Baroness Keeley
Main Page: Baroness Keeley (Labour - Life peer)
Andrew Stunell
I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s case deployed in the debate.
I am pleased to report that there is a very broad measure of agreement, both inside and outside the House, on the Bill’s principles and, indeed, on many of its specific provisions.
Local authorities will need to ensure the delivery of more responsive services in a more transparent way, so that their citizens can see what is going on. To do so, local councils will need to innovate, to work across traditional boundaries and to ensure clear lines of accountability to their residents. That will be characterised, above all, by the way in which local democracy is renewed.
Within this very large group of proposed changes, there are a number of new clauses and amendments that hon. Members from all parts of the House have tabled, including the one to which my hon. Friend just referred. We shall debate them, I will consider carefully the points that hon. Members raise and I hope to have the opportunity to respond to them before the close of this debate.
We had a consensual time on the whole in Committee, and I hope that we can carry that forward in our discussion on this group of proposed changes.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
Not wanting to become non-consensual at this early stage, I note that the Minister talks about limits on power, and we are still concerned about the Bill’s 142 extra powers for the Secretary of State. I am puzzled why new clause 12 specifies only the powers in clause 5(1), because they are exactly the same as those in clause 5(2). If there is a concern about limiting the powers of the Secretary of State, it should apply to both subsections. I wonder whether the Minister might cover that point.
Andrew Stunell
I hope to have satisfied the hon. Lady by the time I have completed my remarks. If not, I am sure that she will let me know.
All the Government amendments and new clauses, one way or another, are designed to improve the effectiveness of the Bill, given the range of issues that were raised in Committee, as the Minister of State said, and given outside events, including in particular the passage of the Welsh referendum, which means that some of the provisions that were in prospect earlier on can now be made a reality. To that extent, I hope I can reassure the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) that we are not inserting a whole lot of totally new provisions; we are simply making available to the Welsh Executive the same powers that are being made available in England. I hope he finds that somewhat reassuring.
We have, where appropriate, taken into account feedback from the consultations that have been carried out on elements of the Bill and representations that we have received from a wide range of organisations that have been interested in—and, in some cases, very excited about—the prospect of the Bill coming into force.
Barbara Keeley
This is the point where we have to become non-consensual, because Labour Members are still totally opposed to EU fines, and amendments have been tabled on that.
Andrew Stunell
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that the Bill is not applicable in Northern Ireland. Currently, every local authority in England has to have a statutory code of conduct, so we are not for want of an example. We are saying that there should be flexibility about the shape and nature of the code, and that that flexibility should be exercised by the local authority.
On EU fines and infractions, I assure the House and the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South that we will ensure that any process to pass on an EU fine is fair, reasonable and proportionate, and we will consult on that. We will pass on a fine only if an authority has clearly caused or contributed to causing it, and has the power to remedy the situation and can afford to pay. That is set out in new clauses 13 and 14 and in Government amendments 132 to 143. The measure is not about Ministers reclaiming every penny; it is about giving a strong encouragement not to incur fines in the first place. Local authorities must not be able to assume that if they make a mistake and are in the wrong, the UK taxpayer will pay their bill for them.
It is perhaps worth rehearsing what the process is. EU grants are given with conditions attached. At present, the monitoring, and therefore the risk, falls to central Government and their agencies. In the new, devolved world, that will not always be the case, and with the transfer of control has to come a transfer of risk. The Government do not seek to offload risks that are beyond a local authority’s control—mention has been made of air pollution targets and so on.
That will all be set out in a policy statement, and I can say today that we are making good progress on that. I am placing in the Library a paper from the Greater London authority that has emerged from some of our earlier discussions, and I would very much welcome comments on it. We do not necessarily agree with every single part of it, but it will provide a strong basis for discussion over the next few weeks and we are committed to taking that discussion forward. We have also engaged with the Local Government Association and will continue to do so.
We debated fire and rescue authorities in Committee, and our amendments 92 and 93 are a response to the concerns that the Opposition raised and feedback that we have received from industry partners. They relate to authorities’ powers to charge for attending persistently malfunctioning or wrongly installed automatic fire alarms. It is not in dispute that there should be such a provision for non-domestic premises, but the point was made that domestic premises would also be caught by that power, and probably wrongly so. The amendments simply remove that option from fire and rescue authorities.
We also discussed pay accountability in Committee, and we undertook to return to the House on the matter of greater accountability on low pay in light of Will Hutton’s report on fair pay in the public sector. His report made some clear recommendations, particularly about the benefit of setting decisions on senior pay in the context of the pay of the rest of a body’s work force. Some of the Opposition’s amendments are in the same tone. We are sympathetic to that idea, particularly the potential for linking lower pay with senior pay, and we will consider the best way to take that forward. If necessary, we will return to it in the other place. As we do so, we will remain mindful of the level of burden placed on authorities and ensure that pay decisions remain ones for the appropriate local employer to take and are not dictated by us.
On the other hand, we do not think it would be helpful to use the Bill to address the pay of contracting bodies. Councils, the voluntary sector and businesses, especially small firms, have called on the Government to remove unnecessary burdens and break down barriers in local authority contracting, not increase them. That does not prevent a local authority from developing a local policy to ensure that bodies with which it contracts are open about their rates of pay as a matter of contract. That should remain an issue for local decision making, not central determination.
We have a very large group of amendments, and you no doubt have a large group of Members wishing to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise to the House on the one hand for taking so long and on the other for dealing with some very important topics only in skeleton form. I am pleased to move new clause 12, and in due time I will wish to move the other Government new clauses and amendments in the group. I undertake to listen carefully to Members’ contributions as the debate proceeds.
Barbara Keeley
I am glad that Ministers are still so interested in my website—it makes it worth all the effort of keeping it up to date.
I shall speak first to amendments 36 and 37, which are related to new clause 12. They are intended to protect a list of the most important duties of local councils from the powers that the Secretary of State wants to take in clause 5(1) and (2). I should remind the Minister that he did not answer my question about new clause 12 not applying to clause 5(2). I see that Ministers are looking at the Box and seeing if they can find some inspiration over there.
As I said on Second Reading, the Secretary of State’s power under clause 5(1) and (2) is chilling, because it would allow him to
“amend, repeal, revoke or disapply”
any statutory provision. The Government can keep calling that barrier-busting, but it will still end up being the same swingeing power. The difficulty for those who are opposed to it is that it would leave local councils and the people who use their services at the mercy of the ideology of the current Government and Secretary of State. I know from the debates that we had in Committee that some of the Ministers were opposed to giving Secretaries of State such a level of power in previous local government Bills, and spoke against it. Perhaps they would like to think about why they have had such a change of heart.
Since our debates on the Bill started, the Department has launched its review of the statutory duties of local councils. That means that the nature of the power in question, and how it will be used to sweep away what councils are starting to see as burdens, is now much more under the spotlight. The Government’s focus on duties as “burdens” has caused alarm and great concern to people who rely on the services of their local council. Their concern about the extent of the Secretary of State’s powers to sweep away councils’ duties is greater because of the language that the Government are using to describe the vital duties on which people depend. In the review, councils and the public were asked to specify the bureaucratic burdens that they wished to throw away. In fact, Ministers have allowed all the duties of councils to be listed, and voted on, as “burdens”, “red tape” or “bureaucratic barriers”. In using that language, they do not appear to have considered the importance of many of the statutory duties of local councils.
Strangely, we now find ourselves bartering to try to find out which particular duties might be safe and protected from the Secretary of State. The Department’s website states that the only duties that might be protected are those on libraries and child protection, but the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), ventured in a recent letter to The Guardian that allotments were also safe. It is not reasonable to have only vague reassurances on three out of all the duties of local councils. We have therefore tabled amendments 36 and 37, and I say to Ministers that they must be clearer about protecting the vital duties of local councils—duties that legislation has created, which provide important protections and services on which people rely—from the power that the Secretary of State wants to
“amend, repeal, revoke or disapply”
any statutory provision.
Members should make no mistake about it: there are real concerns about that power. Professor Luke Clements is a leading expert on community care law, and in an article about the statutory provisions that could be swept away by the new power, he stated:
“The list includes large swathes of the Mental Health Act 1983, the Children Act 1989 as well as virtually every community care and carers statute. The suggestion that protecting children or frail elderly people from abuse could be…‘burdensome’ is further evidence of the coalition government’s disdain for the very notion of a welfare state.”
He said of the Government’s approach:
“It is a contempt that has already created a largely lawless regime where fundamental rights, such as the right to a face-to-face assessment”
and
“the right to have assessed needs met regardless of resources…are openly flouted. It is a regime that fuels the daily news stories of disabled, elderly and ill people being failed by public bodies, and experiencing neglect and extreme indignity. In the face of this, the response of the coalition government is not to strengthen the law, but to suggest that it be trashed.”
Andrew Stunell
I have really been disappointed by the hon. Lady’s remarks, which are a travesty of what is in prospect. I spent perhaps a little too long in my speech explaining precisely what new clause 12 will do and making it absolutely clear what it will not do. I am sorry to say that she is making it up, which is not good.
Incidentally, I can answer the hon. Lady’s question about clause 5(2)—as she suggested, inspiration has arrived. It relates only to overlapping powers, so by definition it will not change local authority powers or duties because it will take away only one of the overlapping powers.
Barbara Keeley
I am afraid that I am not convinced by that, and I am not making this up. I know Professor Clements, because he helped to draft much of the carers legislation that went through the House as private Members’ Bills. He, among others, is very concerned.
To respond to the Minister’s point, part of the difficulty is that the conditions set out in Government new clause 12(2) are subjective. It is another lawyers’ charter, because they will have to settle the question of whether or not legislation fits those conditions. The key point is that all the decisions lie completely within the judgment of the Secretary of State. That is what is making people uncomfortable. There is great concern about sweeping away the laws, rights and protections for those who need care. Yesterday in the Palace, I attended a gathering of five all-party groups on disability—I attended as the chair of the all-party group on social care. Two questions were asked of the Bill and the review, and there was a chorus of concern in the room. Ministers can attack me if they want to, but I am representing concern from outside the House.
Citizens Advice has told MPs that it is worried about the broad-ranging powers that clause 5 confers on the Secretary of State. It is worried that the power will be used to revoke or repeal a number of statutory provisions, such as the public sector equalities duty.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister says that he wants power to be given back to local people. Does my hon. Friend agree that giving the Secretary of State 126 new powers contradicts that?
Barbara Keeley
That is a contradiction. In fact, the 126 or 142 new powers—we can count them in different ways—are of great concern.
The list of legislation that we propose in amendment 37 for protection from those new powers may not be perfect—I am sure people can find fault with it—but it is vital to get a clear steer from Ministers that they do not intend to continue to see important council duties as burdens. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Homelessness Act 2002, which is on our proposed list, creates a vital duty for councils to have a strategy for tackling homelessness, or does he agree with Hammersmith and Fulham council, which has asked for that duty to be scrapped? Hammersmith and Fulham also wants to scrap the rough sleeper strategy, and wants not to assess the sufficiency of locally available child care. It wants no requirements on its youth service. Do Ministers believe that Hammersmith and Fulham should be able to shed those duties? That is the key question.
Councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham want to shake off what they view as burdensome duties, but the Opposition’s view is that those council services are vital and should be protected. A list of what is vital and to be protected is the key to that. In Committee, the Minister said:
“Every local authority will retain duties enshrined in other legislation to provide services and not to charge for them, if charging is not allowed at present.”––[Official Report, Localism Public Bill Committee, 1 February 2011; c. 184.]
However, Hammersmith and Fulham wants not to have plans for homeless people, and Wandsworth council plans to charge children £2.50 to use a playground. That is where we are. It is time for Ministers to end the uncertainty that they have generated with their sloppy plans for revising legislation on council duties. It is time for them to reintroduce certainty, so that people know that councils must provide land for allotments and an efficient library service, assess carers’ needs, and have plans for tackling homelessness.
I welcome the Minister’s partial sympathy on proposed new clauses 27 and 28 and the proposed amendments on pay transparency and very much look forward to developments. Much has been said in recent months on top pay in local government. I am sure that Ministers would agree that a great deal of that talk has been stoked by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. However, he has tended not to show the same concern for the lowest paid staff, or for levels of pay among consultants and contractors, who provide £38 billion-worth of goods and services to local government, which is paid for out of the public purse.
Our proposals aim to introduce pay transparency much more fully than the Government plan. We want to shine a light on top pay and low pay, and I welcome the Minister’s sympathy for that. However, the Opposition also want to develop the recommendations in the Hutton review on pay. Ministers said that they would reflect on that review, and I hope they take that seriously. All hon. Members agree that there has been some excessive growth in senior roles in the public sector, but there are also myths about public sector pay. The Local Government Association estimates that of 1.7 million employees in mainstream local government jobs, 60% earn less than £18,000 a year. According to the LGA, more than 400,000 council workers earn less than the living wage, including more than 250,000 who earn less than £6.50 an hour.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a strong point. As a former Unison trade union officer, I know that a high proportion of those low-paid workers—a big majority—are women.
Barbara Keeley
Indeed, a quarter of those who experience in-work poverty are employed by the public sector. In addition, the average public sector pension, at £4,200, is very far from the gold-plated pension that people talk about. Our proposals would introduce greater transparency and help the objective of curbing excessive pay at the top of the scale, because it will be harder for a highly paid council chief executive to defend his or her pay if the public can see what that council pays its lowest-paid members of staff.
The Opposition believe that as well as an approach on top and low pay, we need a fair and consistent approach to transparency in local authority pay. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said in Committee, Will Hutton’s report puts paid to the myths. Public sector employees earn only £1 of every £100 earned by the top 1%, or to put it another way, out of every £100 that is earned by the top 1%, only £1 is earned in the public sector. Therefore, the perception that the public sector is awash with fat cats is a myth, and it does not help when DCLG Ministers spend their time building that myth as a way of dealing with top pay.
The Hutton report confirms that increases in executive pay have been a private sector phenomenon. That is why tackling excess pay should happen not just in the public sector. We should also focus on pay in the private sector when money is paid from the public purse—that is the test. Staff on outsourced local government contracts tend to be concentrated in low-wage sectors such as cleaning, catering, low-skilled manual work and care work. One key question for hon. Members is this: do we want cleaners, care workers and teaching assistants to earn a living wage? The Opposition believe that they should earn such a wage. We therefore hope that Ministers and Government Members agree that the implementation of a senior pay policy in local government would be a double standard if the same logic is not applied to contractors, not least because the local government procurement market is valued at £38 billion.
Will Hutton said in his report that
“it is important that the Fair Pay Code and as far as possible the other recommendations of this Review are extended into the public services industry.”
I hope that Ministers—I welcome the Secretary of State to the Chamber—support Hutton’s proposals to extend pay transparency to those private sector contractors who are paid out of the public purse. Implementation of our proposals would help to ensure that executive pay does not spiral up, that low pay is challenged, and that people can be confident that their local council is spending their money fairly and wisely.
Finally, I support amendments 39 to 41, which are in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and for Birmingham, Erdington. The proposals would remove the power of the Secretary of State, who has just joined us in the Chamber, to direct or order the imposition of shadow mayors. That is one of the most controversial measures in the Bill, and it represents the Government at their most centralising. The Government want to order a local authority to cease its existing form of governance and begin to operate a mayor and cabinet executive. Ministers spent months denying that they intended to try to impose shadow mayors.
I remind the Secretary of State that he gave the following answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on 21 October 2010:
“She seems to be suggesting that we would somehow impose mayors on those 12 cities, but of course we will not-that is completely out of the question. The proposals will be subject to referendums. Once we know the views of the people in those 12 cities, we will move on to the election of a mayor if people vote for that.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 1117.]
[Interruption.] I am getting some confusing signals from Government Members. On the same day, to be clear about the Secretary of State’s intentions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) asked him again whether it was his intention to turn council leaders into mayors before holding a referendum. He stood at the Dispatch Box and referred my hon. Friend back to the earlier question:
“I ruled out the possibility that we would be imposing mayors. This will be subject to a referendum.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 1125.]
He was absolutely clear. However, the proposal in the Bill directly contradicts what the Secretary of State said on that occasion and on other occasions. It is further proof of a Government who say one thing and do another, and it raises further questions about whether what they say can be trusted at all.
Since the debate began on the proposal to impose mayors on 12 of our largest cities, opposition has bubbled up and developed all over the place. Indeed, the day after the Localism Bill was announced, the leader of Bradford council, Councillor Ian Greenwood, told the Bradford Telegraph and Argus newspaper that he was uncomfortable with being given an office to which he had not been elected. In that article, he said:
“My view is this is not the right thing for Bradford… I am uncomfortable about being given an office I wasn’t elected to. I don’t feel it’s the right thing to do. Leadership is not about dictating, it’s about taking people with you”.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend accept that we need a clear line on this? The Secretary of State’s apparent proposal for Birmingham would mean that the person who lost the election this May and will lose it again next May will be imposed on the people of Birmingham, irrespective of how they vote. Surely there is nothing democratic about that.
Barbara Keeley
No, there is absolutely not. I thank my hon. Friend for making that point.
Hon. Members will be interested to know the extent to which there is all-party opposition to these proposals in Bradford. The Conservative group leader on Bradford council also argued against the imposition of a shadow mayor in that city. In the same article, Councillor Anne Hawkesworth said:
“My colleagues and I are not supportive of elected mayors… We do not think that the proposals are suited to the needs of…Bradford.”
Last week, the same issue was reported on again, when the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) said:
“My view is that it should be for the councils to decide if they want to go down the referendum route. The referendum shouldn’t be imposed.”
The Opposition agree. Shadow mayors and referendums on having a mayor should not be imposed. In Bradford at least, it seems, there is Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative opposition to the Government’s proposals. However, there has also been opposition in other councils, including Leeds city council.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
While my hon. Friend is running through a list of authorities, will she also refer to Sheffield—now a Labour-controlled authority, of course? There has been cross-party agreement between Labour and Liberal Democrats, and all are opposed to any mayoral system at all, and certainly opposed to shadow mayors. I am sure that were there any Conservative councillors in Sheffield—which there are not—they would be joining in the opposition as well. Is it not a strange system in which a mayor’s legitimacy comes from being elected by the public, but a shadow mayor’s legitimacy comes from being the representative of most councillors on a council? In Sheffield, that majority of councillors are opposed to the proposals.
Barbara Keeley
Absolutely. I was not going to go through a complete list, but I welcome hearing about what has happened in Sheffield.
It seems that Yorkshire is turning against these proposals en masse, and there has been opposition in other councils—for example, in Leeds city council. The Yorkshire Post quoted its leader, Councillor Keith Wakefield, as saying that these proposals are
“not acceptable in today’s democracy… If people decide they want an elected mayor that’s what they should have, but do it following a vote… I think the idea of a referendum is OK where people have an opportunity to say yea or nay. What’s not right is putting you in a position where there’s been no vote.”
I understand that he would turn down the position whatever happens.
I hope that the hon. Member for Bradford East and his colleagues will support our amendment 41, and vote against the imposition of shadow mayors and referendums on their local councils.
Barbara Keeley
I am about to conclude, so as to leave time for other Members to speak.
I regret that a new group of amendments on scrutiny was not selected for debate tonight. It was debated in Committee, and I hope that it can be taken forward to the other place. I would like to underline again and again that we are still opposed to EU fines.