Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we are fully committed to openness and transparency in the proceedings of local government, combined authorities and mayoral combined authorities. We would draw the line so that the same rules operated as for local government currently. We would have reservations about taking it back beyond that—certainly taking it into the area of advice.

That raises a question; I do not know whether the Minister can help us with it. When there are discussions and negotiations about devolution deals, are they in the public domain?

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)]

My Lords, my first intervention in proceedings on the Bill were when we were discussing the same subject in Committee. There were references then, as there have been today, to the 1972 Act. The particular episode to which I referred in that previous debate was the Private Member’s Bill introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1959-64 Parliament, which was her first real appearance on the parliamentary scene. My late noble kinsman sat on the Front Bench throughout the passage of her Bill.

I have taken an interest in the subject going back a great deal further, to that moment in 1809—we were fighting the French at the time—when the Treasury intervened to say that three particular government departments which it had nominated must by 12 noon on any day, on anything which had been in any way controversial or interesting in the morning’s papers, agree the Government’s position, which would then literally, in the language of government, become the line to take thereafter for the rest of the day. When I served as a Treasury Minister, the reason that I had responsibility for the Central Office of Information went back to that fact, because it was the Treasury which had set up the system in the first place.

I want also to say a brief word about the passage of the then Greater London Authority Bill, because it was the first Bill under which the evidence of those advising councillors in local authorities could be made available to the public at large. I am not in any way intending to pour anything hostile into wounds that are long since healed, but the Minister in charge of that Bill made an extremely loyal and long-term defence of the fact that that provision was in the text of the Bill—which it was not. I am afraid that I did go on pestering the Minister in charge of the Bill—no names, no pack-drill—as to where in the text of the Bill, which we were looking at, that information was. Eventually, he broke down and admitted that they were planning to do it and were going to put down an amendment, but had not actually put down the amendment before. It was very loyal of him to have defended and covered for the junior Minister, the Minister who should have put it down.

This has long been an interest and I shall be very interested indeed to hear what my noble friend says in responding to the propositions that have been put in front of her.