Localism Bill
Debate between Baroness Keeley and Kelvin Hopkins
Barbara Keeley
That is a contradiction. In fact, the 126 or 142 new powers—we can count them in different ways—are of great concern.
The list of legislation that we propose in amendment 37 for protection from those new powers may not be perfect—I am sure people can find fault with it—but it is vital to get a clear steer from Ministers that they do not intend to continue to see important council duties as burdens. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Homelessness Act 2002, which is on our proposed list, creates a vital duty for councils to have a strategy for tackling homelessness, or does he agree with Hammersmith and Fulham council, which has asked for that duty to be scrapped? Hammersmith and Fulham also wants to scrap the rough sleeper strategy, and wants not to assess the sufficiency of locally available child care. It wants no requirements on its youth service. Do Ministers believe that Hammersmith and Fulham should be able to shed those duties? That is the key question.
Councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham want to shake off what they view as burdensome duties, but the Opposition’s view is that those council services are vital and should be protected. A list of what is vital and to be protected is the key to that. In Committee, the Minister said:
“Every local authority will retain duties enshrined in other legislation to provide services and not to charge for them, if charging is not allowed at present.”––[Official Report, Localism Public Bill Committee, 1 February 2011; c. 184.]
However, Hammersmith and Fulham wants not to have plans for homeless people, and Wandsworth council plans to charge children £2.50 to use a playground. That is where we are. It is time for Ministers to end the uncertainty that they have generated with their sloppy plans for revising legislation on council duties. It is time for them to reintroduce certainty, so that people know that councils must provide land for allotments and an efficient library service, assess carers’ needs, and have plans for tackling homelessness.
I welcome the Minister’s partial sympathy on proposed new clauses 27 and 28 and the proposed amendments on pay transparency and very much look forward to developments. Much has been said in recent months on top pay in local government. I am sure that Ministers would agree that a great deal of that talk has been stoked by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. However, he has tended not to show the same concern for the lowest paid staff, or for levels of pay among consultants and contractors, who provide £38 billion-worth of goods and services to local government, which is paid for out of the public purse.
Our proposals aim to introduce pay transparency much more fully than the Government plan. We want to shine a light on top pay and low pay, and I welcome the Minister’s sympathy for that. However, the Opposition also want to develop the recommendations in the Hutton review on pay. Ministers said that they would reflect on that review, and I hope they take that seriously. All hon. Members agree that there has been some excessive growth in senior roles in the public sector, but there are also myths about public sector pay. The Local Government Association estimates that of 1.7 million employees in mainstream local government jobs, 60% earn less than £18,000 a year. According to the LGA, more than 400,000 council workers earn less than the living wage, including more than 250,000 who earn less than £6.50 an hour.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes a strong point. As a former Unison trade union officer, I know that a high proportion of those low-paid workers—a big majority—are women.
Barbara Keeley
Indeed, a quarter of those who experience in-work poverty are employed by the public sector. In addition, the average public sector pension, at £4,200, is very far from the gold-plated pension that people talk about. Our proposals would introduce greater transparency and help the objective of curbing excessive pay at the top of the scale, because it will be harder for a highly paid council chief executive to defend his or her pay if the public can see what that council pays its lowest-paid members of staff.
The Opposition believe that as well as an approach on top and low pay, we need a fair and consistent approach to transparency in local authority pay. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said in Committee, Will Hutton’s report puts paid to the myths. Public sector employees earn only £1 of every £100 earned by the top 1%, or to put it another way, out of every £100 that is earned by the top 1%, only £1 is earned in the public sector. Therefore, the perception that the public sector is awash with fat cats is a myth, and it does not help when DCLG Ministers spend their time building that myth as a way of dealing with top pay.
The Hutton report confirms that increases in executive pay have been a private sector phenomenon. That is why tackling excess pay should happen not just in the public sector. We should also focus on pay in the private sector when money is paid from the public purse—that is the test. Staff on outsourced local government contracts tend to be concentrated in low-wage sectors such as cleaning, catering, low-skilled manual work and care work. One key question for hon. Members is this: do we want cleaners, care workers and teaching assistants to earn a living wage? The Opposition believe that they should earn such a wage. We therefore hope that Ministers and Government Members agree that the implementation of a senior pay policy in local government would be a double standard if the same logic is not applied to contractors, not least because the local government procurement market is valued at £38 billion.
Will Hutton said in his report that
“it is important that the Fair Pay Code and as far as possible the other recommendations of this Review are extended into the public services industry.”
I hope that Ministers—I welcome the Secretary of State to the Chamber—support Hutton’s proposals to extend pay transparency to those private sector contractors who are paid out of the public purse. Implementation of our proposals would help to ensure that executive pay does not spiral up, that low pay is challenged, and that people can be confident that their local council is spending their money fairly and wisely.
Finally, I support amendments 39 to 41, which are in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and for Birmingham, Erdington. The proposals would remove the power of the Secretary of State, who has just joined us in the Chamber, to direct or order the imposition of shadow mayors. That is one of the most controversial measures in the Bill, and it represents the Government at their most centralising. The Government want to order a local authority to cease its existing form of governance and begin to operate a mayor and cabinet executive. Ministers spent months denying that they intended to try to impose shadow mayors.
I remind the Secretary of State that he gave the following answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on 21 October 2010:
“She seems to be suggesting that we would somehow impose mayors on those 12 cities, but of course we will not-that is completely out of the question. The proposals will be subject to referendums. Once we know the views of the people in those 12 cities, we will move on to the election of a mayor if people vote for that.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 1117.]
[Interruption.] I am getting some confusing signals from Government Members. On the same day, to be clear about the Secretary of State’s intentions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) asked him again whether it was his intention to turn council leaders into mayors before holding a referendum. He stood at the Dispatch Box and referred my hon. Friend back to the earlier question:
“I ruled out the possibility that we would be imposing mayors. This will be subject to a referendum.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 1125.]
He was absolutely clear. However, the proposal in the Bill directly contradicts what the Secretary of State said on that occasion and on other occasions. It is further proof of a Government who say one thing and do another, and it raises further questions about whether what they say can be trusted at all.
Since the debate began on the proposal to impose mayors on 12 of our largest cities, opposition has bubbled up and developed all over the place. Indeed, the day after the Localism Bill was announced, the leader of Bradford council, Councillor Ian Greenwood, told the Bradford Telegraph and Argus newspaper that he was uncomfortable with being given an office to which he had not been elected. In that article, he said:
“My view is this is not the right thing for Bradford… I am uncomfortable about being given an office I wasn’t elected to. I don’t feel it’s the right thing to do. Leadership is not about dictating, it’s about taking people with you”.