Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rating (Powers of Entry: Safeguards) (England) Order 2015
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham
That is right. Yes, it is the spare room subsidy, a wonderful euphemism. In establishing whether that applies, an inspection would presumably often be required but is that covered by these provisions? It would be interesting to know.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, if I may intervene, noble Lords opposite do not need to feel that they have to object to every regulation that comes here. I have no particular difficulty with this order, as to give three working days is highly sensible. Indeed, most of what is in it is highly desirable.
I intervene briefly only to say that, as we have discussed on other occasions, this is part of a lot of stuff now coming out from the department. As we look forward to the next Parliament, I would put in a plea to whoever is in control of it. I agree with my noble friend and I sincerely hope that it is him, because he is a highly respected and experienced colleague from local government. After the election, however, I hope that there will be a restraining hand laid on those who want to uninvent the general power of competence or assert the principle that Whitehall knows better than local authorities about a range of things, from how votes should be conducted in council meetings to how an individual high street should be regulated. At this last stage in the Parliament I put in a plea before both parties, although I hope that my own will form the next Government, for that message to be heeded. However, I hope that we can approve these regulations. They are highly welcome and I thank my noble friend for bringing them forward.
Local Government Pensions Scheme (Transitional Provisions, Savings and Amendment) Regulations 2014
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I should perhaps declare an interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association and a serving councillor on Newcastle City Council, albeit one who has not been involved in any way with this provision of local authority member pensions.
I begin by extending congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, who as far as I am concerned is making her first appearance on the Front Bench on a DCLG matter. I may have missed her on a previous occasion, but in any case it is a pleasure to congratulate her on that, and on not having to answer this debate or accept responsibility for this particularly malign set of proposals.
These proposals were launched initially by Brandon Lewis MP, the Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government, in October 2012. I think that his main claim to fame is that, on an organisation called Phoenix radio, he hosted a talk show called the “Eric and Brandon Show”, which I suppose had a fairly minimal audience in the Brentwood area, where Mr Lewis was at that time the leader of the council. Subsequently, he has of course become an MP elsewhere, while his colleague, who is now the Secretary of State, is the Member of Parliament for the same constituency. Quite whether that broadcast had the impact of the Nick Clegg broadcasts on London radio, I hesitate to think.
However, Mr Lewis must certainly be given the credit for a certain amount of ingenuity. He wrote a letter on 13 March 2014 to Conservatives MPs in England—not that there are many outside England—to explain and defend what the Government were doing. In that letter he said, as we of course understand, that,
“councillors do not receive a salary; rather, they receive allowances to compensate for their out-of-pocket expenses”.
That is an interesting formulation because the actual wording of the Government’s document about this was rather different. The wording in paragraph 1.20 of that document said:
“Councillors are volunteers, elected to their local council to represent their local community. Councillors are not paid a salary or wages, but they are entitled to allowances and expenses to cover their out-of-pocket costs of carrying out their public duties”.
Now, expenses are clearly designed to cover out-of-pocket costs but allowances are not the same thing. Mr Lewis has elided the two concepts in his letter, and quite deliberately so. In addition, he said that,
“following changes made by the Labour Government, allowances have slowly become a form of salary, a situation worsened by the state-funded pensions”,
as if the entire cost was paid by the taxpayer. Of course it is not, as it is a contributory scheme.
However, even that is not quite the full story because paragraph 1.9 of the Government’s document says:
“The provision allowing for councillors’ pensions in England is contained in Section 18(3A) of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989”—
when to the best of my recollection there was not a Labour Government in office—
“and the Local Authority (Members’ Allowances) (England) Regulations 2003 made under the powers contained in that section”.
We have one former Secretary of State present from a Conservative Government, although I do not think that the noble Lord was the Secretary of State at the time. But it was a Conservative Government who facilitated or indeed established the concept of making this scheme a possibility. Of course, Mr Lewis carefully avoids that reference but he then says:
“This blurs the distinction between council officers and councillors”.
In whose eyes, it has to be asked, is there a blurring of the distinction? Citizens can distinguish perfectly well between councillors and officers. What is the nature of this blurring that is alleged to be taking place?
I have been a councillor for what might seem an interminable time, particularly to some of my constituents, but I am not alone in having a long period of service. I anticipate that we will hear from other noble Lords today who have had very distinguished local government careers, such as the noble Lords, Lord True, Lord Shipley and Lord Tope, as well as my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who have already spoken. Looking around the Chamber, it is possible that there will be others such as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and my noble friend Lord Harris—and there is of course the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton. How could I forget her? Of the five noble Lords I anticipated would speak, between us we have served 165 years, 43 of those as leaders of our respective councils. It was not until the late 1980s that I was in receipt of a special responsibility allowance as leader of my council. I did not take the full amount until the last three years of my tenure. I was senior partner at a firm of solicitors and I felt, in the circumstances obtaining in the early 1990s, that I should claim the full £7,000 a year, which was the allowance paid by my authority at that time. We are not talking in general about very large sums.
Among my successors was the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who, no doubt, will tell us about his own experience. My recollection is that he also would have received a modest allowance as leader of the council when he served his term. The present leader of Newcastle City Council—with a budget which, as a result of government cuts, is alas declining from the £260 million a year it had originally reached—receives an allowance of £16,500 and a basic allowance of £8,500. The specialist allowance has been frozen and the standard allowance for members in Newcastle has been cut. That is likely to be the situation in many local authorities in this country. When I was leader of the city council, I was in receipt of a combined allowance that was significantly less than was paid to my secretary. Exactly the same position will apply to all my successors, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the current leader; and it may well apply in a number of other authorities.
However, there is another matter that Mr Lewis carefully avoided mentioning in his letter to his political colleagues, which is at paragraph 1.11 of the Government’s document. It says:
“Councillors are eligible for allowances to be pensionable if the local independent remuneration panel made a recommendation to that effect”.
In other words, this is not something dreamed up and decided upon by a local authority: it has to follow a recommendation of the independent remuneration panel. Why does Mr Lewis not refer to that? The answer is perfectly obvious: it would demolish the case he is making, which effectively is that greedy local authority members are determining for themselves whether they should be part of this scheme. It is a shabby and disgraceful way to mislead his colleagues, let alone members of the public.
I recall very well that in my early years as a councillor, before I became leader, I had a very good colleague who felt he had to give up his time at the council, because it was going to affect his own pension at work. Clearly, there are many members up and down the country who feel that they cannot continue. Turnover of members is a significant factor, particularly in London. London colleagues may agree, or may not be able to confirm that. There is a particularly high turnover of people who are in employment because it is very difficult to discharge one’s duties as an elected member—at any level, but particularly at a level which carries significant responsibilities—and be in gainful employment. We do not want to see local councils composed of the unemployed, the retired or the rich. A council composed in that fashion is not an adequate way of serving the public. We want people who are actually in a job, working in the community and bringing that experience and influence to bear upon the workings of their council. If their employment or their prospects of pension provision are going to be imperilled as a result of public service, that will diminish the pool of those willing and able to serve the public.
These proposals are another example of the Government’s—or more particularly, to be fair, the Secretary of State’s—aversion to local authority members. He has a rather Malvolian response to the criticism that he has brought upon himself over the past few years by his repeated attacks on local authorities and members generally. I recall that wonderful phrase in “Twelfth Night” when Malvolio, villainously cross-gartered—I cannot see the Secretary of State as cross-gartered, while “villainous” is an adjective that might be applied to other aspects but perhaps not his gartering —says in frustration and rage as a result of his treatment:
“I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you”.
This recommendation certainly seems to carry that sentiment into government policy, and it is deplorable.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for enabling this debate, although it gives me no pleasure to intervene in the spirit in which I shall. Given what I know of the many representations that have been made at the highest level in both coalition parties by local government representatives on this issue—representations that have been brushed aside, sometimes rather brusquely—it would be feeble if I lacked the integrity to speak up publicly from these Benches for hard-working colleagues of all parties, including my own, who serve the public as councillors and who, rightly or wrongly, feel targeted by this proposal.
I should declare an interest at the start lest some bright spark declares that I am—what is the phrase?—“on the gravy train”. I lead, nearly full-time, a local authority that, like 58% of councils, is a participant in the local government scheme for members. I am a scheme member, as are 26 others—just half our members. The scheme cost us £65,000 last year. The total cost of member remuneration in Richmond is £56,000 lower than in 2010. For the record, the leader’s allowance is £26,000, which I cut by 12.5% when I became leader.
Against that background, however, we judged cross-party in 2003 that a right of access to a pension scheme in a workplace was a reasonable part of total remuneration. That was a local decision and, like so many other things in local government where all central Governments tend to put their lead boots on, it should be for local determination and local accountability.
I spent half a lifetime judging and advising on public policy—some of it good, some of it bad. There are various tests for a good policy, and among them would be the following. It should not seek to regulate at national level what can reasonably be decided locally or privately. It should be consistent and coherent with other policy—what some call “joined-up”. It should be based on objective evidence. It should address a problem that needs to be solved. It should be proportionate to the issue concerned. It should not be designed, or felt, to discriminate against any group. It should be likely to lead to better public administration or significant savings in expenditure. It must respect, if not always follow, the outcome of consultation. Finally, failing all these, it must be urgent or necessary to respond to a clear public call for action.
In my submission, the policy spectacularly fails every one of those tests. On a clear public call for action, there was none. We have seen comments from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which is an estimable group—I share its diagnosis that we are spending, borrowing and taxing too much—but it is not the public. The Taxpayers’ Alliance was quite right to note the generosity of the Local Government Pension Scheme, and in my view the Government were right to reform the scheme. Councillors up and down the country, including me, would have supported the reform of members’ rights, too. But why the removal, not reform, of the right of councillors to contribute to a scheme in the workplace? How does that stand up to the tests of good policy? Does member remuneration need to be decided nationally? I do not think so. Nor, in fact, do the Government; in this provision they are not addressing allowances or setting limits, just attacking pension rights. It does not add up.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(11 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I endorse my noble friend’s amendment and refer for the third or fourth time to what used to be available to local authorities in the form of planning development grant to improve and sustain the capacity of planning departments, which now, like every other local government department, have come under severe pressure due to increasing financial constraints. Will the Minister turn her mind to capacity and how the Government can assist, possibly by restoring some form of planning development grant? They need to ensure that the necessary staff are available with the necessary skills in order to facilitate the speedy, but thorough, examination of planning applications, which is what she, the Government and the Opposition very much wish to see.
Lord True
My Lords, I am certain that my noble friend will not succumb to the blandishments of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. In a way, reluctantly, I have to say that from my feelings at Second Reading, I think that she would be right to resist his temptations. This Bill as it started, as many of us said, was very broadly drafted, and in many areas it threatened to enable a degree of centralism that was unacceptable and went against what this House had recently argued for. I always accepted that there should be some kind of backstop provision on Clause 1. I was not one of those at Second Reading, as I have reminded the House, who opposed it in principle.
The powerful and eloquent arguments of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, among many others made in this House, have contributed to changes in this clause, which he was generous enough to acknowledge earlier. After the way in which the Government have moved, it would be strange if we now seek to excise the clause. However, I say to my noble friend from these Benches that we will want to watch carefully, and with a mild degree of scepticism, the way in which this clause may or may not be used in the future. I certainly welcome what she had to say on the previous amendment about keeping the matter under review. I hope that the House will not follow the tempting voice of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, into suggesting that this clause, as it has been amended, should go, although there is still much yet in this Bill that needs to be dealt with.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(12 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
However, in the early 1990s I worked for Sir John Major at No. 10, where one of our main responsibilities was finding an alternative to the community charge. Therefore, I was in a different place but working on the same issue. In many ways I am also in the same place as other noble Lords who have spoken today. I made a number of points at Second Reading that were taken up by noble Lords. I support to a large degree the intellectual case that was put. My noble friend Lord Tope spoke wise words. The Committee must address practically the issues that have arisen. We have all made our position clear. I said at Second Reading and will say again that I would rather we were not here and that the benefit was part of universal credit. However, given the position that the Government are in, we must try to make this work in the best way possible.
This debate has taken on the tone of that on Amendment 1. I agree with some of the analysis, but if the logic is that the burden will go on a narrower and narrower base, and that base will tend to be lower-income working families, we will have to wrestle with these issues very carefully in Committee. A number of amendments suggest all sorts of other exemptions, some defined, some less defined. Some call for the Government to define who the vulnerable are; that is an interesting concept. The risk is that the Committee could make the work incentive situation worse with a well meaning intent to try to protect broad categories of people who obviously deserve our consideration.
I throw that into the discussion because it will be an interesting tension given that we are also told to take it as read—like my noble friend Lord Tope, I accept the position of my Government—that pensioners are to be excluded. However, as my noble friend Lord Greaves and others have said, that of course narrows the ground. In my authority, too, pensioners make up around 44% of claimants and 43% of council tax benefit spending.
I am not going to claim any credit of prior speaking on this. The point is well made; I made it at Second Reading. However, I hope that as we go forward to look at the amendments in detail we will remember that some well meaning amendments might have the perverse effect of making the work incentive situation even worse. I hope that we can now go on to look at the matters in detail.
Lord Beecham
I suppose that we must be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord True, for the part he played in mitigating, to use the phrase of the day, some of the worst consequences of the poll tax. However, he should be gently reminded that an element of the poll tax remains within the present system. That was a most astute piece of reconstruction of the poll tax, somewhat akin to the three-card trick. I do not blame the noble Lord, Lord True, for that; I think that the Secretary of State of the day, the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, trod the path rather carefully. It certainly was an improvement but, as we all know, it leaves us even now with a system of local taxation more regressive than it should be.
However, we are not really debating the poll tax; we are debating these proposals. It seems to me that my noble friend Lady Hollis’s amendments are designed to have precisely that mitigating effect that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, cannot discern but which the noble Lord, Lord True, rightly encourages us to find. That is because of the link to universal credit. However, frankly, we should stop talking about a 10% cut. It is much more likely to be a higher figure anyway. The £500 million is widely regarded as a substantial underestimate. Then, as implied or explicitly mentioned by other noble Lords this afternoon and at Second Reading, the impact of the exemption of pensioners from this—which I support, contrary, once again, to the ministrations of the Local Government Association—will obviously increase the burden on everybody else. We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, refer to an 18% figure. The impact assessment talks of a 16% figure. It is interesting to look at what the impact assessment says about the whole issue. Paragraph 34 of the recently updated impact assessment reads:
“Although the net impact of the policy is simply a transfer from council tax payers to Government”—
a phrase worth thinking about—
“(and therefore a reduction in demands on general taxation, by bringing decisions about local tax reliefs closer to those responsible for raising local taxation), there will be some groups who see a reduction in their income. These groups may be: working age council tax benefit claimants”,
as already referred to,
“council tax payers or any recipients of local services that may be reduced in order to meet any funding shortfall”.
Again, this is implicit but is worth making explicit. Then it says:
“However, an accurate analysis of the reduction in income of these groups is not possible since the design of any council tax support scheme for working age people will be at the discretion of local authorities. In addition, the means by which a local authority recovers any shortfall in funding will be for themselves to decide”.
Once again, the buck is passed but accompanying support is not there.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(12 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I entirely support the amendment moved by my noble friend and supported by my erstwhile colleague on Newcastle City Council and fellow vice-president of the Local Government Association. It clearly makes sense, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, it is clearly in the spirit of the Localism Act.
However, there is another aspect. The Government set much store on the proposals in relation to the business rate as part of an approach to incentivise and increase local investment by business, growing the local economy and all the rest of it. In that context, it would surely be sensible if, in addition to consulting local government perfectly properly on these topics, they also consulted business. That cannot be done at every local level by the Government and councils will no doubt continue to have discussions with their own local businesses. However, as I pointed out on our first Committee day when I quoted the London chambers report, some 53% of businesses believe that councils set the business rates now. So there is a certain amount of education to be done here. But at the national level, I would have thought it important for government to consult, particularly about that proportion of the business rate that is to be held centrally rather than devolved locally, because that clearly would be a matter of concern to the business community.
Without the necessity of moving anything formally, it would be helpful if the Minister could put on the record an intention that in any consultation about the business rate and the various elements, resets and proportions and so on, the Government will consult the business community as well as local government.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(12 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Beecham
Will the Minister look again at subsection (2) of the amendment to which she implicitly referred? The amendment would require the report in any year to refer to,
“any representations ... received from local authorities on whether it would be appropriate to re-set the system”,
and to the Secretary of State’s decision and the reason for that decision. The Minister rightly says that people could ask a question or a succession of questions about that. This amendment systematises that process so that it is clear and seen as an integral part of the annual financial report. I cannot see the difficulty in the Government accepting that it should be part of the information base to be considered alongside the whole of the rest of the local government finance settlement at the appropriate time. Would it not be more convenient for Ministers to do it that way rather than to have to reply to a succession of questions, perhaps over a different period, not necessarily tied in to the process of approving the report?
Lord True
I should declare an interest as the leader of a London borough and as a member of the leaders committee of London Councils. I hope that my noble friend will maintain the position that she has just set out. I was encouraged by what she said about not ruling out exceptional circumstances. I shall not weary the Committee with my rather unusual local authority, which will be a tariff authority, as I referred to it at Second Reading.
It seems to me that we have a very open system. In all the years that I have been following local government I have never noticed the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, being slow in coming forward to make representations either public or private. Indeed, many of us in local government have often been very grateful for those representations.
Lord Beecham
Could the noble Lord remind me of any that have been successful?
Lord True
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was extremely successful in secret with that one Government with whom he had a good relationship once upon a time.
I do not wish to detain the Committee. I would simply say that surely the problem with a system like this one is that you will then have emulous enthusiasm, so that if the authority of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, makes representations and they are going to be published in a report before Parliament, someone will come to me or to my noble friend Lady Eaton and say, “Why has your authority not made representations?”. So we will have lots of local authorities asking directors of finance to put in their representations so that they can be published and ticked off in a report to Parliament. I do not think that we should bureaucratise this too much until it seems, with experience, that the Government are suddenly not prepared to hear representations on the system. Then we can look at it. However, I think that there is a risk of overbureaucratising this and that it could be a make-work rather than provide a solution. I appreciate the intent with which it is offered but I hope that my noble friend will stick to the position she set out.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, I am rather more sympathetic to the Government’s attempt to find a formulation than some of the demurrers and I congratulate my noble friend on finding an admirable way through. That is another example of the way in which she has conducted the Bill. If I may help my noble friend Lord Tope, surely the answer to the question of committees or bodies to which councils mandate members is that in the first instance questions of misconduct must come from those bodies themselves, to which the people are mandated. It seems inconceivable that any council would wish to be represented by somebody who had attracted censure. It would certainly be within the power of any council to withdraw a nomination and I would hope that every authority would do that.
My noble friend Lord Shipley raised a point on subsection (3). I rather like that subsection although I agree with my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Tope, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, that there has to be some sense that there is independence. Often these matters can be dealt with by arbitration and a sensible person who will put two people together. It is clearly sensible, as my noble friend Lord Shipley says, that we may need to get two committees. However, there may be things that can be dealt with more effectively without getting to that process, but giving everybody along the way the sense that they can go to an independent body. I would not want my noble friend to be much more prescriptive, but I agree with the sense of what my noble friend Lord Shipley said. We have found an admirable way through and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and others who have contributed to it.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of a council—hence my straying into jargon that we apply in council debates—a member of the standards committee, which meets later this week, and vice president of the Local Government Association. I join other of your Lordships in extending warm congratulations to the Minister who is clearly responsible for, and indeed embodies, an outbreak of sweet reasonableness over this issue that we hope to be pursued by some of her ministerial colleagues when we come to other legislation after this evening’s proceedings.
Like other noble Lords, I believe that there are issues that one might have wished to have taken a little further. A mandatory code would have perhaps been preferable. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, indicated, in all probability we will end up with something like that. I hope that the Local Government Association, with others, will draft something that will be useful and will be adopted by many local authorities. It is very important that this independent role should be reflected. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that mandatory committees, perhaps with that independent element, would have been preferable. Nevertheless, we have gone a long way forward since the original Bill and our earlier discussions on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report. For that we are clearly indebted to the Minister.
I am not quite so sure about the sanctions that are available and whether they are sufficient to meet some of the more serious cases. A huge range of cases has applied at national and local level. I note that people from all political groups have transgressed, sometimes quite significantly. A prominent Conservative ex-leader of a council was found to have leaked a confidential document related to a land sale and was suspended for 28 days by his council. A Labour deputy group leader was also found to have breached confidentiality in relation to a compulsory purchase order. These are not insignificant issues, and they are not personal issues either. He was suspended for three months by his local authority. A Lib Dem councillor was suspended for six months for bullying and disrespectful behaviour at a training session. One of the worst cases was an independent borough councillor who had undermined and humiliated the council’s press officer systematically in front of other councillors until she began to cry and had to leave the room. That is intolerable behaviour in any circumstances and is certainly not consonant with holding a public office. A suspension for three months took place in that case.
However, I wonder whether suspension from a committee or even removal from outside bodies is necessarily sufficient for the more serious types of case. We clearly cannot pursue this further tonight, but it may be that over time, and bearing in mind that we need to see how this works in practice, we might have to revisit that element. Another place has quite draconian powers of discipline. I am not quite sure that they are quite as draconian in this place, although there are matters currently under consideration of a very grave nature and one hopes that one would not see anything like that again in your Lordships' House. It may be therefore—given that the national framework has been dismantled and that there may still, unfortunately, be a few cases where really serious misconduct occurs—that one must wonder whether the sanctions currently available and reflected in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, are adequate. We have clearly moved on and I am grateful and pleased that we have achieved this. I congratulate the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and thank them for the work they have done on this matter.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, there have been significant changes wrought by this Bill. One of those that we debated in earlier days was the abolition of the duty to promote local democracy, which I thought was somewhat inconsistent with the general localist agenda. That elicited little or no support on the Benches opposite and did not seem to me to be worth while bringing back at this stage. However, in respect of another issue, which was the provision about petitions, it does seem to me that the case for some provision—as opposed to the elimination which Clause 46 of the Bill would have carried through—has been heightened by at least two recent developments.
The first is the changes in the Bill around the issue of democratic engagement. I very much welcome the withdrawal of the proposals for local referendums, which I thought were misconceived, overelaborate and calculated to produce a great deal of mischief and trouble. Nevertheless, they were a form—and in my view a very unsatisfactory form, and I think that has ultimately been accepted by the Government themselves—of promoting public engagement. This still leaves the issue of how one does promote particular forms of public engagement.
In another place a week ago, there was a diverting evening using the petition process which the Government have initiated to debate rather grander matters, I guess, than will normally be the case at the local level. Of course, the Government have proceeded with their electronic petitioning and the right of the other place to debate matters that receive a significant degree of support—a policy which may not have entirely produced the results anticipated last week and which some members of the Government may even have cause to regret. At any rate, the procedure is there.
For some time, in some councils, there has been an approach which has welcomed, and indeed encouraged, the bringing of petitions and discussion of them. Looking back, about three years ago the New Local Government Network, which is not a partisan organisation—it has councils in it that are controlled by all three major parties and indeed some independent members—advocated a proposal for a more defined process for bringing petitions. That proposal was, in almost the last gasp of the previous Government, embodied in legislation which, as the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, pointed out in his typically robust fashion was somewhat overelaborate, to put it mildly, and that certainly was the case. I think the legislation was announced in December 2009 and passed into law shortly after that, and it was certainly much too overprescriptive in the way it laid down how the process should be implemented.
Nevertheless, although a significant number of councils have a process to facilitate the bringing of petitions and their consideration, it is by no means universal. It seems to me important that there should be an obligation on local authorities to foster that kind of engagement with the communities they represent so that matters can be brought to the attention of the council and discussed in whatever form the council decides is appropriate, on the basis of the basic requirement that Amendment 49 would create, of having a scheme under which the petitions might be considered. This would also include another right that was brought into being by the previous Government, the right to call an officer of the council to account, in a properly structured way.
This is not an overbureaucratic process. As I say, many councils have their own procedures now. Mine certainly does; I dare say the councils of the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Tope, and perhaps even that of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will have similar procedures. However, it is not universal, whereas it seems to me that it should be, so that any number of people—the council may lay down a minimum if it chooses—would know that they have the right to have matters raised at the level of the local authority, not just with their individual councillors, although that is always an option, but in a more systematic way.
The amendment also provides for a simple enough procedure for the council to give an account of what happens to those petitions, so they do not just disappear into a black hole. That certainly is the case in my own authority and I suspect in many others, and all there really needs to be, perhaps even just once a year, is a brief summary of what matters have been raised and how they were dealt with, so people can know that their views and concerns have been taken care of. It is not a huge obligation and would contribute to a healthier relationship between a local authority and its members on the one hand and the community on the other. I hope that even at this late stage the Government will have second thoughts. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, that is a nice try by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, but I am afraid I am going to be conditional in my support again. Petitions are important and he is quite right to say that my own authority considers them: tomorrow night we have a debate on a petition from the public; and there are two running petitions, both with over 2,000 signatures, which I am sure will lead to debates at future council meetings. I agree that it is good practice for local authorities. I do not think the Government are withdrawing from encouraging that but it would be a pity if they were.
I have not had time to study the details of his new clause so for that reason alone I would find it hard to support it. However, I am slightly worried about the concept of public petitions calling an officer to account. All those who have been in positions of authority in local government will know the amount of, frankly, sometimes libellous and hostile comment one gets about officers, and one of the duties of people who are elected is to take responsibility. I do not care for the encouragement of petitions to call officers to account. For that reason, as well as not having studied it, I would be doubtful about the form; the spirit is right but I do not think that it is something we could add to the Bill at this stage.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, I was not able to be present for this discussion in Committee. I would like to associate myself very strongly with the remarks made by both my noble friends because they are good localist arguments. Having campaigned in all integrity on the basis of the promises that were put forward by my party in respect of a community right of appeal, like many colleagues in the Liberal Democrat party I remain in a state of puzzlement as to why this worthy and desirable policy, very sensibly circumscribed in the amendment spoken to by my noble friend, has disappeared. It is something that some of us will want to return to on a future occasion, and I hope sincerely that the leadership of my party and that of my fellow party in the coalition will think again on this matter.
Lord Beecham
Heaven forfend that I should trespass on the griefs of the coalition about unfulfilled promises. It is already late enough and one could go on for many hours about unfulfilled promises, but I shall resist the temptation.
We cannot support either of these amendments. There is a balance to be struck between what is purely local and where there are other considerations which might well be of significance in regard to major areas of public policy, including that to which the noble Lord, Lord Reay, refers and about which he is exercised—it is right that he should be, if those are his views. There is a legitimate role for the Secretary of State to determine, at any rate, some appeals beyond those which the amendment would refer.
The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, in addition to the general principle, also creates difficulties. A community right of appeal is an arguable proposition. Whether a community right of appeal could be said to be legitimately exercised by,
“a ward councillor for the area; … any parish council covering or adjoining the area of land to which an application relates; or … any overview and scrutiny committee for the area”,
as proposed in new subsection (2B) that Amendment 232ZB would insert into Section 78 of the 1990 Act, is indeed arguable. I cannot see that those matters are a very persuasive definition of a community right of appeal, even assuming one was in favour of a community right of appeal, which, on balance, I am certainly not—whatever the coalition parties thought they were going to implement.
In these circumstances I offer once again an unusual degree of support to the Minister if he declines to support these amendments.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, there is a gentle sense of irony in the representative of the workers’ party, and my noble friend who is yearning for the days when his party stood for worker control, expressing so much concern at the prospect of employees, however few—less than half, I gather, is unacceptable— expressing an interest in undertaking a function. It seems to me that we are witnessing major change in communities and local government and that it is perfectly reasonable, indeed it is already happening all over the country, that groups of workers and employees are coming forward with propositions to set up social enterprises, to take on existing bodies and to take on other activities. I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber to welcome the withdrawal by my noble friend of regulation in the previous group of amendments, which I do welcome. Yet here we are being pushed to prescribe and put blocks in the way of people putting forward expressions of interest simply on the basis that they might be employees of the organisation and, still worse, that they might secretly be in cahoots with capitalism.
Lord Beecham
That is not what I said, nor is it what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said. What we object to is the idea of two people in a potentially large organisation committing the rest of the employees. Where is the democracy in that?
Lord True
There is nothing to say that this deals with a large organisation—some of the things that we are discussing at the moment are relatively small. It seems inconceivable to me that two employees would act against the wishes of those people that they actually want to work with in the future. For years the noble Lord endured the policy of his party being made by small, powerful executives purporting to speak in the names of millions of people—for all we know, they probably still do. I do not see any reason why a group of workers or employees should not get together and entrust their negotiations about an expression of interest to two or three of their number. I think that we should be extremely careful in framing this Bill not to put forward regulation that makes employee initiative more difficult.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham
Lord True
My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. They are all deigned to build greater flexibility into the Bill and make it operate more in line with the real meaning of localism as I see it and with the opinions of local people, particularly in urban areas. New Section 61G(1)(a), to be inserted in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 by Schedule 9, allows an authority to designate a neighbourhood area only where a would-be neighbourhood forum or parish council has asked for it. That is cumbersome and restrictive.
My Amendment 148ADA would allow a local authority simply to ask local people what they consider their neighbourhood areas to be and to designate them themselves. To quote the Bill, why do they need to wait for a,
“body which is … capable of being, designated as a neighbourhood forum”,
to ask for it? Surely a local authority can do that.
Lord Beecham
Can the noble Lord help the House with a little explanation of the effect of Amendment 148ADA? It indicates that you could have a parish council where,
“the authority has conducted a survey of the residents of its local authority area asking its residents to define their own … village … and at least 5% of the households in the local authority area”.
Does that cover a local authority—be it Richmond, Newcastle or anywhere else—if 5 per cent of the population indicate what their area is in a ballot? You could have a neighbourhood forum where perhaps nobody has responded. Or does the amendment mean that there would have to be at least a 5 per cent response within each area that was to be designated as a neighbourhood area? That is rather different from the wording that is before us.
Lord True
That may be the case and I apologise if the drafting is not clear. What I had in mind is a 5 per cent response across the local authority area. It seems to me that if only a very small number respond to say that they want this place to be designated as an area or village, ipso facto that demonstrates that they do not see it as an area. However, if a significant number do, then they would. Some of these may be small. My Amendment 148ADD would require an authority to take account of local people’s preferences in the survey. Perhaps I could answer the noble Lord by saying he is right—it is not a problem in rural areas but it is an urban problem. My authority, along with others, has conducted surveys. In the survey we had locally, the response level was above 5 per cent and the respondents designated 14 different areas that they defined as the area in which they live, or as their local area. The population size varied from a few hundred up to several thousand. My contention is that, prima facie, that is a community that feels it is a community and can be designated, if we go through this model in the Bill, as a neighbourhood area. Have I made myself clear?
Lord Beecham
No, because you could have 5 per cent of Newcastle or Richmond concentrated in part of the authority. That would then appear to validate the creation of neighbourhood forums in parts that have expressed no interest whatever.
Lord True
I apologise. I am not good at drafting but I do want to press on and let the House make progress.
When people were asked to respond as to what their neighbourhood area was, those areas often overlapped, not just horizontally but vertically. People in an urban area can very easily feel attached to two geographical concepts and at different levels—a community and a town. My Amendment 148ADE challenges what I think is, again, a rigid concept in the Bill that no neighbourhood area may overlap another one. It allows people to be members of and participate in more than one neighbourhood area, if they have said in a survey that they feel part of or influenced by events and developments in more than one area. In the previous group, my noble friend was moving towards that by saying that people outside the area could participate in a referendum. However, people’s perceptions about planning may differ also within an area—two communities may have different views, say, about local parking standards but be united on back-garden development across the whole of the town, or on shops. The last thing I would contest is the guidance to the Bill, which says that there should be a strong assumption that existing ward boundaries will define the neighbourhood area. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also addressed this point.
Anyone who has been involved in representations to the Local Government Boundary Commission will tell you that lines drawn by the commission are frequently strongly contested and often bear absolutely no relation to community realities. Take my own small town, which is covered by parts of three different wards. The neighbouring ward contains two communities that, in the survey I mentioned, self-defined as two separate communities—Mortlake and Barnes. They saw themselves as entirely different. Barnes is actually split between two wards, while Twickenham is covered by four wards. I do not see how you can address neighbourhood planning simply in an urban area without allowing flexibility to stray across these neighbourhood areas, both horizontally and vertically, as I have put it. The concepts in the Bill are therefore potentially too rigid and problems arise only because of that. I shall not press these amendments, but I ask my noble friend to reflect on this point: we should allow communities, where we can, to define their own place, coalesce and differ for different purposes as they wish, and not to be locked into one neighbourhood area for five years. They should be facilitated in doing that by a local authority, which has the flexibility to move the pieces around and bring people together for different purposes. That would be real, active localism and not the rather rigid approach set out in the Bill at this point.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, if my noble friend wants to come to our high street, he can have 30 minutes of free parking. The Mill Road story, to which my noble friend referred, is extremely interesting. Unfortunately, the Tesco Express, which was its original focus, was successful. There are defects with all the amendments before the Committee; I hope that my noble friend will not feel that all of them have to be addressed.
I was very encouraged by what was said in the other place. One difficulty is that not everyone has the same view of vitality. My predecessor as leader of my council from another party said that he would be delighted if he heard that a Tesco was opening in his area, because it would bring people to that shopping area. We must address head-on the nature of the retail multiple and the manner of the high street. Can my noble friend assure us that before we finish examining the Bill, when we have seen the national framework, Parliament will give local authorities real power to deal with the problems which my noble friends, Lord Cotter and Lord Greaves, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised? That is all I ask for at this stage, not a detailed commitment. I hope that my noble friend can give that assurance.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I warmly endorse the thrust of the three amendments. It is clearly desirable to have a proper planning framework to encourage retail diversity. However, although that is necessary, it is not a sufficient condition of ensuring that we get retail diversity. There are other significant considerations, particularly financial considerations and other policies which may militate against the achievement of the aspirations of the amendments—with which I entirely concur.
I can cite examples from my experience. When I was chairman of the development committee in Newcastle, I tried to persuade our partners in the city centre shopping centre—we were partners because we owned a substantial stake in it—to diversify the offer to try to get away from chainstores, which were pretty much all we had there, and provide for some niche retailing. Despite the fact that we were significant shareholders, I was totally unable to persuade them to do that.
In another example of the Tesco influence, in the west end of Newcastle adjoining a street in an ethnically mixed area with a lot of little local shops and one or two other retailers, Tesco has secured planning permission to build a largish store on the site of a former hospital. The hospital is very keen to get the money from it, for obvious reasons. I am afraid that council officials supported the recommendation, and indeed an inspector upheld the recommendation. So we have a Tesco store not far from the town centre that is likely to do serious damage to local shopping.
I fear there are policies that might encourage that kind of trade-off, where you are effectively getting a financial benefit—in that case for the hospital but in other cases for the local authority itself. Most of us welcome the proposal for tax increment financing but that puts a premium on promoting development that will generate significant rateable value on which you are then going to borrow. There will be a temptation, frankly, to push that kind of development at the expense of the kind of development that these amendments are interested in promoting, which is less likely to contribute hugely in terms of rates and certainly is more difficult to put together. So you potentially have a policy that might militate against the thrust of these amendments.
We are also now going to get a range of enterprise zones. I do not know if the Minister can tell us whether there will be any restrictions this time round on retail developments in the enterprise zones. As I understand it, it is pretty much carte blanche for whoever develops these zones. Again, I speak from experience—and there are other Members of your Lordships’ House who will know the kind of damage that was done to city centre shopping in places such as Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham by some very substantial out-of-town shopping developments in enterprise zones. Enterprise zones were originally designed to promote investment in manufacturing industry and so on. It would be unfortunate if again they were to be captured by the interests of large retail developers, thereby threatening diversity in existing centres.
These amendments are entirely on the right lines and I hope that the Government will consider them very seriously. However, I also ask them to recognise that there is a need to look at the other policies that impinge on this area and try to ensure that there is a sensible look across the piece at the implications of a range of policies on the objectives that these amendments seek to promote. Perhaps that is a debate for another occasion but I do not think that we can look at these things in isolation. We need to bring them together, and I hope that these amendments may help us start to do that.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord might look at Clause 52(4), which seems to give the relevant discretion.
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord will become very familiar with that sort of drafting in the course of discussions on this Bill and others.
Lord True
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, wishes to speak briefly: I, too, will speak briefly. I do not think that this is a matter that we can resolve in this Committee. It is important and perhaps in the period up to Report we may see some guidance and thoughts as to how the Government, the Electoral Commission and others see it developing. There is a difference between a national referendum about an unresolved policy question and certain circumstances of local referendums. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, is no longer in his place; he has rushed out to organise a referendum against the parking-charge policy of his own council. In those circumstances it is surely reasonable for the council to defend its policy against the proposition that is put on the other side, so I do not think that we can be absolutist on this matter. I do not favour the extensive spending of public money, but I hope that my noble friend, as we discuss these things over the next few weeks, will not rule out and disarm councils—elected representatives—from putting their case in referendums.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I echo the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord True. This is difficult territory. The Bill as it stands contains a provision that,
“enables the authority to incur only such expenditure as is reasonable”.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already indicated that it is not at all clear what “reasonable” might be, but I put it another way: if expenditure is unreasonable, then, of course, it can be challenged by the usual audit processes. I think that that is sufficient safeguard in that respect. What is more complicated is the question of equal prominence. Amendment 128AA states that the decision is only to,
“be exercised following a resolution authorising the maximum amount to be spent”.
This raises some difficult issues. On the equal-prominence argument, who is to provide the case for the petitioners—for those who are seeking the referendum? It can hardly be suggested that the local authority should provide their case for them. There will be cases in which there is a well resourced, articulate group of people who can produce a substantial case. If, on the other hand, it is a community group, or some organisation which produces a three-line question for a referendum, it may not be able to do that. Is the council then constrained to reply to the three-line referendum with a three-line response? That would not be reasonable. The equal-prominence test is very difficult to operate in practice.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord True
My Lords, perhaps I can speak briefly to Amendment 105 but before doing so, I pray the indulgence of the Committee if the debate is prolonged, as I have amendments to the Education Bill in Grand Committee. I mean no offence if I have to withdraw at some point. I should also say in preamble that, having seen the news yesterday on the transparency of Transport for London and given the matters we will be considering in Clause 206, I wonder whether “a relevant authority” might include Transport for London within the meaning of these clauses.
I am grateful for my noble friend’s remarks, but my concern is about politically inspired resolutions put to local authorities, particularly in the run-up to elections. I accept that the wording of my amendment may not be correct. I am not someone who has argued for extensive regulation but we have seen, even from such an august person as the Secretary of State, that public comment on the level of senior officers’ pay attracts the attention—often very approving attention—of the press. My fear is that, notwithstanding the niceties of employment law and the effective risk of constructive dismissal, in the approach to an election it would be unbearably tempting for a minority party in a local authority to lay a resolution calling, say, for the reduction of chief officers’ pay by 10, 15 or 20 per cent. Why stop there? “Vote for us and we will cut senior officers’ pay”.
In those circumstances it is politically quite difficult for the governing party in a local authority to resist such a proposal if put as a resolution to a council. Any member of a council can put forward a resolution just as any noble Lord can put forward a proposal here. Clause 23(4) makes it absolutely clear that, including after the beginning of the financial year in which a senior officer’s pay statement has been laid, it is perfectly in order for a local authority to seek to change that pay statement. So while I am not calling more regulation down on the heads of local authorities, I warn my noble friend that there is an extremely high risk in the six months before elections of competitive resolutions being laid to reduce the pay of members in authority, which might have pernicious effects and could, in some cases, be contrary to employment law.
Having asked my noble friend to consider the matter, I am grateful for the consideration he has given so far and I am reassured by some of the things he has said on the point, but I hope that, in considering any guidance, he will take very seriously the points that have been made. It would be a great pity to see a rash of resolutions coming out of local authorities asking the impossible of senior officers, who are in most cases distinguished public servants doing their best for local people.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I understand the noble Lord’s point, but I have to say that it would be a huge infraction on the responsibilities and rights of elected members of councils to indicate what might go on a council agenda and what might not. That is going much too far. Although I expect members to behave responsibly, if they are irresponsible, it would be the task of those answering such a resolution to make the case. We ought to have the self-confidence to do that, so I do not think, with all respect to the noble Lord, that his amendment should progress.
I seek some assurances from the Minister, to see whether I have understood him correctly, apart from anything else. Later—many, many hours later—we will come to the question of the community infrastructure levy and whether or not it should be a material consideration in determining planning matters. There will, I think, be quite strong views about that. I wonder, having heard the Minister, whether it will be permissible for councils to take into account the factors referred to in my noble friend’s amendment as a material consideration in the awarding of contracts. If I understood him correctly, the noble Lord indicated that that would be permissible, although it should not be prescribed, and I can understand that position. Perhaps he will confirm or disabuse me of that notion.
I also ask the noble Lord whether he has a view on the living wage, which has been espoused—I think before an election but certainly after an election, to revert to the point of the noble Lord, Lord True—by no less a person than the Mayor of London, who has adopted the concept initiated by his predecessor of promoting the living wage. Does he accept that it is right for councils, if they choose, to adopt such a policy in respect of their own authorities and to seek to reflect that in the conditions upon which they let contracts?
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Beecham(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this group of amendments concerns governance issues, the part of the Bill to which we now move. The amendments deal with some of the regulations which the Bill empowers the Secretary of State to make. I have a vision of a group of civil servants in the subterranean depths of Eland House employed full time in drafting regulations on all manner of things, many of which we will encounter as the Bill progresses through Committee. In the interests of health and safety, if nothing else, of those who are so engaged and of local government, I suggest that the Government look again at the degree to which they are seeking to regulate.
The amendments relate to Schedule 2, page 189, and seek to limit the degree to which regulation will take place other than at the request of local authorities. Amendment 34 suggests that regulations should be made only if asked for by authorities. Amendment 35 would limit significantly the arrangements that the Government seek to make under these proposals and would ensure that any such arrangements are consistent with the principles of localism and the representative democracy which featured so largely in the initial debate on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, it might be helpful if I speak to my Amendment 37, which is in this group and relates to governance arrangements. I apologise for its rather dense language but it imitates the drafting style of the Bill and I was trying to be as accommodating as possible to the Government. The real issue here is about the relations between lower tier and higher tier authorities, and how we achieve localism where things are done to local people by higher tier authorities.
I have a very live example: before leaving for the House this morning, I received an extremely angry e-mail from a person in my ward asking, “Why on earth are you wasting my money moving bus stops on our high street?”. The answer is that I am not doing that. I have had meetings with TfL asking it not to move bus stops. But it is all being done by a higher tier authority within a lower tier authority without any open consultation with the people affected.
There are many other examples of this kind of thing, and I am sure it does not only go on between London boroughs and regional government—it probably goes on between lower tier authorities and county councils and, in some cases, parish councils. Another example would be the one I cited at Second Reading where, after consultation with local people, we proposed revised parking standards in a neighbourhood. Without holding any public consultation, we received a letter from a higher authority saying that the arrangements were not satisfactory and did not accord with its standards, and we were asked to change them.
I do not wish to unpick the constitutional arrangements between lower and higher tier authorities in this country, but I do not think that the Bill is very localist when it comes to London boroughs. Indeed, it strikingly fails to be localist in that respect. What I am really asking for in the amendment, although I do not expect my noble friend to agree to it at first bite nor do I necessarily want to add to the huge bible of regulation that is emerging from this Bill, is recognition of the important principle here. If we believe in localism, at the very least it should be open to the lower tier authority to be able to say to the higher tier authority, “If you are considering planning changes which specifically affect an area”, such as whether to have high-rise buildings in the centre of Twickenham, which happens to be a live issue in my authority, “meetings should be held by the higher tier authority to gauge the opinion of local people”. It might even be that we could ask officers to come and hold public meetings, or indeed have the right to require that that should happen.
At the moment there is no formal ability for a lower tier authority to act on behalf of its local residents to do what we would regard as absolutely normal in terms of explaining to residents what is going on. It is absolutely inconceivable, if we were planning to change the alignment of a high street in a village or small town centre, that that would be done without prior and detailed public consultation with local people. The purpose of the amendment is to give a lower tier authority such as my own, a London borough, but also those outside London, the ability to propose or suggest arrangements to the higher tier authority to ensure that it conducts itself in a proper, localist fashion in respect of matters that affect local people. I urge my noble friend to reflect on the issue being raised here.
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 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.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, relates to the part of the Bill which defines a mayor as distinct from a councillor. I wonder whether that is particularly well advised. I cannot recall the precise clause or paragraph in the schedule that deals with the eligibility of people to stand for election as mayor. It lists a whole series of officers of an authority who may not stand. At the moment, a serving member or employee of a local authority is disbarred from standing as a councillor. If the mayoral position was to be treated for all purposes in the same way as a councillor, you would not need a provision in the Bill to identify all the authority officers who could not stand for that position. Indeed, it could be argued that if you do not treat the mayor as a councillor, you might find that some people are inadvertently omitted but who perhaps should be barred from seeking to be elected because they already hold a position within the authority. My understanding is that the bar will remain in place for some time after their period of service has concluded.
Would it not be sensible for the Government to rethink this provision and simply state, unless there is a regulation the other way, as it were, that all provisions relating to councillors such as declarations of interest and all the rest of it should apply to elected mayors, rather than reverse the procedure and require regulations specifically for the elected mayor which could otherwise be avoided?
In relation to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord True, there was a problem, and indeed there still is a problem, in the grouping of these amendments. As I read it, many of the noble Lord’s amendments tag on to provisions for the implementation of the mayoral system, with reference to a referendum having taken place on the basis of three possibilities. One is the decision of a local authority itself, but subject to a referendum. Another is a petition from the public generally, and the third, which is the problematic one for many of us, is the requirement to hold a referendum by the Secretary of State. As I understand it, the noble Lord’s amendments, along with those of his noble friends, assume for the purposes of their amendments that the compulsory referendum remains part of the Bill. Last night I endeavoured to turn the debate around the other way so that we could deal with that issue first. When we come to consider the Bill on Report, perhaps we might look at how to address the issue.
The implementation points are perfectly valid and apply to the two non-compulsory forms of acquiring an elected mayor, but while I know that the Committee will not divide on them today, if the amendments were to be accepted on Report, it would be assumed that the compulsory referendum had been agreed. Some of us, perhaps many of us, have different views about that. In today’s groupings there are amendments which address that issue of principle, and I hope that the noble Lord understands where some of us are coming from in that respect.
Lord True
I thank the noble Lord. I have seen his Amendment 81B, and obviously that implies the direction he is coming from, but I certainly do not want to be unhelpful to the Committee in any way. My objective, which the Government have now said is theirs as well, is to erase the principle of shadow mayors. However, I agree that the point of principle he has raised does merit discussion at some point in our proceedings. I will be as co-operative as I can, under advice.
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.
Lord True
My Lords, perhaps I may take a minute of the House’s time and speak now to the two other amendments in the group on which I lead and which have the same welcome effect, as noble Lords on all sides have said. I, too, repeat my salute to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding and the Minister. The separation of mayor and chief executive is a good idea and we should maintain it. I am grateful to my noble friend.