Localism Bill

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander]

I have no experience of that happening. I would be interested to speak to the hon. Gentleman after the debate to learn more about his experience.

What puzzles me most about this Government’s obsession with senior pay is that it comes at a time when they seem spectacularly unwilling to tackle excessive pay in the private sector. I represent a London constituency and I know that there are bankers, lawyers and accountants who, within five or six years of graduating from university, will be earning £60,000, £70,000 or £80,000 a year. That is not far off the wage of a head of children’s services. I ask whether it can be right to put all the focus on senior council pay.

I agree with the amendments tabled by Opposition Front Benchers that deal with bringing transparency to low pay. Lewisham is an authority that has led the way on implementing the London living wage. As a result of its London living wage policy, 800 contracted staff are better off from the council’s insistence on seeking invitations from contractors that put in a London living wage bid as well as a regular bid. I am proud of the work that the authority has done on that and I believe that there are ways of encouraging the public sector and local councils to do the same.

I had wanted to comment on amendment 37, but I am conscious of the time. It is strange how the Government are, drip by drip, telling us which duties they wish to protect—whether it be duties to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, or to provide allotments or whatever. Why did the Government not do this work before they put out their review of burdensome regulations? A couple of weeks ago, the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government heard the Minister for Housing and Local Government talk about the Department’s decisive leadership in abolishing the Audit Commission. I would urge the Government to show some leadership in saying which of the “burdens” they value and want to see protected. It seems to be one rule for one thing and a completely different rule for something else. I think it is sloppy and poor government—sadly, I think many of the Bill’s provisions are an example of poor government. I look forward to voting against some clauses and in favour of some amendments when we get the chance.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

We have so little time that I am going to cut straight to the chase; I hope not to take more than a minute or two.

I speak in favour of new clause 10, which I tabled and which is supported by Members from both sides of the House. It concerns the recall of councillors. I view this as a simple, obvious, “no brainer” idea, which I hope will be met with a nod of approval by both Front-Bench teams. I will briefly make the case for it.

As Members know, the Government are planning to introduce a recall mechanism for parliamentarians, whereby Members face being removed from office if their constituents so choose. The plans, in my view, do not go nearly far enough. MPs will be subject to recall only if a Committee decides that they have committed an act of serious wrongdoing. Recall is supposed to be about empowering people, not parliamentary Committees, so I shall seek to amend that provision when I have a chance. In the meantime, I was pleased that the Secretary of State promised to consider introducing into this Bill a recall mechanism for councillors. That has not happened, so I have done it for him.

I am fortunate in that my constituency is served by some excellent councillors, but we all know that there are some councillors who do very little for their constituents, so there should surely be a mechanism whereby residents can hold councillors to account during the four years in between elections in the same way as employees are in every other field of human endeavour. It cannot be right to ask Members to vote for measures that will introduce recall for parliamentarians, but not for councillors in local government, which is just as important.

My new clause would allow for

“25% or more of the… voters in the constituency of an elected local government member”

to petition for and trigger a recall election. I think that that strikes the right balance between preventing vexatious recall attempts and empowering local people to hold their elected councillors to account. The new clause would greatly empower local people and would keep councillors on their toes, and I hope that it can be put to the vote so that the House can support it.

[Mr Raynsford]

I wish to speak, very briefly, to amendments 365 and 366, which I tabled and which relate to standards.

In his opening remarks on the programme motion, the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)—who steered the Bill through its Committee stage—expressed a wish to listen to the views of people, whether they were members of the Committee, other interested parties, or people who had given evidence to the Committee. As he knows, an awful lot of people gave evidence, and many who gave evidence on standards gave very interesting evidence. Sadly, however, the Government did not listen to the evidence, including that given by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The Government may be right in saying that there is a case for some streamlining of the standards procedure, and indeed I conceded that in Committee, but I am afraid that they are making a serious mistake in substituting for the existing machinery a framework that is incoherent, that is potentially extremely weak, and that will contain serious anomalies.

Let us examine those three problems. First, clause 17 allows the Secretary of State to require local authorities to establish a procedure relating to the declaration of interests, a breach of which will involve a criminal liability. Clause 16 allows the establishment of an entirely voluntary framework within which it will be up to a local authority to decide whether to adopt a code of conduct. That could lead to an extraordinary situation. Someone who had failed, perhaps owing to a technicality, to declare an interest as part of the mandatory requirement imposed by Government would be liable for a criminal action, whereas someone who had behaved in a deplorable way—who had bullied people, been dishonest, or behaved shamelessly in the council chamber—could emerge scot-free because the council concerned had chosen not to adopt a code of conduct. That is clearly unsatisfactory.

Secondly, there will be no code of conduct promoted by Government, like the model code that has existed in the past, that could serve as the default in the event of a local authority’s failure to adopt its own code.

Thirdly, there is a serious risk that, under clause 16(2), a local authority that currently has a code of conduct could

“withdraw its existing code of conduct without replacing it.”

Ministers claimed that they would leave this to local government—that they would do the right thing. At a time when we are all concerned about standards in public life, whether at national or local government level, it is extraordinary that they should produce a half-baked proposal which has not been thought through, which allows loopholes and anomalies to exist, and which—most seriously—undermines the substantial progress that has been made in recent years in improving those standards.

Although Ministers appear unwilling to accept the case for amendments in the House of Commons, I sincerely hope that Members in another place with real experience of these matters will press amendments to ensure that there is a more coherent, more satisfactory and more demanding framework to maintain standards in public life.