Local Government Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I do not have that sort of information. Since this is all mythical, I am sure that could not have happened in any case, any more than people would have put their conkers in the oven without using protective oven gloves. Obviously, my hon. Friend has great experience in dealing with conkers. One of the most dangerous aspects is using the skewer to make a hole through the centre of the conker, as people need to make sure that they do not puncture themselves at the same time. This all goes down to experience, and why should we not allow people to gain experience in the normal way in the hurly-burly of everyday life and have a bit of fun at the same time? Why are we creating a health and safety culture in which people over-react or fail to act responsibly?

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am distressed to hear about the Shrove Tuesday fun deniers in Hampshire. When we are putting through a Localism Bill, it might initially sound counter-intuitive and centralising to give more powers to the local government ombudsman, but we must remember that localism devolves powers to, and through, individual citizens and communities. What we are discussing is a great example of protecting the individual celebrations that enrich the lives of many of our communities.

[Mr Chope]

I share my hon. Friend’s misgivings. It is extraordinary that a national Parliament should have to intervene, and that we cannot have common sense applied at the local level, but if that is how it is, that is how it must be. In his report, Lord Young hoped that it would not be necessary to introduce too much legislation to implement his recommendation, but said that legislation would have to be introduced if there was no other way of ensuring a sense of perspective and proportionality.

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government will respond to the debate, and I am grateful to him for his informal communications with me over the last couple of days about the Bill. The Bill was drafted as an attempt to implement Lord Young’s recommendation. Clause 2 states:

“Where a local authority bans or imposes restrictions on any event on the grounds of health and safety, the local authority must provide the event organiser with written notification of the decision on the day on which the decision is taken…The written notification must include…the details of the ban or the restriction, and…reasons why the ban or the restriction has been imposed…On receipt of a written notification an event organiser may ask the local authority to review the decision and the local authority must conduct such a review within two weeks of the request being received and issue written notification of its further decision to the event organiser.”

If the local authority must justify its decision in the first place, and give reasons for it, it will probably be a lot more cautious about seeking to ban such events. An individual officer could not use his discretion or apply his prejudice to ban such events, as he would be brought to the attention of the chief executive and councillors of that local authority and have to provide justification. If the matter had not been dealt with satisfactorily within a fortnight, it could ultimately be referred to the local government ombudsman. The Bill would not impose an enormous extra burden on the local government ombudsman, but, in effect, would use his office as a long-stop to ensure that sanity prevailed in relation to health and safety issues.

The Beaulieu pancake race is only the most recent example. The examples that hit the headlines are inevitably the tip of the iceberg, as many other organisations are inhibited from even embarking on such activities because of fear of health and safety problems. I have various press cuttings, one of which, from Tameside, states:

“Town hall chiefs have denied being killjoys after they banned sparklers from Bonfire Night celebrations. Families going to the Richmond Street fair and firework display in Ashton have been told the children’s favourite is prohibited”,

because of

“health and safety considerations…A sparkler can reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees centigrade.”

I am surprised that we still allow sparklers even to be sold in the shops and that so many Members of the House have managed to get this far in life without being burned by a sparkler or having our children burned by sparklers.

There are many examples, including one in my constituency in Ferndown, where the erection of Christmas lights was banned not on the grounds of religion, fortunately, but on the grounds of health and safety. In another cutting, the BBC reported on 1 December that a west Wales town in Cardigan was told that it must go without Christmas lights in the main street because of health and safety concerns. Then, there is an example from the Virtual Festivals website, which reported that at a Devon rock festival last July a band was told that it would have to be without one of its props for an upcoming performance, because the use of a UFO—a fake spaceship—was banned on health and safety grounds,

“which deemed the elevated object a hazard to those in attendance.”

Sometimes, councils or organisers get around such bans by being imaginative. When a rugby club was told that it could not have a big bonfire on bonfire night, it showed its initiative by having a virtual bonfire. The club erected large screens so that people could see a picture of a big fire, and it had sound effects, giving people the impression that the fire was burning strongly. They had quite a lot of liquor to go with it, and I think that it was a very successful event. So it is not all bad news, but, because of the current ludicrous regime, people have had to use their initiative to try to get around such health and safety bans.

Other examples include sack races being banned because the children might fall over and hurt themselves and donkey derbies being banned because the children might hurt themselves. In May 2008, in the donkey derby at Llandudno in Wales, children were replaced as riders by inflatable animals because of health and safety laws, and there is the well-reported story of children not being allowed to wear swimming goggles in the pool on the basis that the goggles might snap and damage their faces. And so it goes on.

We have a killjoy atmosphere and a defensive approach to health and safety, and that is linked—this is obviously not part of my Bill, but part of the background to it—to Lord David Young’s concerns about the creation of an atmosphere in which people feel that they must not take risks because, if they do, they might open themselves up to significant compensation claims. Another of his recommendations is to try to deal with the so-called compensation culture, which I think lies behind many of these crazy examples.

In almost complete contrast with the first Bill today, which deals with reaffirming the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, this is very much a niche Bill designed to make our country a happier and more joyous place, to encourage more local participation and voluntary activity and to increase the range of activities in which children and adults can participate voluntarily, so that, when the history books come to be written, people do not find that all those traditional activities, which are held in villages and towns throughout the country each year, have been reduced to the lowest common denominator and can be exercised only virtually rather than in reality.

I propose that the Bill be read a Second time, and in so doing I thank the Minister for his indication that the Government are quite supportive of it. If it were ever to go into Committee, it would be some sort of record for myself, because, although I have spoken on numerous Bills in the Chamber on a Friday, I have yet to get a Bill into Committee, so I live in hope that this might be the one that breaks the mould.