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My main purpose is to speak to our amendments 24, 25 and 26 and new clauses 17 and 18. We have already been able to touch on some of the main themes that we explored in Committee, one of which is very simple. We do not see why it is necessary to write on to the statute book things that any decent local authority should be doing anyway-promoting democracy, responding to petitions, and securing the involvement of people in their local area. That seems likely to bring about the very opposite of the result that Ministers claim. We believe that the Government's mission, whereby everything and everyone must be micro-managed by Ministers and officials from Westminster and Whitehall, serves only to depress local government turnout and to demoralise local councillors. In Committee, we could scarcely find one person on the Government Benches other than the Minister who would defend in principle those three aspects of the Bill. The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) is not here, so I will not embarrass him by quoting directly what he said on
Second Reading, but even he, doughty defender of the Government though he was, made it clear that the petitions element, in particular, was merely micro-management.
The Government, in their wisdom, chose to reject that consensus view, which we have already heard expressed in the debate on general competence. However, in July, just after the Bill came out of Committee, they took the notable decision to publish a consultation paper called "Strengthening local democracy", which announced:
"This consultation explores whether local government has the powers it needs to meet today's challenges...It sets out a range of proposals to promote local democratic renewal."
When we read it, we found that some of the things in it are in the Bill before us today, as they were in Committee. For example, question 11 asks:
"How can Councils best reverse the decline in confidence?"
"Should the duty to respond to petitions"-
"be extended to sub-regional bodies?"
Section 162 suggests that the duty should apply to leaders boards:
"Applying a duty to respond to petitions would also make these structures more directly responsive to citizens."
This is all the wrong way round. It might have been better had consultation on these matters preceded the Bill instead of the Government's having yet another consultation right in the middle of the Bill's going through the House-hence our amendments, which I hope the Minister will take in a spirit of due gratitude. They seek to give the Government time to look at the results of the consultation, which is not yet complete, and to consider whether Ministers want to amend any part of the Bill in the light of its findings. Then, after the election victory for the Minister's party that I know she is anticipating, she will have time to consider what the consultation has said and to produce any changes that she wants to produce by 1 July next year. We will be interested to hear her response to this moderate suggestion, which seeks not to obviate the provisions but to give her time to consider them in the light of the consultation that her own Department has issued.
As an inducement for the Minister to consider the amendments seriously, I will deal with the Government's record in responding to petitions, which has been raised by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy). This morning, I conducted an experiment by going to every Government Department website and punching in the word "petitions" to see what was the response. Only in a very few cases-the Downing street website is one exception to the rule; the Department for Communities and Local Government may be another-is there any indication that the Department is organising a response to the petitions that it receives. Surely, before laying down this duty on local authorities, the Government should put their own house in order so that when one types "petitions" into the website of the Foreign Office or the Ministry of Justice one is not referred to petitions that apparently have nothing to do with what that Department does.
Julia Goldsworthy: I understand the hon. Gentleman's going through the failure of all Departments to address this issue. However, the consultation specifically refers to regional bodies. I am sure that a lot of people would be frustrated to find that the petition of 30,000 signatories against the south-west regional spatial strategy has had no formal response. Should not the Government have considered that whole process and could they not have dealt with it without the need for any legislation?
Mr. Goodman: The hon. Lady makes a perfectly valid point and reminds me not to go through all the Departments' responses, which would take up a great deal of time. However, it is remarkable that if one types the word "petitions" into the website of, say, the Ministry of Justice, which must receive petitions, all one gets is references on to company windings-up and bankruptcy petition statistics, not a response from the Department itself.
Our amendments propose yet again the idea of abolishing the Standards Board. In Committee, we argued that most right hon. and hon. Members will have known of cases involving a complaint about a councillor to the Standards Board where that councillor may not have known the name of the person bringing the charges against them. Such situations are clearly unjust and have an effect on the willingness of new councillors to stand and of old councillors to remain.
In her interesting response to the debate in Committee, the Minister conceded a great deal of our case by emphasising that the conduct regime was devolved last year and saying that the board's role has changed to that of a strategic regulator providing local authorities with the tools, training and guidance that they need to reinforce the often robust conduct regime in local authorities. I put it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the House that if phrases such as "strategic regulator" are hurled around into the atmosphere, one must examine them very carefully.
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It became evident in Committee that the change in the nature of the Standards Board that was brought about last year leaves it with little to do that could not be done elsewhere. After all, if it is guidance that local authorities need, the Local Government Association can provide that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) said at one point in Committee. If financial impropriety is the problem, the local government ombudsman is there to investigate it as district auditor. If there is a case of libel or slander, that is covered by the civil law, and breaches of the criminal law are of course eligible to be investigated and prosecuted by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts. Everyone is casting around for a reason why the Standards Board should be in place, but there really does not seem to be any substantial reason on offer. As we say in our paper "Control Shift", the Standards Board should be abolished. If the Minister does not commit tonight to doing that, that is the commitment that we have made if we are elected to Government.
New clause 18 refers to comprehensive area assessments. Again, we had a telling debate about that in Committee, during which two principal fascinating points emerged. The first was that there is no clear evidence yet that the CAA process has resulted in a net gain. Were there such
evidence, the Minister or the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich would have produced it. The second was that it is hard to find a comprehensive figure for how much it costs. The Lyons review, using an estimate prepared by the National Audit Office, not a figure that the Department has produced, estimated the cost at £2 billion. Michael Frater, the original head of the Lifting the Burdens Task Force, said that 80 per cent. of the costs were those of reporting to central Government, rather than to the local communities that councils are there to serve.
In her response in Committee, the Minister did not claim that the regime was working in the sense of producing any kind of tangible result. For that reason, we have tabled new clause 18. Unless she gives us some very good reason to do the contrary, we intend to press it to the vote if we possibly can, along with our new clause on the Standards Board.
Graham Stringer: I wish to speak to new clauses 10 and 11. As we discussed in the previous debate, the Bill is in a very real sense a lost opportunity to deal with the relationship between local, regional and central Government and to allow local government to deal with many of the problems that it faces. It surprises me, given that the Bill deals with petitions and consultations, some of which I believe are best left to local choice, that it misses out a matter that has become increasingly demanded by local people when there are difficult issues: the regulation of referendums.
Referendums are difficult matters. It is difficult to know where they should begin and end in a democracy that, at both local and national level, has been predominantly representative for its whole history. In parts of the world, referendums have been used by extreme right-wing Governments. They have been used to death in California so that local or state democracy fails to work, because referendums can come to opposite conclusions. They can both reduce expenditure and increase the demands on it at the same time. They are therefore particularly difficult issues.
What is clear, however, is that all parties have now accepted referendums in principle. All three parties had in their manifesto a commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon treaty, or the European constitution as it then was. My party had in its 1997 manifesto a commitment to referendums on devolution, which it carried through with a positive result. There was also a commitment to referendums on elected mayors, which have been used in a number of districts, and there have been referendums on a regional assembly in the north-east and congestion charges in Edinburgh and Manchester.
Although I start from a moderately sceptical point of view on referendums, having participated in the debates on both regional assemblies and the congestion charge in Manchester, it seems to me that done properly, they can involve a lot of people and bring about an outcome that people accept, whichever way it goes. At some times and in some areas, referendums are the right path to take. How strange, when we have had all that experience of them, that there is not a specific responsibility in local government Acts to allow them to take place and to regulate them.
When the congestion charge referendum was agreed to in Manchester, it was not clear whether it would be held under section 45 of the Local Government Act 2000,
section 116 of the Local Government Act 2003 or section 170 of the Transport Act 2000, all of which were introduced for different reasons but were not satisfactory. Although it was called a referendum and everybody recognised it as such, it was not technically a referendum within the legal meaning. That meant that the promoters of both the congestion charge itself and the referendum were one and the same person, which is not satisfactory. Although that experience turned out to have no bad consequences, it was wrong in principle, and it is the reason why I have tabled the new clauses. I shall not press them, but I am interested to hear what my right hon. Friend the Minister says in response.
What happened in Manchester, apart from the fact that people made it clear that they did not want the congestion charge, was that the promoters of the scheme appointed the person who ran the referendum. He was given an office in Manchester town hall next to the people who had done the detailed work on the congestion charge and the transport innovation fund bid. During that period, he accepted undisclosed hospitality from the promoters of the scheme. When I put in a request, I found that that was not part of the declared expenses.
When it came to determining the question to be put on the form, the only people who were talked to were the promoters of the scheme. Most bizarrely, although again with no actual consequences, when it came to the result of the referendum on the congestion charge the only people allowed to speak were the losers, the promoters of the scheme. Those of us who had been on the other side were not allowed to speak. It was as though there had been an election for a Member of this House and the only person allowed to speak was the loser. It was the most extraordinary circumstance.
In that particular case, the issues involved and the bias of the returning officer were so clear that they probably helped the no campaign, but it would not always be that way. In a much closer referendum, a biased returning officer, such as the one we had in Manchester, could affect the result. I therefore think that when there is an increasing appetite in our democracy for referendums on difficult issues, the Government need to find the right space in the legislative programme to regulate them, first so that people can ask for them and, secondly, so that there is a clear framework so that people cannot try to fiddle the system. I will be very interested in my right hon. Friend's response to that point.
Julia Goldsworthy: While listening to the contributions of the hon. Members for Manchester, Blackley (Graham Stringer) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew)-I am sure that other hon. Members will make similar contributions-it struck me that we should have had measures such as their proposals in the Bill. We should have had an opportunity to remove hurdles in primary legislation, including unintended hurdles, that are effectively blocking the effective function of local democracy. The Bill should have been an opportunity for a bottom-up process, whereby the blocks could have been presented to the Government, who could then have addressed them. It is unfortunate that the discussion of this group of new clauses and amendments has been the only time that such a process has worked.
Before the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley spoke on referendums I was sceptical, as I was regarding the points made by the hon. Member for Stroud. My
concern was that referendums could be hijacked and that they could be irrelevant. Why place a duty on local authorities when perhaps what we need is enabling legislation to allow the process to go forward? However, there is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed, and the hon. Gentleman did a great job in raising it.
It is disappointing that there has not been a proper process to allow for such a discussion, and that we are now tacking it on to the end of a lengthy debate. We may get some leeway from the Minister, but in most cases hon. Members' efforts will be frustrated.
The hon. Member for Stroud made a valid point about how the system of parish polls is being abused, but I am not entirely sure that his proposal would adequately deal with the problem. The hurdle might have been raised, but perhaps by only a very small amount. I remain concerned that the system is open to abuse, although I understand the need to address the problem that he identified.
After speaking to the leader of Newcastle council, John Shipley, I understand that the issue raised by the proposal made by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) is important. Although his proposal concerns an historical tradition, it would be a great to be able to introduce some equality to it.
I understand that the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) is going to talk about giving councils the option of reverting to a committee system if they feel they could benefit from it. I have absolutely no problem with supporting that principle.
On the measures proposed by the Conservatives, amendments 24 to 26 are effectively wrecking amendments, and I think we could vote against the Bill if we considered it to be so unsatisfactory. I do not understand why the Government do not understand that the way to deal with a rubbish local authority is not to require more of it through primary legislation, but to vote it out. It is simple. A lot of the issues could be dealt with through a best practice manual.
On the Conservatives' proposed new clauses, we share the scepticism about the Standards Board. In practice, it has not proved to be very efficient or effective in tackling concerns about the conduct of councillors. The system has also been vulnerable to vexatious complaints. Those are two of many reasons why it is not fit for purpose, and why there are no arguments for sustaining it.
Although more efforts are being made to engage the public in the comprehensive area assessment process, it is still difficult for people to understand. It is all about allowing councils to compare themselves with each other, but the public want to see how their councils compare in terms of things that they understand. They do not just want to know that their local council is as good as any other at delivering a service; they want to know that it is good in absolute terms. I am not sure that the existing system of inspection has addressed that.
I have some sympathy with some of the issues raised by Conservative Front Benchers, but I am also sympathetic to other proposals. As I said, the greatest pity of all is that the Bill does not set up a better mechanism for having such discussions regularly.
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Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne, Central) (Lab): I rise to move new clause 4, which stands in my name, and I hope to offer the House a little explanation of it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I just say to the House that the hon. Gentleman is actually going to speak to his new clause? For the benefit of all the House, we do not "move" new clauses when we are discussing a whole group from the beginning. We are debating the lead new clause-that is the one that has been moved. Other clauses and amendments will be moved as and when we come to them on the selection paper.
Jim Cousins: I am, as always, grateful for your clarification, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
New clause 4 would give the daughters of freemen the right to become freemen in their turn. The present situation is that only sons have that opportunity. The proposal would thus correct a significant inequality. It would also correct an anomaly that undermines freemen, where they remain, when exercising functions on behalf of their communities, and that undermines a significant part of our constitutional heritage.
It is important to explain that I am not talking about honorary freemen. They are a common part of the work of every local authority, and we are entirely familiar with their situation. Nor am I talking about the statutory position of freemen of the City of London, which is excluded in the proposed new clause.
The Municipal Corporations Act 1835 swept away the historic position of freemen who, through the guilds, had been the original governors of local communities up and down the country. In a significant number of places, freemen continued to exercise functions, usually charitable, whereby they used certain property and land for certain statutory purposes. That is the case in York, Chester, Coventry, Northampton, Durham, Beverley, a number of other places and, most significantly from my point of view, the city of Newcastle.
I can best explain the new clause and its importance with reference to the city of Newcastle, which has already been referred to today by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). I suspect hon. Members will be pleased that I am not going to accompany my references to Newcastle with references to John Lewis-a splendid store of which perhaps all in this House have learned rather too much in the recent past.
The freemen of the city of Newcastle continued to exercise functions after the 1835 Act. Their responsibility was to safeguard the Newcastle town moor and to use the benefits of grazing cattle on it for the benefit of the poor citizens of the city. The town moor therefore survived in a way that it probably would not have survived if it had simply been left in the hands of the council of the day. If that had happened, the moor probably would have been physically developed, but it has not. The moor remains, at the heart of the city of Newcastle, an area of open space that is protected by the right of the freemen of the city to graze their cattle. Importantly, the freemen do not control the freehold rights over the moor; they control only the right of herbage, but that safeguards the use of the land.
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