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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 60-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: housing planning, local government and the regions committee
The Role and Effectiveness of the Standards Board for England
Monday 17 January 2005 MR STEVE BUNDRED SIR ANTHONY HOLLAND, MR DAVID PRINCE and MR PAUL HOEY RT HON NICK RAYNSFORD MP and MR PAUL ROWSELL Evidence heard in Public Questions 129 - 262
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee (Urban Affairs Sub-Committee) on Monday 17 January 2005 Members present Chris Mole, in the Chair Andrew Bennett Sir Paul Beresford Mr Clive Betts Mr John Cummings Mr Bill O'Brien Christine Russell Mr Adrian Sanders ________________ Memorandum submitted by Audit Commission
Examination of Witness
Witness: Mr Steve Bundred, Chief Executive, Audit Commission, examined. Q129 Chairman: Good afternoon, and welcome to the second session of the Urban Affairs Committee's inquiry into the role and effectiveness of the Standards Board for England. Would you identify yourself for our record, please? Mr Bundred: I am Steve Bundred, the Chief Executive of the Audit Commission. Q130 Mr Cummings: Could you outline for the Committee your current relationship with the Standards Board for England, please? Mr Bundred: Both ourselves and the Standards Board have an equal interest in ethical governance issues. The Commission has a long-standing interest, and indeed we published a report on corporate governance last year. It is also the case that many of the issues that give rise to complaints to either body may be made, and frequently are made to both of us. There was therefore a recognition quite early in the creation of the Standards Board that the Board and the Commission needed to work closely together. That recognition was reflected in a memorandum of understanding, which was agreed between us early last year. It set out the arrangements for information-sharing and cross-referrals where matters that come to either of our attention are more appropriately dealt with by the other party. We have been working very closely with the Board to build on that relationship since then. Q131 Sir Paul Beresford: Would it make sense if the two were put together? Mr Bundred: That would be a matter for Parliament to decide. The point that I obviously would make is that the Standards Board has powers and deals with issues that are beyond the powers that our auditors have and beyond the issues that auditors have traditionally dealt with. Q132 Sir Paul Beresford: They could be combined - that is the implication. Mr Bundred: It would be a matter for Parliament to decide whether they should be combined. Whether it will save duplication or not is a separate issue because, as I said, the Standards Board deals with matters other than the matters that have traditionally been dealt with by the Audit Commission. Q133 Mr Cummings: How well is the memorandum of understanding working? Mr Bundred: The honest answer to that question is that it is working very well at the national level, and at the most senior levels the relationship between the Commission and the board is a close relationship and working very well. I think both organisations need probably to do more to ensure that there is better joint working at the local level. We have both come across instances where the degree of information-sharing at the local level has not been as great as we would hope it might be. Q134 Mr Cummings: How do you intend to achieve these improvements? Mr Bundred: Certainly within our own organisation we need to do more with our auditors to ensure that they understand the requirements upon them that are imposed by the memorandum of understanding, and the auditors need to be more proactive when issues come to their attention in which the Standards Board might have a remit, to ascertain whether action has already been taken by the Board on those issues, and indeed whether the Board is aware of them. Q135 Mr Cummings: Has the Standards Board acknowledged its deficiencies and is it moving towards improvements? Mr Bundred: That is a question best put to the Standards Board, but we would be in agreement with the Board that both organisations ----- Q136 Mr Cummings: If you are both working towards a common aim, then obviously you must have accepted, and the Board must have accepted that some ----- Mr Bundred: As I said earlier, at the most senior levels the relationship is very good, and both organisations would agree that that close relationship needs to happen just as effectively at the local level, and more needs to be done by both organisations in that regard. Q137 Mr Cummings: You are saying that there is room for improvement in the relationship between the Audit Commission and the Standards Board. Can you give the Committee something positive as to how this will be achieved? What positive measures do you intend to take? Mr Bundred: We will certainly be reminding our auditors of the need to ensure that when issues come to their attention for which the Standards Board also has a remit, or indeed may have the primary focus, that those matters should be shared with the Standards Board. Q138 Chairman: Does that mean that your auditors would be under an obligation to make the referral if they found something inappropriate? Mr Bundred: They are required to do that by our memorandum of understanding, and it happens in many instances. Our concern is that it may not be happening in every instance, and we will be reminding our auditors of the need to ensure it happens in every instance. Q139 Mr Cummings: In your written evidence you stated that you would be looking at closer links between the comprehensive spending performance assessment and the code of conduct. Can you tell the Committee what stage this is at? Mr Bundred: Currently, we have proposals for comprehensive performance, for a fresh approach to comprehensive performance assessmen,t which will be introduced later this year onwards. Those proposals are currently out to consultation, and the consultation is due to end on 18 February. We will then obviously assess the responses that we have received. Q140 Mr Cummings: Are you doing anything else with the Standards Board to promote ethical governance in local government? Mr Bundred: Yes, we are doing quite a lot of work jointly with the Standards Board. We have a diagnostic toolkit which was developed within the Commission but which is being jointly badged and promoted by both organisations. We have 34 local authorities at the present time that have said that they would like to make use of that tool. We are also engaging with other bodies with a similar objective, and principally the Local Government Ombudsman and also the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government. There is a steering committee of all four organisations which meets regularly to take that work forward. We have contributed to the annual conference that the Standards Board runs for members of standards committees, and we have jointly contributed to events that have been organised by individual local authorities, training events for their standards committees and often for their senior staff members. Q141 Mr O'Brien: How broadly has the consultation exercise been extended? Sir Anthony Holland: The consultation on our performance assessment is a very wide consultation. It has been run in parallel with a separate consultation on joint area reviews of children's services because the intention is that comprehensive performance assessment will inform and be informed by joint area reviews of children's services, so the existence of consultation is very widely known in local government. It is not just a consultation in which we have invited people to respond in writing; there have also been a number of events. Indeed, there was an event in London only today where we were anticipating of the order of 150-160 people would attend. Q142 Mr O'Brien: Do the stakeholders get involved? Mr Bundred: The stakeholders get involved both through those events, and there are smaller events also. Indeed, I have a meeting tomorrow morning with a number of local authority chief executives and other stakeholders. There will be other similar events for local politicians to share views with us, and of course they will respond, as authorities, formally in writing during the course of consultation. The consultation document was launched in December. The consultation period runs until 18 February, so it is an extensive consultation running over a couple of months. Q143 Christine Russell: In your opinion, do you think one of the reasons why the Standards Board struggled to cope in the beginning was because they just were not prepared for the huge number of complaints that were launched? Mr Bundred: That is probably a question best put to the Standards Board. I am not in a position to know how well prepared they were for the volume of complaints they received. I do not think I was personally surprised by the volume of complaints, and I do not think others with good knowledge of local government were hugely surprised by the volume. Once the decision had been taken to extend the remit of the Standards Board to smaller authorities, then inevitably it would cover a much larger number of local authorities and was going to give rise therefore to a larger number of complains. Q144 Christine Russell: You think that that should have been planned for, the extension to include town and parish councils; that it should have been possible to predict that there would have been this huge workload created by complaints against those two types of organisations. Mr Bundred: I do not know whether it was predicted within the Standards Board. That is a question you would need to put to representatives of the Standards Board. I would say that it was predictable that there would be a large volume of complaints, and certainly it appears from all the evidence that the Standards Board did struggle in its early days. Our experience is that it is now getting very much more on top of those problems, and the changes that have been made in the regulations will help in that regard, and are very welcome. Q145 Mr Betts: Is not the problem that everything has to go to the centre before even a relatively minor complaint is passed down and dealt with locally? Would there be some merit in doing things the other way round? Some of our witnesses have said that initially the complaints should be sent locally, and if at local level it were deemed to be a serious matter, within guidelines, it would be passed up to the Standards Board. Mr Bundred: The answer is that there are powerful arguments both for and against that. If there were a local filter, it would be able to draw on local knowledge and give local authorities the opportunity to put their own house in order first; and it would no doubt be more cost-effective. On the other hand, however, one of the purposes of the Standards Board is to ensure public confidence in standards in local government, and the independent and assessment at first instance is one of the elements that provides that public confidence. It is also true that there would no doubt be some degree of inconsistency if there were local filtering, and there is no doubt therefore a risk that initial local filtering could make it more difficult to deal with certain types of allegations. The honest answer is that I do think there are strong arguments both for and against, and there are different views on that matter even within the Audit Commission itself, and possibly within the Standards Board for all I know. Q146 Mr Betts: What would your advice be about the best way to operate? Mr Bundred: At this stage, while the Board is new and the code of conduct and the governance framework is new, having the entirely independent element right at the outset of the investigation process is probably the best approach. It may well be that as local standards committees become more embedded and more effective and there is a better understanding within local government of the kinds of standards of conduct that are and are not acceptable, and as public confidence in those standards grows, then it might be possible to take another look at it at some future stage. At the moment, my inclination would be to stay where we are. Q147 Mr Betts: Have you noticed any improvement since early November when there were new guidelines issued by the Board about dealing with complaints locally? I understand as well that the Board's ethical standards officers can now refer matters to monitoring officers locally. Has this improved the situation or have you limited experience of that so far? Mr Bundred: It is probably early days to observe improvements arising directly from those changes. Our experience is that cases are being dealt with more quickly now within the Board than when it first came into existence, and there does seem to be some evidence that the backlog of cases is being freed. Q148 Andrew Bennett: Do you think the code of conduct is satisfactory or would you recommend a few changes? Mr Bundred: I do not have a problem with the code of conduct itself. I think it could say a little more than it does about relations between members and officers, but I think it broadly satisfactory. Q149 Andrew Bennett: What should it say as far as members and officers are concerned? Mr Bundred: Local government only functions well when relations between members and officers are relations of mutual respect, where the roles of each are very clear, and they respect each other's roles as well as respecting each other. The code of conduct could emphasise that point slightly more than it does currently. If I may go on, it is not so much the code of conduct that I would want to see changed. We were looking at the aspects of corporate governance as a whole, but perhaps we could look at some other elements of the arrangements and some aspects of the way in which the arrangements are supported. Q150 Andrew Bennett: What about the whistleblower clause; is there not a problem with that? A former leader of the Labour group admitted to me at the first session that on more than one occasion he had had to take disciplinary action against one of the members of his group, not over voting but over behaviour. It is a bit difficult for groups to run a strict regime in relation to behaviour if in addition to criticising someone they have to automatically report him to the Standards Board. Mr Bundred: I do not have a problem with that particular clause. The purpose of that clause in the code of conduct is, again, to give confidence to members of the public that wrongdoing will not be covered up. There are parallel clauses in many of the provisions governing local authority staff, where wrongdoing or impropriety is suspected and where it should be brought to the attention of the proper authorities. I would hope that local authority members would want to regard themselves as exemplary in that respect. Q151 Andrew Bennett: If a rumour is circulating about the behaviour of a particular individual, although you have no proof that it is true, you have a duty to report it. Mr Bundred: I think there is a difference between a rumour and a well-founded suspicion. Q152 Andrew Bennett: But if you are running a tight ship as far as the leader of a group is concerned, it is perfectly reasonable to act on the basis of a rumour, is it not? You think that disciplinary action within the group on the basis of a rumour would be their function, and only if it became well-founded would they have a duty to refer it on. Mr Bundred: You would need to give me some specific examples of occasions when, within a political group, action was being taken on the basis of not being more than a rumour. I would hope that justice and the principles of justice would apply within political groups as well as within local authorities and corporate bodies. It seems to me that that is one of the principles of justice, that there should be a good reason before action is taken against individuals; and a rumour is not necessarily a good reason. Q153 Andrew Bennett: If it is going to be fair under the code of practice, is it not important that the person who makes the complaint gets at least the same level of publicity as the person who is complained against? Mr Bundred: Giving publicity to complainants might well deter complainants from bringing concerns to attention in some instances. The same principles apply to whistle-blowing more generally. I would not want to see a situation in which the identity of the complainant automatically became known, even more the substance of the complaint had been assessed. Q154 Andrew Bennett: When you are doing the comprehensive performance assessments how far do you take into account whether councillors attend training or not? Should people be trained in terms of their ethical duties as councillors? Mr Bundred: In the current comprehensive performance assessment we have not emphasised that issue particularly but under the proposals that we are currently consulting upon, an element in the criteria by which we will assess the effectiveness of how well a council is performing will be issues around, for example, whether the standards committee is proactive in promoting and maintaining ethics, and is respected and effective within the council more generally. We would expect that councillors, through the work of the standards committee would understand their responsibilities in this respect, and we would expect to get some evidence that the standards committee was proactive in informing them. Q155 Andrew Bennett: Would you expect that to be in terms of people attending training sessions, or merely that they have been provided perhaps with examples of what is ethical behaviour? Mr Bundred: We would not want to be overly prescriptive in the way in which authorities dealt with this issue. There are different approaches, which might be equally effective in different circumstances, and also depending upon the way in which the authority organised its affairs. I would be disappointed to discover that there was an authority where training had been provided that members did not participate in. Q156 Andrew Bennett: Is that not a bit naïve? Councillors are still not expected to be full-time, are they? Mr Bundred: No, they are not expected to be full-time. Q157 Andrew Bennett: So if you get elected there is a limit to how much time you can commit to training. Mr Bundred: That is true, but there are many local authorities where, for example, in relation to licensing or planning matters members are not allowed to participate in the relevant decision-making processes unless they have also participated in the relevant training. I see no reason why these wider aspects of government should be any different in that respect. Q158 Mr Sanders: This is a general question, and I would ask you to look at this through the eyes of an auditor. Given the annual budget of the Standards Board plus all the other costs that are incurred locally, does the output of around 40 sanctions a year represent best value for taxpayers' money? Mr Bundred: I am afraid I do not know what the annual budget of the Standards Board is, so I do not feel able to answer that question. Q159 Mr Sanders: Should you not know? Mr Bundred: We work with the Standards Board but we do not audit them. Q160 Mr Sanders: Should not somebody audit that process and output? Mr Bundred: That is a question probably best put to the National Audit Office rather than the Audit Commission. Memorandum submitted by Standards Board for England Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Sir Anthony Holland, Chairman, Mr David Prince, Chief Executive (and Accounting Office), and Mr Paul Hoey, Head of Policy and Guidance, Standards Board for England, examined. Q161 Mr Betts: Your start was hardly a glorious success, was it, if you look at the targets that you were set or set yourselves and your achievements? To pick one out, for the percentage of cases referred to investigation that were completed within six months, the target was 90 per cent and performance was 38 per cent. Why is that? Sir Anthony Holland: That is a perfectly fair comment, but I think it is right that I should give an explanation as to the background. We were set up in March 2001. It was a completely new process, dealing with the integrity of politicians. That demanded, in my view, a very careful approach. I was a lawyer in the past, and the one thing I wanted to avoid at all costs was a judicial review that attacked the process that we went about investigating complaints that we received and the eventual outcome of complaints. The over-arching demand I made therefore of the staff was that they should do nothing that could in any way be challenged at judicial review. To the extent that we have never been challenged at judicial review, I think that is a great success. The second thing of course was that the legislation was flawed in two respects. The first was that we had not been given the power to delegate complaints when they came in, so the Board was forced to meet every week for something like 18 months to look at every single complaint that came in to decide whether or not it should be referred. That in itself slowed things down because unfortunately referrals had to go through a certain process, and it had to be passed to the Board for it to make its weekly meeting decision in that context. The third aspect was that because we were starting from scratch, there was no precedent for this kind of body. We had to recruit people who had the ability to do a certain number of quite key tasks. One was to investigate and the second was to make a decision as to whether or not that should be taken further; and the third was to do it on the basis of best legal advice. Unfortunately, we have been located in London, and the consequence of that was that it meant we had to recruit people, with great difficulty on our part given the salaries we could offer. Therefore, our recruitment process took far, far longer than we ever anticipated, and indeed we only got up to full strength last July. We had difficulty in recruiting the ethical standards officers, ESOs, to begin with, because we could not offer sufficient money. We had difficulty recruiting a full legal team because we did not have the ability to compete with the salaries that lawyers can attract in London. All those together made it very difficult for us to operate at full strength from the word "go". There was a final problem. We had no real idea of what kind of complaints we were going to get, whether they would be serious complaints coming in from the heavier authorities, the county councils, or whether they would be the less serious but nevertheless complaints that came in from parish councils. There are 8,900 parish councils, but nobody knew that until we compiled the first list. The volume of complaints was what we expected, or very nearly, but the kind of complaint meant that the investigation process was far more complex than anticipated. Why was that? It was because when you get complaints from parish councils they are nothing like as easy to investigate as they are if they come from county councils, which have resources available to individual councillors. Parish council investigations can be quite tricky and quite personalised, and very often involve basically neighbourhood disputes. That is an explanation, and it is the best I can do in all the circumstances. Q162 Mr Betts: Are you now on track to get rid of the backlog by April 2005, and to hit the six-month target? Sir Anthony Holland: Yes, we are. Q163 Mr Betts: Have the new regulations, which now allow reference by one of your ethical standards officers to local authority level, speeded up the process? Sir Anthony Holland: It has to some extent so far, but it is early days. The first tranche of regulations came in in June 2003, which allowed us to refer investigations which concluded for determination of the sanctions to the local standards committee. The second tranche only came in in November, and we have only had 25 to 30 cases go back in that context. It is early days to talk about that, but as far as we are concerned, we are anticipating within six months referring probably a third of the cases back for local investigation. If I could just break off there, there is a serious issue about how the delay led to our problems. It cannot necessarily be laid at the door of anyone in particular. I do not want to get too technical, but a monitoring officer was being asked to do a number of tasks, and the way the legislation was drafted meant that there was a probably conflict between those various tasks. To ask a monitoring office one minute to be advising a councillor, and the next to be clerking a committee that is investigating a councillor, and at the same time also having to advise a local authority - those are fundamental conflicts, and it took a long time for those conflicts to be ironed out with lawyers in the ODPM's office. That is what caused the delay. Q164 Mr Betts: Is the case management system now working and useful? Sir Anthony Holland: It is up and running, and running very well. Q165 Christine Russell: Can I ask you about the type of complaints, because I understand that you consider only about one in three are worthy of serious investigation because the others are either trivial, malicious or vexatious, and what you are doing to reduce the number of those. Sir Anthony Holland: When we first started, because as a board we were looking at every complaint that came in, we were very cautious, and we started off referring 46 per cent in the first few months, which was an awful lot; but we did not know how to evaluate those things. I had a number of politicians on the Board, and there were lay people; and they all had different judgmental standards. However, we eventually agreed amongst ourselves that we were being too careful and referring too many complaints, because, plainly, some were, particularly at parish level, effectively neighbourhood disputes. Those of you who come from a rural community will know what a viper's nest that can be in some questions. We actually became quite strong-minded about it, and now it is down to 28 per cent. We now have a referrals unit and policy and it has gone way, way down. There is no doubt that to begin with we were too cautious and did refer too many complaints; but we had to err on the side of caution because people felt that the particular issues they were complaining about were crucial to them. Indeed, we are now getting criticised for not referring enough. It is a balancing judgment, and it is not an easy one. Q166 Mr Sanders: Can I ask you about elected members of authorities who make vexatious or malicious complaints. Sir Anthony Holland: Tit for tats! Q167 Mr Sanders: Often against their political rivals. Do you think any steps should be taken to penalise those individuals? Sir Anthony Holland: It is certainly something I would like to think about in about a year's time. We have managed to get rid of a lot of the tit-for-tat stuff and have made it perfectly clear that we are not looking very favourably upon tit-for-tat complaints, or political complaints to score points off an opponent. If one had a situation a year from now where that was still the case, the Board would look very carefully at whether to change the policy. Q168 Mr Sanders: You are serving notice. Sir Anthony Holland: Yes. It cannot go on. It really is a disgrace in some situations. Q169 Sir Paul Beresford: Will it not be a bit difficult to take that approach in the light of article 7, which says they have an obligation to report matters? Sir Anthony Holland: That is a judgment putting us in the opposite direction. All that we are about involves all the time a balancing exercise in terms of deciding how best to offer a ---- Q170 Sir Paul Beresford: What about the customer? Clause 7 says he has got to do it, and you are going to come in a year's time with advice that if he does not complain too often you are going to jump on the back of his head. Sir Anthony Holland: I have not said we are going to; we are going to take it into consideration in a year's time. The difference is that there are those complaints, plainly, which are perfectly justifiable; but there are those that, frankly, do raise an eyebrow. The skill in all this is making a judgment. The more experienced our staff become, the more capable they are of understanding the exercise, the better it becomes from our point of view. Q171 Sir Paul Beresford: Would clause 7 - the Nastase clause, as I see it - be effective in stimulating these sorts of complaints, the eyebrow-raising complaints? Sir Anthony Holland: The figures we have do not bear that out actually. We have had 1 per cent of complaints of that kind, of whistle-blowing. It is very unpopular, and I make no bones about it. The only similarity I can think of is that in the profession I came from originally, lawyers had to do a similar thing. If you think a lawyer has been dishonest or not acting properly, even within your own partnership, you must say so. Q172 Andrew Bennett: How often did they do it? Sir Anthony Holland: I cannot answer that question, I am afraid, sir. Q173 Mr Betts: It is suggested that the written code of conduct encourages people to go out looking for complaints and increases the number. Is that something that has been said to you, and are you looking as part of the review at revising the code of conduct in any way? Sir Anthony Holland: The code of conduct is under revision now, in the sense that we are consulting about how it could be changed/revised/improved. That is a consultation exercise we promised to do to the ODPM's office. The volume of complaints has remained pretty static for the last nine months, at around 300 a month. The numbers we have referred for investigation have gone down steadily. Mr Prince: The trend of complaints that is noticeable over the three years is that those coming from the public have risen, and the number of member-of-member complaints has been falling, as indeed have the number of complaints coming from the parishes. The Chairman has mentioned the consultation on the code, and we should be issuing a consultation document very shortly. That will be very comprehensive. It will certainly address section 7, and in fact it will address every section of the code. It will give some headline analysis of the issues and problems that are known to have arisen, and we shall ask some open questions of small stakeholders as to how the code might be amended in the future. It will be a very full exercise. It builds on the discussions that we were able to have at our last annual assembly, when we had the benefit of some 700 members of standards committees and chairs of standards committees and monitoring officers with us at Birmingham. Q174 Andrew Bennett: On the figures you have just quoted, when you talk about the general public, presumably someone who is a candidate in the forthcoming election counts as a member of the general public, but in local perception would be one of the competing candidates. Mr Prince: That is always a possibility. I am talking about the trends from known elected members through to members of the public who may or may not be candidates - and obviously we have no means of knowing that. Q175 Mr Cummings: The Committee has received evidence suggesting that communications between the Standards Board and town and parish councils relating to guidance on the codes of practice are very poor. Do you accept this and o you see room for improvement; and if so how could it be improved? Sir Anthony Holland: There are many things probably that on reflect might improve, but the funny thing is that that is one that I would not. When we first started I personally was a bit surprised at the fact that parish councils were not included at all; but that was the law, and I therefore felt it my duty to spend a good few months going round to all the county associations and ensuring that the Board went round the county associations, pretty well every county association, talking to them. We went to talk to the National Association of Local Councils, which was the national body of local county associations, and I found it a very useful exercise. We put an awful lot of effort into the parish council problem, and we were rewarded with the fact that at all times the national association and those county associations I had spoken to, as opposed to those that members of the Board had spoken to, had all been very supportive and enthusiastic in some cases. I did occasionally get worried about this. I thought, "how could every county association be so supportive?" One evening last summer I went to speak to a parish councillor in Northamptonshire. What was interesting there was that I got a different feedback. That parish councillor I suspect is typical of many, and he was not enthusiastic. He did not like the declaration of interests and was wholly opposed to the whole concept. All I can say to you is that we have addressed pretty well every county association. We have never had a compliant from the National Association that there has been no contact or no reciprocity of communication, but obviously we can always get that. Mr Hoey: Every publication we produce is sent to every parish council in the country, all 8,900. Q176 Mr Cummings: I am sure that is a move in the right direction. What are the particular challenges that the Standards Board faces in communication with smaller councils? Sir Anthony Holland: I have always thought that the biggest challenge is in some areas like north Cornwall, which I am particularly familiar with, where there are 69 parish councils. There is one monitoring officer and not a very large number of backroom people in the council, I suspect. They have to service 69 parish clerks, and the communication therefore is somewhat stretched, and given their resources unfairly stretched probably. We therefore have to do what we can by communicating directly with the parish councils. I have addressed personally, and other members of my staff, as well as the Board, have addressed the National Association of Clerks to Local Associations, that is clerks of the parish councils and town councils. They have their conference every year in Stratford-upon-Avon. We have put a lot of effort into parish councils. That is not to say, however, that individual members of a parish council do not get concerned because we do seem very remote. We are based in London, and although the Board members have been out and about and done an awful lot of visits, plainly we have got to keep on doing it. Q177 Christine Russell: I want to ask you about disclosure. We have received evidence from people who quite understandably feel they are worried that even where a member is cleared of any wrongdoing whatsoever, the details appear on your website. Mr Prince: For some time afterwards too. Q178 Christine Russell: Are you looking at that? Surely, members who have committed no offence at all should not find themselves listed? Sir Anthony Holland: The Board is looking at that. We looked at it three or four board meetings ago, and we are coming back to it during the course of 2005. There are two aspects. I am not very happy about the fact that it remains on the website for more than a year - it is currently two years and it is far too long. Secondly, I am not very happy about the detail that appears, so we are looking at it. It is a moving target. Q179 Christine Russell: Why do the details remain on the website, even if the person has been totally cleared of any charge? Why do you keep it on for years if that person has not broken the code of conduct? Mr Prince: We keep it there so that the outcome of the case is known to all the parties. As Sir Anthony said, this is something that we often talk about, and the Board has identified this problem. Sir Anthony Holland: There are four possible results of an investigation: no breach at all; no further action; reference back to a local service committee; and reference to the adjudication panel. Obviously the first two will remain on the website. The first one, where there has been no breach of the code at all - I personally have grave reservation about what appears on the website - although the Board does not share that view. The trickiest one is "no further action" because without getting too technical, there is no way that a person who has been found to be in breach of the code but there is no further action can challenge that except by judicial review. It is a lacuna. If they were going to be taken elsewhere, then they could challenge the whole thing. They have broken the code, but the only way they can challenge that finding is by judicial review, and I think that is a bit of an unhappy situation. 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 or 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 naïve 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 be known ----- 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 the 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 per cent of parishes are not 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 we 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. Q200 Mr O'Brien: Can I refer to local standards committees, Sir Anthony. At the last session it was said, and most of the evidence we have been given has been that the local standards committee should deal with all complaints and then forward the most serious ones to the Standards Board. Is this a practical operation? Sir Anthony Holland: It is practical because when you are setting up the regulatory system you could start from the top or from the bottom. I have read, like you have - and you have heard it - the evidence of Dennis Wilson from the Northamptonshire standards committee, who felt that if you start from the bottom up, there might well be problems. Equally, if you start from the top there are problems. When you are setting up a new scheme - because, believe you me this was a very new idea and it was not taken kindly to by the local councillors concerned, as I know - it is probably better to start from the top. That is not to say that you do that for ever and a day. I personally think that you are better off keeping it from top up for the time being. It would be putting an enormous burden on some standards committees locally. It would also take away such confidence that there is that what is being done is being done objectively if it was done locally at this stage. Sir Anthony Holland: After all, the great purpose of what we are about is to create a view that if there is a genuine problem with a local authority or councillors or whatever, it does get looked at objectively by people who are fairly objective in the way they are looking at things. Clearly, if you have a local committee there is a chance that it will not be, and the way to safeguard against that is to say "Right, every member of a local standards committee must be independently appointed by an external body" and that way you can guard against that problem, but I still think at the beginning of an exercise like this, and we have only been doing it for two and a half years in terms of complaints, if you start looking at it too quickly after the beginning I think you are in danger of getting it wrong. You have to build up experience, understanding and confidence in the system, and if you change it too quickly after you have started then one of the effects is to destroy that confidence. One other point: local standards committees are variable, and are bound to be because some have independent chairmen, some do not, how they are made up varies, and whereas there are some which are perfectly independent and very objective, others are not quite within that category. Q201 Sir Paul Beresford: Because of the variation that you outline of the different committees and the fact that one of the aims of the code of conduct is to see that public trust in elective members is maintained and increased, if the complaints board is looking at their own standards will this develop that conduct or trust in members by the public, or do you think we should be doing something positive on the point you raised about independent chairmen, or independent members? Sir Anthony Holland: I think the more independence the local committee has the greater the confidence in what its outcome will be. Q202 Sir Paul Beresford: How do you get that down to local authorities? Sir Anthony Holland: We have this assembly every year of all the standards committees, where the chairmen come along and the monitoring officers come, and we try to emphasise, and we have done it on each of the three occasions, the importance of having independent chairmen and, even more importantly, independent members as well. Q203 Andrew Bennett: You have this whole process of investigation. Do you think the sanctions against individual councillors at the end are reasonable and sensible? Sir Anthony Holland: On balance I think they probably are, yes. Q204 Andrew Bennett: And you do not think there is a danger that you penalise the electorate rather than the council? Sir Anthony Holland: That is always a danger and, again, it is a balancing exercise of which is the more important objective. Parliament has decided, and I think that is right, that this is the more important objective, to get the council's behaviour, if you like, totally above board, objectively considered, and dealt with. Q205 Andrew Bennett: I am aware of a councillor who has been suspended for six months from all his council activities because he hit one of his constituents. He was elected relatively recently; most of the people who voted for him would know of his fiery nature. Is it really fair on his constituents that for six months he will not be able to pursue matters and do representation? Sir Anthony Holland: I suppose that is the price you have to pay for this kind of legislation. Q206 Andrew Bennett: Do you think it is good legislation? Sir Anthony Holland: Life is not very fair and occasionally, when you have any legislation, there are drawbacks to parts of it and it may not be perfect. If I had to stand back and make an assessment of this particular piece of legislation's intent I think it is a good piece of legislation. I started out having no experience; I have made no bones about this of local government; I was appalled by some of the things I saw in the first 15 months or 18 months when we looked at every complaint. I had no idea such things went on. It has not actually destroyed my faith in local government because I think by and large the vast majority, 98 per cent of people, do a very good job often with great difficulty and at great demand and personal sacrifice to their families. Q207 Andrew Bennett: So do you think after two and a half years you have improved the standards in local government? Sir Anthony Holland: I could not make a judgment; that is for others to judge. Q208 Mr Sanders: For the record, what is the annual budget? Sir Anthony Holland: £8.9 million. Q209 Chairman: I think the last statement but one was very positive so I was going to say it is a very good note on which to end, but do you want to risk spoiling that, Mr Prince? Mr Prince: Just going back to an earlier question, the Board handles about 1,000 cases in the course of a year in terms of referred cases. Q210 Chairman: Is that the value for money question? Mr Prince: Yes. A thousand cases are considered in terms of one of the statutory sanctions. Mr Sanders: But if they were not there they would not be considered, would they, and therefore the money would not be spent. Chairman: On which note I think it is a good time to thank you for your evidence. Witnesses: Rt Hon Nick Raynsford, a Member of the House, Minister for Local and Regional Government and Fire, and Mr Paul Rowsell, Official, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, examined. Q211 Chairman: Good afternoon, Minister. Would you introduce yourself, please? Mr Raynsford: I am Minister for Local and Regional Government, accompanied by Paul Rowsell, a senior official in our department with an oversight of the work of the Standards Board. Q212 Chairman: Would you like to make an introductory statement? Mr Raynsford: No. I am happy to go straight to questions. Q213 Christine Russell: How successful do you think the Standards Board has been in restoring, improving, public trust in councils and the elected members? Mr Raynsford: I think I would say, first of all, that establishing public confidence and trust is not something that is amenable to quick, overnight judgments. Trust can be damaged quite seriously by individual cases in a particular council area, and that may take several years to recover. More general trust in the operation of local government is extremely important; we believe that the Standards Board does play a hugely important role in building public confidence; the very fact that it is there, that it is able to deal with complaints, that it can investigate them in a thorough and impartial way all add to the scope for enhanced public confidence, but I would expect it to be a little longer. After all, the Board has been in existence for only three years, and I would expect a longer term period before I could give a definitive statement, but I think it is making an important contribution and I think its existence is crucial to public confidence in local government. Q214 Christine Russell: But do you feel more needs to be done to raise public awareness of the existence of the Standards Board? Mr Raynsford: I think it is almost inevitable that a new body does take a certain period of time both to get fully and effectively operational and to build understanding in the wider world. This is not the sort of material that will find its way into most media every day of the week, and it does take time. Q215 Sir Paul Beresford: Has the Board suggested changes to you that might improve the opportunity for it to do its task? Mr Raynsford: The Board has taken a number of steps and I think in particular has given a lot of attention to how it can help to spread good practice and understanding on the part of local authorities and how they best handle complaints and deal with matters that might otherwise be referred to the Board. I think that is equally important to the role of providing a body which can investigate complaints, and I have been very keen in response to suggestions from the Board that they should develop and take forward that work in spreading good practice and encouraging councils themselves to train and develop their own members in the high standards. Q216 Sir Paul Beresford: Have they suggested changes in the code of conduct? Mr Raynsford: Well, they are looking at it at the moment. It was my suggestion that they should review the code after a period of three years of its being in existence, and I am delighted they are doing that. Q217 Mr Sanders: Has the Standards Board met its aim of fulfilling confidence in local democracy and governance? Mr Raynsford: As I said in response to Christian Russell's question I think it is too soon to give as definitive a statement but I am confident that it is fulfilling its role and that public confidence will be enhanced as a result of the continued work of the Standards Board. Q218 Mr Sanders: So will you be recommending that the rules are now extended to members of Parliament? Mr Raynsford: These are different issues. The Standards Board is there to look into matters relating to local government and there are separate procedures for dealing with complaints against members of Parliament. Q219 Mr Sanders: Such as training of members, for example? Mr Raynsford: Well, it would not be for me to make such a recommendation but I think there are lessons that can be learned from the experience of bodies doing parallel work, and I am sure the Committee on Standards and Public Life will be looking very closely and with interest at the good work being done by the Standards Board. Q220 Chairman: Will you have discussions with your colleagues about whether bodies like primary care trusts might be subject to similar scrutiny? Mr Raynsford: I am sure there is scope for learning through the dissemination of best practice, there is no doubt, but I have to say I have rather limited my remit to oversight of the Standards Board itself, to ensuring that the teething troubles they face in the early period of time as a result of the delays that built up over certain cases were dealt with expeditiously, that the Board is able to fulfil its function and to meet its overarching objective of building public confidence in the institutions of local government. Q221 Chairman: But do you have something good to offer to colleagues in other areas of government, that there might be some rationale in looking at something like that? Mr Raynsford: Yes. Q222 Mr Betts: What importance do you give, Minister, to the issue of training councillors so they become fully aware of the code of practice, the guidance, etc? Mr Raynsford: I think that is very important indeed, that the Standards Boards work in disseminating good practice, in encouraging training, in helping local authorities themselves develop appropriate training and development programmes for members. All of that is crucial. I remember when I first became a member of a local authority we had virtually no training at all other than the programme that had been put in place by my party before I was elected. One was then dropped in at the deep end and expected to function as a councillor dealing with quite complex issues with very little preparation or training. In that case it was rather crucial because there had been a fundamental change in the composition of the local authority as a result of two very large swings in public preference in the relevant elections, so you had a lot of very young inexperienced councillors. I think nowadays we have learned that there is a need for much more to be done. Certainly through our capacity building programme we are assisting councils to do more, and the whole leadership centre is giving real attention to what is necessary to help develop and train councillors, so there is much more attention to that nowadays. Yes, this issue of standards is crucial, so we are very supportive of the approach which the Standards Board has taken and we are very keen to encourage councils to build on the good advice that the Board has made available. Q223 Mr Betts: But the reality is that if a councillor decides that the training is there but they do not want it, they can still carry on being a councillor and taking the decisions that any other councillor would take who did not have the training course, and yet any councillor who maybe is on a regulatory committee or a planning committee and so on will not be allowed to go on those committees until they have been trained in that specific task. Is there a slight problem here in the way that there is no censor at all if the councillor refuses to go on a training course? Mr Raynsford: This is the issue that comes up repeatedly with anyone who is elected to public office, whether it is members of Parliament or councillors; all of us are ultimately accountable to the electorate and that is the final court of judgment and it is difficult to put in place highly prescriptive obligations on people who are not answerable to the officers in the local government and the local authority any more than we are answerable to the authorities in this House. We are answerable to our electorate and ultimately one hopes that people will act sensibly and responsibly but it is quite difficult to see how you can put in place very prescriptive obligations without creating a potential risk that someone is called to account other than by their electorate. Q224 Mr Betts: But councillors who in some authorities do not go on a training course for licensing regulations do not go on the licensing committees? Mr Raynsford: But the council is perfectly free to have such rules if it so chooses. Q225 Mr Betts: So councils could say "If you have not been on a training course on matters of standards and conduct then you will not be allowed in any council meeting"? Mr Raynsford: I am quite relaxed about councils adopting those kinds of rules and I would encourage that, but I would not want a highly prescriptive centralised regime insisting that people must go through certain detailed requirements before they are eligible to perform their functions as councillors. That would seem to me to be overbearing on the part of central government. Q226 Mr O'Brien: On the question of the Standards Board and the fact that they underestimated the amount of complaints that they would receive and obviously the practice of trying to deal with all the complaints was a problem in the first few months, was the Standards Board under resourced to manage the input of the complaints? Mr Raynsford: I think the thing you must remember was that this was an entirely new venture. It was starting from scratch; it was moving into territory which was to a large extent unknown. I do not think it was surprised by the number of cases. I think the Board was troubled both by the complexity of some of the cases and the inability in some of the early stages to be able to devolve responsibility for investigating beyond the Board itself. We have acted in response to the concerns that were raised and we have allowed, through changes both in legislation and in regulations, the Board to devolve responsibility for decisions to officers of the Board and, indeed, to allow local investigation as well as local determination on cases, and that has taken a little time to put in place. On resources, when the chairmen came to see me I suppose about 18 months ago to highlight some of the resource difficulties they were facing, we did consider the issues carefully and we have made an additional £900,000 available to the Board to enable it to tackle the backlog. That I am pleased to say has helped the Board to respond very effectively indeed, and we have seen a dramatic reduction in the backlog and now we are seeing the Board moving forward confidently to meet its targets for expeditious handling of its cases. Q227 Mr O'Brien: Was the additional resource to bring in more officers to investigate the cases on a proper level? Mr Raynsford: It was more than that but it was certainly to enable the Board to have the staff available to be able to cope with the volume of work and the complexity of the cases that had to be handled. Q228 Andrew Bennett: You gave them the extra money 2003‑4, 2004‑5. Is that going to continue or have you now cleared the backlog, or they have, and their funding is going to revert to where it was? Mr Raynsford: I have had recent discussions with the Board about their budget for 2005‑6. We certainly see the need for contingent resource; there is no question of the level of resource being reduced by that amount of the extra increase, but clearly we expect the Board to act in an expeditious way and we will be finalising the budget with them in the reasonably near future. Q229 Andrew Bennett: Right. So how much do they get? Mr Raynsford: I am not at liberty to say yet but I am determined that they will have the resources they need to be able to continue to provide a high quality service and to maintain the gains that have been achieved over the last 18 months. Q230 Andrew Bennett: So how are we as a Committee to make an assessment as to whether we are getting value for money from the money they are having? Mr Raynsford: These are very difficult judgments because if you start with the principle that it is public confidence in the institution of local government that is the ultimate measure of success, it is quite difficult to put a monetary value on that, and certainly with the difference between, say, a budget of nine and ten million it would be very hard to say that the difference of a million in that budget is the measure of success or failure in terms of public confidence. However, if one looks in terms of the level of cases being handled, the speed with which those cases are being completed, the volume of other work that the Board is undertaking in terms of advice and good practice guidance and training for local government, then one can form a view as to whether it is acting in a cost effective way. I certainly believe it is at the moment and I think it will be open to the Committee to look at that too. Q231 Andrew Bennett: The Committee might, and you can, but what about my constituents who might feel that a few extra daffodils in each local authority park would be better value for money than an organisation like this, most of whose investigations are frivolous complaints? Mr Raynsford: If I can put it this way, I am sure there are many of your constituents, and many of mine, who, presented with the issue in those terms at a time when they have not had any high profile complaints against their local authority might well say "Yes, maybe it would be better value for money to have more daffodils in the parks". As soon as the first serious complaint comes up that a councillor has not acted properly, I suspect you get a very different judgment, why was there not a body in place to take action to deal with that, and that is the difficulty. This is about confidence which is why in my initial response to your question I emphasised it is very difficult to measure long‑term objectives like public confidence in the institution of local government against short‑term measures of value for money performance. Andrew Bennett: If it was really serious could it not have been dealt with in the courts anyway? Q232 Sir Paul Beresford: Or by the Audit Commission? Mr Raynsford: I have to say my feeling is that there are many people who have felt that the previous arrangements did not provide an adequate form of redress. The courts inevitably raise issues of cost and the capacity of individuals themselves to take on perhaps more powerful individuals who can be quite threatening and intimidatory if they are challenged, and I think the Standards Board provides a very necessary and very important safeguard that many people are extremely pleased to see in place, so I certainly would not think there was any benefit in going back to the previous status quo. Q233 Sir Paul Beresford: But the Audit Commission does some of that anyway? Could they not be very simply added to it? Mr Raynsford: No. The Audit Commission has different responsibilities, as you are well aware. Q234 Sir Paul Beresford: But it could be added? Mr Raynsford: I am sure if it was suggested that that could be done then that could be explored and I suspect there have been discussions about this, but I am sure the Audit Commission would be the first to say they would require the necessary resources on the same scale as the Standards Board to be able to perform the function that it performs, and I am not sure what would be gained by that process. Q235 Sir Paul Beresford: Perhaps less duplication? Mr Raynsford: I do not think it is duplication. There is a memorandum of understanding between the Standards Board and the Commission, as indeed there is with the local government ombudsman. It is not suggested that the Audit Commission should take over the local government ombudsman functions. There is obviously a common interest, but they are different functions performed well and separately by the two separate bodies, and exactly the same applies, in my view, with the Standards Board. Q236 Mr Sanders: Coming back to value for money, the Board has since its existence come up with 160 cases where sanctions have been applied. That works out at about £220,000 per sanctioned member. I just cannot believe that however many bad apples there were before this system was put into being, it cost that amount of public money. Mr Raynsford: Let me put it this way, and I will take an example from the past. If the activities associated with Mr Poulson 20, 30 years ago had been identified and investigated earlier, had there been a Standards Board able to take action, then I think not only would the public have felt very much happier but there would probably have been very clear value for money in that a lot of the events that took place that caused huge public concern at the time could have been prevented. I am not saying it would have been but it could have been, and I seriously do not think you can take a view that because, over a relatively short period of time, the three years or so that the Standards Board has been in operation, two and a half years that it has been investigating cases, the actual monetary value attached to cases where sanctions have been decided appears to be quite high, I do not see that is a proper basis for forming a judgment about a body which is there, as I have said, essentially to build public confidence in local government. Now, it only requires one high profile case to completely change people's perception, and that is the point I was trying to illustrate by reference to Mr Poulson. Q237 Sir Paul Beresford: But equally the Audit Commission would or should have picked up Mr Poulson as well, if they were in existence at the time, and they were not. Mr Raynsford: I am not sure they would have initially - and they were not in existence, you are quite right - because I suspect a lot of the issues were to do with complaints about probity and relationships and it is precisely those that the Standards Board is in the strongest position to investigate. Q238 Mr Betts: We have heard evidence that the Standards Board was initially swamped by the enormous number of cases coming in and they were working out how to approach this and develop ways forward. It took, however, until November of last year for regulations which allowed cases to be for investigation and determination at local level. Could something not have been done more quickly in the interim to help the Standards Board out of the difficulties they were clearly in? Mr Raynsford: We would like to have done so but I am sure you understand it was necessary that the regulations were the subject of consultation and those consultations highlighted a particular problem, and the problem was the potential conflict of interest for a monitoring officer who has given advice to a member about the member's behaviour who might then be, under the original proposals, the investigating officer and it would clearly have been a potential conflict of interest so we had to make provision which required legislation to enable the monitoring officer to delegate responsibility for investigation in a particular case. That was the issue highlighted by the consultation which required an amendment to the 2003 Local Government Act and that was the reason for the relatively long period of time before we were able to put in place the new arrangement. I understand exactly the frustration: I hope you will understand that actually the delicacy of that issue made it essential that we did make the necessary legislative change and that was the reason for the delay. Q239 Mr Betts: And there was no possibility to do anything else in the interim to help? Mr Raynsford: We could have but it would have left the monitoring officer, who was the person in charge with investigating, being in a position of potential conflict of interest which could have seriously undermined the very thing we have been talking about for most of this afternoon, which is public confidence in local government. Q240 Mr Betts: And how do you see the local standards committees operating in the longer term? What is their central role? Do you think they can be seen to be demonstrably free from bias, which I think is one of the tests about how people perceive the process? Mr Raynsford: I have given quite a lot of thought to this and I have spoken to both the Standards Board annual conference on the subject and also to a very interesting meeting I had with the independent members of the Standards Board in the Greater Manchester area of standards committees, where I was invited to talk to a group a month or two ago. My view overall is that they are working generally well but they have a balance to achieve. On the one side they have to convince the public that they are independent, and the presence of independent members is crucial to that. On the other hand, they are not to be so independent that the local authority does not itself take ownership for the whole issue of standards and encouragement of good practice in the authority, so you need to have not just independent members but councillors who are thoroughly committed and involved. Now, inevitably there are some people in the public who regard the presence of councillors on a local standards committee as prejudicing the outcome, because they will have a vested interest. I do not think that is the case but I do think it is a delicate issue and standards committees do have to do these two separate things. In general I think they are doing well; I am keen to see the role of independent members developed - I myself have expressed sympathy for the view that in general they should be chaired by independent members, I think that is a way of giving a very strong message of reassurance to the public that these are not likely to be swayed by the interests of the council - but again I do not wish to be unduly prescriptive in this area. It is a matter for local government and what we are trying to do is help, with the Standards Board itself, raise the confidence of individual standards committees and let them share good practice. One of the reasons I was particularly keen to go to that gathering in the Greater Manchester area was that it brought different independent members from different standards committees together, and that sharing of good practice is I am sure very constructive. Q241 Christine Russell: You said in an earlier answer that you welcomed the review of the code of conduct. Why do you welcome it? What concerns do you have with the existing code? Do you consider it ambiguous or confusing? What is the concern? Mr Raynsford: I think my response is implicit in an earlier answer I have given ‑ that we are in an area which is rapidly developing; this is a new institution; it has already a lot of experience, and inevitably some of the assumptions we have made at the outset have not proved to be sustainable. I have talked about the need to change legislation relating to the role of the monitoring officer because of potential conflicts of interest, so things like this emerge from the experience of the work of the Board and of standards committees, and therefore it seemed to me this it is timely, now that we have had two and a half years of practical experience, to begin to look at the ways in which the code might be changed. I do not think it is going to require fundamental changes but I do think it is an appropriate moment to take stock to see where in some cases modest adjustments might help to improve things and other areas where there may be a case for looking a bit more radically. I know the issue of whistle‑blowing has been a matter of real concern and I am sure it is sensible to look again at that because there are conflicting interests there. On the one side you have the need to discourage a culture of collusion that might prevent exposure of malpractice; on the other side you have to avoid a framework that creates undue pressures on councillors and which might be seen to be unduly prescriptive. Q242 Christine Russell: Do you have another concern which is the fact that it appears to be that the code of conduct has actually deterred a number of people from putting themselves forward as candidates, particularly for the smaller authorities like parish councils? Mr Raynsford: I do not accept that. I think we heard a lot of hype in the early days that this was going to lead to a mass exodus from parish councils; in my experience it was greatly exaggerated. The fact of the matter is that parish councillors were subject to standards before. It was not a case of new imposition. What the code did was to codify expectations for the first time, which I think was frankly helpful, and it did quite rightly fire a warning shot across the bows of those who believed that, because they were part of a relatively small body, they had no need to worry about the standards and practice of public life that everyone knows is appropriate. I have to say I do not accept that presumption at all. Whatever level of public life you are engaged in, whether parish council or in government, I think maintenance of the highest standards is absolutely fundamental to public confidence, and I think it was absolutely right to apply the code to parish councils and I do not think there has been across the country as a whole any serious loss of talent from parish councils. There has been, I am certain, greater sensitivity to standards of openness and declaration about prejudicial interests and, judging by the volume of complaints that the Standards Board has received, that is a matter of real concern to many people in many areas who felt previously that some parish councils did not always uphold the standards one would want to see in public life. Q243 Christine Russell: But without wishing to condone any prejudicial behaviour, can you not accept that sometimes there are individuals who have real, serious conflicts of interest because they live in a small community and perhaps wear an awful lot of different hats in that community? They could be a school governor, a church warden, could run a number of voluntary activities. Is it not more challenging perhaps to be a parish councillor and comply with the code of conduct than perhaps if you were a councillor in a big metropolitan area? Mr Raynsford: I genuinely do not think so. You, like me, live in your constituency and will know that a public representative living in their community is going to be subject to quite a lot of scrutiny, and the principles of openness and declaration of matters that might be prejudicial to their public performance - this is not a question implied about people having to reveal their private circumstances, that is not the case, but on matters that might affect their performance of public duties - I think disclosure is proper and appropriate. Q244 Mr O'Brien: The evidence that has been presented to the Committee and comment that has been made by members and organisations is that the code of conduct has given opportunity for troublemakers to make capital out of what is happening in their own area for political gain. Do you think the Standards Board have been effective in preventing this kind of activity? Mr Raynsford: This is always going to be an issue which does raise concern as to whether the existence of a mechanism for complaint encourages the vexatious or the unjustified complainant. I think the only way this can be resolved is by a speedy process of filtering cases which the Standards Board now has in place: I think it is now dealing with all first complaints. Initial screening is handled I think within 11 days with the objective of achieving it in ten, and those cases where there is no merit in the complaint should be immediately filtered out at that point, and that is the safeguard against the possibility of unjustified and vexatious complainants making excessive use of a system. But there is always going to be a risk with any system that allows complaint that there will be some people who try and abuse it for other purposes. That happens in the courts and in tribunals and is something that we have to guard against, and we have robust systems in place to provide safeguards but we can never wholly prevent. Q245 Sir Paul Beresford: Do you think the Stasi clause or the whistleblower clause inspires people to make the excuse for those sorts of complaints? Mr Raynsford: No. I think the people who want to make vexatious or malicious complaints will do so, and do so in any context. It could be in the case of a dispute over a garden hedge with a neighbour. Q246 Sir Paul Beresford: Some of the evidence given to us has indicated that people on local authorities in particular thought that this in fact did stimulate complaints. Mr Raynsford: There is very little evidence. We have seen a more or less constant level of cases coming to the Standards Board over the two and a half years that they have been fully operational. I do not see any significant evidence there has been a huge increase or after the initial surge a dramatic reduction, which might be expected if this was thought to be in the short term a process of stimulating artificial complaints. Q247 Mr O'Brien: Earlier in a question I put to you about resources there was this issue of officers being appointed and the fact that there was a shortage of officers in the first instance. Do you think there should be penalties against people where it is proved that they have been raising frivolous or vexatious questions? It is wasting officers' time and resources. Should it be highlighted that this is a situation that will face penalty? Mr Raynsford: I can understand the thinking behind the question and I have a certain amount of sympathy with it. The difficulty is the process of then investigating the vexatious complaint to establish beyond all reasonable doubt that the person should be subject to a penalty is likely to be disproportionate. I think the right response is to have the filter which has the result of a quick but nevertheless serious look at the evidence, decides that the case is non meritorious, and the complainant is immediately notified that that is it, the case will not be taken any further. That sends a pretty powerful message that the system will not provide an easy route for people who simply want to use the Complaints and Standards Boards for unjustified purposes. Of course, people who repeat vexatious or unmeritorious complaints do put themselves in a position where it would be possible for their political opponents to expose that in the local press, so I think there are certain safeguards. But it would be very difficult to have to go through a process of checking in detail the basis of that complaint, as to whether it was simply a genuine mistake, someone thinking there might be grounds for complaint, against someone acting irresponsibly and for malicious purposes. Q248 Mr O'Brien: But the whole purpose of the code of conduct is to build and extend the confidence of the electorate, and if you are parties on a local authority who want to score points off each other with frivolous complaints, surely this is not the best way to encourage the electorate to give support? As the minister responsible, and obviously you do have concerns over some of the issues, are you intending to pursue this matter with the chairmen of the standards boards to keep abreast of the situation so we do not fall into that trap of a situation where the electorate become disillusioned? Mr Raynsford: Yes, very much so. I will continue to keep a fairly close watch on this. I am reassured by the fact that the trend in casework going to the Standards Board does not show a surge in the majority of cases come from members of public or from council officers rather than from other councillors, but if there were to be a trend showing significant growth in malicious an unjustified complaints then I would want to see further consideration to be given to what might be done to discourage. At the moment I do not think that is the case but I can give you the assurance that I will continue to keep a watch on this. Q249 Chairman: Do you not think there should be some local filtering? You probably know who some of the vexatious complainants in your constituency might be, and I suspect some of the local authority members might know who in the bodies beneath them might be. Would it not save some of the strain on the Standards Board if there was some pre filtering? Mr Raynsford: Undoubtedly it could but there is a downside, which is twofold. One is that if the filtering was to be done locally there is a risk that the public would lose confidence in the independence of the process. In particular the vexatious people you have described, some of whom I am well familiar with, would never believe that the case had been rejected, if it was rejected, fairly if it was done locally. Q250 Andrew Bennett: They never believe that anyway! Mr Raynsford: I agree, but it is much easier to demonstrate that they are wrong when an independent body, the Standards Board, has investigated the case. Secondly, equally importantly, there is a need for consistency between areas and I cannot see how, if you did depend simply on local filtering, you would not get quite significant variations in the levels of proof, the standards of investigation, applied between areas. So both on the question of public confidence and on consistency I believe it is essential that there is national filtering but it has to be done quickly and I am delighted that the Standards Board has been very successful in speeding up that process. Q251 Andrew Bennett: What about a moratorium on complaints in the month before local elections? Mr Raynsford: It is an interesting issue because there is a genuine concern that a complainant can get a complaint in quickly, then publicise it and can use that for electoral purposes ‑‑ Q252 Andrew Bennett: That is why I have asked you the question ‑‑ Mr Raynsford: I understand exactly the anxiety. Q253 Andrew Bennett: ‑‑ so what about answering it? Mr Raynsford: My view about this is that the safeguard against that - and I am not not answering, I was only setting out the logic - against that is to have speedy filtering of the complaints and a speedy rejection of those that are unjustified so that the person against whom a malicious complaint has been made for electoral purposes is able to use that rejection by the Standards Board of the complaint to get their own back in the course of that election. That seems to me the best safeguard. The risk of having a moratorium is that a genuine and serious case could not be investigated and that might undermine public confidence if they were told there was nothing they could do for a period of time. Andrew Bennett: The logic of your proposal that they get an answer quickly is people leave it closer and closer to election date to make the complaint? Q254 Sir Paul Beresford: And make the complaint more complicated so that it takes time to investigate. Mr Raynsford: All I would say is that because I am a London member my local newspaper only appears weekly so there is very little benefit in making the complaint less than a week before the election because it will not get any publicity in the local organ, so I am not sure that that does apply. Q255 Andrew Bennett: 60 per cent of the complaints in 2003‑4 required no investigation. Have you any idea whether the people who made the complaints were satisfied with the answer that they got from the Standards Board? Mr Raynsford: I do not have objective evidence on that. I suspect, and you will have your own views on this too, that some will remain dissatisfied; some will accept the outcome. I am pretty confident that if that initial screening had been by the local authority, a larger proportion would have been likely to be dissatisfied because they would not have had the confidence of knowing that it was an independent body. Q256 Andrew Bennett: As the Standards Board is better understood, would you hope that the number of those sorts of complaints steadily goes down? Mr Raynsford: Yes, because I would hope that the very presence of the Standards Board would ensure that vexatious and non meritorious cases would not be brought and that the public would understand the remit of the Board and the fact that a vexatious complaint was unlikely to be considered so I would, but I think these things always take quite a long period of time and I would not like to give a forecast as to when one might expect to see that process developing across the country as a whole. Q257 Mr Sanders: At what point after a complaint has been made should the person who is the subject of the complaint be made aware of it? Mr Raynsford: Again, a very good question, and I know there have been anxieties on the part of people who have been the subject of a complaint that they are not informed during the initial screening period. I think that is acceptable, providing two conditions are met. Firstly, that the initial screening is very quick and, secondly, that there is a clear statement by the Standards Board at the end of that screening which is available to the person against whom the complaint has been made that the complaint has been rejected. Q258 Mr Sanders: Should the monitoring officer of the council be informed depending on the nature of the complaint, or is that pre judging it? Mr Raynsford: This is an interesting issue but there is a risk of pre judging the outcome and, while I can see some possible merit in the argument, I would personally want to see rather more evidence of the implications both ways before expressing a view. This is precisely the kind of issue that I would hope would be discussed in the course of the review of the current code. Q259 Christine Russell: Finally, looking to the future, do you have any plans to change the role or the responsibilities of the Standards Board, and when will the review be carried out? Mr Raynsford: We have no plans for fundamental changes. We believe that the Board is an essential and very necessary part of the overall architecture of the framework for local government in the country. We do believe there is scope for fine‑tuning and improving some of the procedures and some of the details of the code, hence the review of it. I am sure that will be an on‑going process. I would not expect to see tablets of stone established for a few years yet and, indeed, in any good system for dealing with complaints from the public there is probably a constant need to be thinking about whether all the procedures will be as good and efficient as they ought to be, so I would not want to fix a finite time and say that by such‑and‑such a year we will have got everything absolutely right. But I do repeat what I have said, that I think the Board has made very real progress since it came into existence; I am pleased with the direction of travel and the speed of travel, the speed of improvement in case‑handling, particularly recently, and I am confident that it will make a significant impact in building public confidence in the integrity and the decency of local government. Q260 Christine Russell: The Board has now been up and running for nearly four years, so when will the review be carried out? Mr Raynsford: Well, the review of the code is happening already. Q261 Christine Russell: No. The work of the Board? Mr Raynsford: We will want to review, in the normal way we do with agencies and non departmental public bodies, to a five‑year timescale. Q262 Chairman: On which note can I thank you very much, and call the session to a close. Mr Raynsford: Thank you. |