Local Government: Nolan Principles

Dan Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alberto Costa]

That is an interesting point. I must confess that I have not considered it, so I would welcome any further information or a further briefing from the hon. Member on what he means by that, particularly in my role as Chair of the Standards Committee.

The Nolan principles must ensure that elected representatives are held to account properly, at every level of local government. In Labour’s plan for local government reorganisation and a new structure, the way that standards are dealt with must not be neglected. I hope that the Minister will say a few words on local government reorganisation, and how he thinks the Nolan principles and any code of conduct might underpin that.

I think we can all agree that the current regime is failing. Issues of misconduct, bullying and harassment in local government—parish, town, county and district—have become worse. I know of parish councillors in my constituency whose lives have been made a misery through months and, in many cases, years of verbal abuse, intimidation and harassment from fellow councillors.

In Leicestershire, one instance of constant harassment and relentless, vexatious complaints resulted in a parish council officer dramatically resigning during a parish council meeting. I have no doubt that hon. Members have witnessed or heard similar stories in their constituencies. Those bad apples make up only a small minority of councillors but even so, according to a 2017 report by the Society of Local Council Clerks,

“15% of parish councils experience serious behaviour issues… 5% are effectively dysfunctional as a result of them.”

So where does the current regime fall short? First, there is no clear definition of bullying or harassment in the Localism Act 2011, which leaves it to monitoring officers to interpret vague codes of conduct inconsistently. What is serious in one district area is dismissed in another. Town and parish councils have no internal mechanism to investigate breaches of conduct. At the same time, principal authorities are also powerless to enforce meaningful sanctions, except in cases serious enough for criminal referral.

The 2018 Ledbury town council case exposed a major flaw in the system. The council was forced to pay more than £200,000 in legal fees for trying to sanction a councillor through an internal grievance process. That highlighted a fundamental problem: parish councils lack the power to act independently, while principal authorities have no real enforcement mechanisms. Accountability falls into limbo unless there is clear criminal conduct. My speech is not about criminal conduct; it is about the issues that we as Members of this House are familiar with—bullying, sexual misconduct, harassment and the like.

If the public were able to hold rogue councillors—the minority—to account properly at the ballot box, I would be less concerned, but the gaps in legislation are made worse by the democratic deficit, certainly at the parish level, where elections often lack enough willing candidates to ensure true accountability. In the May 2015 elections, for example, only 20% of eligible parishes contested their vacancies. The ballot box rarely holds councillors to account, and even if it does, it can often be too late.

We know that accountability problems will be more pronounced in areas that have a unitary authority, which is the direction of travel under this Government, as parishes may be given even greater powers due to the abolition of district councils. I hope that the Minister can comment on what consideration the Government are giving to that specific point or, if he is unaware, that he will write to me after the debate.

For now, I encourage the Government to consider the following steps to strengthen accountability, and to protect town and parish councillors and those who work for town and parish councils. First, I suggest amending section 27(3) of the Localism Act 2011 to give a clear definition of bullying that explicitly covers persistent verbal abuse, intimidation or behaviour that causes significant distress to other parish or town councillors or those who work for parish or town councils. That would give monitoring officers of principal authorities a firmer basis on which to act, and would set a threshold for escalation, distinguishing heated debate from harassment.

The next step would be to mandate standards committees in all principal authorities, which would be tasked with impartial investigations, deciding on allegations and imposing sanctions. Those committees, supported by truly independent persons, would bring consistency, credibility and impartiality into an appropriate disciplinary system. Here in the House of Commons, as part of the Committee that I chair, we have seven lay members alongside seven Members of Parliament, and as the Chair, I do not have a vote other than in the event of a tie. That means that the seven lay members provide the impartiality that the House wants when disciplining its own Members.

[Dan Norris (North East Somerset and Hanham) (Lab)]

The Nolan principles also apply to officers working in the public sector. I am a regional mayor, as well as a Member. I am aware that a regional mayor in the east of England is currently talking with a chief constable about officers under the previous mayor making decisions that should have been made by politicians—in other words, the normal rules and policies seemingly being circumvented.

It troubles me that the interim officers who work for local authorities or regional authorities move on quite quickly. They do not stay very long, and if something questionable is subsequently found, they are not bound to take part in any inquiry. That means that the Nolan principles can be completely circumvented; it drives a coach and horses through the good principles. I agree with everything that the hon. Member has said so far, but does he think there should there be a special circumstance or a modification to the rules to allow those officers, who keep moving around and carry on working in local government, to be held to account?

I also ask the Minister what the Government will do to make sure, where questionable things have happened, that the local authorities to which those interim officers go are alerted about that. Those local authorities should know that irregularities have taken place.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order. Can we have shorter interventions in future?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim McMahon]

I will follow up after the debate on the example that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to. I commit to finding out a bit more information through the Department and will respond in writing. As a matter of principle, it is not unreasonable to expect that board members, as opposed to the wider public, are informed about matters of financial relevance to the operation of the board. That seems fairly self-evident to me. If he provides more information on the particular case, which I am not familiar with, I will certainly come back to him on that.

I am enormously grateful for the more than 2,000 responses that we received to the Government’s standards consultation. We are working at pace to analyse the results. We will think carefully about how to take into account the views that were expressed for each of the proposals that we have set out. The Government response will be issued in due course, and after its release, we will continue to work actively with local government on developing detailed implementation.

The hon. Member for South Leicestershire mentioned reorganisation, and although I completely acknowledge the examples of poor behaviour that he identifies—I have witnessed such things in some authorities, too—I would be careful not to attach local government reorganisation as an inherent risk to the standards and behaviours of councillors. I think this is cultural, and it is about a lack of framework and, honestly, slightly a result of a standards regime that has not got teeth.

There are some members who know that what they are doing is not right, and that that is not just about free speech, but about abusing the position they hold and the freedoms. We often see that relationship, where elected members who are holding court in the council chamber attack officials on the top table who have no power to respond themselves. We see that power imbalance taking place. I suspect that most elected members who are behaving in that way know exactly that their behaviour is not okay, but they also know that the standards regime has no teeth to deal with that, so what are the consequences? I would be careful not to attach that behaviour to the reorganisation point, because we want to rebuild the system from the ground up, so that every council in England—whether they are part of the 21 counties going through reorganisation or are among the rest—is subject to the same robust standards regime that does have teeth.

Let me return to the subject under debate by dealing with some of the points about not allowing the system to be used for political ends and how it has to be held up to all scrutiny at all levels. This is about having a proportionate system that can hold up to scrutiny and be tested, but it has to be mandatory. It must have sanctions that matter, including the power of suspension, the power to withhold allowances, if that is correct, and the power for premises bans, if there is a safeguarding risk at play. We have examples where councillors can be on police bail for sexual assaults, and during police bail, they can attend council meetings and attend the premises. That clearly would not be acceptable to most members of the public, but the current regime allows that, and that cannot be allowed to stand. Perhaps more controversially, the system should include disqualification in some cases for more serious breaches.

[Dan Norris]

Will the Minister address my point about interim officers, or perhaps write to me if there is not time today?

[Jim McMahon]

I will return in writing to the point about interim officers being able to move around and whether they are held to the Nolan principles as a founding principle. This debate is more about the standards regime that governs elected members in that context, and that is the consultation that we undertook.

I have no doubt that the Nolan principles will continue to be enormously influential in contributing to the effectiveness of local government. They are a prescription for the values to foster a culture of integrity and ethical behaviour. This Government are committed, at the heart of our ambition for the whole of local government, to creating a fit, legal and decent local government sector, and that is what the public have a right to expect. To be effective, local government must serve to foster vibrant local democracy. It must encourage a wide diversity of talented people to step forward to represent their local communities in that position, and we are committed to working to that end.

Question put and agreed to.