Local Authorities: Standards

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the changes we made to the standards committees and standards support were made, as the noble Lord will recall, as a result of concern in this House. Our thrust has always been to ensure that this matter is run at a local level so the decisions made on how the system is set up will be left to local authorities. But I assure the noble Lord that we will be monitoring what happens as a result of those changes and looking to see how local authorities are dealing with allegations about the conduct of councillors—just to avoid, we hope, the problems that he mentioned and to find out the views of councils about the new arrangements.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, has the noble Baroness had a chance to reflect on the recent High Court decision in the case of Bideford Council? Does not she agree that it is “vexatious and frivolous”—the words in the Question—when local authorities are taken to court for arranging voluntary sessions before council meetings where members are invited to say prayers, as we do in this House?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, that was a legal decision which was interpreted, I think, as part of European Union law. It is clear that councillors can voluntarily attend prayers if they wish. There is no compulsion on them to attend, but council authorities can have prayers out of the chamber if people wish to have them before a meeting.