Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-74)

6 DECEMBER 2004

COUNCILLOR JIM BREAKELL, PROFESSOR RICHARD CHAPMAN AND MR DENIS WILSON

  Q60 Christine Russell: Yes.

  Professor Chapman: Without going into detail, we had a case reported four months ago now. Since then we have had a letter of acknowledgment and another letter saying something is going to happen, but otherwise we have not been contacted for further evidence, and as far as I am aware—and of course I am not part of what is going on behind the scenes—nobody else has been contacted either. So that one has been running for four months and that is relatively recently,

  Mr Wilson: As a committee we have had little contact with the Standards Board, apart from the national assemblies, which have been very useful: we have had a lot of practical advice from them. Otherwise, I think most of the contact has been with our monitoring officer and his staff. My understanding is that the support they get is quite good but the only criticism I heard them make was that it is not easy to get through to the right person first.

  Professor Chapman: When you asked the question, if I am correct, you used the word "relations".

  Q61 Christine Russell: Yes, the relationship between committees like yours and the Standards Board.

  Professor Chapman: I would agree with the comments of both my colleagues here. I would add that there are one or two other things as well one could mention. One of these is, for example, the annual assembly, the big conference which appears to have been very successful. I attended the first one but we were unable to go to the second one or the third one because it really is too expensive.

  Councillor Breakell: Indeed.

  Professor Chapman: It is extremely important to pay attention to this because our most significant work so far has been in training and advancing the climate and culture of ethics in the local government. One of the best assets to us is attendance at that sort of event, but if we cannot afford to go, it again undermines the purpose of the whole exercise.

  Q62 Christine Russell: Where was he conference? London?

  Professor Chapman: Birmingham.

  Q63 Christine Russell: Some of the evidence we have had submitted seems to point to the fact that it has been quite difficult to get the public involved in standards committees. Would you like to comment on that?

  Mr Wilson: In being involved in sitting on standards committees as independents?

  Q64 Christine Russell: Yes, to serve on standards committees.

  Mr Wilson: Certainly in Northamptonshire we have no vacancies. Our committee is three independent members, of which I am one, and two councillors. We have had no evidence of problems in getting people to come forward. When I applied there was an interview and I think there were quite a number of applicants. I do not see that there is a problem.

  Councillor Breakell: We have one member from each of the four political groups and we have two independent members. We publish an advertisement seeking applicants. We were not short of applicants: we got five for two posts. We went through a selection process with interviews and we selected two very competent members from the independents.

  Professor Chapman: I am one of the two independent members and I am very happy to be one of the two independent members. We did have an interview system and there were other candidates. But the question you asked related to the involvement. I would like to think there would be more involvement from the public generally. Nobody seems very interested outside in what we are doing. I would like to think that what we are doing is important in terms of democracy in terms of the public's interest. It is a great pity to my mind that we do not get the attention and there is not the interest in local democracy that there ought to be.

  Q65 Christine Russell: Is that a criticism of yourselves because you do not promote yourselves and raise awareness of your existence perhaps?

  Professor Chapman: It is very difficult to raise awareness of one's existence when the means of communicating with the public is, to a large extent, through the press but the press is not interested in us because we are not doing things that interest the press.

  Christine Russell: I thought they would be very interested.

  Q66 Mr Cummings: Not unless the press is crucifying a councillor.

  Professor Chapman: Yes. If you have a case, then you have an interest, but if you do not have "juicy" cases, if I may put it like that, then the press is not very interested. If you look at all the meetings we have at two-monthly intervals over the last four years most of them have been taken up with consultation exercises for the Standards Board or yourselves or for the Committee of Standards in Public Life or any one of a number of other things. We are very good at being consulted with, but if you attend our meetings and listen to us going through the documents clause by clause, and line by line, it does not make for very good reporting in the local press. I am pleased to say that we have had no, what I would call, "juicy" cases to attract the attention of the press.

  Q67 Mr Betts: Does the Standards Board have enough flexibility to refer quickly and effectively the less serious cases to committees like yours?

  Councillor Breakell: I think the idea is it is going to improve, is it not? I am a member of a hospital board as well and I am always delighted by the straightforward triage system which we have in accident and emergency, as an example. I feel we could have a rapid turnaround by a triage of cases received. The fact that everything has to go into the melting pot and be sifted through, taking months to be resolved, I think is unnecessary. I would have thought that a very quick turnaround could be taken with those cases which one could deem from first sight to be either vexatious or trivial, with those cases being referred back very quickly either to you as an authority, to your monitoring officer, or else to the monitoring officer of an adjoining authority so that they could do a bit of quid pro quo.

  Q68 Mr Betts: One of the suggestions that is being made to us is that it might be better if we reversed the whole process, so that the cases initially came to local standards committees, which would sift out the really serious ones and send them to the Standards Board.

  Councillor Breakell: So you form your own triage, in fact, and do it yourself.

  Mr Wilson: I would wish to disagree with that idea. Our committee considered that and one of the aims of the exercise is confidence, local confidence. We felt that if we as a council were investigating ourselves, the public would tend to lose that confidence. We felt it should go to somewhere independent and then be referred back down, as it is at the moment. The other issue is consistency, to make sure you get consistent referrals down. If you do get a very serious case there is the possibility of officers being lent on at the local level. I am particularly thinking about the really serious cases which you are probably familiar with. We felt the best way at the moment was to go up, straight to the Standards Board, but have a quick reference down. I am talking about the flexibility of the Standards Board to refer matters down to the standards committees and, indeed, for local investigation and determination. That is limited, of course, by the penalties that we as standards committees can impose—which, as you are probably aware, is three months' suspension as a maximum penalty. Anything that would warrant anything more than that, we would see anyway.

  Professor Chapman: As I understood it, the question was about the Standards Board's scope for doing this. As far as I can see, the Standards Board could easily now do this with the regulations we have in force. I think the pattern would be different in relation to different standards committees because the political salience, if I may put it like that, in different parts of the country varies from place to place. I could imagine a situation where many cases could easily be dealt with by the standards committee but I would also like to add that an awful lot can be resolved informally without this procedure having to take place at all. There are examples where you may say this is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and a word informally in the ear of one or two people can often resolve a difficulty without it having to become as significant as going to a case to the Standards Board.

  Q69 Andrew Bennett: This question of the naming of members, both as complainants and as people who are found to have committed offences and as people who are cleared, is it consistent? You are making expressions, but the trouble is that those expressions do not appear on the record.

  Professor Chapman: I think that was a pause while we looked at each other to see who was going to go first! This is not me speaking on behalf of the City of Durham Standards Committee, but I can give you my personal attitude to that, and that is that, I am afraid, if you are entering into public life you have to face the fact that your name may be mentioned in contexts in which you would prefer it not to be sometimes. That is one of the facets of working in public life.

  Q70 Andrew Bennett: I think we understand that!

  Professor Chapman: You do, yes. So, thank you very much! I think, therefore, you have to face that as one of the facts of life. It is better for people to know they are being criticised than it is for them not to know when everybody else knows they are being criticised. Therefore, as I think you put it earlier, it is an aspect of natural justice that somebody who is being accused should know they are being accused.

  Q71 Andrew Bennett: What about if someone is found not guilty? As far as I understand it, at the moment the Standards Board puts up the details of somebody who has committed some offence but they do not put up the names of people who have been totally cleared. Is that right?

  Councillor Breakell: That is correct.

  Q72 Andrew Bennett: Do you approve of that?

  Professor Chapman: We seem to be going along that way. I have very little experience on which to base a helpful answer, I am afraid.

  Mr Wilson: On the website it does actually give whether there was found no case to answer or no further action would be taken—and there is a difference between the two. I think if someone is totally cleared, that does appear on the website as: "It was investigated by the ESO and the ESO found there was no breach of the code."

  Q73 Chairman: If we are looking at when the person being complained against first hears about it, should they hear about the complaint before the Standards Board decides whether to refer it for an investigation?

  Professor Chapman: As far as I am aware, the present practice is that they are informed that there is a complaint against them, so they know. It seems perfectly satisfactory to me that they should know at that stage. But that is a personal view.

  Q74 Chairman: You have not come across any instances where that has not happened and the first time they hear about it is when they see their name in the newspaper.

  Councillor Breakell: No. The normal response seems to be that when the complainant gets confirmation that it is being carried on, the person being complained about similarly gets a letter of confirmation at the same time.

  Chairman: Thank you very much for your evidence.





 
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