Baroness Eaton
Main Page: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)Local Government (Review of Decisions) Bill
Baroness Eaton Excerpts
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, my honourable friend Mr Mark Spencer deserves great credit for steering this Private Member’s Bill through another place, from its introduction on 2 July 2014 to its Third Reading on 26 January. The Bill is a common-sense, proportional measure to make local authorities accountable for the health and safety decisions they take about events, and to offer the public a route for redress where a council makes an unreasonable health and safety decision about an event.
We are fortunate in this country to have what we recognise as strong community spirit. The Bill will, I hope, ensure that communities continue to be able to hold events, allow the public to take part in and enjoy those events, and ensure that local authorities work with their communities to ensure that events are successful and safe.
Before I outline why the Bill is necessary and explain what it does, I should be very clear about what it does not do. The Bill does not weaken the very necessary and important health and safety arrangements that exist to protect employees, or the public health and safety regime that is in place nationally. The public, employers, authorities and enforcement organisations have an important role to play in ensuring that not just our workplaces, but our streets and our recreation spaces are safe. Proper and proportionate management of risk is, I think we can all agree, important and to be commended. The Bill will not place any unreasonable demands upon council resources, nor will it place unreasonable increased demand on the resources of the Local Government Ombudsman.
Why is the Bill necessary? At Second Reading in another place, during an extensive and very useful debate about the Bill and its provisions, a number of examples of what might be described as questionable decisions about health and safety at local events were given. If one wants a real and recent example demonstrating that a culture of overzealous application of health and safety really does exist, one need only ask the residents of Banbury in Oxfordshire, who nearly lost their charming mini-library, established in a telephone box, when BT warned it was going to remove the books because of health and safety considerations. In this case, I understand that the town council has stepped in and adopted the telephone box, meaning that the library remains and that the story, appropriately, has a happy ending.
The inspiration for the Bill comes from the 2010 report by my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham, Common Sense, Common Safety. This was produced following a Whitehall-wide review of the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture. In his foreword to the report, the Prime Minister clearly expressed the genesis of the Bill when he wrote that newspapers were reporting ever more absurd examples of senseless bureaucracy that gets in the way of people trying to do the right thing, that we should put a stop to senseless rules that get in the way of volunteering, and that we need a system which is proportionate, not bureaucratic, and which treats adults like adults and reinstates some common sense and trust. In short, while we should never disregard risk, we should ensure that we take a proportionate and common-sense approach to allowing people to enjoy themselves.
The intentions of the Bill are simple. Its provisions go some way towards halting, and even reversing, the risk-averse culture that has grown up in councils. The objectives of the Bill are straightforward. The provisions will encourage councils to give careful consideration to decisions about health and safety at events, bringing an end to unreasonable bans or restrictions on events that are a result of a risk-averse culture rather than a balanced assessment of risk. The Bill will provide a transparent framework for council decisions on health and safety, allowing for scrutiny of council decisions and transparency in the council’s decision-making process. This should lead to sound decision-making on future health and safety decisions.
I make it quite clear that the Bill does not require councils to do anything they should not already be doing. It requires that a council must put in writing a health and safety-related decision that prevents an event taking place or places restrictions on the holding of the event. The Bill also requires that if the person who made the application to the council, or the organiser of the event, requests a review of such a decision, the council must carry out that review. The Bill does not make any provision for how the council will carry out the review—we trust councils to be able to deal with these matters fairly and efficiently. The only stipulation it makes is that the review must be completed within 15 days. The outcome of the review will be that the decision will be confirmed, withdrawn, replaced with another decision or varied, but varied only so far as the decision could have been reached in the first instance. This is, of course, to ensure that any wrong decision can be overturned or modified in time for the event to which the decision relates to take place. These measures bring transparency and accountability to a council’s decision-making process and are—I hope the House will agree—proportionate and sensible.
I turn to the role of the Local Government Ombudsman. The ombudsman is the national body to which individuals who consider they have suffered injustice arising from council maladministration can complain. The ombudsman can investigate and, if fault is found with the council, recommend redress. The ombudsman is a valued and respected part of the democratic process. The Bill makes specific provision for the ombudsman to treat a particular class of complaint differently from another class. Although the ombudsman already has discretion to distinguish the treatment of complaints, this provision will put that discretion beyond doubt and help to reduce the risk of a successful challenge from a member of the public who complains that their case has not been fast-tracked.
In discussing the role of the ombudsman, it is perhaps worth providing some assurances about what the Bill will not do. As I have already indicated, we do not expect the provisions requiring councils to put decisions in writing and to undertake a review of their decision if requested to do so to require them to do anything that they should not already be doing. Nor do I consider that the Bill will have any significant financial consequences for local authorities. In putting in place a local mechanism for the consideration and review of decisions, problems that might otherwise lead to legal action are dealt with by internal procedures and at a local level.
I would like to provide assurance to those concerned that the ombudsman might award compensation to event organisers, not just possibly for the cost of having to cancel an event but also potentially for any funds generated by the event that would, for instance, have gone to charity. The ombudsman can recommend redress, which can include financial remedy, but this remedy is more usually in the hundreds of pounds and not the thousands of pounds. Moreover, we should trust the judgment of the ombudsman in these cases. Finally, the recommendations of the ombudsman are just that—recommendations. He does not make binding rulings and cannot compel a council to comply with its recommendations, although the overwhelming majority of councils do comply.
The Bill makes sensible provisions about local transparency and accountability, and fast-tracking redress when things cannot be resolved at a local level. More than that, it seeks to make a change to the risk-averse culture that has grown up in councils by making officials consider carefully their decisions. It is hoped that the Bill will result in local authorities working together with their communities to enable them to continue to put on events that are safe and enjoyable. These events are important for the community, and community cohesion is important for everyone.
In summary, this Bill is a common-sense and proportional measure. I hope that with the support of the House we can move forward. I beg to move.
Baroness Eaton
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, for his support and that of Her Majesty’s Government for the Bill. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. Like him, I regularly share in many community activities, and to think that some overzealous bureaucrat can spoil these events does not really bear thinking about. I will certainly view the noble Lord in a new light and wonder whether, in December, we will see him in somewhat different garb in the Chamber.
We have all read so often about the increasing list of apparently ridiculous decisions made on supposed health and safety grounds and have all seen so many risk-averse officials. This Bill will not affect the general requirements for safety at events but will make for very appropriate decision-making and allow people to enjoy activities so much more. I conclude by asking the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.