authorities and therefore to all councillors. As my noble friend Lord Greaves has said, it should apply to all councillors because it is not a matter for local diversity, interests or circumstances. As important is the need to have a standards committee. Again the nature, format and constitution of that committee are open to discussion, but the basic fact that each local authority should have a standards committee is important to us.
With the offer of further discussions, for now I certainly beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Greaves
I am confused because my Marshalled List does not have the next amendment, Amendment 98HA, on it.
Lord Greaves
I have found it.
Clause 18 : Disclosure and registration of members' interests
Amendment 98HA
Lord Tope
I am sorry to have to say that as a loyal member of the coalition, but it is my view.
Amendment 98J would simply leave out “and other”. The other amendment in my name in this grouping is identical. My purpose is not so much to press the amendment as to find out what the Government have in mind with “and other”. What does it refer to?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, we do not see the case for these amendments, which would limit the registering and declaring of interests to financial interests. That would take us back to the days before the Widdicombe committee in 1988, when there was widespread concern about the treatment of non-pecuniary interests, which led to the strengthening of the requirements relating to pecuniary interests. There are clearly situations where non-financial interests are relevant to decision-making by councillors, and it is right that the public are aware of such interests so that they can see that decisions are being made fairly and transparently. I hope that my noble friend will see the merit of the argument and withdraw his amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank noble Lords. I am sort of having a second bite of the cherry within the group, because I can talk specifically about the proposals of my noble friend. I hope that I can really reassure him. He talked about appeal structures and the like and the need to maintain them—and of course human rights legislation provides for this. But in actual fact the sanctions that the Secretary of State intends to provide for in regulations under Clause 18(2) will be relatively low-level sanctions based on powers of discipline that councils already possess. It is not our intention to confer any new disciplinary powers of the sort that would give rise to a need or expectation for a bureaucratic appeal process.
I cannot support Amendment 98M, which would insert a new clause relating to parish standards, although I understand the interest in it. The legislation as currently drafted gives parishes the power to have a code or a standards committee if they would like. Parish councils are free to make arrangements to work jointly with other authorities. My noble friend is mistaken if he believes that advice is not available to parish councils. The last Government published the Quality Parish and Town Council Scheme; it was published by the department in 2003, and it gives information about model charters whereby principal and local councils in England can work in partnership. That document can be viewed on the DCLG website. We intend here also that the regulations to be issued by the Secretary of State under Clause 18(1) will specify that the registration of parish members' interests will be carried out by the monitoring officer of the district within which the relevant parish falls.
There was some talk about the criminal sanctions for failing to register, and I note noble Lords’ concerns on that. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked, too, that he might be a party to discussions that we might have before Report on those issues. I assure noble Lords that we would be happy to discuss that aspect of Clause 19 relating to breaching regulations under Clause 18. With that, I ask my noble friend Lord Tope to withdraw the amendment.