Localism Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

We could go on. I shall take the opportunity to give one more example of a mad council ignoring the wishes of local people. That was in my own local authority in Richmond, where a couple of years ago—[Interruption.] It happens even in places such as Richmond, where I called a referendum on a proposal to bring in a supermarket, which local people felt would seriously damage the independent shops in one of the much-loved streets in Barnes. We had a bigger turnout in that referendum than in any general election, but we had a Mugabe-esque result: nearly 90% of people rejected Sainsbury’s, yet the local authority did absolutely nothing to prevent the takeover of the high street by Sainsbury’s. Again, whether we agree with the decision or not, democracy ought to play a role in such decisions.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case in favour of referendums. He referred to overwhelming turnouts in favour of a proposition. However, the proposal before us contains no safeguard for such a referendum, and there could be a binding referendum on a very small turnout. How would he deal with that problem?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is a safeguard, although it may not be enough. The Government’s proposal was that 5% of the population could trigger a referendum, which I always felt was too low and would allow it to become a cranks’ charter, because it does not take much to get 5% of people to call for something, and we could end up debating some mad ideas. My amendment would raise the minimum number of signatures required to trigger a referendum to 20%, but I would be happy with 30%, because it should be difficult. A referendum should act as a veto in the hands of the people, but it should not be an easy mechanism to deploy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

We are getting into a technical exchange—[Interruption.] It is very technical, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman has answered his own question, as Government Members have pointed out from a sedentary position. The previous Government’s proposals for the non-binding aspect of the referendum were clearly inadequate, but I concede that, as the Minister said at the time, they represent a start. It was a start until the entire chapter was dropped as it was being negotiated in the other place. That might have been a mistake, in which case I am happy to reintroduce the concept in the amendment, but it takes the previous Government’s idea one step further. The amendment would give people power to instigate a local referendum, which is a commitment that all Government Members made in the run-up to the last election. We all committed to ensuring that people could have their say in local referendums, and in my view it was an important part of the manifesto. Crucially, it is binding. Crucially, we have raised the threshold to 20%, which I hope would prevent the kind of abuses that people are worried about.

[Bob Blackman]

My hon. Friend once again makes a powerful case for referendums, but the point is that although the trigger for instigating a referendum would be 20% of the electorate, there would be no safeguard when it came to the voting. The turnout could be as low as 5% or 10%, but the result would still bind a local authority.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will not argue on that point, because I do not necessarily disagree with him. The purpose of the amendments is to introduce the concept of binding local referendums. If it was decided as a result of a proper debate in the House that the minimum proportion of signatures needed to be 30%, I would not argue with that. At one point the Bill specified that it would be 15%, and after much discussion the Members in whose names the amendment stands decided to raise the figure to 20%. In my view, that is not an issue to get hung up about. Similarly, I certainly do not oppose the concept of a minimum turnout, and would have been willing to include that in an amendment, following proper discussion. It is the principle that is important. It was an error for the Government to remove even a half-hearted attempt at handing power back to local people, and it is a mistake that I think people will remember.

I will not press the amendment to a vote, because clearly it does not enjoy overwhelming support, and Front Benchers on both sides of the House have said that they will whip against it. If I pressed it to a Division, I would not expect to achieve anything other than wasting people’s time. However, I hope that the Government will think again and recognise that they have an opportunity to show that when they talk about localism they actually mean it, and that they trust people to make decisions that affect their own lives. I hope that they will recognise, as the Minister has done many times, that no one is better placed to decide the nature, shape, form and future of an area than the people who live in it. I urge the Government to think again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless]

As I said, I believe that in this respect the Bill is a marginal improvement on what we had before. Let us consider the idea that the federal Governments in the US or Germany would look at each state, determine what the level is—indeed, the same level for all states—and say, “If you want to raise your property tax by more than that, you have to have this referendum, and this is the exact way in which we specify that it has to be run.” By comparison, we seem to have an extraordinarily centralised state, and I am disappointed that the tiny steps in the Bill have only a very little impact on that.

In the policing universe, the Bill is not just a little bit of progress but a step back. The significant difference is that there is not a single body making the decision, as with a local council within the referendum protection; we are setting up a special local body, a police and crime panel, that will have scrutiny, oversight and an overview of the directly elected commissioner. We said in the coalition agreement that the elected police and crime commissioner

“will be subject to strict checks and balances by locally elected representatives.”

We were then told—I questioned the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice about this earlier—that the panel

“will have a power to trigger a referendum on the policing precept recommended by the Commissioner.”

The Minister said that he disagreed with the premise of my question, which was in fact the premise in the White Paper that the Home Office published in July last year, “Policing in the 21st century”, which said that the police and crime panel will have this power. However, the Bill, which provides for these referendums, has no provision to allow the police and crime panel to trigger such a referendum, and the powers appear to have been taken by the Secretary of State, despite the coalition agreement and what was promised in the White Paper last year.

When the Minister spoke about this on 30 March, it seemed that his officials had not properly explained to him his own Bill. He said that

“the police and crime commissioner will set the precept but a referendum will be triggered. The”

police and crime

“panel will not be able to prevent that, but it will be able to propose an alternative precept with accompanying reasons that will have to be published. The public will then have to decide—having both sides of the story.”—[Official Report, 30 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 433.]

That suggests that the referendum was going to be between the commissioner’s precept and an alternative proposed by the panel. That is what we said would happen, but unfortunately the provisions of the Bill do not allow it to happen. In the case of the police precept, we are bringing in this third body—the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State, not the local panel, has the power to trigger a referendum. That is a highly regressive step that will prevent the elected police and crime commissioner from establishing a responsible relationship with his chief constable—perhaps being able to get him more budget and, in return, getting different priorities for policing. They will always be looking over their shoulder to the Secretary of State, who is giving a standard rise that they cannot go above without the risk of a local referendum that would cost perhaps 2% of the council tax, which they would have to pay even if they won. This will have a chilling effect on our proposals for police accountability.

I am very disappointed, because in 2005 I wrote a book called “Direct Democracy” for which I had four co-authors—my right hon. Friends the Members for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), and Daniel Hannan, who is now an MEP. In that, we called for direct democracy and the devolution of powers, and, in particular, an elected person in charge of overseeing the police who would have local powers. We still believed that in the coalition agreement and we still believed it in last year’s White Paper when we said that the panel would be able to trigger a referendum. It is terribly disappointing that this Bill fails to provide for that and instead hugs the power to the Secretary of State.

[Bob Blackman]

I want to make three points. The first is about the codes of conduct and the abolition of the Standards Board. I, like many local councillors at the time, was the subject of numerous referrals to the Standards Board. The first that anyone heard of it was when they received the letter from the Standards Board saying that it had decided to take no further action on the vexatious complaint. It could take many months and, in certain cases, years before a complaint was determined one way or the other. In cases that were chosen for investigation, the investigations could take the length of a councillor’s term of office before it was decided whether they were guilty.

I have concerns about what is being proposed. I completely agree with having a national standard for the codes of conduct that local authorities should impose. There should be national standards and everybody should abide by them, even though they will be monitored at a local level. There is a key concern about how valid complaints will be investigated. I have a concern about elected councillors overseeing complaints about other elected councillors and about how politicians might seek to gain party political advantage over one another through standards committees. The concept of having independent individuals in charge is of course welcome. However, the risk is whether such people can be found for every local authority and whether they will be of a suitable standard to make the system work. I have concerns but, broadly speaking, the Government’s amendments should be welcomed.

My second point touches on the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) on referendums. The key concern is about the difference between a local authority consulting the people it serves and it being bound by a referendum, possibly on a single proposition. I do not think that local authorities in this country consult properly. Instead, they notify the public that they will do something to them, regardless of what they think of it.

I will give an example from a local authority on which I used to sit. The London borough of Brent has decided to close half its libraries. The council put it to the public and 82% of people said that they did not like it. The answer from the council was, “We’re still going to do it.” That was the result of a consultation. The idea was overwhelmingly rejected, but the council are progressing with it. That would be a case, like my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park described, in which a referendum would undoubtedly go against what the local authority wishes to do. However, that does not change the fact that local authorities are elected to serve and to make decisions. They should do so even if those decisions are not liked by the people whom they represent.

I will also cite the case of Bristol, which several years ago conducted a referendum on the level of council tax to be charged. The council put four options to the people of Bristol: a reduction in council tax with a drastic reduction in services; a marginal reduction in council tax with a marginal reduction in services; a stand-still option; or the council’s preferred option of an increase in council tax and keeping services at the same level. Lo and behold, the people voted for a substantial reduction in council tax and a substantial reduction in services—not quite what was expected. One has to be careful in taking on a referendum. For the purposes that I have described, a referendum is clearly not the route to follow.

Equally, as I have said in interventions, if we had referendums with a trigger of 20% or 30% of people signing a petition, that would not necessarily work if the turnout for such a referendum would be far too low. That would be ridiculous and would impose on local authorities an unfair basis for making decisions. As we all know, it is easy to get people to sign a petition, but it is another thing to get them to vote. Clearly there is a role for petitions in consultations, but using them to trigger referendums is difficult.

My third point relates to the position on council tax. I have always been an advocate for councils being free to set council tax at the level they choose. If councillors choose to impose a swingeing increase in council tax, the public have the right to vote them out at the next election. We should trust the people to do that. I have always been stringently opposed to the capping of council tax or previous forms of local taxation, because it takes away the decision-making powers of local authorities. Councils should not have referendums held over their heads on council tax, but people should have the power of the ballot box to remove councillors who vote for a swingeing increase. That is the right way to protect people.

Most local authorities in this country have their councillors elected by thirds, so the local electorate has the power every year to remove councils and councillors who choose to vote for large increases in council tax. In unitary authorities, there are all-out elections, which means that councillors, having been safely elected, can take decisions at the beginning of their cycle to get their betrayal out of the way before they face the threat of the ballot box three or four years later. Perhaps we need to re-examine the governance of local authorities and ask whether they should face more frequent local elections, rather than having periodic elections when the decisions made by the local electorate are often more about the national Government of the day than the decisions that are made at a local level.

Having spoken about those three key issues, I will conclude my remarks. I warmly welcome the amendments proposed by the Government.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I rise to speak about the referendum issue. Members will note that I am one of the signatories to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith).

I support the principle of referendums and believe that they are a natural development of our democratic process. Having spent many years as a local councillor fighting against centralisation, I warmly welcome the moves that the Government are making, but they could go further. To give an example, I sponsored and secured a referendum in one ward of my unitary authority to abolish a town council. I did so because there was clear opposition to a council that was charging in excess of £100 per household for band A properties. There was an overwhelming vote to abolish that council. Unfortunately, the referendum was not binding, because it was held under the Local Government Act 2003, to which the Minister referred. The unitary council of North East Lincolnshire subsequently overturned the referendum result.