Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
17 JANUARY 2005
SIR ANTHONY
HOLLAND, MR
DAVID PRINCE
AND MR
PAUL HOEY
Q180 Chairman: Is that something you
feel might need to be addressed in legislation?
Sir Anthony Holland: I think it
has to be looked at. It is a very tricky one. Sometimes, you look
at the investigation and the person has actually broken the code,
but he or she may not think they have; and yet if you say there
has to be some kind of hearing you almost make it worse for them.
I think a fair amount of research needs to be done as to what
councils would themselves feel is a fair situation. I do know
there is a lot of feeling about this.
Q181 Chairman: Is it something you have
raised with the ODPM?
Sir Anthony Holland: Yes. We raise
things fairly regularly actually.
Q182 Mr Cummings: Do you have any measures
at all in your armoury that you could impose upon complainants
to prevent them creating unfair public scrutiny through the media?
Sir Anthony Holland: No, no regulation.
There is nothing in our armoury that can do that.
Q183 Mr Cummings: Would you welcome such
a move?
Sir Anthony Holland: It is a very
difficult one, this. Going back to basics, what we are trying
to do, and the purpose of Parliament giving us this legislation,
is to improve the confidence in local democracy and the standards
of behaviour at local government levels. So Parliament, following
the Nolan report, felt that something had to be done. As soon
as you try and squash complainants you may succeed in squashing
two or three who deserve to be squashed, but the odd person who
does not deserve to be squashed somehow gets caught up in that
exercise, and suddenly people think, "ah, it is all a bit
of a game and you are not getting all the complaints you should
be having". On balance it is a judgment, and I think on balance
you ought to leave it as it is rather than try and penalise complainants
who should know better or did not know better, or just frankly
were vexatious.
Q184 Mr Betts: What importance do you
attach to training councillors in these matters? Do you think
there should be a sanction if councillors do not go for training,
or maybe people should not be a councillor until they have had
proper training?
Sir Anthony Holland: We do have
a separate duty.
Mr Prince: It goes back to some
of the previous discussions about the line of inquiry in the next
comprehensive performance assessment. The issue of members performing
regulatory functions, whether licensing or planning, there is
a very strong argument, and many councils now enforce themselves
and require members to have the training. The general provision
of training is something that the standards committees themselves
should be proactive about, and within their resources, and the
programmes that are in place in most councils now make provision
for there to be useful training around this. You made reference
in some of your earlier questions to case studies and case study
material, and those are things that we have produced in the past
and indeed are planning to do next year—CD-rom and electronic
arrangements, so that people can put on tailor-made arrangements
locally. It is difficult to require training, and it would be
unfortunate if people had to go just to get that tick on the register.
I think it would be most effective where it is part of the general
behaviour and culture of the authority and led very much by the
standards committee, because we believe that the best standards
committees, the most proactive ones, have already put in place
some very good practice around these areas.
Q185 Mr Betts: Why do you think it appropriate
for councillors who perform regulatory functions have to be trained,
as some do, and yet councillors taking decisions about social
services issues or education issues do not have to be aware of
the requirements of the code of practice and all the other things
around standards, because many of them will not go on training
courses unless they have to?
Mr Prince: I can see the case
that many do not have the training for those regulatory functions
because of the complexity of the issue and the legal risks that
the authority itself will run but also in terms of the standards
committees' role and scope for training, then there is a place
for generalised training that is part of the way that business
is done in that authority.
Q186 Mr Betts: With no sanction.
Mr Prince: I think there is a
place for both. I am not convinced that sanctions are the appropriate
way of doing it. It is much better if it is delivered in a way
that people find useful, and where there is a hearts-and-minds
willingness to do it by the members and a strong lead from the
standards committee that it is an essential part of the way the
authority is run.
Q187 Mr Betts: Do you know what percentage
of councillors go on training courses?
Mr Prince: No, I do not.
Sir Anthony Holland: Can I add
something on training, because you raise an interesting point?
I personally would make training pretty nearly mandatory for two
reasons. First, you have this code of conduct now in place, and
therefore you ought to have some means of identifying some of
the issues that it raises for the everyday person working in a
council situation. By very necessity it ought to be there. We
have a statutory duty to guide people about the code. You are
taking it further forward by saying it should be totally mandatory
for everybody on a council to have training as soon as they arrive
at the council, and many councils do have a teach-in and induction.
I went to one myself to see what was said actually, and I found
it fairly good but a bit shallow, and there was not enough detail.
One has to guard against making democracy bureaucratic, and that
is one of the problems that worries me.
Q188 Sir Paul Beresford: You lost years
ago!
Sir Anthony Holland: Perhaps I
have, but I am still naíve enough to think it is worth
bearing in mind. If one plunged straight away into a system where
we had mandatory training for all councillors, I would be a bit
concerned.
Q189 Mr Betts: You said "pretty
nearly mandatory".
Sir Anthony Holland: It is what
I call carrot and stick, is it not?
Q190 Mr Betts: I am trying to explore
what you are saying.
Sir Anthony Holland: I think it
is carrot and stick. People who do not go for training will not—
Q191 Andrew Bennett: Should not get the
allowances?
Sir Anthony Holland: I do not
think I would put my neck on the block in that way.
Q192 Mr Betts: What would happen?
Sir Anthony Holland: When I say
"nearly mandatory" there are all sorts of ways—and
I can speak coming from a large legal practice—you can have
people in the practice, whether lawyers or not, with all sorts
of incentives to undergo certain courses which make them better
at it, and the incentives are not there and they do not have the
benefit of them if they do not take those courses. You can then
do what I call continuing education. You say, "you must have
education in ethics over your period of membership of the council
and accumulate points in order to qualify for membership of a
particular committee". There are all sorts of ways you can
turn this round. I have not looked at the detail, but all I know
is that it is worth bearing in mind that the Standards Board has
had a number of issues where we had got ourselves thoroughly up
to speed on complaints, and that is another area we should look
at.
Q193 Mr Betts: Will you be issuing advice
about it?
Sir Anthony Holland: We issue
advice now.
Q194 Mr Betts: Advice that is perhaps
a bit stronger in terms of what councils might do to encourage.
Sir Anthony Holland: I agree with
that too.
Mr Prince: The pressure that you
are talking about may well come from the key line of inquiry in
the comprehensive performance assessment because the characteristics
of the highest performing authority that we have been working
with the Audit Commission on in that work will be those where
there is strong leadership locally and where the standards committee
is putting into place training, and generally doing things to
deliver the code, rather than just putting in place the bare minimal
compliance bureaucracy. That focus itself will cause authorities
to look at what they are doing and look at self-diagnostic tools
that are available, and ask themselves whether some of the training
and materials that we have been putting in place and urging them
to do should now be applied ahead of that assessment.
Q195 Mr Betts: Do you think it might
be helpful if you collected information about what percentage
of individual councillors undertake training in this area?
Mr Prince: That could be a useful
line because the focus of the research that we are planning on
next year will be very much looking at the effectiveness of standards
committees, both around the local regulations that we talked about
earlier and about how the agenda is being played out at local
level. That, again, will be the subject of our conference next
September about how local arrangements are working in practice
now that the whole of the machinery is finally in place. What
you are suggesting is something we could be looking at alongside
that research.
Q196 Christine Russell: You told us earlier
about the great efforts that you went to personally in the Standards
Board to communicate with smaller authorities like town and parish
councils. I am sure you accept that they have particular problems
where the clerk only works a few hours a week, works at her kitchen
table, in a small community; where she is probably a parish councillor
and running the Guides and the village hall et cetera.
Sir Anthony Holland: I grew up
in a place like that.
Q197 Christine Russell: How do you feel
the Standards Board can help parish councillors and parish clerks
to understand the need to comply with the code of guidance?
Mr Hoey: There is a whole range
of things that we can do, together with the people. We work very
closely with the county associations, which are the organisations
on the ground responsible for parishes. They do an awful lot of
good training and support at county level, and we do give them
and their county secretaries a lot of support. We did some research
last year looking at county associations and we think they are
fairly poorly resourced for what they are supposed to be doing.
They are terribly stretched, and we would like to see how we can
give better support.
Q198 Christine Russell: What percentage
of parish councils are not active or participating members?
Mr Hoey: It varies from county
to county, obviously, but I think the average is that 85-90% of
parishes are members of county associations, and clearly we would
encourage greater uptake of membership because it does give you
access to greater training support and guidance. We work closely
with those. We want to encourage standards committees also because
they have a responsibility for parishes within their districts
so we need to look at how far we can deal with those matters.
Often we find that within a district there might be 80 or 90 parishes
but actually there are only one or two that are of concern in
terms of the way they are run and the way in which they carry
out their business. We need to find a way of concentrating on
those and seeing how we can better support those. We also need
to find ways of better supporting clerks because the clerk is
in a very vulnerable position. We have come across cases of clerks
being bullied and quick turn-around because of the way they are
treated. If in some way clerks can be supported and mentored,
and if there is some way they can get experience from other clerks
who have been in similar situations, we want to try and keep them
in post and make sure that those issues are dealt with at the
local level.
Q199 Christine Russell: Do you have any
capacity for organised training at a more local level than county
level?
Sir Anthony Holland: We are very
concerned about this, and I had a meeting last week with the Minister.
I want to utilise some funds from the capacity building fund to
develop a training programme for parish councils and the clerks.
We have spent a lot of time looking at the problems, and we have
had research done. There are serious issues at the parish council
level. Given that the Government wants to devolve greater responsibility
and create a more important role for them, we have got to get
this improved. There is no doubt that there are dysfunctional
parish councils and some that just do not have the resources,
and we have to therefore intervene. That is our intention in the
next 12-15 months.
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