Lord Beecham
My Lords, I also have an amendment in this group. First, I endorse what the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Greaves, have said in speaking to their amendments. My Amendment 133ZEA is effectively to replace the Secretary of State’s regulatory function—again we come across the Secretary of State’s regulations—with the relevant authority being allowed to determine and publicise the relevant periods between accepting an expression of interest and beginning the procurement exercise. That really ought to be a matter for local circumstances and local decision and not something prescribed nationally.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, Amendment 133ZC would remove the Secretary of State’s power to specify minimum periods for the submission of expressions of interest. Amendment 133ZEA would require relevant authorities to set and publicise minimum and maximum periods between an expression of interest being accepted and a procurement exercise starting. Amendment 133ZE would remove the Secretary of State’s power to specify these periods, which would have a similar effect. We have taken these powers to ensure that power really is pushed down into the hands of communities.
The power to specify minimum periods for submission of expressions of interest will ensure that relevant bodies have sufficient time to prepare and submit them. The power to specify a minimum period between an expression of interest being accepted and a procurement exercise starting will, in particular, ensure that employees, where they are not the challengers, have sufficient time to decide whether they wish to organise themselves to bid, and do so effectively. This will support the Government’s commitment to give public sector workers the right to bid to take over running the services they deliver. It should also help smaller and newer voluntary and community bodies. The power to specify a maximum period will prevent a procurement exercise from being unnecessarily delayed.
The majority of relevant authorities will, of course, act within the spirit of the right, but these powers will prevent a recalcitrant authority from specifying periods that are so short that they stymie relevant bodies wishing to use the right. However, following our recent consultation, we are carefully considering whether some discretion could be given to relevant authorities on the timescales associated with the process to enable them to take account of local circumstances.
Clause 69(2) gives discretion to relevant authorities to specify periods during which expressions of interest could be submitted in particular services. Amendments 133ZA and 133ZB would instead require relevant authorities to specify periods during which expressions of interest in a particular service would be considered, changing the emphasis of this provision. Relevant bodies would then be able to submit expressions of interest at any time. However, this amendment could result in expressions of interest being submitted so far in advance that they would be out of date by the time the relevant authority considered them. The time within which a relevant authority must notify a relevant body of its decision on an expression of interest, provided for in Clause 71(4), is intended to provide time for consideration of expressions of interest. I trust that, in the circumstances, noble Lords will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Greaves
From my point of view, if this provides a bit more flexibility to deal with local holidays and things like that, it is welcome, but the whole thing is still complete nonsense. The idea that local authorities need to be told exactly what the minimum or maximum periods are, or need new rules to say, “This is exactly the flexibility you can have to increase it, or reduce it, or whatever”, is treating local authorities, as I said before, first of all like wholly owned subsidiaries of national government, and secondly like a kindergarten which needs to have its whole life organised for it by people from above. It is absolutely crazy and is typical of the entire ethos which lies behind the Bill. All the good stuff in the Bill is being ruined by this complete nonsense that local authorities have to be told what to do and how to do it in detail. I was thinking about this over dinner. I said before that it is to do with local authority cultures. Local authorities will never learn to be grown-up people who can make their own decisions and organise their own lives if this culture continues.
My honourable friend Andrew Stunell, one of the Ministers responsible for the Bill, complains almost every time I see him that he goes to local authorities and they keep asking him how they are going to deal with the new general power of competence. He says, “It is a new general power of competence and you yourselves will decide how you’re going to deal with it”. That is wonderful, but all through the Bill we have all these detailed regulations that go against that.
Local authorities nowadays will not do anything unless they have such regulations. So long as these regulations continue, local authorities will lack imagination and enterprise. They will be the opposite of what we want them to be. The civil servants and the Government have to let go. Until they do so, there is no hope.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I thank the two noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I have several notes here for responding to these things, and if I do not pick everything, I hope I can write to them afterwards.
We have to remember as a preliminary to all this that this is the Localism Bill and there are some new things here, but that that does not get rid of old things. Therefore, if something is in the law at the moment, no other apple carts are upset. That is the fact of the Bill. However, Amendments 133ZD, 133ZJ, 133ZM and 133ZEC address areas in which existing legislation will apply and where services are contracted out following a successful challenge under the right. Amendment 133ZD would require a relevant authority accepting an expression of interest to decide whether it was going to carry out a procurement exercise, and either carry out that exercise or negotiate with a relevant body on the terms on which it may deliver the service.
Clause 70(3) already requires the procurement exercise carried out by the relevant authority following a successful challenge to be appropriate and have regard to the value and nature of the contract that may be awarded as a result. Therefore, where the service is of a nature or value to which the Public Contract Regulations 2006 apply, the relevant authority will need to follow the procedures set out in those regulations for advertising, tendering and awarding contracts. However, where those regulations do not apply—for example, where the value of the service is below the threshold of £156,000 for local authorities or the services are otherwise exempt—authorities have the discretion to decide how to procure the service, just as they already do when contracting out services.
Amendment 133ZJ would require any contract that a relevant authority entered into following a successful challenge to be subject to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006—TUPE. The TUPE regulations already specify the instances in which they will apply. We are not seeking to change those through the community right to challenge.
Amendment 133ZEC would require a relevant authority to consider whether acceptance of an expression of interest would promote or improve equality of service provision in its area. Amendment 133ZM would apply the duties with which a relevant authority must comply under the Equality Act 2010 when delivering a service to a relevant body delivering a service on its behalf.
Relevant authorities will need to comply with their duties under the Equality Act when delivering services directly, when considering expressions of interest, when contracting out following a successful challenge under the right, and when procuring services outside the right. As is currently the case, when contracting out services authorities will need to satisfy themselves that they have fulfilled their duties, for example by including appropriate requirements in contracts.
Amendment 133ZF would remove the requirement for a relevant authority's consideration of how it might promote or improve the social, environmental or economic well-being of its area through the procurement exercise, to be consistent with procurement law. The amendment would remove clarity where it is needed. A relevant authority considering how it might promote or improve the social, economic or environmental well-being of its area must do so in a way that complies with procurement law. Failure to do so provides a number of grounds for legal challenge.
Amendment 133ZH would enable a relevant authority to specify in relation to contracts entered into following a successful challenge: arrangements for supervision, monitoring and assessment; service levels and standards; and the action that may be taken by the authority where those are not met, including a procedure by which the authority may take the service back in-house. Relevant authorities can and do include requirements in contracts for performance and monitoring. The right does not restrict them from continuing to do so.
Amendment 133ZG would require contracts let following a successful challenge to be time-limited. Authorities enjoy the freedom to enter into contracts for whatever period is relevant to the needs of their service users and to the need to obtain value for money. The amendment would unnecessarily restrict that freedom. In other words, there is no prescription on that. That is not a regulation; it is not in the Bill.
In the circumstances, I hope that the amendment may be withdrawn.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, there have been a number of useful and welcome statements, which have helped us to understand how this might work. I will read them carefully, as usual. There are one or two other issues, such as the TUPE business, for which the Minister said that nothing has changed, but it might still be helpful to know how it might apply to different circumstances under the Bill. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. In general, they were very helpful responses, and I will read them carefully.
Lord Beecham
This amendment, and the other amendment in this small group, Amendment 133ZEB, relate to the situation where the challenge is made by two or more employees of the authority under the provisions of the Bill. The first amendment requires the consent of the majority of the workforce likely to be affected before the authority is obliged to accept the expression of interest. That seems a sensible precaution.
A previous amendment would have raised the number from two to five but, if I may say so, that is almost irrelevant. It would be wrong for a very small group of employees of an authority to have an expression of interest accepted without the support of people in the authority who might be affected by the decision to proceed with the challenge. I hope that the Minister would agree it would be essential in those circumstances for a majority of those who would be so affected to endorse the proposition, even if it were made by a relatively small number. It would not be a cumbersome or difficult exercise to test the opinion of the relevant workforce, and it would clearly be a sensible precaution.
The other amendment is based on concerns about the operation of EU competition and procurement law, particularly in the case of a service that had been carried out by the authority becoming outsourced. This is legal territory into which I venture with trepidation. It has never been my area of legal specialism; it is not an area in which perhaps many in my profession are all that confident. There seems to be a risk in these cases that when an undertaking has been carried out by a public body and outsourcing takes place with the relevant workforce, that may expose the procedure to the rigours of the competition and procurement laws that might then lead not to a community organisation taking over but a private enterprise, which is quite outside the intentions of the legislation.
The amendment would require the authority to take a view—and take advice, of course—about the potential problem. If it was not a problem, of course, the expression of interest could go ahead. If it were to be a problem the amendment would allow the authority to reject the expression of interest on the grounds of a serious risk of the intention of the expression of interest being frustrated by some entirely extraneous body being able to enter into the procurement procedure and win the contract. This is not intended to be a destructive proposal. On the contrary, it is intended to help the legislation fulfil its intentions, and I hope that the Government, if not tonight, will be prepared to look at these two amendments to see whether they can be adopted in the interests of their own position on the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, Amendment 133ZDA would require that a majority of the workforce affected by an expression of interest submitted by employees of the relevant authority consented to a procurement exercise before it went ahead. We agree that employees affected by an expression of interest submitted by their colleagues should be engaged in the development of the proposal and we are looking at how this might be reflected in the requirements for an expression of interest. The face-to-face meetings, intranet updates and staff clinics undertaken when some 1,200 staff from the Hull Primary Care Trust transferred to a social enterprise under the NHS right to request scheme is a good example of how employees have been engaged in a proposal. However, when a local authority decides to undertake a procurement exercise for services outside the community right to challenge, there is no requirement to secure the consent of the majority of the workforce affected by it. This amendment may therefore act as a barrier to services being provided differently and better. Of course, the requirement for employers to inform and consult representatives and employees affected by a prospective transfer of employment will continue to apply.
Amendment 133ZEB would enable a relevant authority to reject expressions of interest when EU procurement or competition law is likely to apply. The Public Contracts Regulations 2006, which are part of our domestic law that implement EU procurement law, set out requirements in relation to procedures for advertising, tendering and awarding contracts when the value of the service is more than £156,000 for relevant authorities or the service is not otherwise exempt. Authorities will already need to comply with these requirements in deciding what kind of procurement exercise to carry out for a service, and will need to continue to do so following a successful challenge under the right. The amendment would enable relevant authorities to reject an expression of interest in all but the smallest services, dramatically reducing the scope of the right. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I suggest that we go into the detail of the amendments and then, if the noble Lord wishes, have a good stand part debate.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
On the whole of Chapter 4? At which stage? After the first amendment?
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend for her explanation. She gave us quite a lot of information at a fairly rapid rate. I have been scribbling down some of the points that she made, and I found myself very sympathetic with her comments about the need for balance and the need to satisfy certain criteria. Then she turned to the question of consistency across the country and a national standard. That is where my Amendment 136 comes in. It inserts in Clause 74(5) the requirement that there should be a definition of an asset of community value. That establishes consistency across the country.
I have not participated in this Bill so far, so I should make it clear at the beginning that I support its thrust. I favour community empowerment. I think it is a good Conservative principle, and I am on the side of the little battalions. Indeed, having just chaired a task force on red tape and having seen hundreds of examples from across the country, one or two of which I may refer to later, I know how important and vibrant local community feeling is, so I very much support the localism idea. Perhaps I may take a minor swipe as I go past. It is rather extraordinary that we should, as a party or Government, appoint Sir Terry Leahy, the ex-chief executive of Tesco, as our adviser. Sir Terry Leahy has had a very distinguished career, building up Tesco nationally and internationally, but his entire career has been devoted to destroying localism. His plan, of course, is to have a Tesco store on every corner, and every butcher, baker and candlestick-maker should be wiped out. It is a slightly strange appointment, but there we are.
I agree with my noble friend that there is a balance to be struck between the community entitlement and the right to private property. This amendment, and indeed the later amendments which I shall be speaking to—probably at our next sitting of the Committee—seek to explore this balance and discover the Government’s thinking.
I first need to declare at least a couple of interests. The first is that I am the senior independent director of a listed company, which is one of Britain’s largest brewers and pub operators. We operate five breweries and over 2,000 pubs across the country, some of which are managed and some of which are tenanted; we are an integrated business, not a pubco. Some of what I say will therefore have a pub flavour about it, if I may use that phrase, but I think there is a good deal of read across to other assets which are of interest to the community and on which I am sure other noble Lords will wish to speak. The other interest that I ought to declare is that I am president of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and—before someone else points it out—the NCVO has briefed against my amendments, which just shows that that is what makes horse racing. There is clearly a balance to be struck.
My concerns and my reasons for speaking to this amendment are partly philosophical and partly practical. I will deal with the philosophical point first. As my noble friend has made clear, the right to enjoy one’s private property is an absolutely fundamental part of our society. The Englishman’s home is his castle: it provides stability for our society; it provides people with a stake in our society and in the order of that society. If I may exaggerate grossly to make a point, development experts will say that property rights are a key part of any country developing satisfactorily. If you do not know when your property may be removed from you, why bother to invest? Merely go and stick it in Switzerland and wait for the inevitable to happen. I am not in any way suggesting that there will be wholesale expropriation. I am, however, suggesting that there may be the law of unintended consequences. It may deter people from offering their assets for use by the community, for fear of precedent; and as noble Lords will have seen in the briefings we have had, woods, cricket pitches and use of buildings are all issues that have been raised by various interest groups talking about the background to this Bill. It would surely be a shame if we were to impede much worthwhile activity at a local level.
So much for the philosophy; what practically needs to be done? My amendment suggests that we should insert a definition on what constitutes an asset of community value on the face of the Bill. This will reduce the fear of the unknown factor. What factors and issues could be included there? I think there is an argument that it should only operate for local businesses. I understand that the wish is to have farm shops, village stores, restaurants and pubs, but national chains—even Sir Terry with his store—might not be as appropriate as an asset of community value. The question is also whether there is any alternative provision in the locality; if there are two restaurants or two pubs, for example, should one of them be able to be listed? As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, there needs to be some distinguishing between the service that is being offered and the premises in which it is being offered. Many communities will like having a shop, a post office, or a shop and post office combined, but suppose it is bought up by the community and turned into an antique shop; that is rather a different issue.