Byelaws (Alternative Procedure) (England) Regulations 2015

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister, who must have laboured long and hard, burning the midnight oil to prepare the speech with which she launched this momentous set of regulations.

The Explanatory Memorandum deals with the impact of the regulations on business, charities and voluntary bodies and describes the impact as “negligible”. That is the judgment that I would make on the impact of the regulations on local government and communities: it is negligible. The noble Baroness rightly said that matters were set on foot in 2008. I have a vision of armies of civil servants in the Department for Communities and Local Government labouring over seven years to produce this momentous change in practice and in law, and I am tempted to echo the sentiments of Winston Churchill in remarking on the fact that probably never in the history of secondary legislative endeavour has so much labour been employed for so long and to such little effect—for very little changes under these regulations.

It is particularly important that the Government continue to reserve a role for the Secretary of State. My honourable friend Steven Reed in the debates in the Commons pointed out that the Welsh Assembly Government have dispensed with the role of the Minister and the Secretary of State in Wales. Curiously, Her Majesty’s Government went to court over these matters; they are usually critical of those who seek to take the decisions of Governments to court, but they took the Welsh Government to court and I am pleased to say that they lost over that decision to leave the Minister out of the picture altogether. True localism, I suggest, would make that course much the more desirable.

There is another issue that arises from the Explanatory Memorandum, which is that by-laws are not only made under the auspices of this department: there are other government departments which have responsibilities for by-laws. One might have thought that across government there would be some discussion about having a uniform system for by-laws. No attempt appears to have been made to do that. So we have at least a binary system, where one or more other government departments will still require the procedure for by-laws made under the local government legislation which these regulations are changing. Has it never occurred to Ministers that they should look across government and provide a uniform system? I have already indicated that this change does not amount to much, but it is surely better to have a uniform system, whatever its character, than to have two apparently parallel systems running side by side. Perhaps the noble Baroness would agree to take back this aspect at least, and try to ensure that there is a common approach across government.

Of course the Opposition are not opposed to this very modest change. In fairness, I do not think that it was envisaged to be all that ambitious when it was initiated by the original legislation, so I am not claiming this as a party point. It does seem sad, however, that it has taken this long to produce such a feeble change in the system, and perhaps we can have assurance that any further change will be made with a great deal more expedition.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments. I thought that he was going to say at the beginning of his speech that he congratulated me for saying “by-laws” so many times in one speech, because it seemed like I was saying it constantly.

One of the questions that he asked, quite reasonably, was why it has taken so long for the regulations to come into force, given that this was first discussed in 2007 and 2008. I understand that we have been refining the new by-law arrangements, including the deregulatory framework, to ensure that the by-laws made by local authorities do not curtail civil liberties or increase regulation disproportionately. Of course they are local laws and can result in a criminal offence.

He also makes the pertinent point about other government departments. What other government departments do is a matter for them, but hopefully where CLG starts, others may follow, so that we may see a flood of by-laws from other government departments in due course. But I will certainly take back the comment about other government departments.

He talked about Wales. The Local Government Byelaws (Wales) Act 2012 required that local authorities have regard to any guidance issued by the Welsh Government, and that guidance has been issued. In short, local authorities in Wales are very much required to make their by-laws in a prescribed manner.

[Lord Beecham]

The noble Baroness referred to the possibility of other regulations coming back. Would it not be possible for a single regulation to apply across the whole of government rather than individual departments drafting their own regulations, presumably on similar lines and submitting them to this process?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Perhaps I did not articulate that correctly, but as I have said I will take back the comment about a common framework for government. With that, I commend the regulations.