Local Government (Disqualification) Bill

Gareth Bacon Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 14th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)]

I join colleagues in what I think is unanimous support for the Bill, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on his admirable work in progressing it to this stage. I spent 23 years in local government, initially as a councillor, and latterly as a member of the London Assembly, and I feel that the action being taken to address this anomaly is long overdue. I pay a sincere tribute to the aims of the Bill, and I do not believe that a great deal can be said against the proposals.

The Bill will apply to individuals subject to notification requirements under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, known as the sex offenders register, as well as the sexual risk order that my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley mentioned. It will apply to local authorities and the Greater London Authority. Councillors are champions of their local communities, and they have so much contact with a variety of groups, not least the vulnerable and children. It is therefore completely right that this change is made, even if for no other reasons that those of safeguarding. The Bill is necessary because, as my hon. Friend set out in Committee, there is a loophole whereby a councillor who is convicted of a sexual offence but avoids a custodial sentence is not automatically disqualified, despite being placed on the sex offenders register. That is clearly not right.

Let me mention a few potential criticisms of the Bill, although they are few and far between. The Local Government Association has indicated that it is supportive of the Bill, but pointed out that it applies only to councillors, Assembly members and mayors. Police and crime commissioners, and indeed parliamentarians, are not affected by the Bill, and that is a serious omission. After all, if a sexual offence would bar someone from sitting on a local council, it would seem odd to allow the same person to sit as a police and crime commissioner. Perhaps my hon. Friend will address that point when he sums up the debate. However, as we heard from the Minister, the proposals in the current Bill have been consulted on for several years, and the Bill should not now be sunk into a quagmire about what it does not do. We should not make the perfect the enemy of the good, and there is a great deal in the Bill that is good.

As the Minister set out in Committee, there are more than 100,000 local councillors in England, virtually all of whom give up their time and are prepared to put their heads above the parapet in the name of public service. Unfortunately, the Bill is still needed, not only to draw parity between the sentencing guidelines, but to have proper rules in place for those rare instances when something does go wrong.

The most appalling example I have seen, and a case that I suspect contributed significantly to much of the motivation behind introducing this Bill, is that of a parish councillor, who I shall not name, in Saddleworth. He was convicted of 16 counts of downloading indecent photographs of children. He avoided a prison sentence, but was given a community order for 24 months and sent on a programme for sex offenders. Despite that, he continued to sit as a parish councillor on Saddleworth Council, which was officially unable to intervene. It did not have the necessary powers to remove him, because he had not been given the requisite prison sentence of three or more months. As I understand the situation, several other councillors took it upon themselves to see whether it would be possible to call a referendum, but, to make that passable, every member of Saddleworth council would have to be re-elected. That would have been an excessive administrative exercise when there should have been the much more straightforward remedy that the Bill will provide.

I know that we are pushed for time and want to get on to other business, but finally, as local government is a devolved matter, I want to talk about how the Bill should be implemented across the UK. I am unashamedly a passionate Unionist and, although the Bill extends only to England, I noted with interest the Minister’s comments in Committee about commitment to support implementation in Northern Ireland. She stated:

“The Government will work with the Northern Ireland Executive to seek to extend these measures to Northern Ireland in a comprehensive package, addressing candidates and sitting councillors.”––[Official Report, Local Government (Disqualification) Public Bill Committee, 1 December 2021; c. 5-6.]

I warmly welcome that. More widely, the Bill matches rules across the country as the Parliament in Wales recently legislated on the matter. It would be most welcome if similar measures could be enacted in Scotland so that we would have a shared commonality of rules for public representatives across the whole of the United Kingdom. I think that people across the whole United Kingdom would welcome that. For those reasons, I will support the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley on bringing it to the House.