Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 13th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, in moving government Amendment 34, I shall also speak to Amendments 40 to 42, 44 to 50, 55 to 57, 290, 297 and 306.

Amendments 34 and 306 give those preparing for and running the proposed east Midlands CCA mayoral elections in May 2024 early clarity as to the rules. Amendment 306 commences Clause 25 and Schedule 2, which contain the relevant powers upon Royal Assent. Amendment 34 enables the statutory consultation with the Electoral Commission, and the commission’s recommendations as to candidate expense limits, to occur before commencement in the east Midlands.

Amendment 50 amends Schedule 4, the current drafting of which provides only for mayoral combined authorities and mayoral combined county authorities to input on local skills improvement plans covering any of their area. However, the devolution framework in the levelling up White Paper states that this will be available to all CAs and CCAs and individual local authorities with a devolution deal. This amendment will allow all CAs and CCAs, including those without mayors, as well as local authorities with devolved adult education functions, to have their views on the relevant local skills improvement plans considered by the Secretary of State. These alterations will allow devolution deals in areas with devolved adult education functions to be fully implemented.

Amendments 55, 56, 57, 290 and 297 seek to amend Clauses 65 and 231. In its 24th report, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee recommended that any regulations regarding the membership of CAs and CCAs, as made through powers confirmed by Sections 104C and 107K of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 or this Bill should be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure rather than the existing mixed resolution procedure, whereby only the initial statutory instruments made are subject to the affirmative process. I thank the committee for its work in relation to the powers in the Bill. These amendments accept that recommendation and will ensure that an appropriate level of scrutiny is achieved for regulations relating to membership of CAs and CCAs.

The remaining government amendments in this group are all consequential, amending the Equality Act 2010 and the Localism Act 2011 to apply provisions in these Acts to CCAs to allow the model to work in practice. Given their importance in allowing CCAs to operate as a local government institution, and to enable the first CCA mayoral election, I hope that noble Lords can support these amendments.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I begin, as I generally do, by reminding the House of my relevant interests as a councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I wish particularly to speak to government Amendment 34. I was quite astonished when I read it; it brings to the Bill a new issue that has not been discussed previously either at Second Reading or in Committee. I was also astonished because the amendment attempts to bypass the independence of the Electoral Commission. The commission was established to improve trust in our electoral arrangements. That is its function, and we rely on it to provide its stamp of approval for the arrangements made for elections.

To use a strong word, this is quite a pernicious amendment because it attempts to bypass the independent consultation of the Electoral Commission. I will tell the House what it says. The Bill, in its Schedule 2, currently expects the Electoral Commission to be involved in setting the arrangements for mayoral elections. On page 286, paragraph 12(4) states that

“the Secretary of State must consult the Electoral Commission”

and in sub-paragraph (5) that

“the power of the Secretary of State to make regulations … is exercisable only on, and in accordance with, a recommendation of the Electoral Commission”.

Government Amendment 34 states that the requirements in the two sub-paragraphs I have just quoted

“may be satisfied by things done before the coming into force of this paragraph”.

In other words, the Government are going to bypass those requirements. That cannot be right.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Hayman. My noble friend Lord Bach is addressing a memorial meeting in Leicestershire for the late chief constable with whom he worked very closely as police and crime commissioner.

To bring it back to my local patch, my concern is that Clause 59 means that the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority can become the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands Police whenever he wants, without consultation or an open debate about the consequences for the West Midlands. That is a local example of what my noble friend Lady Hayman has just described. I recognise that a mayor can become a police and crime commissioner if he or she has general support, as I think has happened in Manchester and West Yorkshire, but in the West Midlands that support has not been forthcoming. The local authorities did not agree to it.

We have got used to voting for a police and crime commissioner. As it happens, it has been for a Labour one each time—most recently in May 2021, on the very same day that we voted for a Conservative mayor. There is no suggestion that the two postholders cannot work well together. Both were elected. I do not understand what the argument for change is. What is the argument for essentially nullifying the result of an election if it does not seem to suit one party?

This is compounded by Amendment 307, which allows the West Midlands mayor to take on PCC powers on Royal Assent—this could happen in September. What is the rush? If the Government are determined to go ahead with this clause, surely it should be done in a seemly and orderly fashion?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment is really important for democratic overview of policing in a combined authority area. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has said, West Yorkshire already has a mayor and a non-elected police and crime commissioner, because the arrangement for West Yorkshire—sadly, in my view—was that the two roles would be combined. The elected Mayor of West Yorkshire is therefore also responsible as police and crime commissioner. The consequence of combining those two roles has been that the Mayor of West Yorkshire was able to appoint a police and crime commissioner for West Yorkshire.

The whole concept of police and crime commissioners was that there would be democratic accountability for the oversight of policing in a police service area. In West Yorkshire and other places, I think including Manchester, that democratic accountability has disappeared because the mayors in those places—I live in West Yorkshire so I know the situation well—have appointed people they know as police and crime commissioner.

That is no reflection on or criticism of the job that that individual does, but it is a criticism of the lack of democratic accountability. If the oversight of police and crime in a very large area—2.5 million people—is given to an appointed person and the electorate cannot vote them out of office, there is something fundamentally wrong with the system. That is why Amendment 54 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, and introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is so important. The Government have gone in the wrong direction on this one. If we are to have police and crime commissioners, they need to be elected, as they are everywhere else in the country.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for outlining her rationale for tabling Amendment 36: to clarify the relationship between PCCs and mayors, and their respective roles and responsibilities. She asked if the Government want to phase out PCCs. There is no intention to do so. The intention is to allow mayors only in some areas to exercise PCC functions. Some areas will never have mayors who do so because only in coterminous areas can mayors take those functions.

The levelling up White Paper set out the Government’s aspirations for—

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

The noble Baroness said that you could have a combined police and crime commissioner and mayor only where there is coterminosity. If combined authorities are now able to expand, will that undo that requirement?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No. I hate to bring up the West Midlands—I know the noble Lord opposite will be very pleased that I am—but the Mayor of the West Midlands has a choice: he can either agree to pursue the expansion to include Warwickshire, which has its own PCC, so he could no longer take the PCC role, or he can take the PCC role and therefore not Warwickshire. That is the reality of what we are doing. I hope I have explained that.

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[Baroness Seccombe (Con)]

My Lords, I disagree wholeheartedly with my noble friend. In the lockdown period, I thought it was awful when people had to vote remotely and were charged with being on a beach somewhere. I believe that, in politics, we need each other; we need debate and discussion and to hear other points of view. I believe that doing that in person is right for a healthy democracy.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I make clear that this amendment, to which I have added my name, is about local authorities having the option to make some of their meetings virtual or hybrid. It is not about going back to having all meetings held virtually; it is about having the option to do so where that makes sense in local circumstances.

During the Covid pandemic, we learned that virtual meetings could be conducted and worked well, in accordance with local authority conduct of meetings. There is no problem with the legality of how they were conducted. I accept the noble Baroness’s point about how we need to be together in a democracy but that is difficult on some occasions, and some people will be excluded if we do not provide an option for local authorities to make meetings accessible by making them virtual.

For example, people with disabilities find it more difficult to travel to a meeting in person—and then there are those with caring responsibilities and those with demanding work schedules. In many parts of the country now, people have long commutes to work. That option of a virtual meeting means that they can fulfil the responsibilities of being a local elected councillor as well as being in work. We do not want to revert to a situation in which local councils attract only people who are retired, because they are the only ones who have time or are able to go to meetings. We want as broad a selection as we can of people from our communities to become councillors, including the young and old, people with disabilities and people with caring responsibilities. We need them on our councils so that those voices are heard. That is one reason why the option—and it is an option—of holding meetings virtually is important.

The second is the huge size of some of the councils that the Government have now created. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, used the example of North Yorkshire, which is now a unitary council. People know where Selby is now, so I will use the example of Selby, which is in the south of the southern tip of North Yorkshire. To travel to a meeting in Northallerton, where the county headquarters is, means covering a distance of about 53 miles, which would take probably an hour and a half—so it is a three-hour round trip to go to a council meeting. Think of how many people that will exclude: those who cannot drive would not be able to get there, as there are no buses and no trains, or very few. This is not like London. In the winter North Yorkshire has snow, which makes it even more difficult to get physically to meetings, which is when a virtual option makes really good sense. There is also the example of this House, which has managed perfectly well holding its Select Committees virtually. If we can do it here, surely local authorities should be allowed to do it.

My last point is that this amendment is to a part of the Bill on devolution. If devolution means anything, it means that local authorities and local councils should be able to make the decisions that matter to them—to have the flexibility to make decisions appropriate to their situation. We know that the Local Government Association, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said, is fully supportive of this amendment and this approach. We will obviously listen very carefully to the response by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but if the noble Baroness is not satisfied with the response and wishes to test the opinion of the House, we on these Benches, for the reasons I have given, will fully support her.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, one thing that we have heard in the debates in Committee and today is that councillors are a vital part of our local democracy; they represent the needs of their residents and they work to improve outcomes for their local communities. But it is also important that any good decision-making is done by people who reflect their local communities and bring a range of experience, backgrounds and insight. As we have heard, by law, councillors have to attend meetings in person at the moment. We have also heard how important Zoom and Teams were for councils to continue to meet and the public to continue to take part during lockdown and the pandemic. It also brought people together and involved more people than previously in many cases.

We debated at length in Committee the benefits of continuing to allow virtual attendance at council meetings. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, thoroughly introduced that when she spoke to her amendment, and I am very happy to support her in what she is trying to do. Unfortunately, the Government withdrew this ability. We know that it supports a large range of people, as the noble Baroness laid out: the parents of young children, carers, disabled people and people with long-term illnesses. It enables them to come forward and represent their communities and encourages wider public participation, which is surely a good thing.

When we think about access to participation, why would the Government not lower barriers to that participation? Why can we not have virtual participation in council meetings as an option? We think that councils should have the flexibility to decide for themselves whether this is a useful tool that they can use. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, also mentioned, as have others, the option that we have in this House for virtual participation by those with disabilities and health issues. As others have asked, why at the very least can we not have the same dispensation for local councils that we have here in this House? The Government need to look at this again. If the noble Baroness wishes to test the opinion of the House, we will support her.