Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Beecham

Wednesday 24th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I moved an identical amendment to this at both Committee and Report stages of the Bill. I will not rehearse again all the arguments I set out at both stages or the merits of greater transparency, which we discussed in the debate on the previous amendment, the advantages of tackling fraud, corruption, incompetence and inefficiency, or the principled arguments in favour of citizens having the right to know about the services provided for them to the maximum extent possible and of taxpayers knowing as much as possible about the services for which they pay. However, I stress again that this amendment sets out not to promote an increase in transparency so much as to tackle a decrease in transparency which is brought about by the new arrangements under the Bill.

As I said on Report, the Audit Commission, which is being replaced by the provisions of the Bill, was covered by the Freedom of Information Act. My understanding is that in addition to information that it held for its own purposes, which of course was covered by that Act, other information held by auditors would also have been regarded as being held by the commission in certain circumstances, and therefore would also be covered by the Freedom of Information Act—for example, when the Audit Commission was investigating a complaint against a specified auditor, when it was conducting a quality control assessment of an auditor’s work or when it had required an auditor to provide information for the discharge of wider commission functions such as making judgments on local authorities’ use of resources. In such circumstances, such information would have been deemed to be held by the Audit Commission, and therefore would be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. These are important categories of information that cover significant areas of public interest and concern. Yet, as far as I can see, no public authority as defined in the Freedom of Information Act has inherited those responsibilities from the Audit Commission under this Bill. Therefore, under this new regime, such information will no longer be covered by the Freedom of Information Act. I think that it should be.

This restriction of transparency damages the public interest and the amendment seeks to prevent that happening. At previous stages, this amendment received support from all sides of the House and has the support of the Local Government Association. Only the Government have stood out against it. In the light of our previous discussions on this issue and the previous debate today, I hope that they will now change their minds. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right to point out that this is simply a question of preserving, or perhaps reviving, the level terms on which freedom of information has hitherto applied. It is different from the previous case that we debated. No question of cost is likely to be germane to the amendment. It is simply there to ensure that the transparency currently available within a local authority’s documentation is extended to those with which it contracts, subject to the Freedom of Information Act provisions and exemptions. There seems to be an unanswerable case for ensuring that that degree of transparency will apply as it applies now, before the Bill is enacted. I concur with my noble friend who urges on the Government acceptance of this provision, which is different from the previous amendment and to which I can see no possible objection, even from Liberal Democrat Members of your Lordships’ House or, indeed, elsewhere.

Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Beecham

Monday 24th June 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wills]

I am very grateful. My noble friend reinforces the point about the pathetic nature of the Government in accepting these arguments about increased audit fees. They really need not be there. These auditors are getting access to a very lucrative new stream of work and they should pay the price to the public in making information available.

[Lord Beecham]

Before my noble friend withdraws the amendment, what is the present position when a contract is let by the local authority for a particular service in terms of the audit? What is the relationship of the district auditor to a council-commissioned contract in relation to its own service? Does he have access and is he subject to the same disclosure requirements that my noble friend seeks as if the council itself were directly providing that service?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My clear understanding is that auditors do have access to the relevant accounts of the contractor, but that would probably differ a great deal from one contract to another. I therefore need to make sure that in saying that they have access I am talking about all the cases rather than some. It may well be that a number of contracts differ one from the other.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Beecham

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

I support the amendment. I withdrew my own amendment, which was directed to much the same objectives, because I thought that this one was better. It was more comprehensive and generally much more effective than my own.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, so compellingly set out, the transparent setting of standards for elected representatives plays an important part in securing the accountability that is fundamental for the health of any democracy. With the greater powers conferred on local authorities by the Bill should come greater accountability. Yet as this Bill currently stands, it risks some elected representatives not being accountable in that way. It cannot be acceptable to run the risk of leaving any elected representatives so unaccountable.

Voters expect their elected representatives to meet certain standards. They will expect a code of conduct to be in place for their representatives on every local authority and this amendment will ensure that such expectations are met. I very much hope that the further dialogue about which there has been so much conversation in the debate already will produce an outcome that embeds if not the exact words in these amendments at least something that achieves their effect.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I feel obliged to pay particular attention to the need to declare interests as I reply on behalf of the Opposition to this debate, so I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council, as a recently appointed member of its standards committee and as an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association. I join other colleagues in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and his co-signatories on bringing forward these amendments. I fear that the tiredness of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, may account for the fact that he omitted to recall that several of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, myself and others raised the whole agenda of standards boards and committees at earlier stages of the Bill.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Wills and Lord Beecham

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, this is the first in a series of amendments on the position of standards committees. A small number of us might like to have seen the Standards Board preserved, but clearly that will not happen. The focus of this amendment and subsequent amendments, which will be moved by other noble Lords, is on the preservation of standards committees in councils. This amendment deals with the position on page 256 of the Bill of authorities which currently have such committees and it would amend the previous legislation to omit most, if not all, of those listed. It is probably an accident of grouping that it appears here rather than with Amendment 97, to which I have added my name and which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, will move. I assume that the noble Baroness will not be here. I apologise to your Lordships for the fact that if we go more than a few minutes past seven o’clock, I will not be here either because I need to get back to my home in the north tonight. In case that eventuality arises, I add my strong support to the requirement for standards committees to be preserved. We need a mechanism in councils that is independently chaired—other amendments go into the detail of how such a procedure might work—to retain the confidence of the public in the standards to be observed by those who represent them locally. I hope that it will not be the same as the standards regime in another place but experience suggests that there is a need for a properly constructed scheme under which complaints can be ventilated and dealt with speedily, locally and impartially to sustain confidence in local democracy. To that end I move this amendment and indicate my support for the subsequent amendments.

[Lord Wills]

I hope that my noble friend will comment on a concern brought to me by a constituent when I was the Member of Parliament for North Swindon, which powerfully illustrates the case that he is making for the amendment.

A couple of years ago the constituent came to me with his concerns about the Wyvern theatre in Swindon, which is owned by Swindon borough council but the management of which is contracted to a private company. My constituent had learnt that the business of the lead member in the Swindon borough council cabinet with primary responsibility for letting this management contract had been given thousands of pounds worth of business—from memory, it had been given £10,000 to £12,000 worth of business—by the theatre. It was clear that the councillor concerned had acted properly in leaving the room whenever this contract was discussed. However, that did not satisfy my constituent who made the point to me over and over again that if a Minister had been in an analogous position there would have been a scandal and the Minister would have had to resign. He kept saying to me that even if the councillor had done nothing wrong himself, the private management company might still be trying spontaneously to curry favour with that councillor as his decisions could be of enormous importance to its commercial well-being.

I told my constituent that in my view there was nothing necessarily wrong with a councillor getting business in this way. Councillors are not paid a salary in the same way as Members of Parliament are, for example, and most councillors need to earn a living. I told my constituent that the way to deal with the matter was to find out whether a proper procurement process had been followed, whether the contract had been put out to tender, if it had not been, why not, and if it had been, how many people had responded to the tender, what prices had been offered and whether the contract had been awarded on price, quality or for some other reason—in other words, whether it was all transparent. My constituent pursued this route and I did so on his behalf. We went to the council, which could not do anything. We went to the private company which was not covered by the freedom of information legislation and refused to give any information, so the situation was completely opaque and remains so to this day.

I hope the Minister will agree that such a lack of transparency on such a potentially sensitive issue is not acceptable and that this amendment may provide a way to tackle the opaque nature of such a transaction. I am sure that this situation is not unique to Swindon. If the amendment is not acceptable, perhaps the Minister can come up with some other proposal. I hope my noble friend will agree that his amendment would help to deal with this sort of issue.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I am not sure that it would. Standards committees were established to investigate allegations about members’ conduct. If a member has complied with the requirements of registering an interest and declaring it, unless there was any evidence on the part of a complainant that he had done something improper such as lobbying colleagues behind the scenes or something of that kind, I cannot see that the standards committee route would avail. Other processes might be worth pursuing—for example, via the audit committee of a council or possibly the district auditor. However, I cannot see, in the particular circumstances that my noble friend has outlined, that that would fall within the province of a standards committee or the Standards Board. There does not seem to be a sufficient prima facie case of misconduct on the part of an elected member who has actually declared an interest and absented himself from a decision-making process. I am sorry that that does not sound too helpful, but the system was not designed for such a case as that which my noble friend has outlined.