Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(11 years, 4 months ago)
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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.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I am struggling to understand the implications of what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is proposing. I think we all share his concern—I accept that it might not always be a widespread concern—that sometimes, maybe after five years, it could become too cosy. I hope we would all accept that a tendering process after five years is certainly desirable; whether it should be mandatory is something that we can debate. However, in such a tendering process, would the existing auditor be precluded from taking part in that process, or, if it was to take part in it and was clearly to submit the best value tender, would the authority then be prevented from reappointing it on that basis? That is the point I struggle to understand.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps I might respond before the Minister replies, since we are in Committee. My preference would be for exclusion but as a fallback, at the very least, to have a proper tendering process, as I have explained.
Lord Tope
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, began by describing this process as overly bureaucratic, but then I think he went on to say that, since it is overbureaucratic, let us have an amendment that makes it even more bureaucratic. That is not the most compelling argument that I have ever heard from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, as I suspect he knows very well.
The amendment certainly seems to describe what is good practice and what I hope would happen in practice. I am moderately confident that that is what would happen, certainly with any good authority. Whether we need to have an even more bureaucratic process to enshrine all this in legislation, I am very doubtful, and whichever Minister is replying they will no doubt tell us that we do not want to make it too bureaucratic.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps I may just ask whether it would remain open to authorities to combine in placing audit contracts. The Audit Commission identified substantial savings having been made by central commissioning, and it anticipated that if extended to the remaining 30% of contracts, a significant further saving of some £400 million over five years could be made. I am not necessarily saying that that is the way to go but, under the provisions of the Bill and this whole appointment process, would it still be open for such an approach to be adopted by authorities coming together, for example, in a particular region or a particular class of authority, obviously with the support of their independent panels? Would it still be open to them to move in that direction, getting a sort of bulk purchase by agreement rather than it being imposed externally? It would be helpful to have some assurance on that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am happy to give that assurance. That is entirely acceptable and to be expected within the Bill. Often small authorities in particular will find it convenient and useful to combine how they approach this matter. However, as the noble Lord has just said, this is by voluntary co-operation rather than by imposition from the centre.
I have to reprimand the noble Lord, Lord Tope, for making exactly the first point that I was going to make, thus cutting down on what I have to say.
Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (Council Tax Increases) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2013
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I congratulate the Government on accepting the advice of the Electoral Commission. Certainly, it is sensible to adopt the new wording although, as the Minister pointed out, there are other recommendations that the Electoral Commission made concerning how to promote interest in and understanding of the issue should a referendum take place. I note from the Government’s response and the noble Lord’s remarks that the Government will continue to work with the commission—and, I hope, the Local Government Association—about how that might be effected.
The timetable is ridiculously short in most cases between a council’s final budget decision—even after, as is the case in many authorities, months of consultation about their financial situation—and the date on which the referendum has to take place. It is less than two months—normally it is about six weeks—between the final date for making a budget and a referendum. That is a difficult timescale and the Government need to look at how people might best be informed.
However, the principle of a referendum is extremely questionable. The Minister makes a virtue of the fact that the Government have facilitated a council tax freeze. That generosity would be more welcome if it had not been financed by topslicing the local government grant in the first place so that, in effect, money that would have come to local government is still coming but only for this particular purpose. It creates problems for local authorities because while the council tax is frozen, the base revenue budget is also in effect frozen. There is a growing gap between the council’s expenditure and its base budget and, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, pointed out in a debate the other week, this can and will ultimately cause greater problems. However, we are where we are.
I would like to ask a question—not about the levying authorities, which were dealt with in the Secretary of State’s Written Statement last week; I understand the position about that even though I do not necessarily go along with the whole argument—in relation to the police commissioners’ right to impose a levy because they, unlike other bodies, are not effectively accountable to local authorities. The regulations will place the precepting authority in the frame, so to speak, of the referendum question and that might be thought to be enough. However, I doubt it will be, because the levy will be collected via the council tax and that needs to be made clear to people. It needs to be made clearer even than perhaps baldly stating in the referendum question that this element, if it is in excess of 2%—I know of at least one police commissioner who is proposing a 3.5% increase in the levy—is not the responsibility of the council that collects the tax and sends out the bills. That matter ought to be addressed in more detail in the course of the review that will, no doubt, go on.
There is more to the recent debate about council tax referenda than these technical matters. Recently the Secretary of State came out with an extraordinary threat to penalise councils which opt to increase council tax below the Government’s imposed limit of 2%, above which a referendum would be required. The Secretary of State has accused councils which refuse to increase council tax by less than 2%—I refer to that document of record, the Daily Mail, for the remarks that he made—as being “democracy dodgers” by creeping under the radar and cheating their taxpayers. Of course, the councils would simply be applying the law and the system he pushed through and, indeed, levying a council tax increase below that which would trigger a referendum.
This is remarkable. My noble friend Lord Smith inquired of me whether the Secretary of State for Transport might say that people caught travelling—it is perhaps timely to mention such matters—at 69 miles an hour should nevertheless be deemed to be breaking the law because it is under the speed limit. What the Secretary of State is saying is that councils which levy council tax increases below 2% are somehow creeping under the radar and cheating their taxpayers. This is an appalling statement. It also ignores the fact that councillors remain accountable for their decisions through the ballot box at local elections. A referendum that he seeks to impose is in his view somehow superior to accountability through the ballot box at local elections. He does more than criticise; he actually threatens to take into account decisions to levy an increase below 2% and effectively claw it back or impose tighter limits next year. Where is the justification for that threat?
I have to point out that the Government have sought no approval for their swingeing increases in VAT or the devastating cuts in council tax benefit, housing benefit and other welfare benefits which hit millions of people and will cost many households a great deal more than a 2% council tax increase, assuming that were being levied. In my authority, which I think is not going to increase the levy, a 2% increase would amount to something like £20 a year for 70% of the households in Newcastle. I repeat that the council is not proposing to levy a 2% increase. That pales into insignificance beside the amounts that those households will lose in the benefits to which I have referred.
Mr Pickles was recently on “Desert Island Discs”. He should have opted to take with him as his book a collection of his own speeches about localism and freedom for local authorities, and a copy of his own Localism Act.
Lord Tope
Then it would not be a desert island. Let us move on. I begin by declaring my interest as a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton, where the council has publicly announced that we will be recommending a council tax freeze for yet another year because we are in a position to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said—I think with some regret—that we are where we are. I think it is true to say that as all three speakers thus far in the debate are current or former councillors, we all probably regret that we are where we are. I certainly spent many happy years—I think initially with the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, but certainly with the Local Government Association—listening to Councillor Jeremy Beecham berating successive Governments for capping. I know that it was an enormous disappointment to him, as it was to all councillors, that a Labour Opposition, having been committed to abolishing capping for all its time in opposition, then spent 13 years in government failing to do so. I do not want to get into too much of a semantic argument about whether capping—which is effectively what it is—by the Secretary of State, with a right of appeal to a referendum, is qualitatively better than the situation that pertained before, but at least there is some sort of appeal.
I think that most of us do not expect there to be a referendum. It incurs considerable cost and there is uncertainty about the outcome; or perhaps it will not happen because there is a view that there is too much certainty about the outcome. Nevertheless, that appeal is there. I say to those authorities—probably mostly Labour-controlled now—that if they feel strongly that the cuts they are having to make in the budget are too great, too painful and not in the public interest, perhaps they should consider having the courage to hold a referendum and test the will of the people. It is not a system I like or would want. I would be very pleased to see it go. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, we are where we are. That is what Parliament has legislated for and that opportunity is there. Therefore, if authorities feel strongly that they are in that position, I urge them to trust the people and take the risk—it is a considerable risk—of holding a referendum.
As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, the timescale for being able to do this is incredibly tight and very difficult. I hope that I shall never be in this position but I am very unclear as to what local authorities will be able to do if and when they have a referendum. What are local authorities able to say in putting a case to the electorate on why they are having the referendum and what the arguments are? I am not clear about what role the Government will take. It is too late to say, after the event, that you should not have done this. Before they enter into the referendum, local authorities need clarity on what they are and are not allowed to do. Needless to say, political parties—as distinct from local authorities—are free, within the law, to say what they wish in support of whichever view they want to take on the referendum. We need much greater clarity about what local authorities can do, especially given that the timescale is so short. The wide expectation that there will not actually be any referenda has made people a bit complacent in providing that detail. That is wrong: we need more detail.
Secondly, what would the Government’s role be, should there be such a referendum? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that we are already seeing local authorities of two political persuasions being lambasted by the Secretary of State and Ministers and described as “democracy dodgers” for staying precisely within the law. If we believe in localism, as all of us in this room do, what role is it of the Secretary of State and Ministers to be writing letters to local papers and issuing press releases, attacking a local authority for using its best judgment to determine what should be the council tax increase within the limit set by the Secretary of State and entirely within the law? I ask this question because I worry about whether, should a local authority be brave enough to hold a referendum, the Government would come in on the side of a no vote, or would act—as they should—in a strictly neutral way and say nothing at all.
We have regulations before us today on which the Electoral Commission has said it is entirely happy with the question. I do not think any of us should, or would wish to, argue with that. It has said that the Government have met almost all its recommendations. I hope that when the Minister replies he will tell us about those recommendations that have not yet been met and what the Government propose to do about those.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, Amendment 6 stands in my name and has been suggested by both the Local Government Association and the Campaign to Protect Rural England. It would of course mean that only local authorities which do not already have a local plan in place could be designated as poorly performing. In other words, it would immediately remove from the possibility of designation all those authorities that have a local plan in place. As we all know, the preparation and adoption of a local plan is a lengthy process. It is sometimes too lengthy a process but it is fully democratic and shows that the planning authority concerned is performing to proper democratic accords. On that basis, it is believed that they should be excluded from this threat.
Good, sensible local plans are forward-looking. They are intended and designed to encourage and stimulate growth. It is felt that they are in themselves probably a better measure of how well an authority is performing than individual planning applications—I think that this point has been made in earlier debates today—however major the project for which they are submitted. As I said, the intention of this amendment is to exclude those authorities that have adopted a local plan over the previous 20 years, as it suggests.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, is 20 years a reasonable period? The point has already been made in debate that there is an issue with the effectiveness of local plans. If we are going back as long as that, it could be argued that that is not really a sufficient incentive to authorities to bring their plans up to date. They cannot be done annually but two decades is an extremely long time.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham
Lord Tope
My Lords, I support the thrust of these amendments. I do not imagine that the noble Baroness intends to put it to the vote at this hour. I am not entirely certain that it is appropriate for it to be in the Bill anyway but she certainly raises extremely important issues, which I am quite sure, in a few moments, the Minister will agree with. I would like to endorse that and see how we can take this forward—probably in discussion with the Local Government Association and certainly through issuing good practice. It does not necessarily have to be the Government who do that. The Local Government Association could do that. But these are important issues which need to be addressed.
Lord Beecham
I certainly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said and support the thrust of the noble Baroness’s amendments. The first is a matter essentially for the local authorities. The second impinges on the role of bailiffs. We had a discussion in the Committee stage of the Crime and Courts Bill when I moved an amendment urging the Government to produce a regulatory system for bailiffs, about which there had been a great deal of controversy. The previous Government had passed the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 which envisaged a code of practice dealing with a whole range of issues, some of which were touched on in the noble Baroness’s Amendment 109ZB.
We were informed in the Committee stage of the Crime and Courts Bill that the consultation period that the Government had initiated about that whole area was ending on 14 May and that conclusions would be reached in the autumn. Well, we are in the autumn—we avoided having a summer in the mean time—and it would be interesting to know how things are going in that respect, although I do not expect the noble Baroness the Minister to know offhand. It seems to me, and it might seem to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that it would be sensible to draw the two discussions together, because certainly as far as the role of bailiffs is concerned, clearly critical to Amendment 109ZB, there are also wider implications. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, was dealing with this matter, but I think that she may have moved on and it is probably the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who now has the remit for this. It would be helpful if the Minister could consult with whoever is now dealing with this matter to see what is happening on that front so that we can have a clear indication of the Government’s thinking—I hope before Third Reading, which does not leave a lot of time—so that the noble Baroness might have an opportunity, if necessary, to press something on that occasion. Therefore it would be helpful if the Minister would indicate that she would be prepared to take this issue back, looking at it with the other department and letting noble Lords know how the land lies in respect of bailiffs and enforcement measures generally, but in particular in relation to council tax.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I am not sure now whether I am part of an enlarged coalition or a broad alliance, but whatever it is I am pleased to be part of it. I feel comfortable in such a coalition and alliance. My name and that of my noble friend Lord Palmer of Childs Hill have been added to the amendment and we are pleased to support it. The points have been made.
Perhaps I may add one thing. I suspect that it is unlikely that the Minister will stand up in a moment and say, “No, of course the Government will not consult anyone about this; we will just do it”. I do not think that that is going to happen. I am sure that we will receive reassurance that consultations would take place. I expect that we would have reassurance that the results of the consultation would be taken carefully into account. However, it is the next stage that also concerns many local authorities, and it certainly concerns me. If, as is very likely, there are financial implications from any such policy changes, the reassurance that I should like from the Minister is that the cost and effect of such policy changes will be fully funded by the Government, either anyway or under the new burdens initiative. Frankly, that is one of the key points that we are concerned about—not whether the Government will give us warm words and reassurances about consultation, but whether the effects of any such change will also be fully funded. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I envisage that “all interested parties” will include business. However, for the avoidance of doubt it would be helpful if—assuming that the Minister gives her blessing to the amendment in one form or another—she would confirm that that is the case. Clearly, since the rationale of the proposal in the first place is to incentivise local government and its business development policy, however valid that may be, it would make sense to involve business in any consultation about changes to the policy.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I suppose that I, too, should begin by declaring an interest. I am simply a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton. I am not a vice-president of anything, or at least not yet—I see that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is disappointed with that declaration.
I listened to the noble Lords opposite making the case, with which I am sure many in local government would have some sympathy. I think that all of us, on both sides, would wish to be a little further ahead than has proved possible. However, I suspect that as we will say time and again with this Bill, we are where we are now and we have to consider the question of postponement. My noble friend Lord Jenkin is right to draw a distinction between postponement of the business rate retention proposals and a possible postponement in implementing the localisation of council tax support, to which we will come later. There will be many in local government who have sympathy with what has been said on the other side of the Committee and perhaps more so when we get to council tax support.
As a councillor, I have thought quite hard about this in respect of my own authority and more generally. I do not support postponement. I would rather we were not where we are. Until relatively recently, it was expected that this Bill would be enacted by the end of this month but clearly that will not happen until much later. I hope that, in reply, the Minister will be able to give us a clear and firm commitment that by Report stage, in October, all that is required to be published will have been published, albeit in draft form. I take the point that until the Bill is enacted, it cannot be in an absolutely final form. However, if local authorities know all that they need to know by October at the latest, and I hope a little before that, and if the Minister is able to give a reassurance, I believe that most local authorities will share my view on business rate retention that we are so far down the road and there is so much expectation that this will happen—there has been so much wish that it should happen and we shall come to that later—that postponement now would not be welcome, particularly to me. I hope, with some confidence, that the Minister will resist these amendments.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, my noble friend Lord McKenzie alluded to some of the difficulties that surround next year’s council budgets, to which these amendments refer. In particular, he mentioned reserves and the uncertainty about the timetable, as well as general uncertainties that are leading councillors to take a more conservative view about the level of reserves that should be held. I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, a position that I hope to share with the noble Lord, Lord Tope, as soon as possible. The president is here, so perhaps he can take that message back to the association.
In my council, we have been accustomed to running on a very modest level of reserves. The treasurer is concerned about the degree of uncertainties not only because of legislation and the general financial situation but also because of the growing number of outstanding valuation appeals in the commercial sector. Of course, that goes very much to the heart of what the business rate will deliver. It seems that these appeals are growing in number. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned to me recently that they are taking about two years to be settled. I am not suggesting that the programme be held for two years, but it is an indication of the growing levels of uncertainty about what might ultimately be the yield, let alone about how the Government would handle the business rate when it is collected. In addition to that, a new category effectively of precepting authorities will arise in November when a handful of electors up and down the country will choose their police commissioners, who will have responsibility for 11% of the council tax. Clearly, that will relate to the business rate income. That is another element of uncertainty. In my submission, all this suggests that it would be sensible to ensure that the legislation is firmly in place, is absolutely clear and takes into account these other factors.
I suspect that we shall be debating at some length, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has pointed out, the position arising in relation to council tax benefits or council tax support, as it will be known, and the new systems that will apply. I would have thought that it would make more sense to take those together against the background to which I have referred, a background that the Secretary of State apparently referred to at the LGA conference last week, when he made what he described as a jocular reference to tackling councils’ reserves. By the word “tackling”, I take it that he means requiring that they should be used. Against the kind of uncertainties that we are talking about, such an approach would surely be highly risky and damaging.
I do not know whether the Minister is aware of quite what the Secretary of State said; if she is not, I would not ask her to respond at this point. However, I would be grateful if the situation could be clarified, perhaps by a letter to Members of the Committee—and perhaps wider than that, because it will also send a shiver up many a treasurer’s spine, on top of all the other uncertainties that we have. We will certainly be pressing hard for a deferment of the council tax benefit side, as it seems sensible for the system to change at the same time and not in parts, particularly given the other uncertainties that I have mentioned in relation to the amendments before us.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Tope
My Lords, I added my name to the amendments so comprehensively and ably spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, a little over three-quarters of an hour ago. The way in which the treatment of the issue has developed has been quite an object lesson in itself. As far as I am aware, it received little or no consideration in the other place. If I recall correctly, the only person in the Second Reading debate to devote their speech substantially to this issue was the noble Lord, Lord Filkin. It was at that point that I became very conscious that, in the midst of our general rejoicing at the proposed demise of the Standards Board for England, we were in grave danger of not thinking about what was going to be left later, which effectively was nothing: everything was going out—the baby and the bathwater.
When we got to Committee, we did not reach this issue until a Thursday evening, after the time when the Committee would normally have adjourned. I remember getting rather tired and emotional about such an important issue being addressed at such an hour. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who has known me for the best part of 30 years, is clearly astonished that I could ever get “tired and emotional”, but it sometimes happens late on a Thursday night, as it did on that occasion.
Lord Tope
It was an extremely serious issue. The Government seemed to be taking the view that this was a Localism Bill and that standards in public life could therefore be dealt in accordance with local diversity. I was pleased to see in the briefing from the National Association of Local Councils, much quoted in this debate, the matter put very succinctly. It stated that,
“there is no local diversity about what is appropriate conduct for councillors”.
There is no one keener on local diversity than me, but the one area where local diversity is particularly inappropriate, and where in the past we have had rather too much of it, is in standards in public life.
I am therefore delighted, although still a little surprised, that, at this very late stage in the Bill’s process, we are having a full and good debate on the subject. The Minister’s response has been so much heralded that it is in danger of becoming an anticlimax, because we have all said what we think that he is going to say. If he says it, it will be what we expected; if he does not, we are all in trouble.
I am delighted that we are now, at this late stage, coming to address the real issue, which is not whether we should have had the Standards Board and whether we are pleased that it is going—everyone accepts that it is going—it is what replaces it. There seems now, a little late but welcome nevertheless, to be a general acceptance that there needs to be a mandatory code, that it should not be imposed by central government and the Secretary of State, that it should be drawn up, as our amendment states, by “representatives of local government”—I think that it is generally understood what that means—and that it needs to be mandatory both in terms of its existence and of what is in it, although it may be added to.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I feel obliged to pay particular attention to the need to declare interests as I reply on behalf of the Opposition to this debate, so I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council, as a recently appointed member of its standards committee and as an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association. I join other colleagues in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, and his co-signatories on bringing forward these amendments. I fear that the tiredness of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, may account for the fact that he omitted to recall that several of us, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, myself and others raised the whole agenda of standards boards and committees at earlier stages of the Bill.
Lord Tope
My Lords, in no way would I wish to cast aspersions on the noble Lord and certainly not on my noble friend Lord Shipley. My point was that, if my memory is correct, the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, devoted his entire speech, or pretty well his entire speech, to the issue of standards. He was the only one in the debate to have done so—not surprisingly, as it is such a big Bill.
Lord Beecham
Indeed, and I join the noble Lord in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, on what he said on that occasion as well as this. A number of issues have been raised today. I particularly note the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I am probably alone in this Chamber in being prepared to shed a tear or two for the standards board. It perhaps started off in a rather cumbersome and bureaucratic way, but it did improve its performance over time. Nevertheless we accept that its day is done, and we have to find a suitable replacement for it.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made perfectly legitimate reference to the problem of trivial complaints designed to gag or in some ways punish or inhibit members. That is a perfectly legitimate concern, which can be met within the framework of the local committees that are proposed in the amendments, particularly when they include the involvement of independent members. That is a crucial issue and one which will need to be discussed with Ministers. Those committees offer an assurance of impartiality which might not otherwise arise in the sometimes highly charged atmosphere—not necessarily party-political atmosphere—that can exist within individual councils.
The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred in particular to the position of parishes. There is clearly a need to consider the substantial workload generated by complaints within the very large number of parishes that we have. It is sometimes difficult for principal authorities to cope with the volume of issues that arise. I endorse his view that, where the principal authority is to remain responsible, some representation from parishes within that authority would be helpful. That is certainly the practice in Newcastle, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will confirm. We do have parish members on the standards committee. I ought to say that, whatever happens in terms of the legislation, both political parties in Newcastle wish to continue with that committee, which is of course independently chaired. Incidentally, the independent members have written to say that they would very much wish to see an obligation on authorities to maintain those committees. However, I wonder whether it would be possible, in conjunction with the National Association of Local Councils, to which most, but not necessarily all, parish and town councils belong, to look at ways in which that burden might be moderated. For example, if the association in a county area were able to put together a panel drawn from across an area, rather than necessarily drawn from an individual council, which might find it difficult to man and support such a project, that might be an alternative to principal authorities having to undertake that work.
There is also the fundamental issue of what the purpose of this whole procedure is. The Bill puts the situation as effectively criminality or nothing. If there is a criminal offence, as defined by the Bill, then something happens; nothing else comes within the purview of the legislation. The criminality is based, as we have already heard, on a fairly narrow definition of financial interests. That in one sense is too narrow. But in any event there are other issues which are perfectly legitimate issues for public concern—for example, members’ relations with members of the public or staff, or the misuse of council property.
All these, I fear, occur and there needs to be a mechanism whereby complaints and issues of that kind can be dealt with and appropriate sanctions imposed. I concur that that would be better at a local than a national level. I hope, therefore, that we can carry forward those discussions. The noble Lord, Lord Filkin, is absolutely right: if you do not have sanctions, you do not have a mechanism that the public can have any confidence in. The Minister has indicated—I think to all and sundry—that the Government are prepared to move on these issues. That is extremely welcome, and I hope that we can have productive discussions that will lead to a more flexible and perhaps a more locally based system; but one in which the public in particular—whom it is there ultimately to serve—can have confidence. I very much welcome that change of mind and the positive attitude, which characterises Ministers in this House, at least in this department. I look forward very much to hearing the Minister’s reply and his anticipated undertaking to take this away and consider it, so that we might have an opportunity to see the position satisfactorily resolved at Third Reading.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness’s acceptance of the concerns that were raised and their reflection in this group of amendments. If we could have similar co-operation over the rest of the Bill, we would be delighted—and surprised.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I thank the Minister for expressing her sympathy for what we were saying so well tonight. We of course welcome these amendments. I had the distinct impression that because of this not being perhaps a major part of the Bill, the Government had not properly taken account of the effect that if those councils which wished to change their governance arrangements now, as soon as they are able to under this Bill, had whole council elections, as we have in London and a number of other parts of the country, they would be waiting until after 2014 to be able to make the changes. Those councils which had whole-council elections this year would have to wait another four years to do it. That made no sense so I am pleased that the Minister recognised that and I welcome these amendments.
The amendments will be particularly welcome in a number of councils—certainly ones in London that I know of—which have, in effect, already changed their governance arrangements but hold meetings of the executive after the committee meetings. The meeting of the executive lasts for five minutes and agrees with every decision just taken by the committee. That is the procedure they use in order to get around the system as it is at the moment. It would clearly be even more of a nonsense if that sort of thing were to carry on for another two or three years. I welcome these amendments very much and I know that they will be welcomed in a number of councils, including my own, which are intending to make these changes as soon as the law permits.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the ingenuity of the noble Lord’s colleagues defies description. I certainly welcome this sensible amendment. However, it is timely to say a word in favour of the leader and executive model and, in particular, to draw attention to the one part of the recent publication by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, with which I agree. In relation to elected mayors, the paper makes a strong point. I told him that I agreed with something he had written and he was surprised. The relevant part is the emphasis that he makes about the need for a strong and independent scrutiny function, with which I entirely agree under whatever system is operated—be it mayoral, leader and executive or a straight committee system.
There are those who are still in love with the old-style committee system; the notion that you have a collection of Socratic city elders engaged in philosophical dialogue about the affairs of state in a particular borough or authority. I am bound to say that that does not accord with my own experience, particularly after serving for many years as chairman of committees, leader of the council, and so on.
When I departed to the Siberian power station of the arts and recreation committee, having given up the leadership and any other executive position—by choice I may say; it was self-imposed exile—I discovered that as a back-bench member of the traditional committee system one’s influence was pretty limited. When you are in the chair you can move things on quite briskly: you have an agenda and you get it through. When you are a back-bench member you usually have a political group meeting beforehand. It may last about an hour and there are 12 or 15 of you, which gives an average of four or five minutes each. The point of the formal meeting is to get it over with as quickly as possible. In reality, very little of the purported scrutiny takes place in the traditional committee system nor is there very much influence over policy.
That was summarised for me most effectively one day—I hope your Lordships will forgive this brief anecdote. I had missed a committee meeting of the arts and recreation committee but went to the next one. I read the minutes, which said that a member had raised a question about birds eating the grass seed in the Leazes Park allotments. I thought to myself, “Has it really come to this?”. We had an £800 million budget, with goodness knows how many problems and opportunities to debate, and the most the member could think of to raise at a committee meeting was birds eating grass seed at an allotment. I do not say that that entirely characterises the committee system, but there is some danger of that happening.
The main thrust of my, perhaps somewhat tedious, observations is to recommend that, whatever the circumstances, there must be a strong and independently sourced scrutiny role, not only to hold the executive to account, because perhaps too much of scrutiny has been based on a retrospective look at the actions of an executive, but to look forward, and, as it should be, in an unwhipped forum, at policy, development and so on. That is not incompatible with a committee system, but in reality, in my experience, it rarely took place that way. It needs a push for strong scrutiny and I hope that irrespective of the provisions of the Bill, the Government will encourage authorities to maintain and enhance that scrutiny role, whatever type of authority they are and whatever model of governance they adopt. I certainly would not oppose these amendments to give councils the option to choose their own system.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
Why could the local authority not say that it is not elaborating because of confidentiality or the Human Rights Act? Why should it not make that clear in those circumstances?
Lord Tope
My Lords, that is exactly my point. I thought that the Minister had just given the reason which the local authority would give in those circumstances for not accepting it. If I remember rightly, the question asked by my noble friend Lord Greaves was, “What are these exceptional circumstances?”. The example that has just been given is not one of them because the local authority would give the reason which the Minister has just given us.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I expect your Lordships will be familiar with the provisions of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, and specifically all the requirements laid down in Chapter 1. On the off-chance that all its details do not immediately spring to mind, perhaps I might be forgiven for outlining the relevant chapter.
The duties referred to relate to the promotion of democracy, and the Act sets out a number of issues upon which councils have a duty to promote understanding. They include the democratic arrangements of authorities: that is,
“(a) the functions of the authority;
(b) the democratic arrangements of the authority;
(c) how members of the public can take part in those democratic arrangements and what is involved in taking part”.
The duty also includes:
“a duty to promote understanding of the following among local people—
(a) how to become a member of the principal local authority;
(b) what members of the principal local authority do;
(c) what support is available for members of the principal local authority”.
This is obviously designed to encourage greater participation and greater willingness on the part of people to stand for election and to serve as elected councillors.
In addition, the Act requires councils to promote the understanding of and information about a range of other organisations with which local councils are connected: for example, monitoring boards, courts boards and youth offending teams. The Act also requires councils to promote understanding among local people about the magistracy:
“(a) the functions of a lay justice;
(b) how a member of the public can become a lay justice;
(c) what is involved in being a lay justice”.
These are fairly simple tools with which to promote the involvement of people in local governance—using the term broadly—with both local authorities and, as I have indicated and as the Act makes clear, a range of other local institutions that impinge upon the life of the community and are very often dependent on the voluntary participation of members of that community. They are examples of engagement with society which any Government, including the present one, would presumably wish to encourage very strongly. I therefore do not understand why this Bill seeks to remove that duty. This Bill purports to be about localism and local government, about involving people in the decisions affecting their lives and those of their community, about encouraging wider civic responsibility, so why does this clause remove a basic, not particularly elaborate or expensive, duty to promote exactly that? What is this clause doing in this Bill?
Lord Tope
My Lords, the noble Lord began by suggesting that we might not remember the provisions of the local democracy and everything else Bill. Some of us in this House remember it only too vividly. The noble Lord had the good fortune, if I might say so, not to have been a Member of the House then, but I remind your Lordships that we spent many, many hours on this part of that Bill.
The short answer to the noble Lord’s question as to why my noble friends and I rejoice at this clause is prescription. We spend many hours in this House, including on this Bill, complaining about central government prescribing in detail to local government what it should and should not do, what it can and cannot do, and even more particularly how it should do it. That is what Part 1 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill did in enormous detail. I am sure my noble friend Lord Greaves will remind us exactly how many pages, words and possibly even letters it took to do this. That Bill started in your Lordships’ House and we spent a long time trying to improve that part of it, arguing that it was not the business of central government to prescribe exactly what local government should do and how they should do these things. Of course we should promote democracy. Of course we should encourage all these things. All good local authorities of whatever political control are already doing that. They have been doing it, in most cases very successfully, for many years and will carry on doing so whether there is an Act of Parliament requiring them to do so or not. So I, for one, rejoice at this clause, and this might be one of the few times I say that during this Committee.
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord will be aware that, no doubt for good reasons, I was not a member of the previous Labour Government and I cannot answer for them. They did not do everything that we would have wished in local government. Perhaps this matter did not achieve the priority that some of us would have liked. In replying, the Minister is right to point out possible costs of the detailed guidance that his civil servants are so ready to produce. Of course, that does not mean that that degree of prescription is unnecessarily desirable and that the costs will necessarily have been incurred.
If we want to encourage participation in local government and voter turnout, the people standing for election or seeking to serve their community as magistrates need encouragement and information. The community as a whole needs to be informed about what its local authority can and cannot do, and how it might be influenced. Much of the Bill is about those processes going on in different ways at different levels. The duty would have reinforced the thrust of the Bill. With respect, I still do not see why it is being removed.
I note that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is not in his place. Perhaps his two colleagues have taken him to one side because he subscribed to my amendment.
Lord Beecham
Indeed, but had he been here, I assume he would have supported the amendment to which he has ascribed his name, and with his long experience of local government—including as leader of the council in which we both serve—I would have thought that might carry some weight with his colleagues, but apparently not.
However, I hope it will be recognised that all of us have a responsibility in public and political life to encourage greater participation. If we are not going to do it under the auspices of a duty, let us at least in our various capacities endeavour to do it more broadly, because local democracy needs that kind of support.
The Bill proposes a different method, which I consider to be less satisfactory and which I believe the noble Lords may also consider unsatisfactory, which is the system of local referendums. We will debate it later today, no doubt. This is a much more elaborate system in a different context, because in that case one is seeking the opinion of a community on a simple proposition, subject to a referendum with little authority, given that there will hardly be a significant threshold to call a referendum, let alone in respect of turnout. This is a much more elaborate and expensive way of doing things than dealing with petitions properly and encouraging them to come forward.
Again, I do not understand why the Government feel it necessary to remove these provisions, accepting, again, that the prescriptive element is otiose and could be dispensed with. Petitions are a better way for the public to draw attention to matters with which they are concerned, and for the public to get a response to those concerns in a reasonably structured way. It is true that in some councils there is a process for public petitions—certainly, in my council there is, and no doubt others as well—but it is not universal, and it is not something which is sufficiently developed. In terms of local accountability and transparency, petitioning is a good method, and preferable to the alternative which is enshrined in the Bill. I ask the Government to reconsider this clause. Even if local referendums remain, which will be debated later, and perhaps a view taken on report, it is not mutually exclusive, and the petitioning process could be left as it now stands in the Bill.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I do not want to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and I will not do so. Once again, I rejoice at this clause and very much wish it to stand part of the Bill, unlike my noble friend, Lord Shipley, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. We spent many hours—I have a recollection that it was probably many days—on this part of the Bill. We discussed pages and pages in extraordinary detail, debating how to collect, submit, and process petitions. When the Bill started in your Lordships’ House, the debate seemed to be based entirely on the premise that a petition to a local council was of the same format and standing as a petition to Parliament. In fact, all of us who have been councillors will have seen petitions to councils, and know that they are not usually the most formal documents you are likely to come across. They are of their nature at their best, because they are collected by and within the local community and do not have any formal standing or, often, any formal wording, as was originally suggested in the Bill.
We asked for evidence during all of this that local authorities were not dealing properly with petitions. I find it hard to believe that there can be a local authority of any size in the country that does not receive petitions. I wanted evidence that they were not dealing with them properly. The one merit of our hours of debate was that we discovered that quite a lot of local authorities, including the local authority of the then Secretary of State, did not adequately describe their procedure for dealing with petitions on their websites. The fault was not so much with the procedures of the council as with the adequacy of their websites. My own authority, and I am sure many others, improved their websites considerably as a result. That was a useful outcome, but it justified neither the hours that we spent on it nor the fact that it was all laid down in such prescriptive detail in a Bill.
The other useful factor of the debate was that it addressed the rather more modern issue of e-petitions, to which some local authorities probably had not then given sufficient attention. As a result of the Bill, and subsequently the Act, some authorities, including my own, probably gave them more consideration and put them on their websites.
We do not need an Act of Parliament to do that; we do not need pages and pages of prescription to do that; it is quite simply good practice, which could, possibly was and certainly should have been disseminated by the Local Government Association, in which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, played such a leading part. I shall not disappoint the noble Lord: I once again rejoice at this clause.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 40 and 43 and, in doing so, endorse very much what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said. This is another example of what Tony Blair might have described as “regulation, regulation, regulation”. It is certainly well over the top. In particular, new Section 9EA(2) of the Local Government Act 2000, which he read out, is as classic a piece of Civil Service gobbledegook as I have seen for some time. I guess that, as I go through the Bill, there would be further examples.
Amendment 40 would delete that clause, and Amendment 43 would deal with the prescription as to the size to be covered by an area committee, limiting it to two-fifths. In principle, I would like to see that matter left entirely to the discretion of local authorities. However, if the Government were not disposed to take that view, my amendment would reduce the size of the committee to something which is less like half the total size of an authority and more like what most of us would regard as a manageable area in which it is possible to reflect the views of local communities and members. If the Government wish to have some guideline on this, I invite the Minister to opt for something lower than the proportion indicated in subsection (5) as it now stands.
Lord Tope
My Lords, briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Greaves. He certainly has more experience of rural areas than I do, but I speak from the perspective of what he referred to as a “compact urban area” or, more accurately, a suburban area: a fairly small—in terms of area—London borough. We have six local committees on the council as a whole. There are 43 Liberal Democrat councillors and only 11 Conservative councillors. However, because of the political demography, one of those six local committees is still controlled by a Conservative majority.
Each of those local committees has limited executive powers, which we hope will be extended further, and each operates in quite different ways, partly because of the councillors on them and the way in which they choose to react, and partly, and more particularly, because of the nature of the areas that they represent. All of the councillors for those areas are members of those local committees, to a varying extent, and the local residents in those areas come to those meetings certainly to a far greater extent than they attend meetings of our executive. They take part in those committees and, to varying extents, they feel that they are part of the deliberations.
As a council we have not felt it necessary to prescribe in great detail what each of those local committees shall, or shall not, do or how they will, or will not, behave. They behave sensibly, even the one run by the Conservatives behaves moderately sensibly. We demonstrate, in a very obvious way, the difference between a Conservative-run committee and a Liberal Democrat-run committee. That is what democracy is about; it is what we ought to be doing. As a council, we have not felt the need to prescribe it, nor have we ever thought that we should have prescribed it. I commend to the Government the fact that they too should trust local authorities in this case, as we trust local committees.
Lord True
It may have been for others. I did not know that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, was there. In those circumstances, had there been a scrutiny system with four scrutiny committees, under this amendment a member of the opposition would have found himself or herself chairing two scrutiny committees. The principle behind the amendment is a good one but in practice it simply would not work. In my humble view, the so-called “cabinet” system that was imposed on us by the previous Administration has tended, as many of us involved in local government know, to create a potential gulf between the executive members and the back-bench members of the governing party and local authorities have had to work against that all the time. It is vital that back-bench members of the governing party have full involvement—often very sceptical involvement—in the operation of the authority. It is desirable that they should also be given the opportunity to take a leading role in challenging the authority and scrutinising it. This is often the case in many authorities that I know and have visited. It would be outrageous for the opposition party to be excluded from chairing scrutiny committees but equally, as well as being impractical in certain circumstances, it would be undesirable to exclude the back-bench members of a governing party from being involved in taking executive decisions and playing a leading role in scrutiny. Therefore, I am afraid that I cannot support my noble friend’s amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I begin by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and his colleagues for changing the system that we operated in Newcastle when they took office in 2004. I will let the noble Lord and your Lordships into the secret that prior to that date I had tried to persuade my colleagues at least to emulate the system in another place of a balance of chairmanship of such committees, but with my usual lack of cogency I failed to persuade them at that time. However, they have now been converted by the noble Lord and his colleagues, so things move on.
I entirely accept what the noble Lord, Lord True, has said about the impracticality of the suggestion behind the amendment. I can give a better justification. The borough of Newham has 60 Labour members and no opposition members at all—or at least no overt opposition members—so clearly the amendment would not work there. The Labour Party advice about scrutiny committees is that the relevant duty should be shared. That is national Labour Party advice and I hope that the same is true of other political parties as well. It would make a great deal of sense.
If I differ from the noble Lord it is because, as has rather often been the case, he has tended to view scrutiny as something retrospective and as a case of holding an executive to account for decisions that it has made or is about to make. That is part of the job but it overlooks the forward programming of an authority and the development of policy. One of the great advantages of properly resourced scrutiny is that it allows members to develop policy free of the operation of the whip, which should not apply in scrutiny.
After 24 years chairing committees and leading a council, I was eventually voluntarily dispatched to my Siberian power station; that is, the arts and recreation committee in Newcastle. I found that being a back-bencher was very different from chairing a meeting. As the chairman of a meeting, you had an agenda and if you were any good at it you knew what you wanted, you had a discussion and you got it through. In Newcastle’s case I would have a pre-meeting with 15 Labour members for an hour. That represents an average of four minutes each. The dialogue was not Socratic in its nature. It was not the highest level of political debate and many members were simply concerned to get through the meeting as quickly as possible. By contrast, scrutiny actually allows people to think. Some people found the transition to be rather difficult, but it is welcome.
The whole thing can be summarised for me by my moment of revelation, which came when, having missed a meeting, I went to a meeting of the arts and recreation committee—a very worthy committee with a big agenda —and I read in a minute that a member had raised the question of birds eating grass seed on the Leazes Park allotment. I thought, “Has it really come to this? This is not really an effective way of running things”. I therefore support in principle the executive scrutiny split, provided that scrutiny is adequately resourced.
Subject to those reservations, I generally support scrutiny. I will refer briefly to Amendment 48 in this group relating to new Section 9FC and the guidance being proffered. New subsection (3) states that in exercising the power to refer matters to a scrutiny committee,
“the member must have regard to any guidance for the time being issued by the Secretary of State”.
The notion that 20,000 councillors are going to consult the bible on scrutiny issued by Eland House before they are able to refer something is, frankly, ridiculous. I anticipate that the Minister will acknowledge that this could be excised from the Bill without damage. I invite her so to indicate.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am sure that we will all forgive the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Shipley. It was a well deserved tribute. Perhaps I may also help him with the problem he enunciated about the London Borough of Newham. Of course, it would make it very much easier for Newham to implement my noble friend’s proposals were we to have proportional representation in local government. For the past 25 years, the first past the post system in local government has very ill served the Conservative Party; it has, throughout pretty well all those 25 years, been most unjustly served by our current electoral system. None of that was what I intended to say. In fact, I rose to speak to Amendment 46 and 47 in this group. My noble friend Lord Greaves will speak to Amendments 49 and 49C.
Amendment 46 is self-explanatory. Its provisions recognise the reality of a situation that in many authorities it is not a single officer who alone has the scrutiny function. That person will inevitably, in most cases, need other officers in the discharge of those functions. That speaks for itself and my amendment is a better way to reflect reality in most authorities.
Amendment 47 is rather more serious. Its purpose, if we are to have this part of the Bill, is that the scrutiny provisions should apply also to district councils. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Greaves has far greater experience. I have no experience of district councils because I am in an inner London borough. I know of no reason why—albeit with lesser functions—district councils should not be treated in exactly the same way as all other local authorities of whatever type in the country, as far as the scrutiny function is concerned. That is why Amendment 47 seeks to remove from the Bill the new subsection that excludes district councils from these provisions.
Lord Tope
My Lords, my name, too, is on this amendment like that of my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market. Unfortunately my noble friend is unable to be here today—which I think she particularly regrets given the other names that have now been added to the amendment. I echo all that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has said, and I am relieved to know that even with all his experience, he is possibly nearly as confused as I am about exactly where we are left with this, except that it is certainly in a much better place than it was a few days ago, which is welcome.
I understand now—in the proper spirit of localism, I suppose—that those mayors who are minded also to become chief executives, as I think is intended in Leicester, are at liberty to do so. I said at Second Reading that localism must mean the right to make the wrong decision. Therefore, I have to defend the right to make the wrong decision. There should be a clear difference between the role of an elected political leader and the role of a chief executive—I realise that we still have a head of paid service. A chief executive is usually, in theory, apolitical. There is a clear distinction and I regret the extent to which that is becoming blurred.
Once again I thank the Minister not only for her support for the amendment but for being willing and able to come out and say so at an early stage in the Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, I look forward to a clear exposition of exactly where we are, and what is and is not in the Bill, as we go forward.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join this love fest with enthusiasm and congratulate not only the Minister on working this small miracle but other noble Lords—particularly the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, whose long experience and stature have no doubt contributed to bringing about a change of mind on the part of Ministers generally—on achieving this very satisfactory result to what would otherwise have been a very unfortunate situation. I am happy to endorse everything that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in thanking all those involved.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this group of amendments relates to still more regulatory powers conferred on the Secretary of State, this time in connection with the mayoral position, however derived, in respect of terms of office and the like. The schedule gives the Secretary of State power to regulate the term of office of an elected mayor. I am asking, through the amendment, whether “the term” is used in the sense of a four-year or five-year term, or whether it also gives the Secretary of State power to limit the number of terms. For example, under the police reform Bill, there is a limit to the number of terms that a police commissioner can serve—if that cataclysmic proposal should reach the statute book—to two terms of four years. There is nothing in the Bill to suggest that that is the Government’s intention this time, but it would be welcome if we could have an indication that it was not intended to limit the number of terms for an elected mayor. I say that having served what would have been four and a bit terms, had that term applied to the leadership of the council in Newcastle. But I declare no interest whatever in being elected mayor of Newcastle. I make that very clear.
Amendment 65 refers to the wide-ranging powers in regulations and would restrict those necessary for the purposes of this part of the Bill. Amendment 66 relates to a curious provision on elections and their administration. Under subsection (5) of new Section 9HN, the Secretary of State may make regulations,
“exercisable … on, and in accordance with, a recommendation of the Electoral Commission”,
with a curious exception which I do not really understand. Perhaps the noble Baroness can help me, if not today then subsequently, because it goes on to say,
“except where the Secretary of State considers that it is expedient to exercise that power in consequence of changes in the value of money”.
I do not understand to what that relates. It might relate to election expenses, but it is certainly not clear from the section what it relates to, and a little elucidation would be extremely welcome.
Amendment 67 seeks to ensure that the exercise of the Secretary of State’s powers to regulate in this whole issue of elected mayors and their elections is subject to approval by the Houses of Parliament. These are matters going to the heart of the exercise of local democracy, and they should be subject to affirmative resolution.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will speak to Amendment 86. One particularly odd matter is covered by Amendment 87ZA, which curiously has the Secretary of State involved in the appointment of mayoral assistants. I cannot think why that should be the case. I recall once in Newcastle, when we had a twinning relationship with a city in China, their mayoral delegation came over and the mayor addressed the council. He went up to the dais and one of his retinue came up with his spectacle case, opened it and handed the mayor his spectacles. That seemed an interesting position to hold, and I thought I would indent for a spectacle bearer to the leader of the council, but in the end refrained from doing so. Presumably the Secretary of State would now get involved in such an appointment. It cannot be right, can it, for the Secretary of State to be making regulations for the appointment of a mayoral assistant? Perhaps the Minister can explain. If she cannot do so today—and I would not at all blame her—perhaps she might write to me and others of your Lordships on that point. I beg to move.
Lord Tope
I shall speak to Amendments 86 and 87 in this grouping. My noble friend Lord Shipley has unfortunately had to leave for an hour for another very important engagement, as things would have it at exactly the moment when his amendments come up, so I find myself once again in that position.
The amendments are fairly self-explanatory. They deal with the appointment by the elected mayor of a deputy mayor. Amendment 86 says that such an appointment should be subject to agreement by a majority of the executive. That is certainly desirable; the amendment would say that it was essential, and that would be quite proper given what the role of the deputy mayor could be.
Amendment 87 deals with a situation when there is a vacancy in the office of deputy mayor and the elected mayor has to appoint another person to be deputy mayor. There is no provision that that other person need be a member of the executive; therefore, it is even more important in those circumstances that the other person appointed by the deputy mayor should meet with the agreement of a majority of the executive. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham said earlier in a slightly different context, any sensible mayor, like any sensible leader, would make sure that they did that. On the other hand, it is still a little easier to remove a leader if it is necessary than, quite rightly, to remove an elected mayor. Therefore, we feel that this provision should be in the Bill for the sake of good government.
Lord Tope
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Shipley wished to move this amendment but, as I explained earlier, he has unfortunately, from my point of view, had to go to another engagement and will be there, I think, for another 15 minutes or so.
At a later stage of the Bill, we will probably spend a considerable amount of time discussing local referendums and the many issues that arise in connection with them. This is the first, and perhaps in some ways slightly premature, time that we come to this subject. Amendment 73 would raise the threshold for calling a referendum from 5 to 10 per cent of local government electors. We believe that 5 per cent is too low a figure. When we get to the later provisions, we will have a lot more to say about what the threshold should be and how we should get there, as well as other issues.
My noble friend Lord Shipley would have said that, if the need for a referendum is strong, there really should be more signatures to demonstrate that, and they should be easy to collect. I think we all recognise that the cost of a referendum, wherever it is conducted, is significant—it is not something that is simple to carry out. A whole range of matters has to be dealt with in conducting a referendum and, if it is to be done at significant cost, the need for it must be truly demonstrated. Public demand for it should be there, and 10 per cent—I would say at least 10 per cent—is a better figure because it balances the right to have a referendum, which is conferred under this legislation, with the need for it to be held and the implications of doing so. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this is another example of possible misplacement in the groupings, for which I do not blame anyone. It is very difficult to get a perfectly rational system. In fact, I pay tribute to the officer of this House who works so hard, so long and so late in trying to make sense of my and other noble Lords’ belated efforts to table amendments. She does a wonderful job and I have every sympathy for her. At least she does not have to read my handwriting, which would make the task impossible and not just difficult.
In relation to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I certainly concur, as, I think, do these Benches, with the proposal for a higher threshold. However, I want to address the rest of the amendments in this group, which go to the critical question in relation to governance of whether there should be compulsory referendums at the diktat of the Secretary of State. The amendments that follow essentially relate to that.
The Minister has fortunately helped us by removing the conflation of the position of mayor and chief executive, and she has dealt with—perhaps liquidated—the position of shadow mayor. We are now left with this element of the compulsory referendum. In that respect, it is necessary to look at the whole question of the mayoral system—its provenance and development.
I was present at the meeting about 15 years ago when Tony Blair launched on an unsuspecting Labour Party, and an even more unsuspecting shadow Secretary of State in the person of Frank Dobson, the notion of an elected Mayor of London and, following that, the possibility of having elected mayors elsewhere. I took his motivation at face value. He thought—and others who have advocated this in the past have thought and currently think—that it would invigorate local democracy, improve turnout at local elections and enhance the accountability of local political leadership because the elected mayor would have a mandate from across the whole authority. That was the theory; let us look a little at the practice.
Bearing in mind that until now, and until the legislation changes, only 5 per cent of the electorate in any authority has been needed to requisition a referendum, there have been, I think, only 41 referendums, if one takes Leicester into account, in the 10 years in which this option has been open. One area has had second thoughts and has terminated its adoption of the system. Of the 40 referendums, 14 were in favour of an elected mayor and 26 against.
What is perhaps more significant is the turnout in the referendums and the turnout in the local elections. This, after all, was going to be the great advantage to local democracy of this new system. There have only been two referendum turnouts greater than 40 per cent and both of those took place on a general election day. Some referendums had turnouts of less than 20 per cent, 10 had between 20 and 30 percent, and 17 had between 30 and 40 per cent. The upper thirties is probably about average for a local election—by no means satisfactory, but self-evidently at least no worse, and in many cases better, than the turnout in these referendums. It is quite significant that the turnouts were also very low in the ensuing elections. Some of the referendum turnouts were abysmally low: Bedford had a turnout of 16 per cent; Lewisham had a turnout of 18 per cent; among the best were Hartlepool with 34 per cent and Torbay with 32 per cent. However, this does not give any grounds for saying that this is an enormously popular reform that people are rushing to adopt.
Nor has the turnout in elections been very much greater, even in London. The turnout in the first mayoral election in London was 37 per cent. In the second, there were two—how shall I put it?—charismatic or certainly very visible candidates, and an election that seemed to run for a year, such that every time I stepped out of a Tube station in London and saw an Evening Standard banner, it was always proclaiming something about Ken or Boris. It was impossible, even if one wished to, to escape the fact that there was a London mayoral election. However, even then, the point seems to have eluded 55 per cent of the London electorate. Again, there does not seem to be much evidence for the initial inspiration of this change: that it would improve—whether dramatically, modestly or even at all—the turnout in local elections or interest in local government.
The other arguments were about visibility and effectiveness. Many of the elected mayors have been capable people. In London, I can certainly cite three of them: Robin Wales in Newham; Steve Bullock in Lewisham, albeit with a referendum there of only 18 per cent and, I think, a mayoral election turnout of about the same, when he was first elected; and Jules Pipe in Hackney. All of them, incidentally, had been council leaders before they became elected mayors. However, what sort of alchemy is it that is necessary to transmute a council leader into a mayor? Or is it—and I hope the right reverend Prelate will not take exception to my analogy—some process of transubstantiation that transforms a less visible and accountable leader into an all-singing, all-dancing mayor with much enhanced visibility and effectiveness?
It was interesting that, in promoting the idea of elected mayors, the Labour Party saw fit to send a delegation to the Netherlands to see how this wonderful system was working. They slightly overlooked the fact that, in the Netherlands, mayors are in fact Crown appointees and not elected at all. Similarly, those who pointed to very successful continental mayors, such as the mayor of Barcelona, seem to overlook the fact that he was not personally directly elected—he was the leader of the largest group or faction in the Barcelona council. He was a very able—in fact a brilliant—local politician and extremely effective, but he but not directly elected. In our own politics, although I remember Tony Blair saying in a television broadcast, “The people of Britain elected me Prime Minister”, actually they did not. They certainly have not elected the present Prime Minister. That is not to disparage him; it is just a fact. Why should it be assumed that it is necessary to have that direct personal mandate to be a legitimate leader?
It is said that if authorities adopted the mayoral system, extra powers would be given and a certain amount has been given to mayors in that position. Yet the question arises that we discussed briefly at Second Reading and earlier in Committee: why should those powers be confined to the directly elected mayor, as opposed to the leader and executive model? There seems to be no particular rationale on that. One thinks of great local government figures of the past, from all parties: of Joseph Chamberlain in his initial, Liberal incarnation; of Neville Chamberlain, who was slightly dismissed by Lloyd George as a good mayor of Birmingham in a bad year but who nevertheless had a considerable local government reputation and, it is fair to say, did a lot for it as a Minister; or of Herbert Morrison, a great leader of local government; or, perhaps slightly more controversially, of one of my capable but slightly flawed predecessors as leader of Newcastle council, Dan Smith, who was nevertheless a hugely influential and creative figure, in the best sense, during his surprisingly brief period. People in all political parties have also been extremely effective. Why should it be assumed that council leaders are necessarily less visible, accountable or effective than elected mayors?
There are problems stemming from the system as it has been created, not simply because of the accretion of powers in a single pair of hands but because of the structure around that. It takes a two-thirds majority to overturn an elected mayor’s budget. Yet you can have a situation with an elected mayor from one party and a majority of the council from another. It has happened twice in the authority adjoining mine. It happened with a Labour mayor and a Tory council and it is now exactly the other way round, with a substantial Labour majority in North Tyneside and a Conservative mayor. That highly anomalous situation raises two questions. First, what is the other councillors’ role in that kind of situation? It has to be a substantially downgraded role from what we are used to and what is appropriate. Secondly, will there not come a day when people wonder, “What is the point of electing councillors at all, or of voting for a particular political party, if you are required to have at least two-thirds of the council to vote down a proposition from the mayor”? Most particularly, there is the most crucial decision of all: that about the budget. There are, it seems, real difficulties inherent in the system.
There is also a suspicion, certainly on this side of the Chamber—it may be in certain parts of the other side of the Chamber—about the current political motivation for this decision to take the power to require referendums to be held. I refer in particular to a speech made by the Member for Grantham and Stamford in another place, Nick Boles. He is, I suppose, a Tory intellectual. There are people unkind enough to think that term a bit of an oxymoron but I would not allege that in the case of Mr Boles, who is an extremely bright, intelligent and articulate man. Yet he said some time ago, apropos of this position about elected mayors, that it was the only way in which there would be a ladder back into power for the Conservative Party in places where its chances were pretty minimal. I think that he cited Manchester and other places where Conservative representation has been minimal, if not nil, for some time. I hope that is not the Government’s motivation and I would not for a moment imagine that the Minister would subscribe to that motivation, but others elsewhere might.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I hesitate to intervene at this stage. This is almost the first time in a very long local government career that I actually think that central government should be imposing something. I share the views that have been expressed that it must be a statutory requirement that each local authority must—not may—have a code of conduct. There is a separate issue concerning how that code of conduct is drawn up but I think that it would be nonsense for each local authority to have a different one. There should be a uniform code. I believe that the Association of Council Secretaries and Solicitors—we used to call them legal officers—is drawing up a code of conduct that could be adopted. That is good and right, and I do not suggest for a moment that central government should draw up the code and impose it; I am saying, and I believe quite strongly, that Parliament—central government, if you like—should say that a code of conduct is mandatory, not voluntary. Good local authorities—the vast majority—will adopt a code of conduct, but the ones that most need, and should have, a code are probably those least likely to have one. That is why it should be a mandatory requirement.
The code does not have to be drawn up by central government; it could be drawn up by the association that I mentioned or by the Local Government Association. However, I believe that it needs to be a uniform code so that we do not have different standards wherever they happen to suit particular local interests, usually because it is those local interests that are most in question.
My other question relates to the standards committee. Again, I feel that in the general, although not universal, rejoicing at the departure of the Standards Board for England we are in danger of throwing out a baby with the bath water. We are in danger of moving to a situation that is worse than the one we had before the Standards Board was put in place. Therefore, I believe that it should be mandatory for each local authority to have a standards committee. I say that as one who will constantly argue against prescription, but this is one area where it is particularly important. My noble friend Lord Shipley has proposed a way in which standards committees might be constituted. There are lots of discussions to be had around that, and they could well be had within local government and not necessarily involve central government. However, again, the mandatory requirement to have a standards committee is fundamental.
Those are two issues where, unusually for me, I argue that there should be at least a minimum requirement of a mandatory code of conduct and a standards committee, the composition and nature of which could be subject to further consultation and discussion. Those two requirements should be in the Bill.
Lord Beecham
I endorse everything that the noble Lord has said. I could not have put it better myself. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Tope
I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I did not mean to imply that these things are simple and easy and that all you need to do is talk to people and everything will come out right; I am not that naive or simple. I am just saying that the way in which decisions are made is often as important as what the final decision is, and sometimes helps and facilitates the making of those difficult decisions. They need to be made by the appropriate sphere of government that is democratically elected and accountable.
We set out here, at some length, what we believed should be the definition of localism—what we believe it means. We did so in part to see who would agree with us and who would not. We think that these are the criteria on which we should judge the Bill as we go through Committee: that is why we tabled the amendment in Committee, at the beginning. We are saying that these are the criteria by which we should judge whether this part of the Localism Bill reflects what we understand to be localism, and that if it does not meet the criteria perhaps something in the Bill could be improved. We have had a useful, relatively short debate and perhaps have a better understanding at least of what we on these Benches mean by localism. I am not sure quite what noble Lords who made a “yes, but” response understand by localism. As they said, perhaps it will become clear as we go through the various stages of the Bill.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. A week ago in your Lordships' House, the government Chief Whip lamented the fact that not enough legislation was being debated in Grand Committee. Of course, it would have been quite wrong for this Bill to be assigned to Grand Committee. However, this debate could hardly be better placed than in Grand Committee in the Moses Room. After all, that Room bears a portrait of a majestic, bearded figure bearing tables of stone on which are incised 10 commandments.
This afternoon, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, comes to us not with 10 commandments but with 10 criteria by which this Bill is to be judged. Try as I might—and I have tried—I cannot find very much to disagree with. It is something like 120 years since Sir William Harcourt, a distinguished Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, proclaimed, somewhat optimistically from one point of view, or perhaps pessimistically from another point of view, that, “We are all socialists now”. Nowadays, we are all localist, but that definition of localism is, to put it mildly, somewhat elastic. I think the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has set out as good a definition as one might reasonably expect. If I had a reservation, it would be that in proposed new subsection (1)(d) in the amendment the reference is to,
“minimum standards for the provision of public services”.
I accept that that would be a partial definition, but I think one needs to look at minimum entitlements in addition to minimum standards. Standards imply provision of a service; entitlements are a somewhat broader concept that would, for example, avoid us reverting to a 19th-century poor law view in which benefits are calculated differentially across the country. Indeed, there is a case for variation, and I have sometimes thought of promoting a society for the preservation of the postcode lottery because it seems to me that localism of any definition implies different choices according to local circumstances. I therefore welcome the thrust of this proposed new clause.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her answer, but I am bound to say that I am not any wiser than before. I have used leisure services as an example since it happens to be one for which I am responsible, but perhaps it was the wrong example, which is one of the troubles with using examples. Frankly, I am no clearer about the meaning of this provision and what restrictions it would bring about.
I can see from my raised position that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, wishes to speak.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps the noble Lord could offer the Minister the example of a meals on wheels service that an authority might provide instead of, say, leisure services.
Lord Tope
Indeed, I am happy to offer the Minister the example of a meals on wheels service, which has just come to mind as possibly a more appropriate example. I would be grateful if she could elucidate a little more because I see that I am not the only noble Lord in the Committee who has failed wholly to understand it. If it is not possible for her to do so today, I am sure that she will write to us, but if she is able to be a little clearer about what is covered rather than what is not covered by this provision, I would be grateful.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority Order 2011
Debate between Lord Tope and Lord Beecham(13 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Tope
My Lords, I, too, join in the general welcome for this order. I give it our warm and enthusiastic support. It must be as near to perfection as any Government order can achieve. It is enabled by an Act of Parliament passed under a Labour Government. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, recorded the many happy hours we spent on the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill as it then was. I am hugely reassured to know that something good has at last come out of the many hours that we spent on it.
The order is supported by 10 local authorities and all the political parties, by business and now we hear that it has the blessing of the church as well. What more could any Government ever seek to achieve? Furthermore, we know that this is happening, quite rightly, by voluntary means rather than being imposed from above, and there is a strong lesson in that. We hear, too, that not only is it not going to cost more but there is an expectation of savings and that it can all be implemented without any great bureaucracy. This must be as near to perfection as we can ever hope from any government order, and I am sure that there will be nobody who would wish it ill or wish to oppose it on that basis. We give it our enthusiastic support, and I hope that it will show that this is the way of the future and this will be the first but not the last of a move in this direction. We wish it well.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join the right reverend Prelate in paying tribute to my noble, and indeed personal, friend Lord Smith. George Orwell would recognise him as an exemplary Wigan Peer if he were to rewrite his book. I also congratulate the Minister and the Government on proceeding with reasonable alacrity to bring forward this order. I have not checked, so I am not sure whether it meets the requirement of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, of being printed on recycled paper. If not, that is the only defect one could possibly find with it. However, although this was the first order of this kind and there was a change of Government, it is nearly a year since the proposal was made. One would hope that on the basis of the experience of this order, if further applications are made—and I certainly hope that they are—the process will be a little swifter. Otherwise, particularly if there are a number of such applications, it will be quite a long time before they can be dealt with. However, presumably now that government departments have the experience of dealing with the process, it will be speedier.
I must also pay tribute not only to my noble friend but to his colleagues across the political divide in the authorities in Greater Manchester. They had their differences over the congestion charge, as he reminded us, but generally speaking they have worked very well together. I am sure that that will be the case after the pending local elections in May, although whether there will still be the same number of councillors of different political colours remains to be seen. In any event, it is clear that, not for the first time, Greater Manchester has blazed a trail for metropolitan governance in this country. The councils have, of course, a very strong municipal history. Now that they have come together and formed, in effect, a sub-region, those of us who are concerned with other areas of that kind need to watch carefully and learn from that.
I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I strike a slightly partisan note, but it is regrettable that the Secretary of State has seen fit to single out Manchester City Council for, in my view, excessive criticism—not in relation to this proposition but in more general terms. One hopes that the spirit animating the Government in reaching this satisfactory conclusion to the approach from Greater Manchester will be reflected in more measured language in looking at the problems encountered by all the authorities in that area. But of course they have worked successfully for many years, as the Minister and other noble Lords have said. There has been a very striking urban renaissance in Manchester itself and in Salford, which is welcoming hordes of reluctant BBC employees with open arms as the headquarters move there but also in other parts of the conurbation. As an LGA study some time ago demonstrated, the scale of sub-regional governance is a key factor in bringing together the requirements for the development of the local economy and some of the infrastructure that goes with that, although there are other issues which transcend those boundaries and which need to be considered on a regional basis. In that regard, the structures that have existed will unfortunately no longer exist, and that may slightly impede the success of a very promising venture. Of course, it has to be borne in mind that this takes place against a background of a very difficult financial situation for the authorities.
My noble friend referred to Community Budgeting, or Total Place, as it was known before it was rebranded after the election. There is certainly potential here to look at problems across the range of public services that might be tackled more effectively, given the fairly cohesive nature of the area, although each borough has its own distinctive character. In the local health economy, for example, the issues of skills and further and higher education are not confined by boundaries. Like my noble friend, I hope that the new organisation will be able to influence developments there. Equally, I hope the Minister will persuade the relevant government departments that they must look outside the traditional silos and co-operate fully in the development of such an approach.
I join all those who have spoken in warmly welcoming this critical development. I hope that others will seek to follow it. I have but one question for the Minister, which relates to the constitution. Manchester city is to be visited with the novel creation of a shadow mayor, assuming the proposal is accepted under the Localism Bill. It is an interesting concept: the shadow mayor has to be appointed and there then has to be confirmation of the position in a referendum, perhaps the following year. However, that applies only to the city of Manchester, which is extremely well led by Sir Richard Leese. He will not be the mayor of Greater Manchester—the surrounding boroughs will not quite accept that proposition, although I have no doubt that the press will try to portray him in that capacity—nor will anybody who might be elected to that position, if the referendum goes in favour of an elected mayor.
A question arises from the constitution, on which the noble Lord can perhaps help me. The membership is described as being based on each constituent council appointing one of its elected members to be a member of the new body. Maybe I am being even more pedantic than usual but it is not clear whether a mayor is an elected member of the council. The shadow mayor will be in place for the duration of that year; he is, by definition, a member of that council. If there is an elected mayor, the question then arises of whether he is to be regarded for the purposes of this order as an elected member of the council. He is not an elected member in the way that every other member is an elected member. It may be that this is a point with no substance to it but it might need to be considered. If it is not clear, perhaps some thought might be given to dealing with the situation. If it is clear, that is wonderful—we can all go away happy.