Localism Bill

Lord Shutt of Greetland Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales to acquaint the House that they, having been informed of the purport of the Localism Bill, have consented to place their prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

Clause 10 : Fire and rescue authorities: charging

Amendment 1

Moved by

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[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I will just add a few brief things. My noble friend reminds me of one or two things which I had thankfully forgotten about. I was trying to remember how many amendments I actually put to this chapter of that Bill when it came. That is also something I had forgotten about, which is something that happens.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, quite rightly said that councils have to welcome and encourage petitions. But what is really important is the seriousness with which they treat them and deal with them when they come. You can set up as many bureaucratic, complex, legalistic schemes as you like, but if people do not treat the petitions seriously it is just going through the motions and wasting time and energy. If people treat petitions seriously you do not need a complex, bureaucratic, top-down—and, I have to say, pretty patronising—piece of legislation like Chapter 2 of Part 1 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. I note with some wry amusement that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is desperately trying to hang on to this classic piece of new Labour nonsense, which frankly has not improved the situation of petitions in any council in the country. Those who take them seriously, take them seriously; those who do not, do not.

This is eight pages of primary legislation telling councils in great detail how to deal with petitions. I, along with my noble friend, pay tribute to the Minister at the time, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, who listened to a great deal of what we had said—it was 12 pages of nonsense before we started, and between us we managed to persuade the civil servants and the powers that be in the then Government at least to take some of it out. As I told the noble Baroness at the time, if the Government simply want to tell councils to have a scheme for dealing with petitions that deals with them seriously, they could do so in half a page of legislation, not eight pages. I have been through this and reminded myself of the huge amount of nonsense in it. I will not detain—or should I say entertain—your Lordships’ House with any more of this tonight, but it really does deserve to go.

The one point that I will raise relates to Section 16 of the 2009 Act, which is the requirement to call officers to account. I do not know how often, if ever, this has been used since this part of the Act was commenced. At the time, we had a long debate, and in our view it was totally inappropriate for officers of the council to be hauled up and held to account before the public in this way. The people who should be held to account are the elected councillors: those who run the council and who have been elected by the people to be responsible and accountable to the people. Clearly, they will need support from officers, and if officers are not performing their jobs properly, the elected councillors are the ones who should take a grip of the situation and sort it out. That is a fundamental principle, in our view, but we could not persuade the Government at the time that that was the case. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Shutt is, I assume, going to resist this amendment.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have spoken on this matter. Clause 46 of the Bill repeals the duty on principal local authorities in England and Wales to have a petitions scheme and the associated provisions. Amendment 15 would omit this clause, therefore reinstating the duty, and Amendment 49 would then amend the original legislation, which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to when he mentioned the eight pages. Incidentally, I have a note that there would be still four or five pages left of that, including the requirement to call officers to account. So a lot of it would still be there.

While the intention behind the amendments to ensure that councils treat the receipt of petitions sensibly and appropriately is laudable, I am not persuaded that reinstating this prescriptive and burdensome duty, albeit in a revised form, is either necessary or desirable. The revised duty proposed would remove Section 11 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, which provides for principal local authorities to have petition schemes, but it is clear that they would continue to need such schemes, given that Amendment 49 includes several references to petition schemes. Even with this change, the revised duty would mean a significant new burden on local authorities. The effect of subsection (6) of the proposed new section is that the statutory petitions schemes would have to go into far more detail than is currently required about how particular categories of petition will be treated.

In addition, the extension of the statutory duty to all categories of petition—including mayoral petitions and council tax petitions—which the amendment creates, will create further additional burdens, as a scheme would then need to provide for different processes for different types of petition. To reinstate the current overly prescriptive duty not with a clean sheet but with a confused mishmash of some retained elements, with some changes and some provisions dropped, is not at all helpful. We trust local authorities to make the best choices for their local areas and to respond to residents’ concerns in a locally appropriate way. However, how that looks should be a matter for local discretion, not central prescription.

We simply do not believe that we need to reinstate this duty in order to force local authorities to have a petitions scheme, any more than we believe that we need to tell local authorities how to respond to petitions from their own residents.

The noble Lord, Lord True, asked whether the Government still support the concept of petitions. Let me make it clear that they absolutely support and encourage the use of petitions but at a local and not at a national level. It seems to me that people want to put up a petition in a post office or whatever. They do not want to have to scratch about wondering what the proper way to organise a petition is for that council. They want to get on with the petition, get the names together and get on with it. That is how it is in democracy and how it is in local areas. In the circumstances, I trust that this amendment will not be pursued.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I suppose that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, can be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu since the issue has arisen, but he should have looked at the amendment rather than the Act. The amendment would substantially reduce what I entirely agree was a ridiculously overprescriptive regime for the presentation of petitions. It simply provides for councils to have a scheme to deal with petitions and is not about the detail of how petitions are to be presented, except that they would be acceptable in electronic or written forms. After that, it would be very much a matter of local discretion as to how they would be dealt with. There is no intention in the amendment to prescribe how petitioners should present their case. It is not at all a bureaucratic substitute and is significantly shorter than the three volumes that the noble Lord would have us believe the Act required.

The difficulty is that, by abolishing the provision without any alternative, the Government are sending a signal that petitions do not seem to be important. They are important and it is unfortunate that the Government are sending a signal to the contrary by neglecting this when Parliament is now adopting a procedure, for good or ill, which appears to place considerable value on petitions. However, it is clear that there is insufficient support for me to test the opinion of the House. I regret what has happened and I hope that at some point the issue will be revisited. In the mean time, at the very least I hope that Ministers will use their best endeavours to encourage councils, even if not on a statutory basis, to promote the use of petitions as an important element in local democracy. In the circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

17: Clause 50, page 52, line 37, after “part” insert “or parts”

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, this is a group of several amendments. They are government, minor, technical and consequential amendments to the Bill that are necessary to correct some minor errors, provide clarity of expression in places and ensure that clauses operate as intended. I beg to move.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation of all of these amendments. It was rather hard-going trying to work through them all, as they came through fairly late in the day. However, we are happy to accept them on the basis that, as he said, they are minor, technical and consequential, and on the basis of an assurance I hope he will give us that they do not change policy, processes or, in particular, the protections for local authorities that were achieved by the sterling work of the Front Bench opposite—particularly by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who has been dealing with EU fines. I would just like to ask the noble Lord where things stand on the draft policy statement. I am not clear whether that has become a finalised policy statement and what its status is. Subject to that, I am happy to support these amendments.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I believe that work on the policy statement is still going on, but I am happy to confirm that these amendments are exactly as I have indicated.

Amendment 17 agreed.

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

18: Clause 50, page 52, line 38, after “part” insert “, or those parts,”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

22: Clause 53, page 55, line 28, leave out from “authority” to end of line 29 and insert “is the subject of a designation order under section 52 which applies to that EU financial sanction”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

23: Clause 54, page 56, line 23, leave out “that” and insert “the EU”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

24: Clause 55, page 58, line 30, leave out from “payments” to end of line 31 and insert “, whether any acts of the authority have continued, and will continue, to cause or contribute to the continuation of that infraction”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

31: Clause 56, page 59, line 28, leave out sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii) and insert—
“(i) have caused or contributed to the infraction of EU law concerned; or(ii) have caused or contributed, or will continue to cause or contribute, to the continuation of that infraction;”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

34: Clause 60, page 62, line 32, leave out from “make” to “any” and insert “different provision about”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

36: Clause 63, page 65, line 1, leave out from “authority” to end of line 3 and insert “is the subject of a designation order under section 62 which applies to that EU financial sanction”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

37: Clause 64, page 65, line 40, leave out “that” and insert “the EU”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

38: Clause 65, page 68, line 1, leave out from “payments” to end of line 2 and insert “, whether any acts of the authority have continued, and will continue, to cause or contribute to the continuation of that infraction”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

45: Clause 66, page 69, line 1, leave out sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii) and insert—
“(i) have caused or contributed to the infraction of EU law concerned; or(ii) have caused or contributed, or will continue to cause or contribute, to the continuation of that infraction;”

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Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

48: Clause 69, page 72, line 29, at end insert—
“(8) Sub-paragraph (6) of paragraph 4 of Schedule 8 to the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (contributions regulations for a financial year to be in force by preceding 1 January) does not apply to regulations under that paragraph in their application to the financial year beginning in 2012 so far as they make provision related to the operation of section 47 of that Act as amended by this Act.”