Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill

Simon Hoare Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 25th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. If I am successful with this Bill, I will perhaps have to try to beat her record and go for a hat trick. There is a challenge for her.

Going back to my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth, it struck me that there is a link between my constituency and his—the A5, which runs to Hinckley, but also through Brownhills in my constituency.

Although the title of my Bill is the Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill, it is not really about audit at all. I was going to say that the title might be a little misleading, but I am not sure whether I am allowed to use that term, so let me say that the title does not really encapsulate what the Bill is all about. Let me explain that a little further.

The aim of the Bill is further to improve the transparency and accountability of local public bodies. Because it would amend the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 in respect of the people who are able to inspect accounting documentation, the title has to reflect that parentage. I hope Members will indulge me in explaining that point today. This is a very short piece of legislation, but I believe it is one that we should welcome, because it would make a single and very simple change to the 2014 Act.

The Bill is designed explicitly to amend legislation so that journalists, including citizen journalists, can have the right for one month to inspect the accounting records of the financial year just ended of any relevant authority and to request copies of those documents—without being required to have an interest in that authority.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

When I sat on the Investigatory Powers Public Bill Committee a few months ago, we spent quite a bit of time talking about journalists and how we should define journalists for the purpose of the legislation. Could anybody with an iPhone, for example, legitimately call themselves a journalist? Will my hon. Friend explain in greater depth to assuage my concern that her Bill might put an undue cost pressure on local authorities if officers had to find time to meet any requests, particularly when anybody could classify themselves as both a citizen and a journalist?

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I take my hat off to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for her bravery in entering the private Member’s Bill raffle for two years running. I entered last year and was drawn ninth, and I am only just recovering from the process. For my hon. Friend to do it for two years running is either commendable or just downright greedy. I will leave the House to work out which it might be.

[Wendy Morton]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in his comments. Should he wish to follow the direction I have taken, perhaps I could point him down the route of presentation Bills. If one is willing to queue outside the Public Bill Office, it is possible to get a presentation Bill slot. If he would like me to explain a little more about that after the debate, I will be more than happy to do so.

[Simon Hoare]

Tempting as the thrill of being inducted overnight by my hon. Friend in the arcane rituals of securing a place for a Bill is, I hope she will not be too offended if I find I have a prior engagement when that invitation arrives at my desk.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hoare]

If I can make a little progress, I will of course give way.

[Mrs Murray]

It is on that point.

[Simon Hoare]

If it is on that point, I will of course give way to my fellow Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Mrs Murray]

May I offer my hon. Friend some advice that I heeded when I took two private Members’ Bills through in the previous Parliament? Pick the same number—336 was very lucky for me.

[Simon Hoare]

That might explain why my hon. Friend has never won the national lottery.

[Oliver Colvile]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hoare]

Well, if I have given way to Cornwall, I must of course give way to Devon in this west country pincer movement.

[Oliver Colvile]

My hon. Friend is missing a chance, because he could then have told me how the whole process works.

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[Simon Hoare]

This could almost become a parliamentary orgy, and we should probably avoid that at all costs. Rather than risk the wrath of your chastisement, Madam Deputy Speaker, by having a slightly arcane debate that may be more appropriate for the Procedure Committee, let me return to the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills introduced the Bill with her customary eloquence, and I support the principle behind it—who in all honesty would not? Government of all types, whether local or national, has no funds of itself and merely acts as a clearing house for council or national taxpayers.

We are not spending our money: that fundamental principle underpins a lot of Conservative party thinking, in sharp contrast to the Labour party, for example, which always believes that the state knows best and wants to take as much as it possibly can—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), a former leader of Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council, is chuntering from a sedentary position, but I will leave him to defend his council tax-raising powers to his electorate at the appropriate time. It is absolutely pivotal that voters and members of the public have access to as much information as possible about the finances spent on their behalf.

My next point was also made by some hon. Friends. There will be some issues to be teased out in Committee—I hope the Bill reaches that stage—but I fear that the Bill could in some respects be described as an analogue Bill for a digital age. For example, proposed new subsection (1A) in clause 1 refers to both “journalists” and “publication”. As I mentioned in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, we spent quite a bit of time during the Investigatory Powers Public Bill Committee desperately trying to wrestle with what a journalist is in 2016. Not even the towering intellects of the Solicitor General and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) could come up with a definition that adequately reflected what a journalist is in today’s world. In the 1950s and 1960s, it would have been rather easier: journalists would have carried a NUJ card; they would have written for their local newspapers or broadcast on their local radio station; or they would have published in a national newspaper or periodical.

I move on to the word “publication”. We would have understood what it meant in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; it was either publication by verbal broadcast or in hard copy. Today, the lines are not so clear. If I use my iPhone to take a photograph or write something on my Facebook page or blog, am I a citizen journalist? I do not know. Would my rights be enshrined within the Bill?

[Seema Kennedy]

Does my hon. Friend agree that different standards are exercised by, and expected of, journalists who are members of the National Union of Journalists and citizen journalists, and those do not always go to the same level of criticality and balance?

[Simon Hoare]

I agree entirely. I would add another differential, which is that, as much as I am a champion of a free press, there are many who publish online today without knowing that they are actually covered by the libel laws, as we have seen in a number of cases, and without the double-check of a sub-editor, an editor or a chief news reporter—there will be nobody to sense-check their work, and I will come on to that in a moment or so.

If we turn to clause 1(2), we see the phrase “related documents”. Again, I am absolutely certain that the issue will be teased out in Committee, which will add value, cogency and clarity to the Bill.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Clearly, the aim of the Bill is to throw the light of transparency on council proceedings where taxpayers’ money is being spent. In that regard, it is vital that commercial confidentiality is not used as a tool to hide documents and that these proceedings become more open. Whether it is citizen journalists or NUJ journalists, we need that transparency and the expertise of armchair accountants.

[Simon Hoare]

“Up to a point, Lord Copper” is how I would answer that. My hon. Friend perhaps has very good eyesight, and she would have to in order to read my notes, but she slightly pre-empts something I am coming on to. First, however, I want to talk about “related documents”.

Before coming to this place, I was a district councillor and a county councillor, like many people in the House. I was involved in trying to raise additional funds for our local authority by purchasing commercial property. Some of those transactions would take a little time, but there was documentation available to cabinet members so that we could look at the figures. I take my hon. Friend’s point, because it goes back to my earlier point that local councils have no money themselves, only council tax payers’ money, but we need to think about the precise time when often commercially sensitive financial data would be available and would fall under the Bill.

I also note—I do not say this necessarily with overt seriousness—that I take exception to one word in the Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills should be alert to the gravity and depth of my exception. There is an odd juxtaposition in the marvellous language of the Bill—that wonderful prose with which any Bill begins, which we are all, of course, familiar with:

“Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows”.

We then refer to “citizen journalists”. It is the word “citizen” that we should all take exception to. It is a word that republics may very well use, but we are subjects of Her Britannic Majesty. Therefore, while the words “subject journalists” might not necessarily be as easy on the tongue, they do reflect a better sense of our island nation’s history. If my hon. Friend is lucky enough to secure a Second Reading of her Bill, and daft enough to put me on the Committee, I may very well wish to table an amendment on that issue. Whether I would press it to a Division, I will leave that to my hon. Friend to cogitate on over the coming hours.

[Wendy Morton]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he is clearly making a pitch to be on my Bill Committee, should I be successful today. All I will say to him is that I will add him to my list and I will consider that request in due course.

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[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is clearly exploring the opportunity for another career; I will leave it to the House to consider what it might be.

This important Bill is required because, as was said when we discussed Lords amendments to the Investigatory Powers Bill and section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 on freedom of the press and Leveson, we are seeing a big diminution in local and regional media, and that is having a significant and damaging effect on how information is shared nationally. The days when the local newspaper reporter, with his or her pad and pencil, attended the finance committee, full council, cabinet or the planning or housing committee have, regrettably, gone. It is now often the case that one journalist covers a very large geographical area, and that is not restricted to rural areas; it is also a phenomenon in town and cities.

My own part of the world, North Dorset, does not have a daily or weekly newspaper. We have the most excellent publication, Blackmore Vale Magazine, and Valley News. The first is weekly, the second monthly. Those free publications are available to the subjects of North Dorset—if you live by the sword, you have to die by the sword when you make those sorts of remarks—and they are excellent. That is how people get news, but they do not have the staff or the journalists to cover district or council meetings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. If the journalist behind a small publication lived in Poole in Dorset, that person—or subject, as my hon. Friend puts it—would not be able to get the information under discussion. He is showing why the Bill is so important.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend demonstrates his perspicacity, and that is why he is a Minister of the Crown and I am not. He gets my point entirely. A vacuum is being created and it needs to be filled, if for no other reason than democratic accountability.

In all seriousness, we need to consider a couple of caveats, if and as the Bill proceeds, which I hope it will. When the Freedom of Information Act went through this place, it was said that it would not represent a financial burden to local authorities, but it has and it does. We have to consider the Bill against the backdrop of a prevailing picture of a change in local authority funding and a reduction in the direct grant, as we continue to hoover and shovel up the mess left by the Labour party at the end of its period in office.

We also have to take into account the fact that there has been—I welcomed this when I was a local authority member and championed it hugely—an enormous local government reorganisation of shared and combined services. It is also the case—I am sure that this will resonate with the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton, given his experience of local government—that there are far fewer local authority officers who are able to deal with requests from the public. Moreover, local government reorganisation—this is certainly the case with my own council in Dorset—will involve unravelling, over probably the next three to 10 years, the financial meshings and harmonisations of council taxes.

[Oliver Colvile]

rose—

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[Simon Hoare]

Let me just finish this point, because it is very important. That will take the integrity and knowledge of a chartered accountant at least to be able to follow it.

Let me go back to the point I made a moment ago about the sad absence of local journalists in the council chamber. The fact that they are there, and that the information can be provided to them, does not necessarily mean that they understand what they are seeing. I can well recall a headline in my local paper that said, “Council to Slash Flood Defence Budget,” but we were not going to. I had the local journalist in and we sat and discussed it for an hour. Literally the same sum of money was being moved from one budget head to another. Could he grasp it? No, he could not, even though I explained it to him on at least half a dozen occasions. Therefore, with the right of access to information has to come an obligation from the person accessing it to be responsible for at least making sure that they understand and can contextualise what they are being made privy to. If, particularly in a local authority setting, these sorts of things are viewed in a silo and not seen as a bigger picture, that will often lead to a huge amount of confusion.

[Oliver Colvile]

Does my hon. Friend not think that the public could write to the local authority explaining where the council could be making savings and help them with priorities? That could appear in such wonderful organs as the Plymouth Herald in my constituency—a daily newspaper that is always looking for copy.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend tantalises the House with the wonder of his organ, but we had better be careful on that one as well. I happen to know the Plymouth Herald pretty well. It is a great champion of local stories, which it covers extremely well. I never quite think it gives enough coverage to my hon. Friend—hopefully the editor of that journal might listen to that—or indeed, to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer). [Interruption.] Or to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter). [Interruption.] Well, let us not get too carried away. I often think that if my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) was “Mr January” and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View was “Mr the rest of the months”, the ladies of Plymouth would be delighted. That is up to editorial control and I am going to leave it to them. However, with freedom has to come responsibility.

I also wish to say a few words about vexatiousness. I can think of an occasion when somebody might get the bit between their teeth, and no matter how clearly it is spelt out to them that they have get the wrong end of the stick, they seem not to be able to grasp it and persist and persist. They will often go and tell their local newspaper that they are persisting. That can be damaging to the reputation and corporate profile of the local authority and potentially adds costs to the administration of the local authority.

[Craig Whittaker]

My hon. Friend’s points about the burdens of freedom of information requests and the reduced number of staff are interesting. Would he consider that fair and reasonable costs of providing that information could be the actual costs of doing so?

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[Simon Hoare]

I agree entirely and add that those fees should be paid up front rather than retrospectively, because trying to get hold of that money afterwards can often be very difficult.

I am conscious of the time so I will draw my remarks to a close. I do not want my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills to think for an iota of a nanosecond that I am opposed to her Bill. Far from it—I support it. Why? For the sacred principles of conservatism. The first principle is that we are spending other people’s money and that the people who give it to the local authority or the Government have a right to know how it is being spent. The second principle is that the Bill clearly seeks to fill a vacuum by providing information to a new set of people whose aspirations and inquiries would probably have been covered in the local media. I hope that local media are not in decline, but they are certainly in a period of shrinkage and recalibration.

The principle of the Bill is fundamentally important—to provide access on behalf of taxpayers to information from local authorities and from other bodies that may be added to the Bill as and when it is goes into Committee. I think that that is fantastically important because the key word in the title of the Act that this Bill will amend is not “local” or “audit”, but “accountability”. We are accountable to our constituents in whichever forum we seek to represent them for the money we spend or allocate on their behalf—there should be no opportunity to hide, mask or obfuscate in relation to the audit trail—and we must ensure that people have confidence in how public bodies spend the hard-earned money of hard-pressed taxpayers.