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


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 103-119)

6 DECEMBER 2004

SIR JEREMY BEECHAM, MS CHLOE LAMBERT AND MR ROY WILLIAMS

  Q103 Andrew Bennett: Has the Standards Board been a success? Has it raised standards in local government, or has it increased the public's view that there is some corruption in local government?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: I do not think it has raised standards. I think it has contributed to raising public confidence in local government. There is no evidence to suggest there is any significant problem with corruption in local government and of course the Board is not dealing with corruption in the criminal sense because that would be a matter to be pursued by the courts. As the Committee of Standards in Public Life has pointed out on more than one occasion, standards in this country are generally very high, and that is true of local government. In the relatively small percentage of cases where a finding has been made, they have been subjected to a full investigation.

  Q104 Andrew Bennett: Is it a big bureaucracy that could be got rid of?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: No, I think it is important to retain the structure, working perhaps more quickly than it has been able to do in the past, and it is seemingly more effective as the regulations have now come into force and resources are made available. It is important to have an independent structure to deal with the issues as they arise. I do not take the view that some people do that this is an unnecessary bureaucracy. That is not the Local Government Association's position, although we do think its ways of working might be improved—and hearing the last witnesses, that view is not restricted to us. A local gateway might be a better way of filtering some of the claims, but subject to that it has an important part to play. It is not necessarily the only body that needs to be concerned. There is a responsibility on political parties in particular to be active in promoting high standards and dealing with those who transgress them.

  Ms Lambert: I think the Standards Board has been a success in terms of raising awareness of the need to have a code of conduct and a certain standard of behaviour. The delays we have heard about, which are not being addressed by more local determination, have been the main cause for complaint amongst our members.

  Q105 Christine Russell: Can I ask you for your views on compulsory training for elected members on the code of conduct, perhaps especially for those members that serve on committees involved with planning and licensing?

  Ms Lambert: It is essential. I do not see how people can do their jobs as elected members, particularly on those two committees, without the necessary training. I see it as part of any necessary induction when you are first elected to a council, but also you need regular refresher training to keep yourself up to date. The important part about it is that if you are trained, then, again, you are giving more public confidence in the work that councillors do.

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: I agree with what Chloe has just said, that one needs to be proportionate. It is essential for members of principal councils to have training, but it is not absolutely necessary to train 80,000 parish councillors to the same extent—though maybe the chairs of parish councils should receive the training.

  Q106 Christine Russell: As an organisation, has the LGA collected any evidence of the contribution of the lack of training to submissions to the Standards Board?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: No. I am not sure what the Standards Board reports back, as it were, apart from the numbers of cases dealt with. There are records of some decisions, but I do not think we have trawled through those, and if we did I am not sure it would show training as a particular feature in the cases that go there.

  Ms Lambert: I think it is important that the Standards Board does offer more in the way of training and guidance to local councillors. I am particularly thinking of the introduction of the new licensing responsibility on local authorities.

  Q107 Christine Russell: What form do you think that should take?

  Ms Lambert: It needs to be in all sorts of different forms. I heard today, when I was receiving some licensing training myself, that there is going to be an interactive DVD on licensing hearings, which I am sure will be a best-seller! You need different sorts of training—role-playing as much as anything in that particular case.

  Q108 Christine Russell: The difficulty is, as we heard earlier this afternoon, that there are still a high percentage of parish councils that are not even connected to the Internet.

  Ms Lambert: I understand that, and that is why it needs to take different forms. Also, you need to work with local authorities, the principal authorities, to liaise with their parishes.

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: Training is not necessarily to be confined to elected members. One of the problems that sometimes arises is the excessive caution on the officer side, where, frankly, a more common-sense and robust view might well be more helpful to members. As it is, sometimes extremely cautious advice is tendered and effectively pressure not to participate, when it would be perfectly legitimate for them to do so. We think that clearer guidance from the Board, and perhaps more training for monitoring officers and others would also be relevant.

  Q109 Chairman: Is the LGA confident that the Standards Board understands subtleties of planning law sufficiently in terms of their judgments where allegations have been made in that sort of arena?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: I would hesitate to comment on the judgments they have made. We do have fairly regular contact with them, but we do need to make clear that one has to use common sense in these situations, and in turn they should make that clear. I think it would be wrong to comment on the outlook of particular cases.

  Ms Lambert: I think there is still a need for further training and guidance with specific examples of scenarios presented to those who are receiving the training about declarations and interests, particularly where a member is two-hatted.

  Mr Williams: There is also a third element in training, and perhaps a feature that is coming more to the fore, which is any training or guidance that needs to be given to members of standards committees locally where they are now going to be able to undertake investigation and adjudication. Until now they have not been able to take forward the investigation element, but the regulations have been recently put in place. There may well be a need for a certain amount of training and guidance on how to conduct that sort of investigation and adjudication, to ensure a consistency of approach across the country.

  Q110 Mr Betts: Should all individuals who are complained about be made aware of the complaint against them before a decision is made to carry out the investigation?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: I would have thought so, yes.

  Ms Lambert: It is only fair that there should be.

  Q111 Mr Betts: We have had complaints that there have been occasions when the individual complained about first read about it in the local press.

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: Absolutely wrong.

  Ms Lambert: It is quite wrong.

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: There is a concern about publicity. The Board is clear that there should not be publicity until the matter is adjudicated on. Sometimes there are leaks and sometimes a deliberate move to embarrass people. I am surprised, frankly, if it is the case that complaints have been made and members not notified.

  Q112 Chairman: Do you think the whistle-blowing protection would be compromised if the member making the complaint were named during the investigation?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: There are a number of issues around whistle-blowing. I do not think it is necessary to identify those who make the complaint. We are rather more concerned about the duty that is imposed on elected members—

  Q113 Chairman: The Clause 7 rule?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: Yes, to blow the whistle, as it were, and a failure to do so in itself of course becomes a breach. We think that goes too far and is unnecessary.

  Ms Lambert: It would also tend to lead to more vicious or vexatious claims, which could be made for political reasons for instance.

  Q114 Andrew Bennett: On the question of publicity, it is quite a ploy, is it not; that you complain to the local papers that you are going to make a complaint to the Standards Board in March just after somebody's nomination has gone in, and sometime the following March some adjudication says there is no case to answer? What should you do about that?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: We have argued that the committee of standards and the Standards Board—a disclosure of that kind should itself be a breach and it should be capable of being adjudicated upon by the Board. In other words, it should be an offence to disclose a complaint.

  Q115 Andrew Bennett: If you were a councillor it would be an offence, but if you were just a member of the general public it would not matter, would it—or if you were a candidate?

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: No.

  Q116 Andrew Bennett: Particularly if you were not expecting to be elected.

  Ms Lambert: It is extremely difficult to legislate against such cases.

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: You cannot stop that.

  Q117 Andrew Bennett: No, but you could say that if people seek publicity for their complaint, the Standards Board would not investigate, and that would be a pretty firm way in which you could stop that sort of abuse.

  Mr Williams: That might be a little difficult because that pre-supposes that the complaint is vexatious and does not necessarily warrant investigation.

  Q118 Andrew Bennett: So it is all right if you receive publicity for a genuine complaint; it is only wrong if you get publicity for a vexatious complaint.

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: I am not sure that Mr Bennett has not touched on a rather good idea, actually!

  Mr Williams: The other function of that is that time has been taken up to now to investigate.

  Q119 Andrew Bennett: So there is this problem about publicity beforehand. What about publicity for the council on the website when a decision has been reached? Should they go on to the website, found guilty or found . . .

  Sir Jeremy Beecham: They should certainly go on if found guilty because that is regarded as an issue of public confidence; and if they wish they could go on if they are not guilty, but that must be a decision for the individual council, which may well wish to go public, but on the other hand it may wish to let the matter lie.


 
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