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Mr. Peter Griffiths (Portsmouth, North): I shall not detain the House for long, but I want to express my complete support for what the hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) has just said. In particular, I agree with her request that the Minister look at this whole matter again. I also agree with her that the Government have not got it right at this stage. Fortunately, however, there will be discussions in another place which will give the Government time to ponder their previous decisions and what has been said tonight. They will also be able to reflect on what is said in another place before the Bill finally reaches the statute book.
7.30 pm
I am speaking on my own behalf this evening, but I also want to echo the concerns expressed to me by Portsmouth city council. Just to show that mine is not a party political point, I might add that, over the past few years, the council has been controlled by all the main parties in succession. So I am describing the view of the city.
Portsmouth city is disturbed by what was intended to be an extension of freedom and widening of opportunity. Whereas in the past it was specified where notices had to be published--in paid-for newspapers--the widening of choice to include free advertising, give-away newspapers was meant to give local councils greater say in how they distribute information. In Portsmouth, however, this idea does not produce more competition or choice. There is only one paid-for newspaper, and that paper also owns the free, give-away newspaper. So the city has no choice but to use the services of that newspaper--and it does not take kindly to that.
I hope that I will not embarrass the hon. Member for North-West Durham if I say how strongly I agree with what she said about local authorities being able to publish their own broadsheets. Portsmouth has an excellently printed and published broadsheet which gives information about all the council's activities in an entirely proper, non-political way. It has done that under the control of successive parties. Certainly, it would be illegal if the city council presented the information in such a way as to advance the interests of one political party. That is against the law; it would have serious repercussions, including--rightly--the surcharging of those responsible.
The information can be published by the city of Portsmouth and be attractively presented, on art paper, for instance. It can be illustrated with charts and diagrams. It is of course possible to pay for such services in newspapers, but the cost has to be borne by the city's funds. I am quite sure that Portsmouth is not the only place capable of producing a satisfactory statement that includes performance indicators and tables, and of guaranteeing distribution to every door. After all, the council already distributes information about elections; it distributes the registration forms necessary for voting. It puts them through front, side and back doors--when that is necessary, such as in houses in multiple occupation. This is probably the most efficient distributive system imaginable.
Portsmouth is also capable of varying the size and type in which the information is presented. Statutory notices in Portsmouth's evening newspaper--from the Queen's harbour master to mariners, for instance--are typed in small print because they need to be read by only a handful of master mariners. But the whole idea of publishing performance tables for the public is that they should be read by the man and woman in the street, not the expert on local government. They are for people who want to know what is going on and who welcome a format that is clear and easily understood.
It is possible to do all this by paying a newspaper, but that is very expensive. I therefore suggest that the ideal wording for the clause would be along the lines that local councils should be "responsible" for the distribution of the information. The Bill should not specify how they do it; they should simply be responsible for getting the information to every door, in the manner of their choosing. If, in so doing, they break the law: so be it--they must take the consequences.
The problem remains that, in the absence of competition, the cost of advertising and printing performance tables of this size and on this scale runs into thousands of pounds. That is a heavy burden; hence,I hope that the Government will consider allowing efficient local authorities to produce their own broadsheets in their own way. That will allow them to present information to the very people who will, in time, express their views on the performance of their councils. That is the most democratic way to go about the job.
I have a great deal of sympathy with amendmentsNos. 1 and 2, which the hon. Member for Newbury(Mr. Rendel) may discuss later. Given that there is an all-party consensus on the matter, perhaps the Government will now treat it with care and consideration.
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury):
I am delighted to follow that speech, which seems to show that there is concern in all parties about the wording of the Bill and the Government's way of trying to ensure that performance indicators are given wider publication than hitherto.
The Bill is somewhat lopsided as between the way it treats paid-for newspapers and those which are free.I want to speak, not so much along the lines of the previous two speeches, which have dealt generally with the widening of the ways in which these performance indicators are made known to the public, but more specifically about what I believe are faults in the wording of the Bill which mean that, in practice, the Government will not achieve their aims.
It is clear that any publication in any paid-for newspaper, however small its circulation, meets the requirements of this Bill. On the other hand, if publication is done in free newspapers, then, as the Minister said in Committee, that will meet the requirements of the Bill only if the free newspapers are available to be distributed throughout an entire area. That may happen in some inner-city or inner-town areas, but it will certainly not happen across large parts of the country. That is why the clause is inadequate as it stands.
In my area, the Newbury Weekly News is the main paid-for newspaper. It covers a large part of the district, but certainly not all of it. It makes no attempt to cover a significant part of the eastern end of the area. So if publication is to be, as it has been hitherto, in the
Newbury Weekly News, it will be positively difficult to get hold of the performance indicator information in large parts of the district.
There are also free newspapers in the area covering large parts of it. Between them they may have a larger total circulation than the Newbury Weekly News. Still, they do not attempt to cover the entire area.
Equally, the Newbury Weekly News has a small circulation inside north Hampshire, so technically it would be possible for Basingstoke and Deane council to publish its performance indicators in the Newbury Weekly News--and only there. That would mean that the indicators were published to a large number of people with little interest in them and a small number of people with a considerable interest in them, and leaving out a large number of people with an interest in them but not living in the circulation area of the paper. That is the kind of difficulty that the current wording would produce. The two amendments that I have tabled would, to a large extent, overcome that difficulty.
The Bill should maximise the circulation of performance indicators. In practice, in many areas including my own, the wording of the Bill would make no change to the present situation. In other words, district councils would have to publish their performance indicators in the local paid-for newspapers, because there are not sufficient free newspapers to ensure coverage of the whole area. The Minister made it plain in Committee that many areas would see no change. That might mean that circulation was smaller than it could be, and people who live in those areas might get worse value for money in the information they get about their district councils. We might gain better value for money by ensuring publication in free newspapers that perhaps cover only part of the area, rather than publishing in a paid-for paper which could cover a smaller area.
The Minister made the point that, if councils are forced to publish in paid-for newspapers, the information is at least available to everyone in the area. That is partly true, although in some districts paid-for newspapers may be quite difficult to obtain. People sometimes have to travel some way into the circulation area of a newspaper. However, free newspapers are also, in almost all cases, available in the local town, if someone is determined to get hold of a copy. So the Minister's point falls, because the free newspapers are as available to those determined to get hold of them as paid-for newspapers.
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