Localism Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Shipley]

45: Schedule 2, page 198, line 6, at end insert “and shall be chaired by a member of the largest opposition group on the authority”

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, this group of amendments relates to scrutiny. In my view, scrutiny is best achieved by a committee system. A committee system is better at delivering good decisions than a scrutiny system which scrutinises those decisions after they have been made. In other words, you scrutinise as you go.

This is a probing amendment. As we do not have a voting system for local government in England based on proportional representation, some councils can have very large majorities held by one party. This may not be reflected in the votes that were cast but is very often reflected in the number of seats that are won. Good scrutiny requires constant challenge. Scrutiny committees are proportional in their overall membership but it would be advantageous for them to be chaired by a member of the authority’s largest opposition party.

Members of your Lordships' House are aware that I am a councillor in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2004, when my party took control of Newcastle City Council, we altered the system to ensure that the Labour opposition chaired all our scrutiny committees. I am pleased to say that this year, when control of Newcastle reverted—temporarily, at least—to the Labour Party, chairmanship of the scrutiny committees passed to the Liberal Democrat opposition. Public scrutiny and public confidence in the system of local government would be improved if scrutiny committees were chaired by opposition councillors. That does not mean that a scrutiny committee has to be proportional in any regard other than the number of seats held by each party. However, public confidence in the system would be improved if the person constructing the agendas was an elected councillor of a party other than the one that was in control of the council. I beg to move.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I understand where the noble Lord is coming from but there are obvious difficulties with the amendment quite apart from whether or not it is tending towards prescription. For example, I recall a not very happy election in 1986 when I was one of three members of my party on our local authority—

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[Baroness Hanham]

I will happily do that and I will lay a copy of the answer in the Library.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, before I formally withdraw my amendment, I would like to make two brief points. First, I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord True that in scrutiny there has to be a clear role for back-benchers, particularly those of the controlling party, but there can of course be vice-chairs, and that system works well. Secondly, I hope that the Minister is right that legislation here is unnecessary and will simply bear in mind my amendment should it prove not to be the case. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 45 withdrawn.

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[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, the amendment touches on the question of transparency and the openness to the public of meetings. It seeks to reflect what I understand to be the present position, which is that meetings are open unless council committees or executives decide to exclude the press and public, usually on grounds of confidentiality. This might be commercial confidentiality or sensitive staff issues and the like. The amendments in my name create a presumption that the meetings will be open to the public unless there are good reasons for not having them as such. Those reasons clearly would have to be enunciated. It is difficult to find a form of words that fully meets the case. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will speak to his amendments, which import the term “necessarily”. However, the question then arises of how one defines what is necessary. There is no simple answer, but it is important to have the presumption in the Bill if we can get it, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister in due course.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 53, 54 and 55 in my name. Each is a probing amendment to get confirmation from the Minister that there will be no deterioration in the access of the general public, the press and opposition councillors to meetings and to information. I seek that reassurance because, as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, says, it is quite difficult to get the right wording. The overriding intention must be that there should be no deterioration in what currently pertains in local government for individuals—the public, the media or other councillors—seeking access to meetings and information. The Bill confers an awful lot of powers on the Secretary of State to make decisions in that area. I understand why that is, but I would be more comfortable if it was absolutely clear to the general public that there will be no diminution in their access to information and meetings.

[Baroness Byford]

Perhaps my noble friend would clarify the position. I would like to see a presumption that the meetings will be open, but obviously under certain circumstances access will be restricted. As things stand, it is a case of either/or; there is no presumption that open meetings will be the norm and that meetings held in private will be exceptional. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

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[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, perhaps I may comment briefly on the standards issue, not least because I tabled an amendment yesterday about standards committees that unfortunately has been printed as part of the amendments to the Education Bill. Members of your Lordships’ House will, therefore, not have seen it. I fully understand the predicament that that puts us all in. However, this relates directly to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said. Perhaps I may express some views on the Standards Board and standards committee issue.

For a number of years, I have been deeply concerned about the performance of the Standards Board and that whole standards structure. After a lot of thought about how you might actually make it work better, my amendment proposes a prescriptive way forward that might avoid some of the problems that we have experienced in recent years. We have had problems because the structures of the Standards Board for England and the standards committee under it have worked badly. There have been too many spurious references to it, often followed by detailed press interest in the accusation that has been made. There have been some very poor decisions, many of them reported in the media, and a number have been successfully challenged in the courts. There should not be a structure that ends up with successful challenges in the courts, in a quasi-judicial system, being pursued by local authority standards committees. People’s reputations are at stake here, and we have to do it a bit better.

However, the time is not right for a wholesale change in the standards system, because the general public have a right to expect that a council has a code of conduct, and, in my view, that should not be voluntary. It should be statutory and there has to be a standards committee that can look into any allegations or complaints that the code has not been followed. However, this is quite different from the register of interests and, for example, a failure to declare an interest. Indeed, a potential example was discussed a moment ago.

My solution is simply to propose that we might consider, between now and Report, a provision that a relevant authority should have a standards committee, but that such committees might be established jointly between relevant authorities, which is particularly important for parish councils. That is because the structure of a standards board for an individual parish council is hard to deliver. It would cost a great deal, for one thing. The role of the standards committee is to assess cases brought before it against the code of conduct of that relevant authority, but the membership must have a majority of independent members. They would be appointed against known principles, and have an independent chair. Those councillors who currently serve on such a committee, coming from their own local authority, would no longer do so, because otherwise there would be a real doubt in the mind of the general public as to whether there is any real or perceived bias in a judgment that is reached. I would have other members in a minority who have been elected members of a local authority, I propose for at least four years, but they should not currently be members of a local authority and would not have been a member of the relevant authority to which the committee relates. In other words, you put a barrier between those who make the decision of a standards committee and those whom it is investigating. You would have to have an appeals system. My amendment suggests that the Secretary of State should establish by regulation an appeals system at a national level, and I propose that members would be former chairs of standards committees, all of whom at present are independent.

Maybe we will come back to that issue on the third day but I hope that there may be a way for us to preserve some form of standards committee. Even in this structure, most councils are going to want to do so; otherwise, they do not have a means of investigating a complaint on the voluntary code of conduct. It is a very serious matter because the public perception has to be that everything is being done properly and is above board. So I do not support a voluntary code of conduct and I do think that there is a very strong case for a standards committee for each relevant authority—but possibly combined across several—to be considered.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, the coalition has considered the whole issue of standards boards and standards committees. We must recognise that there are different arguments in this case between the Benches opposite and ourselves. Amendment 96A seeks to remove the amendments that the Government are proposing to the Local Government Act 2000, which are needed to remove the requirement for local authorities in England to have standards committees. Of course, this applies only to England.

Rejecting the coalition’s changes to the standards board regime will remove local choice and retain a key aspect of a costly conduct regime which, as my noble friend Lord Shipley has said, has led to vexatious and politically motivated complaints against councillors. However, my noble friend would admit that if we are going to instil a full sense of responsibility in local government, we need to vest in those local authorities the responsibility for the standards of their members. Local authorities may well wish to adopt a voluntary code of conduct for members and co-opted members and determine for themselves what should be in that code; or they may choose to ensure high standards in another way, for example, through a statement of clear principles against which members can be judged by the electorate. The key element is that the choice about how to promote good conduct should be for local authorities to make, rather than for Government to impose on them the requirement for a code of a conduct or standards committees if they do not wish to go down that route.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will disagree with this because he disagrees with the purpose of this amendment but I have to state the position of the coalition, which is quite clear, that this is a matter for local authorities themselves.