Localism Bill

Debate between Graham P Jones and Alec Shelbrooke

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones]

I appreciate that, but, having a lot of experience in local government, I think that the Minister is missing the point: there is no judicial framework, so somebody can go out and do something, and if there is a complaint by another member of the public about those actions there is nowhere for it to go, so the complaints that we get now could continue. If that is going to happen in planning policy, we will have some problems, so we need a substantive framework and an opportunity for people to bring into public debate the decisions that the individuals on those bodies make.

Further to that point, I am concerned that there is no robust framework for standards, and again I bring local government experience to that point. A lot of vexatious complaints are politically motivated—[Hon. Members: “Yes!”] I hear the cheers from Government Members; I do not know where such complaints are coming from, but they certainly did not come from the Labour side in my local authority. Regardless of that, those who have worked in local authorities know that many complaints are politically motivated, and they need to be removed. That is a serious and substantive point, and simply having a non-elected chair but an elected committee is not acceptable. When we look around local government, we find that even that has failed. There needs to be an unelected, unaccountable—sorry, accountable—[Interruption.] I hope the record is corrected. There needs to be an accountable but non-elected body, because that, more than anything, will stop a lot of vexatious complaints. The Government would be doing themselves a favour if they introduced such a framework into local government.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I shall comment on a couple of amendments, but, starting with amendment 15 and following the remarks of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) on the Standards Board, I was a councillor for six years, from 2004 to 2010, and once during that time I was taken to the Standards Board but found not really to have done anything wrong. The local authority dealt with the matter internally, but the person who brought it did not like the decision and tried to take it to appeal, and that is the point: it was about a planning issue.

Councillors stood in the ward I represented in Leeds on manifestos saying that they would protect certain characteristics of villages, and, when a planning application was made that totally undermined that, they wrote a letter of objection. The person who made the planning application took them to the Standards Board, saying that they were making a prejudicial complaint. That person used the board as a bullying tactic against councillors, and it happened time and again.

Nobody in this Chamber would say that people should not expect anything except the highest standards from those in public office. Everybody across the Chamber agrees with that, but the provisions brought in by the Standards Board were taken up by members of the public. Those people wanted to force the issue with a councillor, and they did not just make their life a misery; they cost them, personally and financially, a fortune.

[Graham Jones]

I was a victim of a vexatious complaint, on a very minor technicality, to the Standards Board. It was politically motivated, and, although I will not say which party chased it, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that such things are very annoying.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who makes my point. The complaint against him was politically motivated, whereas the one against me was made by somebody who was trying to get a particular decision on a planning issue and, effectively, trying to bully councillors not to get involved. There were several such cases, and whether someone has such politically motivated Standards Board cases, or whether the case comes from a slightly different angle, depends on which part of an authority they represent and the biggest issues there.

I do not want to get into which party takes the most people to the Standards Board, but I feel that the Labour party has been slightly unfair on our coalition colleagues. In the city of Leeds, Labour councillors formed a queue around the block to take others to the Standards Board. Indeed, one Labour councillor in Leeds, whom I am to going to name in the Chamber, took many people to the board over things that he considered to be a problem when Labour was in opposition, but now his party is in power and he is still not getting the information he wants, he is still pursuing the complaints. Even his own leadership say that they cannot keep control of him.

Do not get me wrong: the mindset behind establishing the Standards Board was correct. Credit should go to the previous Government for setting it up to demand the highest standards, but in reality and in practice that is not how it has worked, and it has become a useless tool that stops people writing in a manifesto what policies they would like to pursue. The board has been twisted and manipulated.

The former Mayor of London was taken to the Standards Board over a comment he made, and luckily he received the ruling that it had been made in his personal and private life, but what ruling was given to us councillors? It stated, “If someone comes up to you in the pub, you must say, ‘I am sorry, I am not a councillor.’” Come on, let us get real. Either we engage with our public, talk to people and understand things, or we become part of a robotic system in which the public are further distanced from us.

I guess that the vast majority of Members engage locally with their constituents, going down the pub, talking to people in the high street, getting information from what people feel is happening on the street and talking to them about it. Local councillors cannot do that any more, because unless they declare at the outset, “I am not discussing this with you, come to my surgery at this time,” they run a risk, and that represents a big disconnect from and disservice to the public. That was an unintended consequence of the Livingstone case, but whether we agree with his comments or not, that is not the issue, because they occurred in his private life, and the case should never have gone to the Standards Board.

We do have protection of the public: it is called the ballot box. That was always my argument as a councillor when it was said that someone was going to the Standards Board. There is a ballot box, whereby people can be voted in or out, and if someone were seen to be wholly corrupt it would not matter whether they were in the safest seat in the country, they would be voted out.

[Graham Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I will give way. I think I know what is coming.

[Graham Jones]

I agree with the thrust of what the hon. Gentleman says, and I do not want to be controversial, but let us take the Community First programme in my constituency’s Peel ward, where residents are going to spend public money, or the neighbourhood forums. They are not elected. Where is the ballot box for those people?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

But there is something called the Serious Fraud Office—the fraud squad—and there is a law of the land, so we do not need to pursue such things through the Standards Board. If people misappropriate public funds, they can be reported to the police and there can be an investigation. Sometimes we double up on legislation to try to say to the public, “Look what we’re doing,” but in reality they have ended up with less influence and power, because things have become bound up in an operation that has not helped at all.

[Graham Jones]

If my community group decides that it is going to spend money on a project for which it has ownership, or on a project down the road for which there is no ownership within the Community First programme, and it then decides to skew the funding to what suits its needs, not somebody else’s, how does that fit in? That is not illegal, that is not fraud, but it is against accepted standards in public life.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to intervene again on me. Who is awarding the grants to those people to spend that money?

[Graham Jones]

The Government are.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Yes, but the money comes from the council, and that is the point: it comes from the local authority to start with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Jones]

It actually comes directly from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Through local communities and local government, projects are being identified—[Interruption.] I give way to the Minister.