Local Government (Disqualification) Bill

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st December 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider clauses 2 to 6 stand part.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

We are particularly delighted to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq.

[The Chair]

I am sorry. You can’t get the staff these days, Sir Paul.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

We were tempted to chair the Committee ourselves, but we were ruled out of order.

[The Chair]

I need some dental work done, as well.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Absolutely. We were tempted to move the Bill formally, just to save you the trip, but there was an objection.

[The Chair]

Okay—let the process continue.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I am delighted that we are putting the clauses together so that we can discuss them quickly. I think there is universal support for the contributions that follow to be short. I am aware that a number of supporters, on both the Government and the Opposition side, are keen to leave as soon as feasible, so I will be quick.

Like many people, I was very surprised to hear that there is a loophole in the legislation on disqualification of local government elected members who are convicted of a sexual offence. That conviction means that they are subject to the relevant notifications commonly known as the sex offenders list. If the individuals are subject to a custodial sentence, they are automatically disqualified from their elected post. If they are not subject to a custodial sentence, even though they are put on the sex offenders list, they are not automatically disqualified. That really took me by surprise, as it did other people.

The reality, therefore, is that such individuals can stand in an election to become a local government member, and in a few cases over the past few years that has happened. I believe that is absolutely unacceptable. It is degrading. It means that people who should be looking out for the vulnerable, especially children, are in a position where one might doubt that they are actually doing so.

This tiny but somewhat complex Bill will remove that loophole. To hasten proceedings, I have sent all Committee members a copy of the Bill and the explanatory notes, so that they already have the matter covered.

The grounds for disqualification are set out in clause 1, which is entitled

“Members of local authorities in England etc”,

to whom this change will apply. Similarly, the Acts to which the changes will apply are set out. Clause 2 applies to Mayors of combined authorities. Clause 3 applies to the Mayor of London and London Assembly members. The supplementary and final provisions are set out in clauses 4 to 6. Clause 4 contains references to Channel Islands or Isle of Man legislation. Clause 5 deals with transitional provision. Clause 6 addresses the extent, commencement and short title.

Having quickly summarised the Bill, I must thank and congratulate the Minister and her officials, who put together this small but extraordinarily complex Bill, covering all the bases of local government legislation in England and Wales.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I shall be briefer than I think I have ever been in Parliament and simply say that I and the Labour party fully endorse the Bill, and we congratulate the hon. Member for Mole Valley on his efforts in bringing it forward. In my view, it is important that this change is made in relation to all representatives, but with a special focus on those who act as corporate parents. The Labour party supports the Bill.

[The Minister for Levelling Up Communities (Kemi Badenoch)]

I have a very long speech that I am keen for all members of the Committee to go through with me over the next 25 minutes.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) for picking up this private Member’s Bill and helping us to close this loophole. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with him in progressing the Bill to Committee stage, and I look forward to supporting it over the upcoming legislative hurdles, of which no doubt there will be very few for what is a common-sense and necessary measure for the statute book.

It is clear that people must be given confidence that the individuals they elect to represent them are of good character, worthy of trust and beyond reproach. Mayors and local councillors are responsible for the delivery of vital services, including for children and vulnerable adults, and good character in the people making decisions about such services should be the minimum expectation.

It goes without saying that the vast majority of councillors and Mayors are driven by a deep sense of public duty, and they deserve our respect for the excellent job they do. However, perhaps inevitably when there are 120,000 councillors serving all tiers of local government in England, there are rare occasions when the behaviour of individuals falls below the standards that the public rightly expect.

Two such cases have shone a sharp light on the need for reform, including a particularly notorious incidence that involved a parish councillor downloading indecent images of children soon after their election to public office. Despite being placed on the sex offenders register, this individual refused to do the decent thing by stepping down and he then went on to serve his full term. This intolerable situation was made possible by our current legislation on disqualification not having kept pace with our sentencing regime, as our rules disqualified someone only if they received a custodial sentence of three months or more.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley has already described the clauses that are to stand part of the Bill, so I will not repeat them, but it is important to mention the devolved Administrations, as they are not represented in the room. There is a commitment to support Northern Ireland implementation, and clause 6 sets out that the Act will come into force two months after the day on which it is passed. The clause also confirms that the provisions apply to England only.

Local government functions are devolved, which means the Bill is specifically for England. That being said, the Welsh Government have recently legislated on the matter and the Scottish Parliament may wish to make corresponding provision, because the UK Government, unlike in the devolved nations, retains general responsibility for local government elections. The Government will work with the Northern Ireland Executive to seek to extend these measures to Northern Ireland in a comprehensive package, addressing candidates and sitting councillors.

This Government believe that it is absolutely right for councillors, Mayors and members of the Greater London Assembly to face consequences if they fall short of the behaviour we all expect in an inclusive and tolerant society. This private Member’s Bill will help us uphold standards in public life and deliver on our commitment to legislate on this issue. Updates to the disqualification criteria are timely and, many would say, long overdue, and I am pleased to commend the Bill to the Committee.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I am delighted but not surprised that there is general support. I am conscious that Members want to get out of here, so I will be very quick. Before you put the question, Dr Huq, I wish to thank you and all who have attended, having been dragged out of the coffee room. I ask the Minister to convey my thanks to her officials who put the Bill together, because it is much more complicated than it looks—I remember struggling with local government legislation when I was a local government Minister. I thank those who have spoken for being succinct, and I also thank those who did not speak.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 to 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill to be reported, without amendment.

Local Government (Disqualification) Bill

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 14th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendments all together. Before I came to this place, I was a councillor for many years, and I absolutely uphold the principles of the Bill and of the Nolan principles of conduct in public life. I also believe in redemption. I have dealt a lot with issues relating to county lines and there is nothing more powerful than seeing somebody who has been involved as a victim but who is none the less convicted because at a very young age they were involved in something over which they had very little choice. The thought that in later life that person might be disqualified from serving in public office is wrong, and it is my understanding that that would happen if we included these amendments. We need to reflect on the fact that people in public office need to have experience and sometimes that experience may be in areas where they need to advise people of their past mistakes. Safeguarding is a different issue and I absolutely support the Bill in that regard. As a result of that, I will not support the amendments if they come to a vote.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I have known my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), as he said, for some considerable time; we were both on a south London council. Although we are on the same side of the House, sometimes we agree and sometimes we do not. This afternoon, although I have sympathy with what he is plugging for, I do not think this is an appropriate Bill for what he is proposing. It is a Bill that is answering one small point, on which there has tremendous pressure, because there has been evidence of it and of the loophole being abused. As has been said, the loophole is child protection and the relationship with elected councillors. There has been wide consultation with local government before this Bill on the specific issue. The measures it contains are very deliberate and not retrospective. They are also de facto time-limited by the nature of the current legislation relating to the sex offenders list.

It would be fair to say that the new clauses came as a bit of a surprise, although I should have anticipated them because I have known my hon. Friend for some considerable time. I did ask him whether he would like to serve on the Committee, because I knew he would have issues to raise, but he declined to do so. These new clauses will have a draconian effect on local government. I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that they will be retrospective all the way back to 1971 for drugs offences, to 1978 for drink-driving offences and to 2018 for social disorder offences. There is no time limit for this disqualification and no consideration given to the nature of the offence or the length of the conviction. This is a retrospective, one-strike-and-you-are-out proposal.

If the proposals were put to local government as they are on the Order Paper, I suspect the response would include the far from unreasonable request that such disqualification laws should be applied to Members of Parliament as well. I am sure my hon. Friend has no distant conviction, so there will be no difficulty for him, but if he has, I suspect he may not be alone. More to the point, I would strongly argue that any such purely hypothetical conviction from decades ago would have no bearing on his ability or that of any other hon. Member to discharge their duties in this place.

The same applies to most, if not almost all, of our hard-working colleagues in local government. When I looked at the amendments and new clauses, I had visions of some poor councillor who had the misfortune to be convicted in the late 1970s for a minor drink-driving offence when a student—I remember my life as a student; I got away with it—driving their battered Mini around the university campus. This person may have gone on to serve as a councillor or even as a mayor for decades, rendering great service to their community, but they would be disqualified at a stroke by the conviction many years ago, thereby forcing a by-election. It is worth mentioning a point that will have crossed the minds of some hon. Members. The inevitable and aggressive partisan trawling for past convictions to be used as a tool to unseat councillors will be particularly horrendous should these new clauses be accepted. Certainly, we will see minor, irrelevant incidents from the councillor’s past dredged up and used as weapons to force the resignation of people who have given huge amounts to their local community. That cannot be right on the basis of the brief discussion that we have had on these amendments today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I have listened to my hon. Friend, so I would rather not.

The measure, in my view, only undermines the primary aim of this Bill, which is to protect children. I was on the Committee for a Labour Government Bill in 2003 that brought this through, and we went backwards and forwards on this issue. Ultimately, I supported it then, and I do so now. This is a uniquely important issue, and I do not believe that it should be conflated with broader arguments over what should or should not disqualify an individual from participating in local government, as, regrettably, these new clauses do.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for taking the time to engage with the legislation. I know that he is keen to ensure that Ministers have thought things through, and I am impressed that he has actually gone through the consultation document from 2018. I disagree with his amendments and I hope that I can convince him from the Dispatch Box that we are doing the right thing. I also wish to put it on record that I disagree with the rather unpleasant accusation that the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) made from the Labour Front Bench.

New clauses 1 and 2 would have the effect of creating a new form of permanent disqualification criteria for individuals convicted of a narrow group of offences under section 5 or section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 or offences under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. There are a number of reasons why the Government are resisting these new clauses. The first is the fact that they propose that the disqualification would be permanent. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) has said, this runs counter to the principle and expectation that underpins our justice system that offenders serve their time and are then rehabilitated into society. It would have the effect of creating a permanent bar to individuals contributing to public life in their local communities for this limited category of offences. So, singling out this narrow group of drink and drug offences for permanent disqualification is disproportionate.

Secondly, the Bill legislates to capture not only local councillors but mayors and London Assembly members. However, my hon. Friend’s new clauses apply only to local councillors. Thirdly, serious drink or drug-driving offences are already covered by the existing local government disqualification criteria, which bars anyone from standing or holding public office in local government for five years if they have had a custodial sentence of three months or more.

Amendments that create new, punitive measures to permanently disqualify those receiving a conviction for certain limited drink or drug-driving offences or controlled drug offences are really not the purpose of the Bill. The Bill specifically seeks to update disqualification criteria in line with modern sentencing measures available for registered sex offenders. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) said, these amendments would permanently bar, for example, an individual from standing for local office if, perhaps, at 18 they had had a glass of wine too many and were convicted of being slightly over the limit. Forty years later, they would still be unable to stand, which is a bit draconian.

The Bill is appropriately comprehensive, as it catches all those individuals subject to notification requirements for sexual offences but not subject to custodial sentences. The core purpose of this legislation is to prevent those convicted of sexual offences from having a role as a local elected official that could include access to children and vulnerable adults, and the length of their disqualification would be the length of time that they are subject to the notification requirement.

We also resist new clause 3. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has identified that we did consult on disqualifying individuals who had been issued with antisocial behaviour injunctions in 2017, and the original consultation was focused in scope. This Bill does not include civil injunctions, on the basis that they represent only a partial selection of the injunctions and behaviour orders available to the courts. The Government support this Bill because, as I said earlier, we are legislating comprehensively to disqualify individuals convicted of sexual offences from local office. This Bill responds to calls for changes to the law to disqualify sex offenders who are not given a custodial sentence but refuse to stand down, so we want to bring the disqualification criteria for councillors in line with the modern sentencing practice. The current criteria require updating to reflect changes to the law: the courts have tools that they did not have previously, and the disqualification criteria must reflect that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. New clause 3 may have been supported by the Chancellor in his foreword when he was serving in this role, but he is not the Bill Minister—I am—and I believe that Bills such as this should be specific, targeted and focused. This private Member’s Bill focuses on addressing those concerns raised by specific cases where councillors made subject to the notification requirements for registered sex offenders did not resign. Those cases highlighted the fact that those registered sex offenders pose great concern to our communities.

I will now move on to amendments 1, 2, 3 and 4, which all amend clause 1, and which we resist for the following reasons. Amendments 1 and 4 would selectively remove parish councils from the list of local authorities subject to the new disqualification criteria. This would be a significant and troubling reduction of the purpose, intent, and comprehensiveness of the Bill. Parish councils are already subject to the existing disqualification criteria, and rightly so, as there are 10,000 parish councils and approximately 100,000 parish councillors in England. It is vital that the large number of individuals who hold this important position—the grassroots of our democracy—are also subject to the new disqualification criteria introduced by the Bill. People must be given confidence that the individuals they elect to represent them at all tiers of local government are of good character and beyond reproach.

Amendments 2 and 3 would exclude sexual risk orders from the updated disqualification criteria for members of local authorities in England. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has helpfully pointed out, the Government did consult on the inclusion of sexual risk orders in 2017, and we committed to legislate to disqualify persons subject to such orders from holding local office. Individuals are subject to sexual risk orders because they are found by a court to pose a serious risk of harm to the public in the UK and/or children and vulnerable adults abroad. When issuing a sexual risk order, the court needs to be satisfied that the order is necessary to protect the public, or children and vulnerable adults, from sexual harm, and the Government believe it is right that anyone subject to a sexual risk order should be barred from standing for election or holding office as a member of a local authority.

My hon. Friend asked why we changed our mind—why this Bill covers more than the sex offenders register. I should clarify that the 2017 consultation responses regarding the matter of sexual risk orders were mixed: some 39% of respondents were in favour of prohibition, and 45% were against. However, my hon. Friend is not correct to say that the Government have changed their mind regarding the inclusion of sexual risk orders in this Bill. In our response to the consultation, we stated that having considered the responses we received, the Government believe that where an individual is subject to a sexual risk order, they should be prohibited from standing for election. This Bill delivers on that commitment.

My hon. Friend also asked about enforcement—how local authorities will know that a councillor is on the register or has received an order for a sexual offence. A candidate must declare anything that might disqualify them from standing for, or holding, local office. Not doing so is a criminal offence, and this Bill will update those disqualification criteria and therefore ensure they are captured by this requirement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I beg to move, That the Bill be read the Third time.

I will be very succinct, because having looked at the rest of the day’s agenda, I am aware that there is a taxi behind me tooting its horn.

This Bill is a tiny, specific response to heavy demand from a number of Members and a number of councillors. It is intended to deal with circumstances in which an individual has been able to stand or remain as a councillor despite being on the sex offenders list, because they have not been put in jail. Today we will pass the Bill on to another place, where, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) will be intrigued to know, the third former leader of Wandsworth Council to serve in this building will pick it up and take it forward.

I think the Bill is important. It is short, but it meets a need in ensuring that what applies to councillors who are on the sex offenders list and go to jail also applies to those who, as a result of some quirk, do not go to jail but remain outside, and are therefore able to remain as elected members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I will be very succinct. I have mentioned the taxi cab, and I can hear it behind me—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman might like to ask the leave of the House.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. After all this time, I should have remembered that. I ask the leave of the House to say a few words.

I thank the Minister for her support, and I am grateful for the support from right across the House. Even my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is behind the Bill, although he was going to add all sorts of thorns to it—much, I think, to the dismay of local government. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) and the Minister mentioned MPs. If my hon. Friend had spent some time on the Standards Committee, he would have heard of the ghastly accusation of bringing the House into disrepute. That would apply to any MP in this situation, and the door would be shown to them.

I thank everybody again, and I hope that the Bill will progress swiftly through the other place, led by another ex-leader of Wandsworth Council.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.