Local Audit and Accountability Bill [Lords]

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

That is a fair point, as I have said, but perhaps the hon. Lady should have a conversation with the Secretary of State about what his policy is, because we are none the wiser. Indeed, when the code of practice was originally published, the Government specifically rejected a prohibition on authorities taking third-party advertising in their magazines. That is what paragraph 8.25 of the explanatory memorandum had to say.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, while an awful lot of people may miss statutory notices, some organisations—like estate agents, property agents and anybody involved in the licensing trade—trawl through the papers deliberately looking for them?

[Hilary Benn]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point. If the system is changed in the future, as long as people knew where they should look, they could trawl through council websites or other publications.

On the frequency of publication, the vast majority of councils that produce magazines publish them four times a year or less. A very small number publish more frequently, but does that constitute justification for the power in clause 38? Does it actually matter if a small parish council puts out an A4 newsletter once or even twice a month? What business is it of the Secretary of State anyway? Has he not got more pressing things to do?

The second argument we have heard is that Ministers are exercised by propaganda on the rates. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), has talked about a

“corrosive abuse of taxpayers’ money.”—[Official Report, 14 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 840W.]

The Secretary of State has talked about pocket Pravdas, town hall Pravdas and shutting down the Pravda printing presses. Members will detect a bit of a theme there, so I thought I had better have a look. I spent a little time reading through council publications, copies of which I have with me.

Given what Ministers have said, I was expecting to find a hotbed of raw, red propaganda and party politics, but I have to say that I was sorely disappointed. There was not a single proclamation from local authority supreme Soviets, no diktats from executive board commissars and—this was especially disappointing—not a single article on the latest tractor production figures. There was nothing on collective farms. The nearest I got to that was an article about a community garden where “residents developed plots”. Is that the sort of dangerous, collectivist revolutionary activity—plotting in the garden—that keeps Ministers awake at night? Actually, the piece is from an excellent publication, South Kesteven Today—the local magazine of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—and is about a community garden in Stamford.

I continued my search for the cause of all this anxiety. I had a look at Bradford’s Community Pride. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who has responsibility for housing, has left the Chamber, but the magazine had an article on deadlines for primary school applications and an explanation of council tax. Is that a problem?

I had a look at the Epping Forest magazine, Forester, which had an article about parking charges. We know how that subject gets the Secretary of State going, but it is also a very good publication. And what has Luton done? What has Luton done?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

Now that, like me, the hon. Gentleman has time to reflect from the Back Benches, he might consider that part of this problem was that he always fought the last battle. That one is dead and gone. The current Mayor gets his message across because he makes the right case to Londoners. I would think it a good thing if an independent newspaper supported my policies; it would be better than having to pay £1.5 million or £2 million to cook up a newspaper to support them instead. So I do not think he has advanced his case with that intervention.

For another example, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central could pop across to Greenwich from Tower Hamlets and have a look at the—taxpayer-funded, of course—Greenwich Time which has been published for several years now by the Labour-controlled council. In one recent editorial, the council leader attacked the Government’s policies of austerity for damaging the people of Greenwich. That is an interesting view which might have come straight from the pen of the shadow Chancellor—perhaps it did, for all I know—but I am not convinced that it is relevant to the role of the local authority.

Neither am I convinced that it is the role of that interesting Greenwich publication to tell me about the football fixtures or the cinema listings or to give me helpful restaurant reviews. It is the same with East End Life. These are all worthy things that a commercial local paper does, but to use the phrase of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), it is not a sensible use of council resources. I am sure we all want leisure or weight-loss ideas, but it is not the job of these supposed newspapers—these council publications—to provide them. It is a deliberate move on to the turf of privately run, independent newspapers. I say “deliberate” because in some cases, I regret to say, local authorities do not like the competition and criticism. That is what this is about.

Moving away from Greenwich, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central could cross the river again to Newham, where The Newham Mag makes great play of the “savage cuts”—an interesting phrase that I am sure the ever-restrained mayor of Newham had nothing to do with—imposed by the Government. In one fascinating passage, it stated that some councils pulled the plug on their Christmas lights this year because of “savage cuts” in their funding from central Government. When we worked on the formula grant, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I did not consider taking out local authorities’ Christmas light funding. It was a clever use of words to try to suggest that central Government were being Scrooge and making it impossible for people to have Christmas lights on their high street. The article did not mention, of course, that Newham council did not cut the publicity budget, which paid for The Newham Mag, and which even on a conservative estimate would run to about 10 sets of high street lights. Interestingly, even in otherwise legitimate advertising—about making benefit claims and where to go—every reference to cuts is prefaced with “savage” or “massive”. It is clearly politically loaded and another example of how councils are acting against the spirit of the code.

[Ian Mearns]

I am following the thread of the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Is he actually saying that the Gateshead Post, which used to be published every Wednesday, but met its demise more than a dozen years ago, was put out of business by a council publication that did not exist at the time it ceased printing?

[Robert Neill]

What I am saying is that the Gateshead Post was entitled to its view because it was not paid for by public money.

If the leader of Barking and Dagenham council or the mayor of Newham want to put across their views, they can put out a press release through their respective Labour party offices, just as I put my views across in press releases paid for by my constituency party. I do not believe that I should get the council tax payers in my area to pay for me to put out my political views. Such activities are happening consistently, however. The London borough of Barking and Dagenham’s News stated that the council had been forced to make cuts to services. The article related to the spending review, but the council made no reduction to the £1.5 million that it was spending on the News. Simply hiding behind East End Life might make the shadow Secretary of State appear reasonable, but there is a lot more to it than that. I regret to say that, as it happens, all the publications on my list are in Labour areas.