Lord Rennard
Main Page: Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Local Government Bill [HL]
Lord Rennard Excerpts
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I shall write to the Opposition with those costs.
Lord Rennard
Does the Minister agree that many of the potential savings that could have been made had the reorganisation gone ahead could be achieved by better and greater co-operation between the councils in any event? Therefore, many of the savings identified in the impact assessment could be achieved without the reorganisation. However, if we had had the reorganisation, we would still have had the massive costs identified in the impact assessment.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
If that is the noble Lord’s view, why on earth would he reject an amendment that calls for a report to establish just that?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment on electoral provision. Norwich and Exeter have behaved lawfully and impeccably throughout these proceedings. At each stage they have followed parliamentary law, unlike some Ministers in DCLG, such as Mr Neill, who instructed us to do not what Parliament said but what he wished us to do. If a Labour Minister had issued such a letter, there would be fulminations on the Benches opposite.
Councillors have been unseated not because of any sin. There is no question of ultra vires, personal bad behaviour or of betraying their fiduciary duty. They have at each stage done what the law required them to do. Now, because of JR, reinforced by this Bill, a third of councillors in Norwich and Exeter have been removed. In Norwich, the leaders of the Tory Party, the Green Party and the Liberal Democrat Party on the city council have been unseated, as well as the deputy leader of the Labour group. In Exeter, the leader of the Labour group, among others, has been unseated. There has been a serious loss of experience across all parties. Your Lordships will remember that the JR was not against the cities, which have behaved lawfully throughout every day and month of the process, but against DCLG.
Lord Rennard
Does the noble Baroness accept that the High Court decided that the previous Government had behaved unlawfully, and that no blame was attached to Norwich and Exeter councils? The previous Government clearly did act unlawfully, according to the High Court. Therefore, the previous Government, of whom she was a member and supporter, should accept responsibility for this.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, I certainly accept that the High Court judge has ruled that the proceedings of the Secretary of State, as advised by DCLG, were to be quashed. I do not challenge that for a moment. However, I remind the noble Lord, if he looks at the judgment, although we do not have the full transcript, that on appropriate advice—I expect that such advice to a Minister would come only from the department—a letter in December or January would have met the judge’s concerns and the orders would not have been quashed. Alternatively, if the Boundary Committee had reported on time, which it failed to do, there would have been enough time for a quick consultation which, again, the judge says would have met his concerns and the orders would not have been quashed.
So let us not suggest that my right honourable friend in the other place, Mr John Denham, was somehow acting in an inappropriate way. He followed the appropriate procedures which were then held by the judge not to have properly taken into account the need to advise the four authorities of the additional criteria of economic recession and Total Place of which they should have been aware before the Secretary of State proceeded with his orders. That is all. He did not do that. The department failed to send out a letter and he failed to have time for that consultation. That is what happened and therefore there is no—I repeat, no—moral or legal impropriety to be associated with my right honourable friend in the other House.
Lord Howarth of Newport
It is always a pleasure to take an intervention from the noble Baroness. She has held elected office in Norfolk for many years and I am sure that she is concerned that the people of Norfolk should be extricated as best they can be from the mess in which they find themselves. Whether the mess was caused by the previous Government or this Government or the High Court has been debated up hill and down dale. It is not particularly profitable to return to that. We are faced with the practical problem of how to restore order to this chaotic situation in the best interests of local democracy.
Lord Rennard
In our debate on the orders put forward on 22 March, I pointed out that the only effect of approving those orders may well be to deny people in Exeter and Norwich the right to elect their councillors in May, when they would normally have done so, when many other local authorities did so and when they were also voting in the general election. Of course, it would have been much cheaper to have held those elections together on that day. That is why I continue to think that it would have been better if those orders had not been approved and the fatal amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Tope had been carried. However, because those orders were not blocked and because, as so many people predicted, they were struck down by the High Court, additional costs and additional stresses are now being unnecessarily incurred.
I would be interested to see what a report on costs incurred would show. It does not seem right to me to legislate for the Secretary of State to lay such a report before Parliament. No doubt the issue of costs will be raised in the future and there will be many attempts to apportion blame for them. My conscience is clear on the matter of costs. We need to move on and this is an unnecessary amendment. The sort of information that such a report would lay before Parliament should be available to all of us anyway, but in relation to costs and having listened to the recent contributions, I feel that some apology should be forthcoming from those who were responsible in the Department of Communities and Local Government, who got us into this mess at the time.
Earl Cathcart
So far, I have intervened twice without declaring my interests. I live in Norfolk, I have been a district councillor for more than 10 years and I am chairman of my parish. Although I was brought up overlooking the River Dart in Devon, most of what I say will concern Norfolk.
I have a letter from the leader of Norwich City Council saying:
“It had been our desire to have the Judicial Review hearing heard before the draft Orders were debated in Parliament; however Norwich, Exeter and the Treasury Solicitors argued against this on the basis that they would have insufficient time to prepare their case”.
When it was pointed out to them that this might lead to complications with the elections, they replied that it did not concern them. Their main concern was to prepare their case. I find this a curious amendment—that the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report on the costs incurred. That is all it says. Norwich City Council holds an election for one-third of its members each year. It knows only too well how much each election costs and would have budgeted for it. So if the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Rosser, wish to find out the cost, no doubt a quick telephone call would do the trick, rather than bothering the Secretary of State.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I will speak only briefly on this issue, given the time and the important business that is due to follow. I support the thrust of what my noble friends are trying to achieve by this amendment. We have heard of the specific issues and challenges that arise, the relationships between Norfolk and Norwich, and differing views of the relationships between Exeter and Devon. I am bound to say that I do not see twin-hatters as the way to solve all this, as they are subject to the vagaries of the electoral system; they are not a reliable or desirable way to do this.
The nub of what my noble friends are seeking is to recognise that if we truly support partnership working and if Total Place and area-based budgeting is to become a reality and a success—as it must, given the dramatic cuts that are coming down the line from central government—information, the role of councillors, the engagement of councillors between authorities and representation are absolutely central issues, as they are to the assertion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and her party on the way forward for Norfolk and Devon. Even if she does not embrace the formulation in the amendment, will she follow up in writing if she cannot say so fully today quite what mechanisms are and should be available and which mechanisms will be introduced to ensure that all this partnership working, to which we all subscribe, can really become fruitful and deliver the outcomes that are wanted for local citizens and local taxpayers?
Lord Rennard
My Lords, these amendments contain worthy aims about co-operation between the councils concerned—something that obviously everyone should seek, although we may not have been a model of co-operation among politicians in our debate today.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, made some good points about the unfairness in the balance of representation in Norfolk. I must say from the Liberal Democrat Benches that there is an obvious answer to that unfairness and lack of balanced representation in many local authorities: proportional representation for local council elections. I am sure that that will be a subject for a debate in future.
I do not, as noble Lords will know, believe that the process of local government reorganisation in these areas, in particular the way in which the previous Government tried to railroad through new structural changes in their dying days, has been exactly conducive to the sort of co-operation that is now required. However, nor do I think that it is compatible with a localism agenda for the Secretary of State to have to report to Parliament on plans for co-operation between the councils in these areas. That must be agreed locally. It is something that I believe local people will want and vote for in the elections. It is not something that could practically be controlled from the centre. The uncertainty and the consequential divisions of the last few years, and the last few months in particular, need to be set aside. The councils concerned now need to do what many other councils are looking at in terms of proper co-operation without the need for structural reorganisation at this point.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lord Rennard and Lord Cathcart for virtually winding up this debate for me, because they have said more or less all that I wanted to say. There are two main issues here. First, in order to produce the sort of report that is being asked for before the Act starts would mean more delay. Frankly, I think that there has been enough delay and chivvying around with these orders. As I said earlier, this is the end. We must stop this now and let everyone get on with working normally. The amendment would only delay that.
The second issue is that it is not up to Parliament to sort out how local authorities collaborate with each other. It is certainly up to Parliament to say that there is an expectation that local authorities will work together—that counties will work with their districts and districts will work with their parishes. They are going to have to do so because, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, there is going to be far less money. If services are to be provided to a standard and in a way that all local authorities will want, there will have to be close relationships between all levels of authority.
I do not see that these amendments are for Parliament. The first one would certainly delay the issue, which would be an enormous mistake. We have many examples of where there is excellent co-operation in services in terms of procurement, transparency, social services, children’s services and waste collection. I have a long list of every single responsibility in local authority services of where co-operation is taking place, but I shall not weary the Committee with it. All of us know that there are good collaborative arrangements.
I think that Norwich’s miseries have had a good airing today. A lot of information has been given about how things take place and I am sure that that will be noted. I have no doubt at all that Norfolk and Norwich will read Hansard avidly and so will note the noble Baroness’s concerns about the difficulties and how things stand. I was going to say that I do not support these amendments. Indeed, I do not think that Amendment 6 in particular has anything to do with Parliament, so I hope very much that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.