Nick Raynsford
Main Page: Nick Raynsford (Labour - Greenwich and Woolwich)
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
The Minister is putting the completely absurd proposition to the House that the local authority will be under a duty to publicise a code of conduct that it may decide not to have. Will he please recognise that that is nonsense? Abolishing the requirement for a code of conduct in every local authority in the country is a serious, retrograde step, of which the Government should be profoundly ashamed.
Andrew Stunell
The right hon. Gentleman asked me a question and the answer is no, I do not accept that at all. When we exchanged words in Committee, I thought that this was an outrage, so I am glad that it has been downgraded a little. The important point is that the decision a local authority takes should be transparent, so that the local electorate are aware of it and the local authority are accountable to them. We have accepted the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East put to the Committee, and Government amendments 130 and 131 deal with that.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
We have so little time that I am going to cut straight to the chase; I hope not to take more than a minute or two.
I speak in favour of new clause 10, which I tabled and which is supported by Members from both sides of the House. It concerns the recall of councillors. I view this as a simple, obvious, “no brainer” idea, which I hope will be met with a nod of approval by both Front-Bench teams. I will briefly make the case for it.
As Members know, the Government are planning to introduce a recall mechanism for parliamentarians, whereby Members face being removed from office if their constituents so choose. The plans, in my view, do not go nearly far enough. MPs will be subject to recall only if a Committee decides that they have committed an act of serious wrongdoing. Recall is supposed to be about empowering people, not parliamentary Committees, so I shall seek to amend that provision when I have a chance. In the meantime, I was pleased that the Secretary of State promised to consider introducing into this Bill a recall mechanism for councillors. That has not happened, so I have done it for him.
I am fortunate in that my constituency is served by some excellent councillors, but we all know that there are some councillors who do very little for their constituents, so there should surely be a mechanism whereby residents can hold councillors to account during the four years in between elections in the same way as employees are in every other field of human endeavour. It cannot be right to ask Members to vote for measures that will introduce recall for parliamentarians, but not for councillors in local government, which is just as important.
My new clause would allow for
“25% or more of the… voters in the constituency of an elected local government member”
to petition for and trigger a recall election. I think that that strikes the right balance between preventing vexatious recall attempts and empowering local people to hold their elected councillors to account. The new clause would greatly empower local people and would keep councillors on their toes, and I hope that it can be put to the vote so that the House can support it.
Mr Raynsford
I wish to speak, very briefly, to amendments 365 and 366, which I tabled and which relate to standards.
In his opening remarks on the programme motion, the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)—who steered the Bill through its Committee stage—expressed a wish to listen to the views of people, whether they were members of the Committee, other interested parties, or people who had given evidence to the Committee. As he knows, an awful lot of people gave evidence, and many who gave evidence on standards gave very interesting evidence. Sadly, however, the Government did not listen to the evidence, including that given by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The Government may be right in saying that there is a case for some streamlining of the standards procedure, and indeed I conceded that in Committee, but I am afraid that they are making a serious mistake in substituting for the existing machinery a framework that is incoherent, that is potentially extremely weak, and that will contain serious anomalies.
Let us examine those three problems. First, clause 17 allows the Secretary of State to require local authorities to establish a procedure relating to the declaration of interests, a breach of which will involve a criminal liability. Clause 16 allows the establishment of an entirely voluntary framework within which it will be up to a local authority to decide whether to adopt a code of conduct. That could lead to an extraordinary situation. Someone who had failed, perhaps owing to a technicality, to declare an interest as part of the mandatory requirement imposed by Government would be liable for a criminal action, whereas someone who had behaved in a deplorable way—who had bullied people, been dishonest, or behaved shamelessly in the council chamber—could emerge scot-free because the council concerned had chosen not to adopt a code of conduct. That is clearly unsatisfactory.
Secondly, there will be no code of conduct promoted by Government, like the model code that has existed in the past, that could serve as the default in the event of a local authority’s failure to adopt its own code.
Thirdly, there is a serious risk that, under clause 16(2), a local authority that currently has a code of conduct could
“withdraw its existing code of conduct without replacing it.”
Ministers claimed that they would leave this to local government—that they would do the right thing. At a time when we are all concerned about standards in public life, whether at national or local government level, it is extraordinary that they should produce a half-baked proposal which has not been thought through, which allows loopholes and anomalies to exist, and which—most seriously—undermines the substantial progress that has been made in recent years in improving those standards.
Although Ministers appear unwilling to accept the case for amendments in the House of Commons, I sincerely hope that Members in another place with real experience of these matters will press amendments to ensure that there is a more coherent, more satisfactory and more demanding framework to maintain standards in public life.
Andrew Percy
I served as a local councillor for 10 years under the previous standards regime, which was an abuse of and an assault on local democracy. As long as councillors do not break any criminal law, it is for the public who elected them to judge their behaviour. I was once referred to the standards board by a political activist for having dared to be a school teacher. The process wasted public money, because someone had to investigate, only to find it was all a load of old guff. It was a politically motivated referral, and there were countless examples of the same thing in my council chamber. Members on all sides reported each other for everything. That is a load of old nonsense, and the sooner it goes the better.
As for pay policy, I cannot support the amendments tabled by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). It is incredible that the Opposition should advance such proposals, having done what they have done to public sector pay at the top. I recall that when the Labour authority in Hull was seen as a failing council—I believe that the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) was a Minister at the time—we were inspected by officials who told us that we must pay our senior staff more. We ended up with five corporate directors on outrageous salaries of £105,000 a year. [Interruption.] It is true: I was there at the time. We saw a massive explosion in pay. The suggestion that we should take lessons from the Opposition on the subject takes some swallowing.
I do, however, agree that there should be more transparency in regard to private contractors who work for local authorities. My local council, which was Labour-controlled until two weeks ago but is now Conservative-controlled, has spent £3 million on consultants in the last year, and spent millions of pounds in the preceding years. There should be more openness about how money is spent and how much people in the private sector are making. There is a good point behind the proposal, although, as I have said, it takes a little bit of swallowing given that the last Government presided over the pay explosion at the top.
Having made those few comments, I will yield to other Members who, I am sure, are keen to make their own contributions.
Greg Clark
I will make some progress, and then perhaps my hon. Friend can come in again. I know that a lot of Members want to speak.
The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who made many helpful and constructive suggestions in Committee, has tabled two amendments. We will require the examiner of plans to take oral evidence if people want to submit it, but we will leave him or her to make the judgment about whether that is an attempt to delay the process or reflects a genuine appetite. Similarly, his amendment 12 is unnecessary because the Bill already allows prescribed steps to be taken in the examination of a neighbourhood plan, including the consideration of questions about participation. However, we will carefully consider whether an equalities impact assessment is appropriate.
On heritage issues, our amendments correct a misdrafting that seemed to put in doubt the protection that conservation areas and listed buildings receive in the neighbourhood planning process. That was never our intention. Happily, working with the heritage groups, we have been able to agree a set of measures that address that problem.
I wish to say a little about town centres, because I know that an amendment on the subject has been tabled. Policy on town centres has always been part of national planning policy, and I believe that is right. However, as I have done on the subject of sustainable development, I wish to signal clearly the importance of having robust policy, including the sequential test that is currently in planning policy statement 4. That will absolutely be in place, and it will be clear in the new national planning policy framework.
The Association of Convenience Stores wants, to its credit, to keep this issue live and in the forefront of our minds. I am happy that it does so, but it need have no concerns. This Government’s attitude to town centres is absolutely clear: they are at the heart of our communities and nothing should be done that would disadvantage them or jeopardise that.
Government new clause 15 deals with local finance matters, which has caused the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington and his colleagues some concern in recent days. The proposal makes it clear that local finance matters that are relevant to planning considerations can be taken into account. It does not change the law in any way, and it is not some stealthy way in which to introduce a new basis for planning policy. Everyone knows that section 106 payments that are material in planning matters can be taken into consideration. The new clause reflects the fact that the introduction of the community infrastructure levy, and, potentially, other rebates to the local community, as I like to call them, can be used for planning purposes. It is important to be clear, lest there is any doubt on the part of local authorities, that such rebates, just like under section 106, can be made when they are relevant to planning considerations.
Amendment 369, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), suggests that CIL should be used more widely for housing and other local infrastructure. It is important that planning committees, which are sometimes nervous and conservative about such matters, are reassured that the use of the CIL for appropriate planning purposes is perfectly legitimate and that it can be taken into account in planning decisions.
Mr Raynsford
The Minister implies that there is no change in policy as a result of new clause 15, but may I remind him that until three months ago, his Department’s stance was that financial matters could not be regarded as material considerations? His Department’s response to the consultation on the new homes bonus scheme affirmed that the new homes bonus cannot change the position that financial matters are not to be regarded as material considerations. New clause 15 changes that completely, and changes the presumption that planning permission cannot be bought and sold, which has been in the planning system for years. That is an extremely dangerous move, and I am astonished that the Minister has come to it only after 35 minutes of his speech. He has dealt with a lot of detail, but he has not addressed the fundamental threat that new clause 15 poses to the integrity of the planning system.
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman should be reassured that the measure is not a fundamental threat. Rather, it is an incidental measure for clarification. As he knows, section 106 payments have always been taken into account. There is no change in the policy whatever. He misquotes the response to the consultation on the new homes bonus, which is as valid today as it was when it was published. The response states that
“the new Homes Bonus is not intended to encourage housing development which would otherwise be inappropriate in planning terms”
and that local authorities
“cannot take into account immaterial considerations.”
Therefore, local finance considerations, like any other considerations, should be taken into account only if they are material to the application that is being considered. Let me give an example to the right hon. Gentleman. Obviously, if it is perfectly appropriate for a payment made under a section 106 agreement to be taken into account by the planning authority, it would be perfectly reasonable for the CIL, for example, to be used to provide investment in a road scheme that accommodates a development. If a planning authority considers that to be material, it is perfectly reasonable to take it into account. The measure simply clarifies that if payments other than section 106 payments can be used for matters that are material to the application, it is legitimate to take them into account.
Mr Raynsford
The Minister will have to do better. He should consider whether he is being absolutely open with the House about the significance of the change. The existing presumption is that planning permission cannot be bought and sold, and that financial considerations are not material. He will know that section 106 agreements are negotiated only after planning consent has been granted. There should be no question about that. However, he is clearly muddying the waters—his language implies that—and by making a financial consideration a material consideration, he is undermining the planning system. I urge him to reconsider.
Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman is disappointed that this is not the cunning plot that he sensed it might be. It is a straightforward clarification, and he needs to accept that it is not what he thought it was. It is a simple and straightforward clarification brought about by the fact that it has been suggested in the press that some of these payments cannot be taken into account. It is important that councils understand that, where it is relevant to the planning matter in hand—but not otherwise—they can continue to take it into account. That is no different from the present situation, and it is important to clarify that.