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Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 35:
Page 6, line 39, leave out ("the written consent referred to in") and insert ("any written consent required by").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 35, perhaps I may speak also to Amendment No. 46. These are further technical amendments which ensure that the provisions of the Bill recognise that mayoral consent will not always be required for applications to the Secretary of State made under Clauses 5 and 11, because not all experiments will have executive mayors. I beg to move.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: The Government support these amendments, which help to clarify the purpose of these clauses.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 [Approval of applications under section 5]:
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 38:
Page 9, line 1, leave out ("approves") and insert ("has approved").
The noble Lord said: This technical amendment will help to avoid any possible confusion over the effect of this clause by clarifying the provision that the Secretary of State may approve only one application by a local authority to extend the experimental period. I beg to move.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: The Government support this technical amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 7 [Extension of arrangements etc: orders under section 6(4)]:
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 39:
Page 9, line 32, after ("above") insert ("(taking references to the arrangements there mentioned as references to the existing arrangements)").
The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 39 and 40 are technical amendments which will help to avoid any possible confusion over the effect of this clause by clarifying the requirements for publicising and the decision to extend or vary experimental arrangements. These amendments ensure that the correct documents are available for public inspection. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 7, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 8 [Variation of arrangements etc: orders under section 6(5)]:
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 40:
Page 10, line 32, at end insert ("(taking references to the arrangements and the order there mentioned as references, respectively, to the varied arrangements and the order under section 6(5) above)").
The noble Lord said: I have just spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 10 [Monitoring of experimental decision-making arrangements]:
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 41:
Page 11, leave out lines 40 and 41.
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 41, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 42 and 43. These amendments are intended to allow the reporting period for reports, by the monitoring officer and the head of the paid service of an authority, upon the operation of experimental arrangements to begin from the date on which the arrangements themselves begin.
The need for Amendment No. 41 arises from the fact that, as the Bill stands at the moment, the first monitoring report may cover only a few months, or even less, of actual experimentation. The amendment will enable local authorities to report on whole year periods, a move which I believe will allow them to gain the maximum possible information from their experiments. I beg to move.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: The Government support this amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment Nos. 42 and 43:
Page 12, line 7, leave out ("experimental period begins") and insert ("authority begin to operate experimental decision-making arrangements").
Page 12, line 8, leave out from ("which") to end of line 10 and insert ("ends on or before the date on which the authority terminate the operation of experimental decision-making arrangements.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11 [Termination of experimental decision-making arrangements]:
[Amendments Nos. 44 and 45 not moved.]
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 46:
Page 12, line 33, leave out ("the written consent referred to in") and insert ("any written consent required by").
The noble Lord said: I have spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 11, as amended, agreed to.
The Schedule [Modifications of enactments which may be specified in an order under section 3 or 6]:
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 47:
Page 14, line 3, at end insert--
.--(1) Section 4 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 (joint committees and sub-committees) shall be amended as follows.
(2) At the appropriate place there shall be inserted the following subsection--
"(2A) A social services committee of a single local authority may delegate to an elected mayor any of the functions of the committee."
(3) At the appropriate place there shall be inserted the following subsection--
"(2B) A social services committee of a single local authority may delegate to an ordinary member of the authority any of the functions of the committee."
(4) At the appropriate place there shall be inserted the following subsection--
"(2C) A social services committee of a single local authority may delegate to an officer of the authority any of the functions of the committee."
(5) At the appropriate place there shall be inserted the following subsection--
"(2D) A social services committee of a single local authority may delegate to another ordinary committee of the authority any of the functions of the committee."
(6) After subsection (3) there shall be inserted--
"(3A) Subsection (7) of section 1 of the Local Government (Experimental Arrangements) Act 1998 (interpretation) shall apply for the purposes of this section as it applies for the purposes of that section."").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment in connection with an earlier amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Hunt of Tanworth moved Amendment No. 48:
Page 16, line 32, at end insert--
8A.--(1) Section 100G of the Local Government Act 1972 (principal councils to publish additional information) shall be amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (2) there shall be inserted--
"(2A) So much of any written record kept by a single member of a principal council under paragraph 45A of Schedule 12 to this Act as does not disclose exempt information shall be open to inspection by members of the public at the offices of the council until the expiration of the period of six years beginning with the date on which the function to which the record relates is discharged."
8B.--(1) Section 100H of the Local Government Act 1972 (supplemental provisions and offences) shall be amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (4) (offence in connection with document required by section 100B(1) or 100C(1) to be open to inspection by public) for "or 100C(1)" there shall be substituted "100C(1) or 100G(2A)".").
The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 48, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 49 to 55.
It is a key element of each experiment made possible by my Bill that the fullest possible access to information ought to be afforded to both the councillors of the authority and the public, to support both the scrutiny function and open government more generally. These amendments ensure that this is the case.
Paragraph 13(3) of the schedule provides for a councillor (including an elected mayor) who is able to discharge functions of the authority acting alone by virtue of Section 101 of the 1972 Act as modified for the particular authority in question by the Schedule to my Bill to keep a record of how he has discharged those functions. As the provision currently stands, it is incomplete, in that functions discharged by an individual councillor as a result of Section 4 of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 as modified by the schedule are not caught. Amendment No. 53 remedies this.
This record is then to be the mechanism for ensuring that both councillors and the public can find out easily what decisions have been made by an individual councillor acting alone. Paragraph 8 of the schedule to my Bill provides for the record to be open to councillors. Amendment No. 48 ensures that the public will also have access to the record for six years, as would be the case for the minutes of a meeting. It also backs up this right by bringing failure to make this record available to the public within the scope of the offence in Section 100H of the 1972 Act again, just as would be the case for the minutes of a meeting. These are important amendments which will underpin the openness of many of the models made possible by the Bill.
Amendment No. 51 is designed to make similar provision in the case of social services functions in respect of all those bodies within an authority that might have delegated responsibility for those functions. Section 101 of the 1972 Act prevents an authority from delegating to a committee or sub-committee those functions which stand referred and are delegated to the social services committee. This amendment extends that provision to mayors and other councillors who are able to take decisions acting alone, both for consistency's sake and to avoid legislating by omission.
Amendment No. 54 is a technical but important amendment to the Representation of the People Act 1983. It ensures that the election for a mayor who is a councillor can be held at the same time as those of the other councillors for the authority and of other authorities. Thus, the elections of all councillors for the same authority which are due on the same day can be combined and those can also be combined with the election of any local parish councillors, for example. This is important if the nonsense of voters forming separate queues at different ballot boxes in the same polling station is to be avoided.
Amendments Nos. 49, 50, 52 and 55 are minor technical amendments intended to assist the Secretary of State when making an order to allow the operation of experimental arrangements. Amendments Nos. 49 and 50 are intended to ensure that the drafting of the modifications to the Local Government Act 1972 is consistent with the rest of that Act. Further, Amendment No. 52 is intended to insert the definition of an "ordinary member" into that Act. Similarly, Amendment No. 55 is intended to insert the definition of an elected mayor into the correct part of the Representation of the People Act 1983. I beg to move.
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