Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Lord Tope Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Tope]

44: Clause 39, page 26, line 25, at end insert—
“( ) This section ceases to have effect after 30 April 2016.”

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I have no wish to reopen, especially at this time of night, the debate on Clause 39 which was so rudely interrupted on Monday evening when we might well have concluded it. In moving the amendment, which is of course a sunset clause, I am following the wisdom of the current Secretary of State, who described sunset clauses as being:

“In line with best practice on public policy”,

because they limit,

“changes to three years and a review of the benefits from the policy at that point”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/1/13; col. 17WS.]

I am sure that those of us who worked so assiduously on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill will remember those wise words from the Secretary of State, and that is the effect of this amendment.

The LGA would like to see the removal of the clause altogether because it believes that it is,

“a significant threat to both local government’s financial stability and infrastructure investment”.

On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, when he spoke earlier on Report, wanted the clause removed, or at least not implemented, because he thought that the Government had overreacted to what he described as,

“a pretty small problem in terms of the number of authorities and the cash affected”.—[Official Report, 15/7/13; col. 607.]

Time will tell who is right, and that is the purpose of the amendment. The Government are clearly unwilling to remove the clause altogether, so if it has the unforeseen and negative consequences that some fear, it could be removed without the need for primary legislation. As the Secretary of State has said, that accords with best practice on public policy, so I am sure that the Minister will be keen to accept this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the sun has already set; none of us wants to be here when it rises in the morning. I concur with the amendment moved by the noble Lord and I trust that the Minister will accept it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, I can be very brief. The Government cannot accept the amendment. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that council tax payers should have the final say on excessive increases and that the case for the inclusion of levies in the referendum legislation is compelling. The Government intend that, once made, the change to the legislation should remain on the statute book and that council tax payers should be protected from excessive increases permanently—not just for a few years. Local authorities and levying bodies would not appreciate the prospect of further change to legislation in three years’ time.

It may be helpful to the noble Lord if I also mention a major practical issue raised by the amendment. In 2016, as in all years, local authorities must set their council tax by 11 March. Any authority triggering a referendum must begin preparations almost immediately, so the referendum will be scheduled for the first Thursday in May 2016. The sunset clause would take effect on 30 April 2016, right in the middle of local authorities’ preparations to hold a referendum. Furthermore, if the amendment is accepted, by that time, the provision would have disappeared from the statute book and rendered regulations relating to the conduct of the referendum and its effect in direct conflict with the legislation on which they are based. That is because they would be based on the definition of the relevant basic amount of council tax, including rather than excluding levies. That would be a recipe for confusion and would not be fair on local authorities or council tax payers. So, for reasons of principle and practicality, the Government are unable to support the amendment, and I hope that the noble Lord is willing to withdraw it.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister. I confess to a little disappointment about that reply, although I wonder whether I should see some encouragement. If the only defect in the amendment is a technical one on timing, perhaps the principle could be accepted. I look forward to that being pursued in another place at another time. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 44 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Lord Tope]

46: After Clause 39, insert the following new Clause—
“Local authority publicity requirements
(1) Any requirement for a local authority to publish a notice in a newspaper shall cease to have effect.
(2) Instead, the local authority shall publish the notice in question in such way as the local authority thinks is likely to bring it to the attention of the greatest number of people in the area most concerned.”

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I will take a little longer on this amendment as we return to the subject of statutory notices. The amendment is simple, clear and straightforward. It would remove the requirement to publish statutory notices in local newspapers, but it would require local authorities still to publish those notices in such a way as is likely to bring them to the attention of the greatest number of people in the area most concerned.

The arguments for the amendment were well rehearsed at Second Reading and in Grand Committee. We know that the legislation dates from 40 years ago, in 1972, which was a very different world. I think that there is common agreement that the publication of a statutory notice, often in small print and in an impenetrable form, in the middle or back pages of a local paper is, arguably, the least effective means of communication. Those arguments were well rehearsed in Grand Committee and I shall not repeat them all today. What were much less well rehearsed were any arguments against the actual amendment. Instead, noble Lords made perfectly valid points with which I agreed but which had nothing to do with the purpose of the amendment. Let me begin by being clear what the amendment does not do. It does not remove or weaken in any way the requirement on local authorities to publish statutory notices. Indeed, I would argue that it strengthens that requirement, because it requires them to publish them in a way most likely to reach the greatest number of people in an area, which a statutory notice in a local newspaper certainly does not do. Nor does it make any changes to the 163 enactments, which I listed in another amendment, that require publication of a statutory notice. I happen to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, when he said that a cull of those enactments is probably overdue, but that is not part of the amendment. It can, and I hope will, happen anyway.

I agree with noble Lords who said that not everyone looks at the local authority website or even uses the web at all. The amendment deliberately does not specify how statutory publication should be done, only that it should be done in the best way. In some areas, and in some circumstances, that may well be through the local newspaper.

All speakers in Grand Committee agreed that the requirement to publish in a local newspaper came from a very different age. Communication methods have changed hugely in the intervening 40 years. So have local newspapers themselves. There are fewer of them, they are generally less well-read and, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, graphically illustrated in a previous debate earlier on Report, the coverage of local government by local newspapers has also changed. It is a fast-changing world, not least in the field of mass communication. It would be wrong now for government to specify how statutory notices should be published. That would be likely to be out of date even before it was enacted, let alone in 40 years’ time. It would also not be in keeping with the spirit of localism. There are very different circumstances in different areas. Some are fortunate enough to have a well-read daily local newspaper; some still have widely read and paid for weekly newspapers; and some have weekly free sheets that may reach a greater proportion of the local population. But many areas now have none of those things. Not all statutory notices are appropriate to a whole council area. Publication of some can be much better targeted at the particular area to which they relate. These are all reasons why I believe that, while the statutory requirement to publish these public notices must remain, the decision on the most effective way to communicate them should be with the local authority and not enshrined in statute.

The LGA estimates that last year local authorities spent £26 million on the publication of statutory notices in local newspapers as well as a further £17 million voluntarily on general advertising. This was really the only argument put forward against the purpose of the amendment; that local newspapers are in difficulty because of the changes in communication and that therefore local authorities should continue to be required by law, not by choice, to subsidise them through the publication of statutory notices. I do not think anyone regards that as a tenable argument at any time, but it is certainly not one in the face of the severe budget pressures on all local authorities now. Many local authorities, including my own, have good and positive partnerships with the local press that are of mutual benefit and that is surely the route down which we should all be encouraged to go.

Although the Minister gave no indication of this in her reply in Grand Committee, the Government seem to be persuaded by these arguments. The Local Government Chronicle reported last week that the Secretary of State told Conservative councillors that he,

“pledged to let councils publish statutory notices online in the next two years”.

It then reported that the DCLG issued a statement that did not confirm or deny Mr Pickles’ comments. Instead it quoted the Minister, Brandon Lewis, as saying that,

“commercial newspapers should expect over time less state advertising as more information is syndicated online by local authorities for free. The flipside is the free press should not face state unfair competition from town hall newspapers and municipal propaganda dressed up as local reporting”.

This Bill legislates for one side of the quid pro quo. My amendment deals with the flip-side, to use the Minister’s expression. It needs to be in the Bill before it is enacted. Will the Minister tells us in her reply whether it is the Government's intention that the current requirement to publish all statutory notices in newspapers should be ended? If that is the Government’s intention, what is the timescale? Is it the two years that the Secretary of State has referred to? If that is not the intention, how do they intend to give effect to Brandon Lewis’s statement? Assuming that it is the Government’s intention, as I hope and believe it is, will the Minister tell us how and when the Government expect to remove or at least change the current legislative requirement?

Within two years clearly means in the lifetime of this Government. Surely the Government are not intending to legislate separately for this in the last few months before a general election. While it would be wonderful if this amendment was accepted today, I expect to be neither surprised nor disappointed if it is not. I made clear in Grand Committee that what I am seeking is a clear commitment from the Government that they will use this Bill to give legislative effect to whatever change they propose to take effect within the next two years.

Given the reported comments of the Secretary of State since Grand Committee and the renewed interest in and speculation about the Government’s intentions, I hope that the Minister will make the position clear beyond any doubt in her reply today. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for those rather contrary views. Only three people have spoken, and their views were all different, so that is a pretty good start and leaves me with a fine path through.

The purpose of a statutory notice, as everybody clearly knows, is to inform the public about decisions that affect their lives, their property and their amenity. That is especially the case for issues where the public have a limited period in which to respond.

The Committee was in broad agreement that notices should be easily available for local people and that they are vital for local transparency and accountability. The noble Lord has highlighted the cost of statutory notices and suggested that local newspapers are one of the least effective ways to convey information to people. We do not agree. Research by GfK for the Newspaper Society found that the reach of local newspapers was much greater than council websites: 67% of the respondents to that survey had read or looked at their local newspaper for at least a couple of minutes within the past seven days, compared with 9% who had viewed their council website. Some 34% of adults questioned had not accessed the internet at all in the last 12 months.

The most recent internet access quarterly update from the Office for National Statistics, published in May, shows that 7.1 million adults in the United Kingdom—14% of the population—have never used the internet. Two-thirds of over-75s, a third of 65 to 74 year-olds and 32% of disabled people, as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act, have never used the internet. There are quite a lot of people, therefore, who do not, would not and could not use the internet for these notices.

The GfK research for the Newspaper Society showed that local papers are spontaneously cited as the way in which most people—that is, 39%—expect to be informed about traffic changes, for example. My noble friend Lord Shipley will be interested to know that the next placed source of information is street signs, at 26%—they come immediately to notice. When prompted, 79% of all adults responding said that they expect to be made aware of traffic changes in their printed local paper, second only to street signs and ahead of any other communication channels.

Undoubtedly, the requirement to publish some notices in newspapers comes from an age when there was no access to other means of communication. Under present conditions it could perhaps be removed, but the requirement to ensure that these notices are available easily remains as valid today as it always has.

As I said in Committee, the last Administration consulted in 2009 on removing the statutory requirements to publish planning notices in newspapers and found that that was not well received, as noble Lords opposite will remember. Some 40% of respondents to that survey were against the proposals, with a further 20% giving only qualified support. I acknowledge, of course, that that was four years ago. Things have moved on a bit. However, the party opposite concluded that some members of the public and community groups relied on the statutory notices in newspapers, and was not convinced that good alternative arrangements could readily be rolled out. A recent debate in the other place on alcohol licensing notices showed the strength of cross-party feeling against repealing the requirement to publish the notices in newspapers.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that statutory advertising should not go altogether—I think he repeated that today—and that it was more a question of which statutory notices should be reformed and which should continue to be advertised in newspapers. That can already be done, because departments can put forward particular statutory notices for consideration under the Red Tape Challenge, and that provides opportunities to review a statutory notice. The amendment gives little consideration to which statutory notices are important to local people or where there is a case for retaining publication in a newspaper, and that of course would have to be looked into.

In the internet age, it is clear that commercial newspapers should expect less state advertising over time, as my honourable friend Brandon Lewis has made clear, as more information is syndicated for free online. We accept that newspapers need to develop new business models rather than relying on revenue from statutory notices. However, the newspaper industry is very clear that competition with local authority newspapers, for example, can be damaging.

It would be unfair to remove statutory notices in the blanket way that is being proposed while independent newspapers still face unfair competition from local authority newspapers. We must stop this first before looking at other issues. We acknowledge that the DCLG Select Committee’s recommendations a couple of years ago for a review of publication requirements of statutory notices cannot be ignored in the long term.

I hope that with those explanations the noble Lord will be happy to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tope]

Before the Minister sits down, I ask her to comment, as she seems to have forgotten to do so, on the reported comments of the Secretary of State that this requirement will be phased out within two years. He was quoted as saying this by I think three or four Conservative councillors separately, while Brandon Lewis, the Minister, has similarly indicated that the Government intend to change the statutory requirement as a quid pro quo for the legislation that we are in the process of passing. Can the Minister not end this uncertainty now and give us some certainty on what the Government’s intentions are and when they are going to be implemented?

[Baroness Eaton]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate. An issue that concerns me about statutory notices being advertised in newspapers is that in some of our larger cities there are large communities that have no language to read a local newspaper. It can be very helpful when the council passes out information in appropriate languages, and I do not think that any of the debate we have had so far has given any indication of how this is to be communicated to very large sections of larger cities’ communities.

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[Lord Tope]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Shipley for supporting my amendment. I remain not entirely clear whether or not the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was supporting it because once again he avoided the issue. He indicates that he does not support it. He called for a cull of the requirements; I said in my introduction that I have much sympathy with that, but, again, it is not the purpose or the point of this amendment.

The Minister answered—I think speaking on behalf of the Newspaper Society—in terms of more people getting their information from the news reporting in local newspapers. The issue is not about whether local newspapers report the news and provide information more adequately or more fully than council websites. It is not about local newspapers, it is about statutory notices published in them. That is very different from news stories that appear on the news pages of a local newspaper. Again, we are avoiding the issue.

I understand and accept that the Minister is not in a position tonight to make the definitive statement that I think everybody now wants. Whatever side of the argument they are on, everybody wants that definitive statement. I accept that the Minister cannot make it but the Government cannot go on simply avoiding the question. They cannot go on as they have done for several years—almost since they were elected—saying that this is under review; at some point that decision has to be made.

The Local Government Chronicle reported a number of Conservative councillors saying separately that the Secretary of State had said this. The DCLG in its statement neither confirmed nor denied it—most of us would accept that that is as near to a confirmation as you are ever going to get. Before long, and certainly before this Bill finishes its passage through the other place, the Government are going to have to state their intention. They are going to have to give a timescale and say how and when they will legislate to amend the 1972 provision. That is clearly not going to happen tonight. I am sad and sorry about that but I have no choice but to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 46 withdrawn.