Mr.
Goodman: Has anyone come to my right hon. Friend in one of
his surgeries in Hitchin and Harpenden and said, “Can you direct
us to a community meeting that is an authority?” If he replied,
“Please do not talk nonsense”, did they respond with,
“Well, Member of Parliament, if you look at subsections (4) and
(5)(b) of clause 2, you will find that a community meeting is an
authority in Wales, but apparently not in England or anywhere
else”?
Mr.
Lilley: Although the range of issues raised at my
surgeries is breathtakingly wide, so far it has not included the issue
raised by my hon. Friend. I have never held a surgery that did not
raise a new issue that I had not previously discovered in 25 years. So,
in a future surgery, that issue will quite possibly come up, and I will
be better equipped to respond to it as a result of having served on
this
Committee. I
ask the Minister three concrete questions. Why are responsibilities in
relation to housing providers not covered by the Bill? Why are
responsibilities on planning issues, particularly planning inspectors,
not covered? Why do local authorities not have to explain why one
council can build in another council’s
area? 12.30
pm
Ms
Winterton: Once again, this has been a lively debate. I
shall cover as many of the issues that were raised as I can.
Local
authorities’ role as strategic landlords is covered in clause 1.
Planning is the responsibility of local authorities and is therefore
covered by clause 1. The Homes and Communities Agency is referred to in
clause
2(2)(b).
Mr.
Lilley: Clause 1 will impose a duty only on the principal
local authority to explain its responsibilities. It will not, say in
the case of North Hertfordshire district council, impose a duty to
explain how Luton’s responsibilities affect my
constituents.
Ms
Winterton: As I have said, where the local authority is a
strategic landlord, it will be covered by clause
1. On
the point raised by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne about
regional development agencies, as she will know, the House has agreed
to set up Select Committees to examine regional matters, which would
clearly be covered by regional development agencies. I should be happy
to give way to her to enable her to say whether she intends to raise,
through the auspices of the Regional Select Committees, the issue of
regional development agencies and whether they have been meeting her
and others; or is her party not participating in those
Committees?
Julia
Goldsworthy: My understanding is that regional development
agencies are delivering services in the community and should be
accountable to the people they affect. Yet we see the creation,
unfortunately, of yet another indirectly accountable organisation. Does
the Minister not support the idea that such organisations should be
directly accountable to the people they serve, rather than indirectly
accountable to an even more remote and unaccountable organisation via
Parliament?
Ms
Winterton: Personally, I was a supporter of regional
government. I am not sure whether the hon. Lady
was.
Ms
Winterton: Yes, I was a supporter of elected
regional Government, and I am sorry that it could not go forward.
[Interruption.] No; the hon. Member for Falmouth
and Camborne will also know that clauses 67 to 69 set out how the
leaders’ boards will operate. The leaders themselves are clearly
directly elected. I would have liked elected regional government, but
that was not to be. I am sure—and I hope—that she was
very supportive of that. She will see that those clauses deal with the
responsible regional authorities setting out how they intend to involve
local people in consultation. Leaders’ boards, through
sub-national reviews, draw up integrated strategies with the regional
development agencies.
I ask the
hon. Lady again whether she intends to participate in the Regional
Select Committees, which exist to ensure that she, as an elected
representative, can hold the regional development agencies to account,
in addition to the other ways in which they are held to account
locally. Will she be
participating?
Julia
Goldsworthy: I am sure that Cornwall would love a
representative on the Regional Select Committee. Unfortunately, despite
the fact that Labour has no Members of the European Parliament for the
south-west region and is not the largest party, it will have a
majority—
Mr.
Curry: I think that it is sixth in
Cornwall.
Julia
Goldsworthy: Yes, in the latest election, it came sixth,
behind the Cornish nationalists.
[Interruption.] The Minister is
speaking from a sedentary position, but perhaps she will listen. I know
that she is new to the post and may not understand how it works, but
Regional Select Committees will have a Government majority. The Liberal
Democrats would have only one Member who could sit on the Committee.
Therefore, either Cornwall or Somerset would be entirely unrepresented
if the Liberal Democrats took part. It would be very difficult for
Cornwall to be represented at all, even if the Liberal Democrats
participated.
I hope that
the Minister can answer a further question. We are talking about how
local people understand how the authorities work and affect their area.
Will the Regional Select Committees undertake an exercise to help
constituents across the regions understand the decisions that the RDAs
have made and how they will be accountable? That is not set out in the
Bill, which gives responsibilities to local authorities
only.
Ms
Winterton: The hon. Lady will know that Regional Select
Committees were set up under House rules. By that logic, she would not
want to participate in any Select Committee. Frankly, if she wished to
attend the Select Committee, she would presumably have the nous to ask
a question and to make suggestions about how it would operate. I am at
a loss to know why she does not want to take the opportunity to
represent people in her area on an important Committee, which could ask
RDAs to come to the House to answer questions. She is obviously not
interested in pursuing that route but prefers to stand on the sidelines
quibbling about whether they have had
meetings. Several
Opposition Members asked about how the different strategic health
authorities are selected and the criteria for inclusion in the list.
First, anybody with a strong local presence in the area has democratic
arrangements as per the definition in the Bill. There are opportunities
for the public to influence or take part in the making of decisions.
That includes attending public meetings, contributing to consultation
forums, making representations to elected representatives on the body,
or standing for a role themselves.
I draw the
Committee’s attention to the Local Government and Public
Involvement in Health Act 2007, which includes a strengthened NHS duty
to involve users in decisions about service planning and development.
Secondly, there is a duty on PCTs and SHAs that commission health
services to report back to communities about the action that they are
taking in response to public feedback to
consultation. There
are also local involvement networks. A woman came to my surgery on
Friday from the local Alzheimer’s society asking how she could
get involved in influencing decision making about services in the local
area for people with Alzheimer’s. I told her that it would be a
good idea to get involved with the LINk. She replied that she did not
know about it and would be interested in joining. We have to grasp some
of the principles here, because people can feel that they have no
influence over some of these organisations. We in Parliament have set
out ways for people to be involved, whether in shaping decisions about
health care, social services, the police or other organisations. Some
of the proposals have been made in response to Liberal Democrat
amendments tabled in the Lords, particularly in relation to parish
councils. If through legislation in this House we have given people the
opportunity to participate in that decision-making process or to be
consulted on the delivery of vital services, we should do what we can
to encourage a wider understanding about how that operates. That is not
something that we should resile from.
The hon.
Member for Wycombe made the point about being able to add other
agencies at a later date. I am sure that he understands that it would
be foolish to not allow for other organisations to be added at a later
date if it was felt appropriate. We would not want to have to come back
to primary legislation to do that; we would want to do it by secondary
legislation.
Mr.
Goodman: The Minister cannot blame us for asking on what
basis these organisations are listed and whether the Government have
simply thought through their list. I illustrate that point with a
simple question, which I put to my right hon. Friend the Member for
Hitchin and Harpenden: how on earth can it be that a
community meeting in Wales—subsection (5)(b)—is an
authority that is connected with a local authority in Wales? How, by
the same logic, can it not be that a community meeting in England is
not a similar authority? If the Minister does not have the answer in
front of her, perhaps she can wait for the inspiration that
traditionally arrives in Committee to answer a question. It is
perfectly reasonable for Opposition Members to ask such questions about
the detail of this sort of legislation.
Ms
Winterton: The community meeting that the hon. Gentleman
refers to is the Welsh equivalent of a parish meeting. As I said
earlier, the parish meeting was added as a result of a Liberal Democrat
amendment in the House of Lords that the Government accepted following
debate and
discussion.
Dan
Rogerson: I accept that the terminology for English
Members might be slightly different. However, I represent a
constituency with 70 parishes. Where the electorate is small, a parish
council is not formed to represent the people of that parish, and a
parish meeting is therefore held twice a year to discuss issues and set
a precept. That is the model of a community meeting where a community
council is sometimes equivalent to a parish
council.
Ms
Winterton: As I said, we accepted the Liberal Democrat
amendment. We brought forward a Government amendment in response to the
obviously well-thought-out point that, if we did not include such a
provision, we would be missing an important section of people. However,
it relates to parish meetings in England and what are known as
community meetings in Wales.
Julia
Goldsworthy: I have been listening carefully to what the
Minister said about the Government’s willingness to take on
board other agencies and to consider them. An example of that might be
the Child Support Agency, which might be a glaring example, but it is a
clear case of where Government agencies impact on individuals and where
a clearer understanding of how the processes work is needed.
However,
I still do not understand why the Minister seems to rule regional
development agencies out of hand. Surely, if an individual comes
forward to the local council and says, “I don’t
understand how the regional development agency works. Could you please
help me understand how its accountability process works and how I might
participate?” is the Minister honestly saying that it would say,
“We have no responsibility to tell you about that, so I’m
afraid that I am not going to say.” Will it then be left to them
to understand that the agency will go through this arcane route of
being accountable through some kind of Regional Minister and Government
majority-led Regional Select Committee? It seems to make no sense that
councils have a duty to promote the understanding of public bodies that
impact locally, yet the Minister is implying that they would refuse to
do so in this area.
Ms
Winterton: There are two points here. The hon. Lady might
like to look at part 5, which talks about how there should be community
involvement in decisions
that are taken at regional level. Through the leaders’ boards
that will be established following the sub-national review, the
regional strategic plan will be drawn up. Within that, local
authorities will be keen to say why they have supported different parts
of that plan, which include planning, transport and which look at
economic delivery. There is nothing in the legislation that would
prevent local authorities from providing further information about
regional development agencies, and nothing to prevent them from talking
about the decisions made by the scrutiny bodies. All the regional
development plans are covered by scrutiny boards—an extremely
important part of how the RDAs
operate. 12.45
pm The
hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne mentioned the CSA. We have tried
to encapsulate in the bodies listed here ones that have a participatory
forum for local people, as do health and police authorities and many
other organisations. It is true that the CSA has a powerful effect on
local people’s lives. However, local people have consultation
meetings and forums. There is a local presence whereby people go along
and inform the policy. The policy for organisations such as the CSA is
formulated in the House and is the responsibility of Government
Departments. There is a key distinction between how the two operate. I
am sure that if the hon. Lady ponders that, she will see the
distinction between them. It is about, as my constituents would say,
the responsibility for neighbourhood policing—the policing
pledge. Some
Opposition Members have talked about the issue of the chief police
officer. There is a very direct correlation between what people feel is
happening on the streets in their neighbourhoods, what impacts on their
families, and how the policies are put together to reflect those local
circumstances. That is where I feel people make that connection, and
where we are trying, through the list that has been drawn up, to say,
“This is where people need to understand how some of the
decisions are made and how to have an input into
that.”
There are
totally different structures for the CSA. It is about the assessment
that an individual may receive from the CSA. Constituents whom we
support may be going to the CSA to get help in supporting their
families, but it is not about shaping how the CSA might operate
differently in their local area, as opposed to the national criteria
that we in the House have set down.
Julia
Goldsworthy: I can understand the distinction that the
Minister makes between the CSA and, for example, the strategic health
authority. But if the health authority is a body delivering Government
policy in the regions, I fail to see how that can be distinguished from
the regional development agencies, which are also delivering Government
policy in the regions. I do not understand how she is able to make a
distinction between those two regional
organisations.
Ms
Winterton: First, nothing prevents local authorities from
including information about regional development agencies. As part of
their duties in respect of scrutiny at regional level—through
the use of leaders’ boards, for example—they will be
accountable to their electorate for the policies they are advancing. So
there is the ability to give further information about regional
development agencies, but it is also important in respect of the
Bill’s later clauses that the relevant regional authorities give
information about how they are involving people when preparing their
regional strategies, for example. Again, that is an important way to
ensure
accountability. I
have confessed that I would like to have seen elected regional
government, which would have been the ideal way of ensuring complete
regional accountability. That is not to be, but there we
are.
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