EU Free Trade Agreements

Debate between Hilary Benn and George Hollingbery

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery]

As we have already made clear, it is entirely possible to trade on WTO terms. However, it is far more preferable to reach trade agreements with third parties, because then we can trade on a preferential basis that allows us access to markets, the lowering of tariffs and the reduction in non-tariff barriers behind the border, which makes life much easier for our companies.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I want to ask the Minister a very simple question, to which I would appreciate a direct answer. How many of the 40 or so agreements on which an arrangement has been reached to roll them over have been signed as of this morning?

Local Audit and Accountability Bill [Lords]

Debate between Hilary Benn and George Hollingbery

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Bill enables the National Audit Office to provide value-for-money studies, but because he is well informed about local government matters, he will also know that the Local Government Association has expressed considerable enthusiasm for conducting these reviews itself. Is it not better that local government finds what it needs to make value-for-money judgments on, and starts those reviews itself?

[Hilary Benn]

I entirely accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. It seems to me that there is a case for both. Having read the deliberations in the other place, I am just reflecting that Ministers there really lacked enthusiasm for the continuation of central value-for-money work, but I take his point about local authorities coming together to learn from each other.

Thirdly, the Bill as drafted requires the appointment of new auditor panels. The health bodies, as we know, will have panels based on their existing audit committees. On the one hand, the ad hoc Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill described that as an added layer of governance and made a case for strengthened audit committees in order to meet the independence requirements of best practice. On the other hand, the contrary argument has been made that there would be difficulties in asking audit committees to do the work of the panels, not least because in many local authorities the audit committees have a much wider range of responsibilities. Perhaps when he replies, the Minister will explain how he sees audit panels working as sub-committees of audit committees.

Fourthly, on freedom of information, the Bill will weaken the public’s right to know. The Audit Commission is covered by the Freedom of Information Act, but, generally speaking, private auditors are not, so transparency, which the Secretary of State repeatedly tells us he supports, will be diminished. That is really important, especially as more councils are outsourcing work to private companies. We all remember the Government’s recent unhappy experience with the tagging contract scandal. Given that the Government’s view on applying the Act and the arguments they advanced in the other place have changed over time, it would be helpful if the Minister indicated whether there is any chance that their view might change again.

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way. Is it not the case that clauses 21 and 22, when combined with clauses 24 and 25, mean that freedom of information requests are completely superfluous? Clauses 21 and 22 allow the auditor to request any and all documents not only from the council but from connected parties, and clauses 24 and 25 make that information available to the public, so why would one need an FOI request?

[Hilary Benn]

I do not accept the argument that the Freedom of Information Act is superfluous, because it depends on whether auditors seek the information in the first place. I think that, regardless of the action that auditors might or might not take, the public should be protected by having the right to request the information. That point was made extremely forcefully and eloquently by my noble Friend Lord Wills in the other place.

There are some other concerns. We need clarity on who will maintain the outsourced contracts when the Audit Commission finally disappears. What about certification relating to reimbursement of housing benefit claims? We welcome the movement of the national fraud initiative to the Cabinet Office, but the provisions on the purposes for which data matching can be used do not include the prevention and detection of maladministration and error, which we would like to be reflected.

That is what is in the Bill, but there is a great big hole in it. It is principally a backward-looking piece of legislation giving effect to the Secretary of State’s decision of three years ago. He has completely failed to make provision for auditing in the new world being built before our very eyes, which I think is an astonishing omission. The proposed audit arrangements simply do not provide for that changing world in which public services are managed and provided. We have shared services, community budgets, city deals and combined authorities, which are all part of a shift towards much stronger working between central and local government, yet the current and proposed audit arrangements still focus much too narrowly on institutions—the arrangements in the Bill for local government and the National Audit Office for Whitehall—rather than the work they do. Therefore, as community budgets develop, does it really make sense for different auditors to examine the use of the local government pound while the NAO examines the use of the Whitehall pound when they are being spent together? If the service is shared and common, so should the audit be. I hope that Ministers will reflect on that point.

Robust independent audit of public bodies is essential to ensuring public confidence in Government. It is up to us to ensure that we get it right, especially after the three years that have intervened, followed by a Bill that—I gently point out—took longer to gestate than a baby African elephant.

I turn now to clause 38. Let me say at the outset that one local authority publication, which the Secretary of State mentioned, is pretty clearly outside the letter and the spirit of the code—that is, East End Life, which is weekly, advertises property, and carries local news. The Labour leader in Tower Hamlets says that it is an expense that residents cannot afford. The question for the House is therefore a simple one: why has the Secretary of State not done anything about it already? Why has he not sought judicial review? It is no good his shaking his head—he could have taken action, given the fuss he is making, but he has chosen not to do so, and he gives no answer.

[Hilary Benn]

It would be a very important legal argument as to whether the courts would attach weight to what is a code. If the Secretary of State is that worried about East End Life, why did he not take action before coming to this House to ask for clause 38 and the extraordinary powers it contains?

The Secretary of State is asking the House to give him the right, if he feels like it, to control local council publications. We have recently had a great deal of debate about the royal charter following the Leveson report. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is chuntering, but there is a lot more to say about this clause. The charge has been levied, quite wrongly, that politicians are trying to control what appears in the press, yet this clause really would give a politician the power to control, if he wanted to, what is written, how often, and in what way. This shows that underneath a lot of localist rhetoric, the right hon. Gentleman is nothing more than a centralist. I am astonished that Liberal Democrats appear to be happy to go along with a thoroughly illiberal proposal.

The clause would allow the Secretary of State to issue an order directing that one authority, or every authority, comply with his interpretation of one or all of the provisions of the code. I remind the House that the code covers paid advertising, leaflet campaigns, publication of free newspapers and news sheets, the maintenance of websites, the frequency of publications, the content of publications, and even display stands at party political conferences. Clause 38(1)—the first time I read this I could not really believe it—says the following—[Interruption.] I know that Government Members do not want to hear it. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could explain why he wants to be given this power:

“The Secretary of State may give a direction to an authority whether or not the Secretary of State thinks that the authority is complying with the code to which it relates.”

Roughly translated, he wants the power to give direction to a council even though he does not think that it is not complying with the code, and nor does anyone else. We are sometimes mystified by the way his mind works, but under this Bill he will not even have to answer to himself for his own thoughts and actions.

That prompts the question why the Secretary of State has put this measure forward. He advanced two arguments, the first of which is about competition with local newspapers. I agree that local newspapers are a very important part of our democracy. Their independent reporting holds us to account, and they give us important news and information about what is happening in our area. However, many local newspapers are in real difficulties as readership declines and people get more of their news from the electronic media. Sir Merrick Cockell, the highly respected Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, says:

“We’ve simply not been shown any evidence that council publications compete unfairly with local newspapers.”

Such evidence as we do have suggests that the amount of advertising revenue taken by council publications is relatively small, especially compared with the amount of revenue contributed to local newspapers by way of statutory notices.

It is therefore very curious that, despite great play being made in the Secretary of State’s speech and in all the consultation documents of unfair competition and the loss of advertising revenue, it was reported a little while ago that he had indicated to a private meeting of Conservative councillors at the LGA conference that the requirement to place statutory notices in local newspapers is going to be phased out within a couple of years. I would be happy to give way to the right hon. Gentleman if he would like to clarify the Government’s position on the future of statutory notices. The House will have noticed that he has nothing to say. That is because on the one hand he is arguing that council magazines and the advertising revenue they take are a terrible threat, while on the other hand it seems, as reported by Conservative councillors who were at the meeting, that he is thinking of withdrawing a much larger amount of money that papers get from local councils in the form of statutory notices. The truth is that his position is utterly inconsistent.

[George Hollingbery]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is truly being generous with his time. Is he able to give any particular reason why local papers could not report statutory notices as a news item rather than as something that they are paid to do? Does he think it is right that the public purse subsidises commercial organisations like local newspapers when they have plenty of other opportunities to make money?

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly fair point, partly because of the changing way in which people are getting their news. He is right that there is nothing to prevent papers from publishing those notices anyway, and I think that everybody recognises that we are moving towards a different era. The point I am making is that the Secretary of State has jumped up and down to complain about advertising revenue, which is very small compared with the much larger revenue that comes from statutory notices, hence the inconsistency of his argument.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Hilary Benn and George Hollingbery

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, anticipating one or two points I intend to make later in my speech.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman really must make his mind up. On the one hand, he rejects a system red in tooth and claw; on the other, he wants the system to be incredibly fair. Can he explain by what mechanism he and his party would make the system fair, other than by some central interference?

[Hilary Benn]

I would merely say this. First, if councils had a choice between the system under the last Labour Government and the resources made available then, and the cuts imposed over the last two years and the system offered now, I suspect that they would say, “We prefer the old system.” Secondly, the Secretary of State argues that this is all about giving away power and responsibility, but I am pointing out—I can understand why the hon. Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) and his colleagues get irritated—the huge number of powers that he is keeping for himself to shape the whole system and how it works. Given that the Secretary of State has all this power, I gently say that I doubt very much whether the local authority begging bowl is going to disappear any time soon. The right hon. Gentleman has form on this, however. In his equally misnamed Localism Bill, he took for himself more than 100 powers. He says that he is passing down the levers of power, but the truth is that he is hanging on to them very tightly.