Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill

Craig Whittaker Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 25th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

That is an interesting point. I shall deal later in my speech with the definitions of “journalist” and “citizen journalist”.

My Bill seeks to increase transparency and openness, but—I must stress this—not to place an unnecessary burden on local authorities that work very hard and often have to handle a great many requests for information.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I know that the Bill is about openness and transparency, but—this is in the same vein as the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare)—has my hon. Friend conducted an analysis of the extra cost and burden that would be placed on local authorities that are already burdened with huge numbers of freedom of information requests, as she has just said, and the requirement to publish numerous responses?

[Wendy Morton]

That is another interesting point. We need to get the balance right. We want openness and transparency, but we do not want to place an unnecessary burden on local authorities. On the basis of indications that I have received, I do not believe that the Bill would impose a huge burden on them. As for the cost, they will still be able to charge for requests for information, and I shall say more about that later.

A complete list of the local bodies that would be affected is set out in schedule 2 to the 2014 Act and includes local authorities, police bodies, fire and rescue authorities, parks authorities, combined authorities, and parish councils with an annual turnover of £25,000 and above. It is worth recognising that the Bill provides for that threshold.

Section 26 of the Act enables “any persons interested” to “inspect the accounting records” of such bodies, and to request copies of any part of those records or related documents. However, under previous case law it has been determined that the definition does not include journalists, although it would include, for example, local business rate payers or others who pay fees or charges to the body in question. Section 25 gives local electors the right to inspect and have copies of a wider range of accounts-related information from their council, such as the auditor’s opinion or any public interest report. They can also question the auditor and make an objection to the accounts, which the auditor is required to investigate unless he deems it to be vexatious or a duplicate of another request. That, I think, is an important provision, because it provides some safeguards for local authorities.

In all cases, whether the requester is an interested party or a local elector, the relevant authority is able to charge

“a reasonable sum for each copy”

of any document that is made. I hope that that goes some way towards answering my hon. Friends’ questions.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and for speaking in the debate on my previous Bill; I hope she will support me again this time. Reasonableness is important, and including the words “vexatious” and “duplications” should offer some reassurance, but if the Bill makes progress we could seek more clarity on this in Committee. We all work under tight budgets these days, so a balance always needs to be struck between openness and transparency, and unreasonably high charges.

Members may wonder why I am introducing this Bill—why I have given up another Friday to stand here in the House of Commons, as I happen to quite enjoy Fridays. Members may also be a little puzzled as this is a rather technical amendment to audit legislation.

Hon. Members may recall my predecessor as MP for Aldridge-Brownhills, Sir Richard Shepherd. He has probably not had a mention in this place since I made my maiden speech, but my constituents often remind me about him. Sir Richard was a staunch defender of whistleblowers and fought for a more transparent and accountable government and greater freedom of information: if we googled him, we would find many references to the work he did in this place on those topics. His principled stance on those issues resonated with many inside the Chamber and outside, and I am keen to see that that continues. The Bill speaks to those interests by seeking to make local government more transparent and subject to more effective public scrutiny of their spending, and I am sure we can all recall occasions or circumstances when such scrutiny might have been able to help.

The new rights I propose for journalists would provide access to the accounting records of any local authority, thus giving them an important tool. They would be able to access spending information across the piece that would aid their journalistic investigations and the publishing of their findings would provide local electors with information that might enable them to question the auditor or raise an objection, thus enabling them to better hold their local authority to account for poor spending decisions.

Why “journalists” and how do I define that term? I am conscious that Members might want to know why I do not propose extending the inspection rights to everyone or whether “journalist” is a suitable category for the definition of interested person.

Proposed new subsection (1A) defines a journalist for the purpose of this new right as

“any person who produces for publication journalistic material (whether paid to do so or otherwise).”

As well as accredited members of the press, the term is intended to cover citizen journalists, by which I mean bloggers who meet the conditions, although it would not extend to anyone who simply has social media access.

[Craig Whittaker]

My hon. Friend makes a valid case for what she is trying to achieve, but why journalists? Why not open it up to everybody to access these accounts? If we really want to be open, honest and transparent, surely we should not put any criteria or restrictions in place.

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting and fair point, and I would not be against looking at that further in Committee, but I think it is the best way to strike a balance between openness and transparency, and making requests reasonable for councils to deal with. Furthermore, a journalist or citizen blogger would be requesting information that they would then share with the wider public.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend tantalises the House with the wonder of his organ, but we had better be careful on that one as well. I happen to know the Plymouth Herald pretty well. It is a great champion of local stories, which it covers extremely well. I never quite think it gives enough coverage to my hon. Friend—hopefully the editor of that journal might listen to that—or indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). [Interruption.] Or to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter). [Interruption.] Well, let us not get too carried away. I often think that if my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) was “Mr January” and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View was “Mr the rest of the months”, the ladies of Plymouth would be delighted. That is up to editorial control and I am going to leave it to them. However, with freedom has to come responsibility.

I also wish to say a few words about vexatiousness. I can think of an occasion when somebody might get the bit between their teeth, and no matter how clearly it is spelt out to them that they have get the wrong end of the stick, they seem not to be able to grasp it and persist and persist. They will often go and tell their local newspaper that they are persisting. That can be damaging to the reputation and corporate profile of the local authority and potentially adds costs to the administration of the local authority.

[Craig Whittaker]

My hon. Friend’s points about the burdens of freedom of information requests and the reduced number of staff are interesting. Would he consider that fair and reasonable costs of providing that information could be the actual costs of doing so?

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay]

I thank my hon. Friend for putting that on the parliamentary record. That shows that we cannot always rely on external, or even internal, auditors of councils, who have materiality levels to consider. It is often individuals, particularly the press, working through FOIs who shine a light on various areas.

As I was saying, we are sometimes deservedly, and sometimes not deservedly, investigated by the press, but bodies that spend public funds deserve no protection whatever from the eyes and ears of the press. I say again how important a free press is to democratic accountability in this country, whether in central Government, Departments, quangos or local authorities.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills for explaining the extent of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It covers fire and rescue authorities, police authorities, parks, local and combined authorities, and parishes and town councils, beyond the £25,000 threshold. The 2014 Act does not restrict the definition of individual electors. Indeed, that was expanded through the case that was brought against Bristol City Council. It allows members of the local press to make inquiries, because they are likely to be local electors.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) for making a relevant point about the sad demise of local reporters and the local press. I have two local newspapers, the Isle of Thanet Gazette and the Thanet Extra. Once the homes section of the newspaper has been shaken out, there is not much left. The opportunity for local reporters to go to council meetings and attend civic events has diminished greatly. That reflects changes in advertising revenue, which often underpins local newspapers, as more and more material goes online—a point ably made by other colleagues. The whole movement online raises the question of what “publication” means. It means something very different from what it did in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

That brings me on to the question of what a journalist is. Given my ideas on open and democratic government, accountability, and people’s ability to ask questions, I would be more comfortable allowing anyone to make a request under the Bill. However, I fully understand how vexatious those who seem to be serial question-askers can be. We have to balance that tendency with the cost to local government of supplying information that has been asked for.

The term “citizen journalist” has been mentioned, although I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset: I do not subscribe to being a citizen; I would rather remain a subject, so “subject reporters” may be a better term. However, am I a subject journalist? Possibly; I do Twitter and Facebook, and my Facebook account is open, not closed, so perhaps I, too, am a subject journalist. It worries me when legislation that comes through the House has slightly vague terminology, as a lot of it does. We may have an opportunity in Committee to get rid of any vagueness about the term “journalist”, and to get to what I feel my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills intends, namely that this type of inquiry is narrowed down to people who really have an interest in reporting and looking at matters rather more closely, in the public interest.

[Craig Whittaker]

In the same vein of getting some context on what is defined as journalism, is my hon. Friend aware of the huge rise in fake news websites around the world, which specifically—I have just googled this—attempt to

“play on gullible people who do not check sources”,

and will simply pass the fake news on, as if it were really true? How do we get around that problem?

[Craig Mackinlay]

My hon. Friend makes an enormously interesting point. In the modern world, there are new websites that simply drag in bits of information from other, more credible, websites and pass it off as their own.

We are now struggling with what “journalist” really means. Perhaps that can be battened down a little more in Committee. Arguably that definition could be even wider—as I have said, I would be comfortable with that—with anyone being involved, given that arguably every voter in the UK has an interest in every single authority because of the national grant that passes from this place, through the Department for Communities and Local Government, to local authority level. Perhaps everyone has an interest, but we need nevertheless to narrow the definition down away from the vexatious inquirer with whom we are all very familiar.

I will leave my remarks there, but in support of the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, I say that it is quite right that journalism should play a key role in our democracy. People have the right to ask questions about any fund-holding body spending money in their name, so I struggle to find any reason to be against the Bill. I wish it every support possible in its next stages. Any rough edges will be ironed out in Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I can reassure her that the role of the auditor will not change. The current situation is that local electors can make requests of the auditor for further information and objections to the audit, but those who are not electors in that area cannot.

[Craig Whittaker]

While we welcome the extension to include journalists, might not the Government—in the interests of honesty, openness and accountability—consider in Committee opening things up completely, well beyond the intention of the Bill, so that anybody can access this information?

[Mr Jones]

I hear what my hon. Friend says, and I shall come on to that point a little later and explain why the balance is right.

To return to the issue of costs, it is our view that only a relatively small group of journalists or bloggers might wish to take advantage of the new rights. We recognise the potential for increased costs if a journalist running a national campaign asked for particular information from a raft of local authorities on issues such as salaries in local authorities or the cost of refurbishment. I suggest that that might not necessarily be a bad thing.