Localism Bill

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, takes the same attitude to temptation as St Augustine did to chastity. There is another line about temptation that we might want to consider:

“The last temptation is the greatest treason:

To do the right deed for the wrong reason”.

It seems that this amendment is in fact the other way round: it is doing the wrong thing for the right reason, potentially.

I noticed the typing error that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to in subsection (2)(a), but I think there may be another typographical error, or perhaps an error in drafting. Subsection (5) says:

“A community governance review … shall have a presumption that a new parish will be created”—

and I will come back to that point. Subsection (6) goes on to say:

“The provisions of this apply only insofar as they do not prevent action being taken on the request made under this section”.

It is not clear to me what that means. Does it mean the provisions of the previous subsection, or does it mean the provisions of the whole clause? I am at a loss to understand what that implies.

However, I agree very strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, that there is no case for there to be a presumption that a new parish should be created on the simple fact that a request has been made by a neighbourhood forum that might constitute 21 people, of whom a majority of 11 against 10 would therefore trigger not only the whole process but a presumption as to its outcome. It seems a ridiculous proposition given that we are presumably talking about areas of several hundred people, if not thousands of people, possibly, in an area the size of an urban ward or a significant rural community.

The clause also requires the commencement of a review within three months. That might be all right if there was to be one review, but supposing there was a rash of applications from these neighbourhood forums, is a local authority obliged to commence reviews on all of them in that timescale? It does not seem at all realistic. There certainly should be a method of facilitating a legitimate demand—or a widespread demand, let us not prejudge the issue—for the creation of parish councils or town councils. They have a perfectly proper place in our system of local government and that should be facilitated, but this clause really goes much too far in that direction.

Nor is it the case that, once created, all of these bodies are trouble-free. Your Lordships will be aware, from the debate about the standards boards and the need for codes, that most of the complaints that arose under the existing procedure actually came from parish councils. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who is not in his place at the moment, will no doubt have told your Lordships of the case in Newcastle where a council inherited three parishes on local government reorganisation, and one inner-city area opted for a parish council. That particular grouping did not seem to perform very effectively, to the extent that Councillor Shipley’s colleagues in his political group decided that they would go in and in effect take it over, which they did—by perfectly legitimate democratic means, I should say. These places are not without their problems, although they can certainly contribute to an enriched local democracy.

However, there is one other issue in which, again, the drafting is perhaps defective—certainly it raises an issue—and that is subsection (2), which says:

“A request may be made to create a new parish council for … the area of the neighbourhood area together with the area of an adjacent parish council”.

Is it not conceivable that there may be more than one existing parish council? Certainly there are contiguous parish councils in my authority; there will be in other authorities, particularly urban authorities, I suspect. You may well find a community between the two wishing to align with both rather than one, and creating an entirely new structure. For a variety of reasons, I suspect I may find myself—unusually—agreeing with the Minister when she replies and, I hope, says that she may want to take this away and look at it, but that she cannot agree the amendment as it stands. Certainly that would be my position.

[The Earl of Lytton]

Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may ask him if he would comment on the fact that although it is true that parish and town councils provide a disproportionate amount of the subject matter for standards committees, it is also true that because there is no other body of a sort which has recourse to a committee dealing with standards, there is no other basis to judge whether that statistic is large or small, or whether it is characteristic of dealing with community affairs. What I am trying to get at is that it is perhaps not a specific criticism of parish councils as a construct.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I do not know about other noble Lords but, having heard the noble Lord speak to his amendments, I find myself more confused than I was when I read them. Therefore, it is an extremely good idea that these matters should be taken away and discussed further and perhaps enlightenment will dawn on me by the time we get to Third Reading. However, I agree with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Best, that if we can avoid a plethora of unnecessary referendums, so much the better. In that light, I would be happy for the Minister to consider the matter further and for it to be perhaps slightly reshaped at Third Reading.

[Baroness Eaton]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which has offered its broad support for the neighbourhood planning reforms. Indeed, a lot of the thinking on the reforms has come from the innovative and creative local planning schemes which councils have introduced over many years. I do not know of a single council that does not want a more flexible and consensual planning system—indeed, the most consensual possible—and common sense tells us that this benefits communities. The Government have made great strides forward, shredding down the national planning policy framework and confirming that residents will be firmly at the heart of local developments. However, within these new parameters we need to ensure that the planning system can move as fluidly and quickly as possible. I hope that this amendment, to which I am happy to attach my name, clarifies that in certain cases referendums on planning issues might be locally appropriate, as we have heard. The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that discussions with the Minister have suggested a mechanism whereby, if there is consensus, this process will go straight ahead without a referendum. I think that would be well received.

The Local Government Association has estimated that the cost of holding a local referendum on a planning issue will be in the region of £5,000. This is a very significant figure when you consider the sheer number of referendums that could take place around neighbourhood planning issues. It would not be a case of a one-off cost of £5,000 as many costs would arise for local authorities. When the public sector, particularly local government, is so tightly squeezed, that hardly seems a wise use of public resources and public money. I share the request of the noble Lord, Lord Best, for clarity. We would all be much happier if this process was made much simpler and referendums were rarely used in neighbourhood planning. Certainly, councils across the country would support that. I support the noble Lord, Lord Best.