Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Greaves(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I also declare an interest as a local councillor. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that my aged aunt, who has a great fear of spiders, says, “In September and October never talk about a spider, otherwise you will talk one up”, and one invariably comes up. I heard what he said about the contributions of Members on this side to these debates. When he makes such comments, I have to point out that we made very little progress with groups yesterday and there may be some connection—not with the Conservatives but with other Members in the Chamber.
I wish to follow very strongly what my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord Tope said. I have visited a number of authorities and it is true, sadly, that in many authorities where there has been large-scale voluntary transfer, there is a growing disjunction between the council side and RSLs. As I see it, aspects of this proposal from the Government may be designed to break that down and to reinforce the role of a councillor. In my authority we have introduced a tenants’ champion system in order to encourage people to use the local resource of the council as a first resource for complaint and redress against social landlords. That is desirable. Surely in the spirit of this Bill things should be settled as locally as they can be. There are all forms of bureaucracy and the ombudsman system in itself is potentially that. I agree that tenants may not need a filter, but in some circumstances they may need a local champion.
I am not quite so absolutist about these proposals as some others who have spoken. However, I hope that my noble friend will listen to the debate, particularly to the points made by my noble friend Lord Tope, and see whether some middle ground can be found that will enable tenants to have this recourse, but perhaps in the normal course of events to encourage people to seek to settle matters locally.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this is the first time that I have spoken on Report so I should declare a few interests. I am an elected member of a district council in Lancashire, a vice-president of the LGA, a vice-president of the Open Spaces Society and a member of the access, conservation and environment group of the British Mountaineering Council. Those are the interests I can think of that might come up during Report. If I have any others, I shall declare them later.
I apologise for having to nip out of the Chamber for the latter part of the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the beginning of the speech by my noble friend Lord Tope. I can assure everyone that I probably agree with every word that they said, even when I was not here, on the basis of what they have said otherwise. We had a glowing account from the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, about how wonderful the complaints and resolution system is in her housing association.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Greaves
Lord True
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 148AZZF. We are approaching a critical new section of the Bill and I want to underline that I do not seek to challenge the concept of neighbourhood planning or public participation in it—both are absolutely essential. They have been agreed in Committee and so I could not support amendments which seek to remove reference to neighbourhood forums in any circumstances. However, I oppose a straitjacket being placed on local authorities in relation to how they should go about neighbourhood planning.
The Local Government Association has written to many noble Lords saying that the Bill adds unwanted levels of bureaucracy and Whitehall interference that threaten to squeeze the life out of a fluid, flexible and localist system that is currently in operation. I would not go as far as that but I believe that in its present form the Bill could delay effective neighbourhood planning in many places as much as it accelerates it.
Amendment 148ZZEA is clearly defective in its drafting. It was drafted in this way in order not to leap ahead of another amendment that was later withdrawn. However, I hope its purpose is clear and that the Committee will be able to support its principles. They are that there should be an expectation of every local authority to have satisfactory arrangements for neighbourhood planning and that those arrangements must be approved by the Secretary of State. If those arrangements do not exist—I repeat, do not exist—the ideas set out in Schedules 9 and 10 could have effect. In other words, it seeks to replace a one-size-fits-all approach regulated from the top towards neighbourhood planning with a more open public service framework that enables a range of different local approaches to neighbourhood planning which are suited to different local circumstances. Under a framework like this, a recalcitrant authority that is not involving its local people as it should can still be obliged to do so, albeit with the rather cumbersome machinery laid out in the Bill.
My view is that good local authorities can be trusted to, and encouraged to, trust and involve local people in planning their futures. It has been a frequent thread in this Committee that the Bill’s approach seems too often based on the view that local authorities cannot be trusted and must be made to operate centrally designed systems. We had that in the section on the community right to bid where a sensible backstop system to protect key community facilities became transformed in the writing of the Bill into a potential engine of bureaucracy.
I was moved to put down this amendment after entertaining dozens of dedicated local authority workers who had given up Saturday after Saturday and much other of their spare time to help our local communities in working up neighbourhood plans. One of those local authority officers—with a lot of justifiable pride in her case because she had done more than most—said to me, “It has been a great experience. People want to take part. They welcome it so much. It is so rewarding to be breaking new ground”. Of course, she was right, although our authority is far from alone. The Local Government Association brief gives us many other examples of innovative activity right across the country. People want more say in local planning and the Bill’s instincts are right. The Government’s interest in it is welcome but—this is a big but—why must it be presumed to be done only in the elaborate way in the schedules to this part of the Bill?
As I have said before, more than 15,000 people have taken part in our neighbourhood planning process. I think the assumption should be that every citizen and business in a village or neighbourhood should be involved in the process, which is why in my other amendment in this group, Amendment 148AZZF, I suggest that the default position should be that all people should be involved in deciding who forms a neighbourhood forum. That is also the effect of Amendment 148AZZFA and other amendments from my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Greaves. Why should it not be the case for all local people, supported and facilitated by a good local authority, and not a selected few—as few as 21 people in this Bill—who may well claim to represent their area but could well be representative of only part of competing local opinions? Why those few and not others? Is not everyone’s voice equal in matters affecting their own area? Indeed, you could argue that good neighbourhood planning should reach beyond established local pressure groups and amenity bodies, which already have a voice, and not go through them.
I ask my noble friends to consider allowing different approaches, without the need for forums or potentially costly referendums in every case. I am not challenging the basic structure of the backstop in the Bill but I am asking for a more permissive approach. Some may say that we have to legislate for all local authorities in the same way. I profoundly disagree with that. As I said at Second Reading, good community engagement and good local planning should be spontaneous and flexible, even anarchic. One size fits all will choke those qualities and good local planning should enable variety from place to place. Surely, the whole idea of localism is that diversity should be encouraged.
While I freely acknowledge that the words of my amendment may not be right, I hope that between now and Report the Government will give active and serious consideration to the approach that I am suggesting: namely, to have an overriding expectation of local authorities to carry out neighbourhood planning but to do it in a way that liberates and supports existing innovation and fits their own area, and for the Government to have powers in reserve to require the same spirit of community engagement from those other authorities which are not as complying as local people might wish. That would be real localism.
I have views about many aspects of neighbourhood planning that are covered in this group but, in the interests of making progress, I will leave it there for now, as other noble Lords have amendments. However, I cannot sit down without at least welcoming the intent behind Amendment 148AA, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hanham, and others in the group which accept points made at Second Reading that an unelected neighbourhood forum, once set up, should not be untouchable for five years, as it is in the Bill. I am a little disappointed in the briefing being circulated that says the removal of a forum’s designation should be a rare occurrence. I do not see why a fixed set of people should remain in place for five years, unelected, when an elected council can be removed after four years. However, the acceptance that a forum may be disbanded, replenished or renewed is welcome. It represents an excellent first step away from some of the rigidities built into this part of the Bill. I thank my noble friend for that and I only hope that we can tempt my noble friends further. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
I start by agreeing with pretty much everything that the noble Lord, Lord True, has just said. I have more than a few amendments in this group—I will speak generally and raise the questions they bring up rather than go through them individually.
Liberal Democrats are supportive of and excited by the concept of neighbourhood planning but we have two practical criteria to apply to this Bill. First, we want it to work; and secondly, we want it to work in the interest of local communities. We are not sure that the Bill as it stands does that. We are into a new world—a new architecture—of a new neighbourhood planning system based on neighbourhood areas and on authorised and qualifying bodies to carry out planning functions in these areas, which may be parish councils; or, in unparished areas, neighbourhood forums. These bodies can make neighbourhood development orders and neighbourhood plans. This is quite revolutionary stuff.
I will indicate my recent experience of neighbourhood planning at this stage. In recent years I have been involved, as a local councillor, in several master-planning exercises under the housing market renewal programme in east Lancashire, involving consultation with and participation by local residents and businesses in areas of Victorian terraced housing and local industry. I was also a member of the Whitefield Regeneration Partnership in a similar, but mainly Asian heritage, area in Nelson with special conservation status that started with an inquiry-by-design process run by the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment. I was a member of the partnership board which was chaired by my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland.
Issues and questions raised by our amendments include the designation of neighbourhood forums. We question the concept in the new Section 61F(5)(a)(ii) of the Town and Country Planning Act of a neighbourhood forum set up solely for,
“promoting the carrying on of trades, professions or other businesses”.
There is a government amendment to this effect. The question is whether this will mean businesses giving themselves planning permission via a neighbourhood development order. What is the role of residents—both those living in the area, however few they may be, or residents living just outside the area, who may be many—who may be affected by nuisances caused and decisions made?
My noble friend Lord True has already referred to the membership of neighbourhood forums. We are concerned that their membership must be inclusive and their internal processes democratic, so that everyone who lives in the area and all councillors representing the area can take part in neighbourhood planning, and to make sure that the forums are representative of all social and geographical parts of the local community. Similar amendments deal with this issue. This is a central issue for us in this part of the Bill. It is absolutely crucial that we do not end up with neighbourhood forums that are run by a local clique for their own particular purposes. In what ways does the Bill guarantee this? What extra prescribed conditions for possible designation of an organisation or body as a neighbourhood forum are intended in new Section 61F(6)? In particular will narrow profit-making bodies be allowed to set up as neighbourhood forums? These are crucial matters, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
On parish councils as neighbourhood areas, new Section 61G(3) says in the case of a parish council the specified area,
“must be one that consists of or includes the whole or any part of the area of the council”.
So a neighbourhood area, for neighbourhood planning purposes, can be the area of a parish council or a part of the area of a parish council. Can two or more parish councils combine to form one neighbourhood area? This is an obvious question in relation to small parish councils that are simply not big enough to do the job on their own. And what happens in areas that only have parish meetings?
Neighbourhood development orders effectively give planning permission outside the normal system. We will be talking about these orders quite lot in the coming hours. What can be done to create democratic legitimacy in areas without parish councils? Is there not a serious democratic deficit if self-appointed neighbourhood forums are able to make neighbourhood development orders and indeed neighbourhood plans? This is a critical issue for us—the democratic deficit at the neighbourhood level in areas that are unparished. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I was discussing this matter when, some time ago, the Chief Whip suggested that I should sit down and that we should move on. I thought that that was a bit unfair but I will briefly make two points. The important point made by my noble friend Lord Lucas is that of linking neighbourhood planning with the formation of new parishes. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Shipley, who is not in his place, said that a mechanism to do that would be extremely valuable. At the moment, the problem with creating new parishes is that it requires a local governance review by the principal council, the district or unitary council, which can take quite a long time.
These principal councils are not always terribly enthusiastic about creating new parishes. If someone comes along with a petition or whatever, they will be forced to have a local governance review but they may not take it very seriously. There are a number of instances where there has been a clear demand for a new parish council on the ground and the principal council responsible has simply blocked it and said “No, you can’t have it”. If this new Bill is to be a stimulus for the creation of lots of new parishes, of which I am certainly in favour, there needs to be a way in which the Government can link that to this legislation, whether in primary legislation or in some other way, and perhaps change the advice that is given to councils about local governance reviews, thus making it much easier to carry out the review and to create the parishes. I say that as someone who lives in a borough which is now totally parished. The fact that it is totally parished is not entirely unconnected with my activities in the past 30 years.
Lord True
My Lords, I support the spirit of my noble friend’s amendments, particularly Amendments 150 and 167, although I slightly fell out of love with Amendment 167 when I read the last few words, which refer to,
“any guidance issued by the Secretary of State as to the definition of ‘community views’”.
That might be determined more locally. Otherwise, the light-touch approach was much to be welcomed. I also strongly agree with my noble friend’s point about traffic controls, parking and so on. In my contention, ultimately, we should move towards a position where high street shops and shop owners have a decisive role in deciding how those matters should be policed locally.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Greaves(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
I am grateful to my noble friend for that intervention. Libraries are an example of this. In some parts of the country they are very controversial at the moment because they are being closed down on quite a large scale, while in other places they are not. So long as the existing funding for a library may be transferred to districts, there is no reason at all why districts cannot take libraries over. Indeed, the municipal boroughs before 1974 were the library authorities, and many of the fairly new libraries that now exist were built by the boroughs and not by the county council. If the county council is seriously looking at reorganising its library service, one of the ways in which it could perhaps increase the efficiency of libraries and local involvement in them is by transferring at least some of them to the districts. I am not saying that that is an ideal solution everywhere, but it is something that ought to be challengeable. There are a number of things like that.
As for national services, the ward I represent on the council had a recent problem of raw sewage flowing down from an inefficient septic tank system on a caravan site on a hillside and causing real problems to residents in the lane below. Noble Lords can imagine what their back gardens were like—not very pleasant at all. The Environment Agency became involved in this. It came and went and came and went, and the district council, which has no direct responsibility for it, became involved, and in the end it was the district council that actually organised the system, spent the money and connected the caravan site to the main sewage system. It then recharged the people who lived on the site and the people who own it. It was the district council that actually sorted it out on the ground, even though, as far as I could work out, the statutory responsibility lay with the Environment Agency. That is a classic example of the kind of service that, if transferred at a local level to a competent local council, might well be run better.
As for the river system, the Environment Agency is responsible for main rivers, but certainly in our part of the world some of the things that are classified as main rivers are tiny little streams. There is no reason at all why they should not be the responsibility of the district council. The district council has no statutory responsibility for rivers and it is not funded by government for it, but some district councils employ drainage officers because they are the sensible people on the ground who sort out flooding and drainage problems when they occur. How much better if they were actually statutorily responsible for it? I therefore support the noble Lord’s amendment with some enthusiasm, and put mine forward with enthusiasm as well.
Lord True
My Lords, I put my name to the first of the two amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and I endorse all that he said. I can imagine my noble friends the Ministers saying that it is not possible to graft this on to the Bill at this stage, but the principle is a very good one, as my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Moynihan have also said. If the Ministers cannot accede to these amendments now, I hope that they might be prepared between now and Report to talk to local authorities and local government associations about ways in which local authorities might be given opportunities to suggest ways of localising more services.
I must apologise—and this may be a relief to some—that I have to attend a full council meeting later this evening, and if I am not in my place at 7 pm, with the less-than-coalitionist ardour that there is on opposition benches in Richmond I might find that a division is called. I could not support my noble friend on the list of challengeable services because—and he has made this point—it would cause bureaucratic problems for local authorities. I did not put down amendments to Clause 74, which comes later, because it would have been discourteous, anticipating that I was not going to be here. However, I must say that the other form of list that your Lordships will discuss later this evening might, in my estimation, need at least two officers to compile these kinds of lists. Therefore, while encouraging my noble friends the Ministers to resist my noble friend’s amendment, I also hope—in anticipation, as it were—that they will think more carefully later about the other lists that are imposed on local authorities in this Bill.
Finally, I support the suggestion about counties and districts, and of course I also support the principle relating to the Greater London Authority and London boroughs. Self-evidently, there are many things—in an earlier debate I gave the example of running high streets —that London boroughs could do far more effectively than a regional authority. I hope again that my noble friends the Ministers will consider that too.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Greaves(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
My Lords, the amendments in this group need not detain us for long. They have been tabled to probe the appropriateness of the word “misleading” as the criterion a local authority can use to change the wording of a referendum question. It must consult the people who have put forward the petition before doing so, but I am not sure that the word “misleading” covers everything. For example, an authority might want to improve the grammar of a question. As my noble friend Lord Tope said, petitions to councils even for something as important as a referendum are not necessarily written in the most appropriate phrases. If more felicitous wording can be introduced, it may be an improvement, but I am not sure whether that would make the question any more or less misleading. There may be inappropriate words in the question, which the council thinks are slang or rude, but once they are removed the petition remains perfectly valid.
More substantively, a question might be asking for action from the wrong people. It might ask the council to do something which it cannot do, but the council might be able to do other things. I am trying to think of an example. There is a gap in the railway line between Colne and Skipton on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border, and a campaign called SELRAP is working to have it reinstated. Noble Lords might have had communications from the group because it is vigorous in pursuing its case with everybody. I am not sure whether I should declare an interest as a patron of SELRAP since I am talking about it, but I was bullied into it. A petition might ask Pendle or Craven council, or even Lancashire or North Yorkshire county council, to reinstate the railway line. Regrettably, that is not within the power of any of those local authorities. On the other hand, it is within their power to provide funds to SELRAP and to push the process of assessing proposals for the reinstatement of the line further along the road. The GRIP process is a series of steps that all cost money, and the authority could contribute towards it.
A petition might come in asking any of the councils to put in a new railway line, but it would be rejected on the grounds that it had nothing to do with them. On the other hand, the councils could ask for a differently worded petition so that SELRAP could be funded to undertake the next batch of work necessary to get Network Rail, the Government and everyone else to pay attention. Alternatively, it might be a county council matter but the petition is sent to the district council, or vice versa. Those are helpful changes, and I do not think the word “misleading” describes them.
Amendments 128T and 128V were meant to probe the question of holding the referendum on the same day as elections, and whether that is a good or a bad thing. We have discussed this in some detail so it is not necessary to pursue it any further. Amendment 128U looks at how quickly a referendum has to take place once a council determines that it should be held. If it is generally thought that in order to save money and for general convenience, a referendum should be held on the same day as an election, and that election is due within 12 months, the amendment would make it possible, at the discretion of the council, to delay the referendum for up to 12 months rather than only up to the six months provided for in the Bill. In most cases referendums brought forward during the summer and autumn would have to be freestanding and would therefore cost perhaps three times as much. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, this amendment probes the material about the referendum and the question published by the local authority holding the referendum. Clause 53(4) says:
“Subject to subsection (5), the principal local authority may publish, or arrange for the publication of, material that is designed to encourage support for or opposition to the question to be asked in the referendum”,
while Clause 53(5) says this applies only to referendums which are,
“held in response to a petition”,
from the public, “or a request” from a member or members of the authority and that the authority can,
“incur only such expenditure as is reasonable”,
whatever that may mean.
I am moving this amendment to take out those two subsections as a means of probing how they will work and what they mean. I have also put down Amendments 128Y and 128Z, which say that if the local authority produces material in support and/or opposition to the question, it has to do so in a fair and balanced way. It has to give,
“equal prominence to the arguments”,
on each side. That mirrors what happens in national referendums, where the Government, or the Electoral Commission on behalf of the Government, publish statements which say, “On the one hand, vote yes; on the other hand, vote no”. They put a fair and balanced argument. In this new world of local referendums, it is not clear to me whether local authorities are going to be able to churn out publicity on one side only, or to be strongly in favour of one side and against the other, and whether that is intended or desirable. This is a very important question that needs careful bottoming.
My understanding is that the Electoral Commission has expressed some concern about this and believes that there should be balance, although I was looking for the stuff that I think I have had from it before this debate and I could not find it. I cannot quote exactly what it is saying but it would be interesting to have a definitive view from the Electoral Commission on this matter, certainly before we get to Report. It is fairly obvious that this is an important matter and that there may be different views on it, but our view is that a council ought to be putting out fair and balanced publicity, if it wishes to put out publicity at all. It ought to have the option not to spend any more money than it is already and to keep out of the argument altogether. The Bill suggests that it can because it says:
“the principal local authority may publish, or arrange for the publication of”,
with the clear implication there that it does not have to if it does not want to.
Particularly where a referendum is tied in heavily with the local political argument and where referendums and local elections get intertwined, as I think will be inevitable, it will be dangerous for local authorities to get involved on one side of an argument. The political party running a local authority may strongly be on one side with the party in opposition, which might be ready to take over if it wins enough seats, on the other. For the local authority to weigh in with public money in those circumstances seems to me to be wrong in principle. I am not saying that people should not campaign; people should campaign, but they should go out and organise their own campaigns.
Amendment 128AA seeks to put some controls on expenditure on this kind of publicity in a referendum on which the local authority spends its own money. It seeks to harden up the word “reasonable” by saying that it has to be approved by a meeting of the council. The meeting of the council that determines that a referendum should take place should also decide whether the local authority spends any money on it and how much; it should set a budget for it, because, in any case, this will be all be money outside the council’s agreed budget. I assume that councils will not put contingency sums in their budget in case they have referendums. They will all be hoping that they do not have any, from that point of view. They will not want to put the council tax up or cut other services at budget time in order to put money aside for referendums, so I assume they will not do that and therefore it may well need a supplementary vote by the full council anyway, if it is a full-scale referendum and is costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Where is it going to come from? The council will have to decide, so it would be part of that.
I would put forward Amendment 128AA only on the basis that the council was going to be even-handed. The council being able to vote sums of money to one side in a highly politically contentious question is a very dangerous way forward. This is put forward as genuinely probing, to find out what the Government’s views are, but it is also a considerable concern that might need a bit more thought before Report.
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.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord True and Lord Greaves(13 years, 5 months ago)
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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 Greaves
My Lords, I have one amendment in the group and I shall speak to the others. I start by saying that we support the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. They form part of a recurring theme in our discussions on this Bill, which is that while the Government’s proposal is that localism should be more prevalent and that there should be more localism in authorities and among local people, it is being done within a highly prescribed framework and is subject to a large number of orders and regulations from the centre. In other words, it is top-down localism, not genuine localism. There is absolutely no reason at all why this amount of central control and prescription of local authorities should take place. It was not the case when I first became a councillor 40 years ago. We had nothing like this amount of central control when the new authorities were set up in 1973 and elected in 1974. It has crept in over the years from both Conservative and Labour Governments, and we are now getting more of it from the coalition.
Lord True
My Lords, I do not want to prolong the philosophical discussion about which system is better but given the principles behind a Localism Bill, clearly the matter should be decided locally and as soon as possible. I am not speaking as a representative of London Councils, but the matter came up at a recent meeting of the leaders’ executive of London Councils and the leaders of all the parties unanimously agreed that they would like the Government to think again about this proposal. We hope that the amendment spoken to by my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Palmer will gain favour in the Government’s eyes. I submit that what goes for London goes for authorities outside London as well.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I support this sensible and well drafted amendment; my noble friend understands that joke. I want to make two points. First, if councils are to be able to choose the system of governance that they want, let it not be too bound by lots more regulation. Councils used to exist before 2000 and operated committee systems. They did not have lots of statutory guidance, regulations and orders telling them how to run them. They do not need that. Councils can perfectly well set up committees and run sensible committee systems without lots of new regulations.
Secondly, let us not imagine that there was a wonderful era of local representative democracy before 2000, when local authorities everywhere used the committee system, and that it suddenly all went bad when we had to have the executive/scrutiny split, the appointment of leaders, and so on. Life is not and was not like that. In the past, there were councils that operated efficiently, openly and transparently, involved residents and carried out their duties sensibly and efficiently; and there were councils that were pretty hopeless. That has remained the case, even though their systems have changed. Surprise, surprise—those councils that were not so good before 2000 have been not so good since. Of course, councillors can improve and some go the other way but, by and large, it is simply not true that everything was wonderful before 2000 and that everything has been awful since. Different systems may well suit different types and sizes of councils, and the dispositions of different councillors.
I hope that my council will adopt a new committee system and abandon the executive/scrutiny split, although I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that when you are in control of the council, the executive system allows you to do all sorts of things fairly quickly, and you can just get on and do it. Looking back on the five or six years during which we controlled my council and I was involved on the executive, I have to say that I am not terribly proud of the way in which we made some of the decisions out of the public gaze. Of course, they were all rubber-stamped in a proper and legal manner but, in practice, the decisions were made by a small group of people consisting of top councillors and officials who decided what we wanted to do. It may be that that was always the case and that it will happen under a committee system, but the importance of a committee system, as a noble Lord said earlier, is that the scrutiny process can take place at the time that the decision is being made in the committee. This is one of the real reasons for committees and for not having single-party executives making all the decisions.
I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, is not in her place. She and I were together on Lancashire County Council and we have discussed this in the past. I extolled the virtues of the committee system when it all changed to what I think is the appalling way in which that council now makes decisions, a large number of which are made by a single member of the executive—a cabinet member, portfolio member, or whatever they call themselves—sometimes meeting as a single-person committee, with all the officers and just one person in the middle making all the decisions. That is not the right way to do local government. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, would say, “Yes, but even under the committee system, when the Labour Party controlled the county council, the decision was made in the Labour group and very rarely changed”. I would say, “Yes, but occasionally it was changed, particularly when I stood up and pointed a few things out. You made a few changes”. The point is that the decisions were subject to debate and scrutiny in public at the time and at the moment they were being made. That does not happen under a lot of executive systems. The decisions we made on my council, when we were able to do so through the executive route, might have been better if we had had more people there challenging what we were saying and the workability of what we were doing, and persuading us to make some improvements. That is the advantage of the committee system.
However, I hope that people will not continue talking about “going back” to the committee system. We do not want to go back to the old committee system. We who hope that our councils will now move to a committee system want them to learn from the experience of the last 10 years and adopt some of the good things that have happened—scrutiny done well is very good. I know that many councils do not do scrutiny very well at all and that scrutiny committees are simply places to make back-bench councillors think that they actually have a job on the council, but scrutiny can be done very well indeed.
I am sorry that my noble friend Lady Hamwee is not here because she is an expert in scrutiny and would wax more lyrical about it than me. However, I hope that councils which are going to move forward to a new committee system—not an old dinosaur system—will keep the best parts of scrutiny because, done well, it has a role to play. What it does not do is the day-to-day, week-by-week scrutiny of decisions as they are taking place and that is why we want to go back to committees.
I say these things because this is the first time we have discussed the very welcome proposals by the Government to allow councils to make the choice, which some of us have argued for whenever it has come up in this House in the last 10 years. It is very welcome, the Government are to be congratulated, and I hope as many councils as feel it is sensible will go ahead with it.
Lord True
My Lords, my noble friend might be disappointed that I rise at this point, but I gave her notice that I might do so at some point.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made a very interesting and thoughtful intervention which I hope everyone in the House will reflect on. It is absolutely beyond doubt that the coalition agreement, and indeed my own party’s manifesto, made very clear that it wishes the mayoral principle to be extended further, specifically in the cities listed in the noble Lord’s amendment, and he has acknowledged that. From my point of view, therefore, it is absolutely clear that we should support and accept that, as I believe it has, in the traditional sense, a mandate. However, our own party’s manifesto, and the coalition agreement as I read it, did not go beyond that into extending the general principle.
There is at least scope for some discussion on this subject. I have an open mind on it, and I am open to be persuaded by my noble friend and others in the House. In the context of a localism Bill, it is a very strange concept that a Secretary of State of whatever political hue can in effect lift the telephone and say, “You’re going to have a mayoral arrangement in your authority”, even if there has been no clear localist wish for one. If people want a mayor and there is scope for one, and if a campaign for a mayor gains ground, there may be circumstances in which the Secretary of State might be tempted to wish that he had such a power, but I hope that over the next few weeks, while assuring my noble friend of my absolute support for the principles set out in the coalition agreement and in the manifesto, she might be prepared to reflect on whether the best way to advance even what you think is a good idea is to take the power to impose it potentially on the unwilling.
In some way or another we might be able to explore, in the traditions of this House, some way in which the absolute exercise of such potential power could be limited. My noble friend will be relieved to hear that I cannot support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, but I hope that we can have some constructive engagement on this point.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have one or two questions. First, what evidence do the Government or anyone else have that in these 11 cities, including Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Wakefield—the metropolitan district of Wakefield is technically a city, but is in fact a collection of towns, as I know well because I grew up there—Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Nottingham and Bradford—there is an overwhelming demand, or indeed any significant demand, in these places for an elected mayor? In the absence of such a demand, forcing a referendum on people that is likely to be rejected in the majority of these places—perhaps all but two or three places are likely to reject it, or perhaps they will all reject it—is an astonishing waste of money.
Secondly, can the Minister tell us how much it will cost to hold a referendum in each of these 11 places? Although I may have missed something, the only place I can recall where there was a significant campaign for an elected mayor was Liverpool. It was led by some high-profile people, some of whom were connected with broadcasting organisations. However, the campaign failed to get through the present system to requisition a referendum. It is clear that in each of these places it would be difficult to raise the 5 per cent of genuine signatures for a referendum. In those circumstances, it is extraordinary that in a Bill called “localism”, the Government are imposing from the centre their own version of how local democracy should work.
People might argue that an elected mayor is a more localist system than an elected council, council leader and so on. But it is difficult to see how they can argue that it is more localist. They might argue that it is more efficient, more effective or more exciting, or that more people will turn out to vote, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, that is not likely. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us the criteria that the Government have used to make them think that this provision of top-down centralised instructions to people on the ground on how to run their cities fits in with a Bill called “localism”.
Thirdly, what evidence have the Government got that, in those places which have already got elected mayors, taking them as a whole, the system of local government is better than it was previously? There are places where the system is working very well. I would point, as I would anyway, to Watford, which has a Liberal Democrat mayor and a Liberal Democrat council, which helps a lot because they work closely together. But I suspect that, without an elected mayor but with a Liberal Democrat majority, the Liberal Democrat elected councillors and, thus, mayor would work together and would be a good council anyway.
I am not arguing that Liberal Democrat councils are always better than other councils. We all know perfectly well that, while we all pretend that our councils are better in different ways than everyone else’s, it is not always the case. As I keep saying, there are good councils and bad councils, and most councils are somewhere in-between, which goes right across the parties. They may have different approaches to things but in terms of whether they are good, bad, efficient, inefficient or whatever, it goes across the spectrum.
There are councils run well by mayors. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, mentioned some in London. There are also councils which may have elected mayors but do not run so well. Local politics and local administration in Stoke-on-Trent has been a basket case for some considerable time. Having an elected mayor made absolutely no difference. You could argue that it made it worse. Another example is Doncaster, another council which has not had a good reputation for being efficient, open, honest and all sorts of things over the years. It now has an elected English Democrat mayor. Does that make the administration in Doncaster any better? The Government do not think so because they keep putting people in Doncaster to sort it out and to run things.
There are places where the local political culture is conducive to being run efficiently, whichever party is running it. There are places where the local political culture is conducive to it being a shambles and very difficult for whoever is running it to sort out. There is no evidence whatever that those places with elected mayors are on average run any better or any worse than those without elected mayors. Surely, if the Government are going to impose things like this from the centre, it should be on the basis of the evidence. If it could be proved to me that imposing mayors on these 11 places would suddenly make them better run than they are, I would consider it, but I have to say that the big cities in England, taken as a whole, have been one of the success stories of local government and administration over the past 10 to 20 years. Not all of them by any means—I do not want to mention particular cities—but some have been outstandingly successful. That is under the present system, so why will having a mayor make a difference?
Unless we can be given some very clear evidence, this just seems to be policy developed on the whim of a few people at the top of and within the present Government. That is not a reason for supporting it. I accept that if something is in the coalition agreement, as a Liberal Democrat I start from the presumption that I will support it. Some things in the agreement are so important to the coalition, so crucial and critical, that even though I think they are completely bonkers, I will go through the right lobby in support of the Government. There have been certain constitutional issues recently where that has been the case. However, I do not believe that whether you have elected mayors in 11 places, or you have expensive referendums for elected mayors to decide whether to have them in London, are matters that are fundamental to the foundations of this coalition Government. So if the House of Lords booted it out or if it goes to a Division at any stage, I have to say to my own party and anyone else who wants to listen, I will find it very difficult indeed not to support the proposition.