Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Baroness Hanham Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the sun has already set; none of us wants to be here when it rises in the morning. I concur with the amendment moved by the noble Lord and I trust that the Minister will accept it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, I can be very brief. The Government cannot accept the amendment. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that council tax payers should have the final say on excessive increases and that the case for the inclusion of levies in the referendum legislation is compelling. The Government intend that, once made, the change to the legislation should remain on the statute book and that council tax payers should be protected from excessive increases permanently—not just for a few years. Local authorities and levying bodies would not appreciate the prospect of further change to legislation in three years’ time.

It may be helpful to the noble Lord if I also mention a major practical issue raised by the amendment. In 2016, as in all years, local authorities must set their council tax by 11 March. Any authority triggering a referendum must begin preparations almost immediately, so the referendum will be scheduled for the first Thursday in May 2016. The sunset clause would take effect on 30 April 2016, right in the middle of local authorities’ preparations to hold a referendum. Furthermore, if the amendment is accepted, by that time, the provision would have disappeared from the statute book and rendered regulations relating to the conduct of the referendum and its effect in direct conflict with the legislation on which they are based. That is because they would be based on the definition of the relevant basic amount of council tax, including rather than excluding levies. That would be a recipe for confusion and would not be fair on local authorities or council tax payers. So, for reasons of principle and practicality, the Government are unable to support the amendment, and I hope that the noble Lord is willing to withdraw it.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister. I confess to a little disappointment about that reply, although I wonder whether I should see some encouragement. If the only defect in the amendment is a technical one on timing, perhaps the principle could be accepted. I look forward to that being pursued in another place at another time. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, far be it from me to seek to mediate between the coalition parties on this matter, although of course I cannot resist the temptation to do so.

The noble Lord’s proposition is in many ways sensible. Even under the present law, councils certainly have the right to advertise in ways additional to publication in newspapers if they choose. Eventually, no doubt, that will become pretty much par for the course. The Government could facilitate the process by at least reviewing now rather than at some definite point in the future the list of items that have to be publicised, because frankly it is ridiculous. Planning matters are clearly important. However, when it comes to dog control orders or their revocation, the licensing of buskers, charges for street trading licences, abandoned shopping trolleys and charges for public baths and wash-houses, one wonders whether a formal statutory notice of any kind is desired. It is certainly not required, and certainly not in paid publications.

If the Minister were to indicate that the Government will address this matter—it is not that complicated; after all, there are only eight or nine pages of these things to work through—a sensible accommodation could be achieved that still leaves a statutory requirement for publication in newspapers. That should remain as part of a new framework, given that not everyone can look at the website, and there will at least be the opportunity to read a printed version. I hope that that would alleviate some of the concerns of the Local Government Association and, indeed, of the noble Lords who have already spoken. It would not be acceptable for the Government simply to reject the Motion and do nothing about this ridiculous list of notices that have to be published in a paid-for publication at the present time. A gesture from the Government in that respect, other than the normal gesture that one tends to get metaphorically across the Dispatch Box, would be helpful.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for those rather contrary views. Only three people have spoken, and their views were all different, so that is a pretty good start and leaves me with a fine path through.

The purpose of a statutory notice, as everybody clearly knows, is to inform the public about decisions that affect their lives, their property and their amenity. That is especially the case for issues where the public have a limited period in which to respond.

The Committee was in broad agreement that notices should be easily available for local people and that they are vital for local transparency and accountability. The noble Lord has highlighted the cost of statutory notices and suggested that local newspapers are one of the least effective ways to convey information to people. We do not agree. Research by GfK for the Newspaper Society found that the reach of local newspapers was much greater than council websites: 67% of the respondents to that survey had read or looked at their local newspaper for at least a couple of minutes within the past seven days, compared with 9% who had viewed their council website. Some 34% of adults questioned had not accessed the internet at all in the last 12 months.

The most recent internet access quarterly update from the Office for National Statistics, published in May, shows that 7.1 million adults in the United Kingdom—14% of the population—have never used the internet. Two-thirds of over-75s, a third of 65 to 74 year-olds and 32% of disabled people, as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act, have never used the internet. There are quite a lot of people, therefore, who do not, would not and could not use the internet for these notices.

The GfK research for the Newspaper Society showed that local papers are spontaneously cited as the way in which most people—that is, 39%—expect to be informed about traffic changes, for example. My noble friend Lord Shipley will be interested to know that the next placed source of information is street signs, at 26%—they come immediately to notice. When prompted, 79% of all adults responding said that they expect to be made aware of traffic changes in their printed local paper, second only to street signs and ahead of any other communication channels.

Undoubtedly, the requirement to publish some notices in newspapers comes from an age when there was no access to other means of communication. Under present conditions it could perhaps be removed, but the requirement to ensure that these notices are available easily remains as valid today as it always has.

As I said in Committee, the last Administration consulted in 2009 on removing the statutory requirements to publish planning notices in newspapers and found that that was not well received, as noble Lords opposite will remember. Some 40% of respondents to that survey were against the proposals, with a further 20% giving only qualified support. I acknowledge, of course, that that was four years ago. Things have moved on a bit. However, the party opposite concluded that some members of the public and community groups relied on the statutory notices in newspapers, and was not convinced that good alternative arrangements could readily be rolled out. A recent debate in the other place on alcohol licensing notices showed the strength of cross-party feeling against repealing the requirement to publish the notices in newspapers.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that statutory advertising should not go altogether—I think he repeated that today—and that it was more a question of which statutory notices should be reformed and which should continue to be advertised in newspapers. That can already be done, because departments can put forward particular statutory notices for consideration under the Red Tape Challenge, and that provides opportunities to review a statutory notice. The amendment gives little consideration to which statutory notices are important to local people or where there is a case for retaining publication in a newspaper, and that of course would have to be looked into.

In the internet age, it is clear that commercial newspapers should expect less state advertising over time, as my honourable friend Brandon Lewis has made clear, as more information is syndicated for free online. We accept that newspapers need to develop new business models rather than relying on revenue from statutory notices. However, the newspaper industry is very clear that competition with local authority newspapers, for example, can be damaging.

It would be unfair to remove statutory notices in the blanket way that is being proposed while independent newspapers still face unfair competition from local authority newspapers. We must stop this first before looking at other issues. We acknowledge that the DCLG Select Committee’s recommendations a couple of years ago for a review of publication requirements of statutory notices cannot be ignored in the long term.

I hope that with those explanations the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tope]

Before the Minister sits down, I ask her to comment, as she seems to have forgotten to do so, on the reported comments of the Secretary of State that this requirement will be phased out within two years. He was quoted as saying this by I think three or four Conservative councillors separately, while Brandon Lewis, the Minister, has similarly indicated that the Government intend to change the statutory requirement as a quid pro quo for the legislation that we are in the process of passing. Can the Minister not end this uncertainty now and give us some certainty on what the Government’s intentions are and when they are going to be implemented?

[Baroness Eaton]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate. An issue that concerns me about statutory notices being advertised in newspapers is that in some of our larger cities there are large communities that have no language to read a local newspaper. It can be very helpful when the council passes out information in appropriate languages, and I do not think that any of the debate we have had so far has given any indication of how this is to be communicated to very large sections of larger cities’ communities.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her intervention. It is perfectly clear that in most cities, where there are large groups of ethnic minorities, they often have their own publications, and anyway I know that most councils are happy to ensure that information is available.

With regard to the review, as I have said, we accept the Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s recommendation that a review must be undertaken. I have no knowledge of the Local Government Chronicle’s information or where it got it from. I have pointed out that it is possible to have statutory notices considered under the Red Tape Challenge at the present time.

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we are sympathetic to the position adopted by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, As my noble friend Lord Beecham said in Committee, the noble Earl has explained the archaic regime that exists at the moment for parish polls, the small numbers involved in calling a poll, the fact that the poll is not binding and the financial cost being recoverable for the parish. I would have thought an effort to address that would be well worth while. Indeed, the noble Earl’s amendment suggests that there should be an order-making power inserted into the Bill. Obviously, once the amendment itself has been accepted, it is presumably within the scope of the Bill; otherwise it would not be on the Marshalled List.

I do not see why it cannot be done. Maybe the wording needs to be changed. If the Government are reluctant to pick this issue up because they think that there are broader issues involved and it needs to be dealt with in some different way, perhaps we could hear that. However, if there is sympathy for the noble Earl’s proposition, and we are just looking for a parliamentary process to facilitate that, why not an order-making power?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, we, too, are sympathetic to this amendment, and I am grateful to the noble Earl for having brought it to the attention of the House. We all recognise that parish polls are a way for local people to achieve something they want that is relevant and appropriate to the area over which they have authority. The noble Earl made it clear in Committee that sometimes that area extends to the European Union, which seems rather beyond the competence. We accept that there are concerns about the threshold for polls being called. I am very grateful to the noble Earl for coming to spend a bit of time with us, and we have had an opportunity to talk about it.

The way in which the noble Earl has constructed this amendment just about puts it within the scope of this Bill, but it is not wide enough for all that needs to be done. We believe that the scope can be made wider in the other place. We need to look at that carefully and will come back to it. I hope very much that we will be able to say that we will take that up and see it dealt with in the other place. If we cannot, then we are in the sort of territory that the noble Earl has talked about—a Private Member’s Bill or a hand-out Bill. I assure him that the Government are supportive of what he has said, and I give an undertaking to the House to take this away and look at how we can get it implemented in the best and quickest way. I hope that the noble Earl will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, in the light of that undertaking by the noble Baroness, it would be entirely churlish of me, especially at this time of night, to seek to do anything other than to withdraw this amendment. I do so with my enormous thanks to her and her officials for the input that they have had on this. I have my fingers crossed for a later stage. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.