Lord True
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Lord Beecham
My Lords, this group of amendments concerns governance issues, the part of the Bill to which we now move. The amendments deal with some of the regulations which the Bill empowers the Secretary of State to make. I have a vision of a group of civil servants in the subterranean depths of Eland House employed full time in drafting regulations on all manner of things, many of which we will encounter as the Bill progresses through Committee. In the interests of health and safety, if nothing else, of those who are so engaged and of local government, I suggest that the Government look again at the degree to which they are seeking to regulate.
The amendments relate to Schedule 2, page 189, and seek to limit the degree to which regulation will take place other than at the request of local authorities. Amendment 34 suggests that regulations should be made only if asked for by authorities. Amendment 35 would limit significantly the arrangements that the Government seek to make under these proposals and would ensure that any such arrangements are consistent with the principles of localism and the representative democracy which featured so largely in the initial debate on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, it might be helpful if I speak to my Amendment 37, which is in this group and relates to governance arrangements. I apologise for its rather dense language but it imitates the drafting style of the Bill and I was trying to be as accommodating as possible to the Government. The real issue here is about the relations between lower tier and higher tier authorities, and how we achieve localism where things are done to local people by higher tier authorities.
I have a very live example: before leaving for the House this morning, I received an extremely angry e-mail from a person in my ward asking, “Why on earth are you wasting my money moving bus stops on our high street?”. The answer is that I am not doing that. I have had meetings with TfL asking it not to move bus stops. But it is all being done by a higher tier authority within a lower tier authority without any open consultation with the people affected.
There are many other examples of this kind of thing, and I am sure it does not only go on between London boroughs and regional government—it probably goes on between lower tier authorities and county councils and, in some cases, parish councils. Another example would be the one I cited at Second Reading where, after consultation with local people, we proposed revised parking standards in a neighbourhood. Without holding any public consultation, we received a letter from a higher authority saying that the arrangements were not satisfactory and did not accord with its standards, and we were asked to change them.
I do not wish to unpick the constitutional arrangements between lower and higher tier authorities in this country, but I do not think that the Bill is very localist when it comes to London boroughs. Indeed, it strikingly fails to be localist in that respect. What I am really asking for in the amendment, although I do not expect my noble friend to agree to it at first bite nor do I necessarily want to add to the huge bible of regulation that is emerging from this Bill, is recognition of the important principle here. If we believe in localism, at the very least it should be open to the lower tier authority to be able to say to the higher tier authority, “If you are considering planning changes which specifically affect an area”, such as whether to have high-rise buildings in the centre of Twickenham, which happens to be a live issue in my authority, “meetings should be held by the higher tier authority to gauge the opinion of local people”. It might even be that we could ask officers to come and hold public meetings, or indeed have the right to require that that should happen.
At the moment there is no formal ability for a lower tier authority to act on behalf of its local residents to do what we would regard as absolutely normal in terms of explaining to residents what is going on. It is absolutely inconceivable, if we were planning to change the alignment of a high street in a village or small town centre, that that would be done without prior and detailed public consultation with local people. The purpose of the amendment is to give a lower tier authority such as my own, a London borough, but also those outside London, the ability to propose or suggest arrangements to the higher tier authority to ensure that it conducts itself in a proper, localist fashion in respect of matters that affect local people. I urge my noble friend to reflect on the issue being raised here.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have one amendment in the group and I shall speak to the others. I start by saying that we support the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. They form part of a recurring theme in our discussions on this Bill, which is that while the Government’s proposal is that localism should be more prevalent and that there should be more localism in authorities and among local people, it is being done within a highly prescribed framework and is subject to a large number of orders and regulations from the centre. In other words, it is top-down localism, not genuine localism. There is absolutely no reason at all why this amount of central control and prescription of local authorities should take place. It was not the case when I first became a councillor 40 years ago. We had nothing like this amount of central control when the new authorities were set up in 1973 and elected in 1974. It has crept in over the years from both Conservative and Labour Governments, and we are now getting more of it from the coalition.
“(6A) A lower tier authority may propose to the Secretary of State that the Secretary of State make regulations prescribing arrangements specified in the proposal if the authority considers that, in addition to the conditions in subsection (5), the arrangements would lead to the increased local accountability of the higher tier authority to residents of the lower tier authority’s area and improve the ability of local residents to influence or participate in decisions affecting their locality.
(6B) No proposal under subsection (6A) may involve the duplication or repeating of meetings, but may propose that the higher tier authority, or a body established by that authority, or its responsible officers should meet or publish details of its meetings relating to matters specifically affecting people within the lower authority’s area within the lower tier authority’s area.”
Lord True
I would like to move the amendment. My point is twofold. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, others and I were grateful for the support that was given in the earlier discussion. I think that it underlined the point that decisions are not localist in the way that, in my submission, they should be. We need not have regulations of the kind that I am suggesting might be considered if the lower-tier authority were simply prepared to decide where a bus stop should be on its high street. If the Government wish in their reflections on the Bill to come forward with proposals to localise those decisions then, in the spirit of what my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, I would welcome that. Since I do not anticipate that, though, I am asking my noble friend to consider, before we get to Report, the relationship between the lower-tier and higher-tier authorities.
The problem with the Bill as it is now framed, as I read it, is that a local authority may make propositions to the Secretary of State about regulations prescribing arrangements concerning its own procedures but not regarding arrangements relating to another authority’s procedures that affect activity in its own area. I may be wrong in reading the Bill in that way; if so, at this or a later stage my noble friend may be able to enlighten me. As I read it, though, this great Localism Bill, the principle of which we all support, does not give lower-tier authorities the opportunity to suggest that their own people be addressed in a more localist manner by higher authorities.
I regret if I have not been succinct in making this point, but I urge my noble friend and those advising her to consider it seriously. Our daily experience—my noble friends Lord Greaves and Lord Howard of Rising have given examples—show that these matters affect people in their daily lives. As our consideration of the Bill continues, I urge my noble friend to think further and to come back on this matter at a later stage.
Baroness Byford
My Lords, I think that the slight difficulty arose because the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, got up to speak before I had a chance to get in. I apologise for not speaking before he wound up on his amendment.
I come with no practical hands-on experience in local government but I want to reinforce the points that my noble friend is trying to make. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that there was widespread frustration, as indeed there is, from parish level up to district level and beyond. I hope that the Bill will in some way resolve some of the difficulties that my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding spoke about. We have a great opportunity to try to simplify things and ensure that local communities can act in a manner that is in their own best interests. If we are promoting much more involvement of local communities through the big society, it seems a shame if the Bill is not going to ease some of the situations that different tiers currently find themselves in. I hope that my noble friend will have a chance to reflect on this. If the wording is not right—often it is not exactly what the Government of the day wish—it is the thrust of the amendment that is important. It is trying to ensure that local authorities and local tiers take on that responsibility and do so in the proper, accepted manner. It is also trying to ensure that, where there are disagreements, there should be discussions between the tiers, whichever tiers they happen to be. I commend my noble friend’s amendment.
Baroness Hanham
I think that I replied earlier because I had not realised that other people were going to take part in this. I hear what is being said by my noble friends Lord True, Lord Howard, Lord Jenkin and now Lord Wade. When we look at the measures in the Bill, I think that most of them will turn out to be liberating for local government. It gives them a general power of competence and greater flexibility in what they can do. On some of the areas that we are legislating about now, we think that it is appropriate that there should be some regulations about how things should be done.
I worry a bit about my noble friend Lord True’s amendment. It asks the Secretary of State to prescribe a route along which the noble Lord and others have been telling us that we should not be going on any other matter, so it does not quite follow. I think that we have discussed across the Chamber before that there are not always good relations between the three tiers of government, particularly if you start with a parish council, but I am not sure that that poor relationship is something that this Government should try to prescribe a route through.
There are many changes taking place in the way in which local government is run. Many new arrangements are having to be made, as I said earlier, about management, about sharing chief executives across councils and districts and about sharing services, all of which ought to make it much easier for local government to avoid the elephant traps that my noble friend is talking about. In the light of the concern that there is, I will reflect on this issue before the next stage. I do not think that I would hold my breath that we will be able to accept my noble friend’s amendments, but I certainly hear the sentiments that have been expressed in the House today.
Lord True
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the final part of her response. I take some hope and encouragement from that. I hope that she will reflect on the matter; I certainly will. I had no expectation that my amendment was going to be a perfectly framed answer on this subject. However, I earnestly submit that there is a strong localist argument behind this point. I am content to withdraw my modest localising amendment if perhaps at a later stage the Government might return to me with the withdrawal of some of their rather immodest centralising proposals. I thank my noble friend for her response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 84DA in the same group, which stands in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. My noble friend would certainly have wished to move this amendment but, unfortunately, she cannot be here. It is suggested to us by the Centre for Public Scrutiny, on whose advisory body she serves, and it follows a theme of today's discussion in Committee. The effect of Amendment 84DA is to remove the right of the Secretary of State to make detailed guidance on scrutiny issues. It would remove the statutory force from existing guidance that the department has produced but, of course, local authorities would still be able to use that existing guidance to get some idea of the legislative intent of Parliament.
The centre believes, and I certainly agree with it very strongly, that the maximum possible discretion should be given to local authorities about how they operate their scrutiny function, with primary legislation providing general enabling powers which are interpreted intelligently by councils, councillors and their officers. Scrutiny is a member-led function and, therefore, it seems inappropriate that Government should provide detailed prescription of its operation. That is the same theme with which we have been dealing all day today and I suspect that we shall continue to do so through much of this Bill.
Where a specific need for guidance is identified, advisory information can be developed by the sector which can incorporate the views of the Government but which would be prepared independently and based on the needs and interests of local authorities and their residents. The justification for omitting this paragraph on guidance is a combination of practical reasons and reasons of principle. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, I do not wish to prolong proceedings, but I have not had an opportunity to say how much I agree with the general thrust of many of the things that are being said. It may be that, at a later stage, it will be possible, through Amendment 84DA, to leave out a “must” and put in a “may”. Those who advise the Secretary of State, and who have the pleasure of writing all sorts of guidance for local authorities, could continue to do so and we could pay due respect to the importance of that guidance and to guidance that came from other sources. Then perhaps everyone would be delighted and a little localism might reign.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, we are back again to the same arguments that we had on the previous amendment on area committees. It relies on the regulations. I thank my noble friend Lord True for suggesting a way in which amendments might come. I think we need to look carefully at what has been said. Perhaps I need to review this before the next stage to see whether anything needs to be done about these provisions.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, this group of amendments relates to scrutiny. In my view, scrutiny is best achieved by a committee system. A committee system is better at delivering good decisions than a scrutiny system which scrutinises those decisions after they have been made. In other words, you scrutinise as you go.
This is a probing amendment. As we do not have a voting system for local government in England based on proportional representation, some councils can have very large majorities held by one party. This may not be reflected in the votes that were cast but is very often reflected in the number of seats that are won. Good scrutiny requires constant challenge. Scrutiny committees are proportional in their overall membership but it would be advantageous for them to be chaired by a member of the authority’s largest opposition party.
Members of your Lordships' House are aware that I am a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2004, when my party took control of Newcastle City Council, we altered the system to ensure that the Labour opposition chaired all our scrutiny committees. I am pleased to say that this year, when control of Newcastle reverted—temporarily, at least—to the Labour Party, chairmanship of the scrutiny committees passed to the Liberal Democrat opposition. Public scrutiny and public confidence in the system of local government would be improved if scrutiny committees were chaired by opposition councillors. That does not mean that a scrutiny committee has to be proportional in any regard other than the number of seats held by each party. However, public confidence in the system would be improved if the person constructing the agendas was an elected councillor of a party other than the one that was in control of the council. I beg to move.
Lord True
My Lords, I understand where the noble Lord is coming from but there are obvious difficulties with the amendment quite apart from whether or not it is tending towards prescription. For example, I recall a not very happy election in 1986 when I was one of three members of my party on our local authority—
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 True
My Lords, I support in some measure the remarks of my noble friend Lord Tope. I hear what is said about the Centre for Public Scrutiny and all its recommendations. Equally, I hear all that the Government want to say about scrutiny. I am sure that there are two very worthy industries involved here that may well come together. I support the recommendation that my noble friend has made to come forward with thickets of advice to local authorities on these subjects—may the twain meet.
However, as this debate goes on, I sometimes wonder whether the end result might be that parts of the Government involved in providing guidance and regulations could be hived off as a social enterprise, perhaps co-operating with other areas in local government. They could sell the benefits of their advice to local authorities and we might be able to reduce the size of government and perhaps, in partnership, improve the quality of advice. That is a slightly impish suggestion but, on the other hand, it is not entirely without seriousness.
I particularly support Amendment 47A, which addresses the point made by my noble friend Lord Greaves. I think that it would allow issues that were not technically local government matters to be referred to scrutiny. I support Amendment 48A on a probing basis. It would delete from the Bill the words:
“Guidance under subsection (3) may make different provision for different cases”.
This means that if a member of an authority wants to say to a scrutiny chairman, “I think this is something you need to look into”, first, he has to refer to the existing legislation, which is before us, and look up the bible of guidance that will be issued by the government department. He may then find that that guidance makes different provision for different cases, with scrutiny into this or that or some other circumstances, and he is therefore entering a potential nightmare world. I know that my noble friend, local government and outside advisers do not want to go there, but I return to my general point. I hope that those discussions can take place but I hope that the presiding principle in all this will be to minimise the requirements on local authorities to read, mark, learn, inwardly digest and obey. Let us please have localism.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their amendments, and I start by saying that I shall be helpful in relation to some but not to others. As noble Lords have said, the various amendments in the group seek to remove the guidance or regulation-making powers of the Secretary of State—a common theme this afternoon. In each case, the powers enable certain safeguards to be in place. Although noble Lords are critical of regulation, sometimes it is necessary at the same time to protect other aspects with which they are concerned.
Amendment 45A would remove the ability to issue guidance on important matters such as scrutiny chairs, as we discussed on the previous group. Amendments 48A, 48B and 48C would remove the requirement for members to have regard to guidance and the Secretary of State’s regulation-making power in relation to the referral of matters to a scrutiny committee. However, as I said, these powers enable the Secretary of State to ensure that certain important safeguards are in place. We have discussed some of them, such as vexatious or discriminatory matters being placed before a scrutiny committee, which we talked about on the previous amendment. I do not think that it is unreasonable that that sort of aspect should be ruled out of the scrutiny committee’s responsibilities. Some might take that view and some might not but I think it is sensible that they are left with no option about that. As well as rights of appeal, the amendments would also exclude matters that are already statutory processes, such as planning and licensing decisions or matters relating, for example, to an individual. Therefore, I shall not be able to accept those amendments.
Amendments 49U and 49V would remove the ability of the Secretary of State to make regulations to guard against the duplication of requests by scrutiny committees to other partner bodies. They are regulations that seek to minimise the burden on such authorities and make best use of the available information.
Amendments 47A, 49A, 49B and 49D to 49T also look to reform existing scrutiny provisions by simplifying and expanding the definition of “partner bodies”. They would expand the matters in relation to which scrutiny committees may rely on their powers, removing the link to local area agreements—which we have already agreed I should look at—and extending the powers of district council scrutiny committees, among other things, as we have already discussed.
As I said in the debate on the previous group, we do not believe that the existing framework hampers innovative practices by scrutiny committees. However, I have some sympathy with the aims of some of the amendments, and, again, I shall draw them into the discussions that we need to have. They seek to bring up to date the scrutiny regime that sits across various Acts of Parliament in light of recent changes, so it is right that we should look at them.
I am happy to consider Amendments 47A, 49A, 49B, and 49D to 49T. In debating previous amendments, we also discussed committee system authorities and the operation of scrutiny. Our view is that such authorities should be able to choose to have overview and scrutiny committees. Proposed new Section 9JA makes this clear. Removing the section entirely would create confusion. It would be unclear whether committee system authorities could operate scrutiny committees, and what the role and powers of such committees would be if they did. Therefore, the amendment is proposing that is unnecessary.
The provisions that Amendments 87ZB to 87ZD seek to change replicate existing provisions in the Local Government Act 2000, which reflect the important interests that the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church have in the provision of education, given the significant number of voluntary-aided schools in most if not all local authorities. It is correct that these significant partners in education should by right have representation on the relevant scrutiny committees. Therefore, we do not support the amendments.
With those explanations, the realisation that we discussed some issues when debating the previous group of amendments, and my acceptance of further discussions on some of the amendments, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.
Lord True
My Lords, I am tempted to wonder how many pieces of information might have been released during the noble Lord’s exposition of his amendments—doubtless, very many.
I hope that my noble friend will consider sceptically the case that has been made. I am a strong exponent of the principle of openness—we discussed whether there should be a presumption of openness in our debate on a previous group of amendments. I think that I heard my noble friend give a commitment that it should apply to meetings.
The noble Lord is clearly a significant enthusiast for freedom of information, for which I commend him, but again I hope that my noble friend will be sceptical when she examines these amendments, which not many of us have had the opportunity to look at in detail. I asked my chief executive how much freedom of information implementation had cost my authority so far in the past year, to which the response was £120,000. That does not sound like very much but it approaches 1 per cent of the council’s discretionary budget, outside schools. The freedom that has been given is important, but it must be exercised in proportion. In my experience, quite often when someone pursued a freedom of information request they would have been given the answer through the front door if they had simply asked the question, although that clearly would not have been so in the case to which the noble Lord refers.
The noble Lord’s Amendment 52A intends to take these procedures into contractor arrangements, subcontractor arrangements, and doubtless sub-sub-subcontractor arrangements. It would end up creating such a cat’s cradle of bureaucracy for these arrangements that we might well end up, as the noble Lord himself recognised, deterring small businesses from putting themselves within this embrace. I reiterate that I strongly support the idea of freedom of information in principle, but I hope that when my noble friend considers this group of amendments she will, as I said, exercise due scepticism—on behalf of those of us, as publicly accountable authorities, who have to administer open systems, which we do—about the costs that local authorities, and through them their contractors and subcontractors, might incur. With £120,000, I could have created a fairly large number of very useful public assets. Doubtless some of the requests were extremely worth while, but there should be nothing in excess.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I think that we should thank my noble friend Lord Wills for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue. He had a distinguished ministerial career and responsibility for this area, which very much showed in his contribution today.
We are living in an era of transparency, which has already been very much the byword of many of our debates on this Bill. We are also living in an era in which there will be increasing partnership working, outsourcing and joint working, very much along the lines on which the noble Lord, Lord Tope, focused when he talked about scrutiny functions in our debate on a previous group of amendments. The focus of FOI in the current era is therefore entirely appropriate.
My noble friend’s Amendment 52A very much chimes with the group of amendments that we have just discussed in its presumption that meetings should be held in public. On Amendments 133A and 133B, he acknowledged—and the noble Lord, Lord True, touched on this—that we need to focus on the practical ramifications of driving freedom of information through a contractor, a subcontractor and then perhaps a sub-subcontractor chain. I am thinking particularly of the construction industry and how diverse and complex some of its contractual arrangements are.
In a sense, my noble friend offered the route to a solution when he said that there should be some sort of de minimis or cut-off point in the application of this. His focus, as he acknowledged, was partly on the business left over from when he was a Minister, but he also dealt with some practical examples, such as Swindon, and cited the Islington Council situation, which is not theoretical but actual.
The noble Lord, Lord True, said on the one hand that he was an enthusiast for freedom of information, but on the other urged his noble friend to be sceptical about it. I am not sure that those two concepts sit very comfortably together.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I do not disagree, but I thought that the noble Lord said that he was also an enthusiast for freedom of information. Maybe I misunderstand him and he is not, but if he is I do not think that that sits with his urging his noble friend to be sceptical.
As I said, my noble friend has given us an opportunity to have an interesting debate on an important subject. In particular, he has done us a service by focusing on particular issues relating to the Housing Ombudsman, and I am keen to hear the Minister’s response specifically to those. His request is not for the Minister to give a detailed response to his quite extensive and detailed amendment but for her to say whether the Government agree with the principle behind it. That is a very important ask, particularly, as he pointed out, because the coalition agreement has a commitment to freedom of information and to extending its scope. This area is worthy of further analysis and I hope that the Minister can give us some comfort on that matter.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I am conscious that Amendment 56 is possibly not now the most important or interesting in this group, but we tabled it as a probing amendment with a view to asking the Minister to explain more clearly than is apparent in the Bill itself new Section 9H(3) and (4), which deals with the nature of a mayor and his or her relationship with the council. While I am on my feet, I shall refer to some of the other amendments in this group and, indeed, to others that are yet to come. Again I congratulate the Government on recognising that the whole question of shadow mayors and mayoral arrangements really has no place in a Bill that is about localism. As we discussed at Question Time yesterday, I know that it will be said by some that this is a sensible move by a listening Government, and said by others to be a U-turn. I do not mind very much what it is called; I just feel that the Government are to be congratulated.
I thank in particular the Minister for bringing the decision forward at such an early stage in our consideration of the Bill, which no doubt will save many hours of debate in this Chamber. With that, I beg to move Amendment 56 and I look forward to the debate on the other amendments in the group.
Lord True
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, and I want to follow on from what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has said by thanking very sincerely my noble friend for the leadership and responsiveness she has shown on this matter. Those of us who have been present in the Committee today will also have noted the openness, warmth and positive way in which she has responded to a number of the points that have been put forward. We are all grateful for that.
I am slightly confused by the groupings, which have changed a little overnight, perhaps for reasons related to pre-emption or to a number of other points. By the way, I should pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who played a big part in raising this issue at Second Reading. There was unity across the House that to create shadow mayors before the electors in the cities concerned had had an opportunity to have their say was not a good idea. The Minister then came forward at the earliest possible opportunity to say that the Government had accepted the arguments, so the principle does not need to be debated at any great length, and I do not propose to do so. However, I should give notice, in speaking to the large number of amendments within this grouping, that it should be taken that I have also spoken to Amendments 74A, 77A, 77B, 79A and 81A. They are not in this group, but they relate to the same subject. Even if I have it wrong, I hope that the Committee will accept that I shall not come back to those amendments later, and I repeat my thanks to my noble friend for taking up the point in the positive way she has.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, relates to the part of the Bill which defines a mayor as distinct from a councillor. I wonder whether that is particularly well advised. I cannot recall the precise clause or paragraph in the schedule that deals with the eligibility of people to stand for election as mayor. It lists a whole series of officers of an authority who may not stand. At the moment, a serving member or employee of a local authority is disbarred from standing as a councillor. If the mayoral position was to be treated for all purposes in the same way as a councillor, you would not need a provision in the Bill to identify all the authority officers who could not stand for that position. Indeed, it could be argued that if you do not treat the mayor as a councillor, you might find that some people are inadvertently omitted but who perhaps should be barred from seeking to be elected because they already hold a position within the authority. My understanding is that the bar will remain in place for some time after their period of service has concluded.
Would it not be sensible for the Government to rethink this provision and simply state, unless there is a regulation the other way, as it were, that all provisions relating to councillors such as declarations of interest and all the rest of it should apply to elected mayors, rather than reverse the procedure and require regulations specifically for the elected mayor which could otherwise be avoided?
In relation to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord True, there was a problem, and indeed there still is a problem, in the grouping of these amendments. As I read it, many of the noble Lord’s amendments tag on to provisions for the implementation of the mayoral system, with reference to a referendum having taken place on the basis of three possibilities. One is the decision of a local authority itself, but subject to a referendum. Another is a petition from the public generally, and the third, which is the problematic one for many of us, is the requirement to hold a referendum by the Secretary of State. As I understand it, the noble Lord’s amendments, along with those of his noble friends, assume for the purposes of their amendments that the compulsory referendum remains part of the Bill. Last night I endeavoured to turn the debate around the other way so that we could deal with that issue first. When we come to consider the Bill on Report, perhaps we might look at how to address the issue.
The implementation points are perfectly valid and apply to the two non-compulsory forms of acquiring an elected mayor, but while I know that the Committee will not divide on them today, if the amendments were to be accepted on Report, it would be assumed that the compulsory referendum had been agreed. Some of us, perhaps many of us, have different views about that. In today’s groupings there are amendments which address that issue of principle, and I hope that the noble Lord understands where some of us are coming from in that respect.
Lord True
I thank the noble Lord. I have seen his Amendment 81B, and obviously that implies the direction he is coming from, but I certainly do not want to be unhelpful to the Committee in any way. My objective, which the Government have now said is theirs as well, is to erase the principle of shadow mayors. However, I agree that the point of principle he has raised does merit discussion at some point in our proceedings. I will be as co-operative as I can, under advice.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, unfortunately these amendments were grouped and degrouped rather speedily overnight, so we were slightly surprised to see this morning where the degroupings were. However, I accept the fact that the noble Lord will want to deal with the referendum issue at the next stage. Is there an amendment to which he wants to return? Otherwise I will accept all the amendments I have already said that I would accept, and I will go through them quietly again. The noble Lord indicates that he does not have an amendment to which he wants to return. That being the case, within the groupings of the noble Lord, Lord True, I shall list which amendments I am willing to accept, and if there are any differences about that, we shall look at the issue again. The amendments are Amendments 62A, 66A, 69A, 69B, 69C, 73A, 74A, 75A, 77A, 77B, 79A, 81A, 84A, 84B, 84C, 84D, 87A, 87B, 87C, 87D, 108A and 187. In listing them, I repeat the undertaking that I gave at the outset of Committee to remove the provisions for mayoral management arrangements.
I shall deal finally with Amendment 56, to which I suspect the noble Lord will want to return at some stage. The amendment would remove the provisions about whether an elected mayor is to be treated as a member or councillor of a local authority. I am told that these provisions replicate those in the Local Government Act 2000, which put in place the default position that a mayor is not to be treated as a member or councillor unless regulations provide that they should be. I do not know which side of the bed we are now on, or whether we are getting into it or out of it, as the noble Lord has said, but the default position is already in regulations.
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 True
My Lords, perhaps I may take a minute of the House’s time and speak now to the two other amendments in the group on which I lead and which have the same welcome effect, as noble Lords on all sides have said. I, too, repeat my salute to my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding and the Minister. The separation of mayor and chief executive is a good idea and we should maintain it. I am grateful to my noble friend.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I hope that we might be able to get back on track again without me having to swing round to make sure that I have done all the right things. We are happy to accept Amendment 57; I made clear my support for that previously in Committee. We recognise that there is great concern about the combination of the mayor and chief executive under the shadow arrangements and are content to support the amendment.
We are not quite so happy with Amendment 58 and I am going to reject it—I cannot see why, but I am. By the time we get round to the next stage I will have recovered my composure. I think that I was so taken by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, being so nice about me that I completely got underneath this. No doubt he will return to the issue at the next stage if he feels it necessary. In the mean time, I am not going to accept that amendment but have spoken to all the others.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, made some very welcome points. Many years ago I was a councillor in the London Borough of Southwark. I left the council in 1994, so I experienced only the traditional committee system. Many years later as a Labour Party official I attended Labour group meetings at which many members said that they were not so keen on the present system and would prefer to go back to the committee system. My noble friend Lord McKenzie made an important point about younger councillors getting fully involved in the council’s business. It is not so easy for them to play a scrutiny role. I hope that the Minister will explain why the three-year period is necessary and why the relevant matters cannot be dealt with more quickly.
Lord True
My Lords, I do not want to prolong the philosophical discussion about which system is better but given the principles behind a Localism Bill, clearly the matter should be decided locally and as soon as possible. I am not speaking as a representative of London Councils, but the matter came up at a recent meeting of the leaders’ executive of London Councils and the leaders of all the parties unanimously agreed that they would like the Government to think again about this proposal. We hope that the amendment spoken to by my noble friends Lord Tope and Lord Palmer will gain favour in the Government’s eyes. I submit that what goes for London goes for authorities outside London as well.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I support this sensible and well drafted amendment; my noble friend understands that joke. I want to make two points. First, if councils are to be able to choose the system of governance that they want, let it not be too bound by lots more regulation. Councils used to exist before 2000 and operated committee systems. They did not have lots of statutory guidance, regulations and orders telling them how to run them. They do not need that. Councils can perfectly well set up committees and run sensible committee systems without lots of new regulations.
Secondly, let us not imagine that there was a wonderful era of local representative democracy before 2000, when local authorities everywhere used the committee system, and that it suddenly all went bad when we had to have the executive/scrutiny split, the appointment of leaders, and so on. Life is not and was not like that. In the past, there were councils that operated efficiently, openly and transparently, involved residents and carried out their duties sensibly and efficiently; and there were councils that were pretty hopeless. That has remained the case, even though their systems have changed. Surprise, surprise—those councils that were not so good before 2000 have been not so good since. Of course, councillors can improve and some go the other way but, by and large, it is simply not true that everything was wonderful before 2000 and that everything has been awful since. Different systems may well suit different types and sizes of councils, and the dispositions of different councillors.
I hope that my council will adopt a new committee system and abandon the executive/scrutiny split, although I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, that when you are in control of the council, the executive system allows you to do all sorts of things fairly quickly, and you can just get on and do it. Looking back on the five or six years during which we controlled my council and I was involved on the executive, I have to say that I am not terribly proud of the way in which we made some of the decisions out of the public gaze. Of course, they were all rubber-stamped in a proper and legal manner but, in practice, the decisions were made by a small group of people consisting of top councillors and officials who decided what we wanted to do. It may be that that was always the case and that it will happen under a committee system, but the importance of a committee system, as a noble Lord said earlier, is that the scrutiny process can take place at the time that the decision is being made in the committee. This is one of the real reasons for committees and for not having single-party executives making all the decisions.
I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, is not in her place. She and I were together on Lancashire County Council and we have discussed this in the past. I extolled the virtues of the committee system when it all changed to what I think is the appalling way in which that council now makes decisions, a large number of which are made by a single member of the executive—a cabinet member, portfolio member, or whatever they call themselves—sometimes meeting as a single-person committee, with all the officers and just one person in the middle making all the decisions. That is not the right way to do local government. The noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, would say, “Yes, but even under the committee system, when the Labour Party controlled the county council, the decision was made in the Labour group and very rarely changed”. I would say, “Yes, but occasionally it was changed, particularly when I stood up and pointed a few things out. You made a few changes”. The point is that the decisions were subject to debate and scrutiny in public at the time and at the moment they were being made. That does not happen under a lot of executive systems. The decisions we made on my council, when we were able to do so through the executive route, might have been better if we had had more people there challenging what we were saying and the workability of what we were doing, and persuading us to make some improvements. That is the advantage of the committee system.
However, I hope that people will not continue talking about “going back” to the committee system. We do not want to go back to the old committee system. We who hope that our councils will now move to a committee system want them to learn from the experience of the last 10 years and adopt some of the good things that have happened—scrutiny done well is very good. I know that many councils do not do scrutiny very well at all and that scrutiny committees are simply places to make back-bench councillors think that they actually have a job on the council, but scrutiny can be done very well indeed.
I am sorry that my noble friend Lady Hamwee is not here because she is an expert in scrutiny and would wax more lyrical about it than me. However, I hope that councils which are going to move forward to a new committee system—not an old dinosaur system—will keep the best parts of scrutiny because, done well, it has a role to play. What it does not do is the day-to-day, week-by-week scrutiny of decisions as they are taking place and that is why we want to go back to committees.
I say these things because this is the first time we have discussed the very welcome proposals by the Government to allow councils to make the choice, which some of us have argued for whenever it has come up in this House in the last 10 years. It is very welcome, the Government are to be congratulated, and I hope as many councils as feel it is sensible will go ahead with it.
Lord True
My Lords, my noble friend might be disappointed that I rise at this point, but I gave her notice that I might do so at some point.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made a very interesting and thoughtful intervention which I hope everyone in the House will reflect on. It is absolutely beyond doubt that the coalition agreement, and indeed my own party’s manifesto, made very clear that it wishes the mayoral principle to be extended further, specifically in the cities listed in the noble Lord’s amendment, and he has acknowledged that. From my point of view, therefore, it is absolutely clear that we should support and accept that, as I believe it has, in the traditional sense, a mandate. However, our own party’s manifesto, and the coalition agreement as I read it, did not go beyond that into extending the general principle.
There is at least scope for some discussion on this subject. I have an open mind on it, and I am open to be persuaded by my noble friend and others in the House. In the context of a localism Bill, it is a very strange concept that a Secretary of State of whatever political hue can in effect lift the telephone and say, “You’re going to have a mayoral arrangement in your authority”, even if there has been no clear localist wish for one. If people want a mayor and there is scope for one, and if a campaign for a mayor gains ground, there may be circumstances in which the Secretary of State might be tempted to wish that he had such a power, but I hope that over the next few weeks, while assuring my noble friend of my absolute support for the principles set out in the coalition agreement and in the manifesto, she might be prepared to reflect on whether the best way to advance even what you think is a good idea is to take the power to impose it potentially on the unwilling.
In some way or another we might be able to explore, in the traditions of this House, some way in which the absolute exercise of such potential power could be limited. My noble friend will be relieved to hear that I cannot support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, but I hope that we can have some constructive engagement on this point.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have one or two questions. First, what evidence do the Government or anyone else have that in these 11 cities, including Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Wakefield—the metropolitan district of Wakefield is technically a city, but is in fact a collection of towns, as I know well because I grew up there—Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, Coventry, Nottingham and Bradford—there is an overwhelming demand, or indeed any significant demand, in these places for an elected mayor? In the absence of such a demand, forcing a referendum on people that is likely to be rejected in the majority of these places—perhaps all but two or three places are likely to reject it, or perhaps they will all reject it—is an astonishing waste of money.
Secondly, can the Minister tell us how much it will cost to hold a referendum in each of these 11 places? Although I may have missed something, the only place I can recall where there was a significant campaign for an elected mayor was Liverpool. It was led by some high-profile people, some of whom were connected with broadcasting organisations. However, the campaign failed to get through the present system to requisition a referendum. It is clear that in each of these places it would be difficult to raise the 5 per cent of genuine signatures for a referendum. In those circumstances, it is extraordinary that in a Bill called “localism”, the Government are imposing from the centre their own version of how local democracy should work.
People might argue that an elected mayor is a more localist system than an elected council, council leader and so on. But it is difficult to see how they can argue that it is more localist. They might argue that it is more efficient, more effective or more exciting, or that more people will turn out to vote, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, that is not likely. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us the criteria that the Government have used to make them think that this provision of top-down centralised instructions to people on the ground on how to run their cities fits in with a Bill called “localism”.
Thirdly, what evidence have the Government got that, in those places which have already got elected mayors, taking them as a whole, the system of local government is better than it was previously? There are places where the system is working very well. I would point, as I would anyway, to Watford, which has a Liberal Democrat mayor and a Liberal Democrat council, which helps a lot because they work closely together. But I suspect that, without an elected mayor but with a Liberal Democrat majority, the Liberal Democrat elected councillors and, thus, mayor would work together and would be a good council anyway.
I am not arguing that Liberal Democrat councils are always better than other councils. We all know perfectly well that, while we all pretend that our councils are better in different ways than everyone else’s, it is not always the case. As I keep saying, there are good councils and bad councils, and most councils are somewhere in-between, which goes right across the parties. They may have different approaches to things but in terms of whether they are good, bad, efficient, inefficient or whatever, it goes across the spectrum.
There are councils run well by mayors. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, mentioned some in London. There are also councils which may have elected mayors but do not run so well. Local politics and local administration in Stoke-on-Trent has been a basket case for some considerable time. Having an elected mayor made absolutely no difference. You could argue that it made it worse. Another example is Doncaster, another council which has not had a good reputation for being efficient, open, honest and all sorts of things over the years. It now has an elected English Democrat mayor. Does that make the administration in Doncaster any better? The Government do not think so because they keep putting people in Doncaster to sort it out and to run things.
There are places where the local political culture is conducive to being run efficiently, whichever party is running it. There are places where the local political culture is conducive to it being a shambles and very difficult for whoever is running it to sort out. There is no evidence whatever that those places with elected mayors are on average run any better or any worse than those without elected mayors. Surely, if the Government are going to impose things like this from the centre, it should be on the basis of the evidence. If it could be proved to me that imposing mayors on these 11 places would suddenly make them better run than they are, I would consider it, but I have to say that the big cities in England, taken as a whole, have been one of the success stories of local government and administration over the past 10 to 20 years. Not all of them by any means—I do not want to mention particular cities—but some have been outstandingly successful. That is under the present system, so why will having a mayor make a difference?
Unless we can be given some very clear evidence, this just seems to be policy developed on the whim of a few people at the top of and within the present Government. That is not a reason for supporting it. I accept that if something is in the coalition agreement, as a Liberal Democrat I start from the presumption that I will support it. Some things in the agreement are so important to the coalition, so crucial and critical, that even though I think they are completely bonkers, I will go through the right lobby in support of the Government. There have been certain constitutional issues recently where that has been the case. However, I do not believe that whether you have elected mayors in 11 places, or you have expensive referendums for elected mayors to decide whether to have them in London, are matters that are fundamental to the foundations of this coalition Government. So if the House of Lords booted it out or if it goes to a Division at any stage, I have to say to my own party and anyone else who wants to listen, I will find it very difficult indeed not to support the proposition.