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On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 64 [Changing governance arrangements]:
[Amendments Nos. 84 to 86 not moved.]
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 87:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, these government amendments set out a number of technical changes. On Monday, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, kindly indicated that she had a couple of queries on them, so I shall attempt to address those. I have also placed a short note on this matter in the Library of the House.
The amendments ensure that the Bill’s provisions work alongside the existing legislation. During our debates in Committee on directly elected executives, I was asked whether members of those executives will be members of the council in terms of voting in the council. Indeed, the question came up again just before the Division. I informed noble Lords that our policy is that they will indeed be full members of the council.
The Local Government Act 2000 currently provides for an elected mayor to be treated as a member or councillor if express provision is made along these lines in regulations. However, it has come to our attention that there are inconsistencies in this approach and that amendments are needed both to the 2000 Act and to the Local Government Act 1972 to make the position clear. This group of amendments makes amendments to the Bill and consequential amendments to existing legislation to ensure that it is clear when mayors and members of elected executives should be treated as members of the local authority and when they should not.
I will take the amendments out of order, as the key amendment is located in Schedule 4. Amendment No. 226 amends the 1972 Act so that references in that Act to members of the council include mayors and members of the elected executives. This means that, where a council is to vote on normal council business, the mayor or the members of elected executives will be able to vote where those models exist.
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Baroness Hanham: My Lords, we have an intriguing situation here. The Minister has just lost the clause. As I understand it, directly elected executives have been ruled out of the Bill through the vote by the House of Lords. How can we amend something that we have just lost?
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, I believe that it is perfectly possible to proceed with these government amendments. If necessary, we can make arrangements at later stages of the Bill, should that be necessary. Perhaps the noble Baroness is teasing me, but she indicates that she is not. If she will forgive me, I shall plough on.
Amendment No. 117 makes it clear that where there are references in legislation to a member of a local authority or a councillor of a local authority, they do not include a mayor unless the legislation specifically states that a reference to a member or councillor should include a mayor. Amendment No. 118 makes similar provisions for elected executives. Through these amendments, in future both an elected mayor and a member of an elected executive will be treated as a member or councillor if either regulations or another enactment expressly provide for this. My noble friend Lady Morgan has already spoken to amendments that expressly state that an elected mayor and a member of an elected executive can vote on resolutions passed under Parts 2 and 3 of the Bill.
Amendments Nos. 229, 231 to 244 and 255 make the necessary consequential amendments to the remainder of the Local Government Act 1972 and, along with Amendment No. 226, make it clear that a reference to a member in the 1972 Act includes an elected mayor or a member of an elected executive. So in answer to the specific query of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, a mayor and a member of a directly elected executive are not to be treated as members of a local authority unless the legislation or regulations specifically provide for it. This was the approach used in the Local Government Act 2000. The Secretary of State will be able to make regulations under the 2000 Act specifying when the mayor or a member of an elected executive are to be treated as a member or councillor of a local authority. Again, that was the approach taken in 2000.
The group contains a number of further technical drafting amendments that need to be included in the Bill. I hope that I have explained to the House why the technical issues need to be resolved. To refine what I said earlier, we still need these government amendments for mayors but they will not now apply in relation to elected executives. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for responding to the points that I made the other day on Amendments Nos. 117 and 118. I commented that I could see that there might be a little confusion as to when a member was or was not a member, and some authoritative explanatory note at the end of this process—depending, of course, where we end up—could be quite helpful within the trade.
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, another point has just occurred to me which I do not think that we cleared in Committee. The Minister may wish to think
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Baroness Andrews: My Lords, they are indeed supernumerary. They are extra to the number of councillors.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Greaves moved Amendment No. 89:
“(a)”The noble Lord said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 90, which contains the meat of the two amendments. The amendments relate to whether there should be a referendum if a council decides that it wants an elected mayor. There have been a number of referendums under existing legislation for elected mayors, and that is the system. You cannot at the moment make a decision about whether or not to have an elected mayor unless you have a referendum. The proposal in the Bill is that the council will be able to vote to have an elected mayor, by a two-thirds majority, and that decision will be binding. The Minister will say that the council can also make a decision, if it wishes, to have a referendum. It is all rather confusing, because the decision on whether to have a referendum will now be made by the council, a body that may or may not wish to move to an elected mayoral system.
The reason for pursuing the amendment at this stage is to put down the marker, yet again, that out there in the country there will be some very angry people if they find that their council is foisting on them an elected mayor that they do not want and they do not have a vote in the matter. You can argue about whether the decision to have an elected mayor should or should not be subject to a referendum of the people—that discussion took place seven years ago—but the system that is now entrenched is that, if you are going to make such a decision about an elected mayor, you have a referendum. What the Government are now doing in the Bill is potentially taking away that right.
In some of the places that have elected mayors, the decision was not terribly controversial at the time; in other places, it was highly controversial and a matter of great local debate and campaigning. Indeed, in some places far more campaigning and effort went into the referendum on whether to have a mayor than went into who should be the mayor once the elections came round. That turned out to be a damp squib—Torbay is the extreme example, but there are others. Nevertheless, people will feel that that right existed for the people in Bedford, Torbay or
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The case for changing the rules has not been made. As my noble friend has pointed out, elected mayors have become a lot less popular since they first came in, and it is now very difficult to win such a referendum. There is a suspicion that that is why the Government are potentially abolishing the referendum, which may or may not be the case. I do not know why they want elected mayors in the first place, but that goes back to the arguments that we were having before about the nature of leadership and so on.
If we are to have a system in which a fundamental change can take place from the existing way in which local authorities are elected to the election of an executive mayor, taking away the right to a referendum is going to cause a lot of anger and trouble. Even on pragmatic grounds, it is not worth it. I beg to move.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I stand not as an opponent to the weapon of a referendum but as someone who wants it to be used sparingly. I fully support its application where it has been applied, but I am wedded to the idea that every four years, or whenever, the best referendum in the world takes place—an election. People might tell me that they know of a referendum in which the turnout exceeded the number of people who vote in a local election or anywhere else, but I doubt it. A referendum on a particular narrow issue is capable of being hijacked by interest groups that have a purpose in mind.
I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for his in-touchedness with local government matters. I speak only from my own experience, which is nothing like as wide or as deep as his, but what, after all, do you elect a council for? By whatever method you elect it, you give it the authority to continue to govern. If it decides that it wishes to change, the mechanism already exists to do so. However, if it wants to change but the change is then subject to a referendum, I can see that being a hostage to fortune. Already we are talking about too much bureaucracy, interference and being told what to do by Whitehall.
My days on a council—I still attend group meetings of various kinds—mean that I have every faith in the sagacity and integrity of those who ultimately become elected councillors. We must bear in mind the fact that they are elected on a manifesto. They tell the people of the locality what they believe in and how they will do it, and they are open to criticism. The councils regularly take care, most of them with public relations officers or through some other mechanism, to ensure that people understand what is going on. I have every sympathy with what the noble Lord continues to do: that is, to find a means of making a properly working democratic system work even more democratically. That is a laudable objective, but I do not see any need to do what he proposes in this amendment.
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5.30 pm
Baroness Andrews: My Lords, we have a new word in the great British lexicon: “in-touchedness”. It is charming and well applied, and we shall have many opportunities to use it. I thank my noble friend for his powerful comments. They echo a point that I will make later in my reply.
It is in the context of leadership that we discuss the amendment, which would require an authority that proposes to change its executive arrangements to a mayor-and-Cabinet executive to hold a referendum. As champions of their communities, local authorities should be able to propose the executive arrangements that enable them best to deliver strong and effective leadership, which was the burden of my noble friend’s argument. However, I make it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that that does not mean that local people will no longer be able to have their say about executive arrangements. The Bill proposes not to do away with local voice or local choice, but to give a locally elected council a power that it does not, and should, have; that is, to propose a move towards a mayoral model if it resolves to do so. The 2000 Act did not permit a decision on moving to a directly elected model to rest solely on such a decision. That may have reflected the novelty at that time of the directly elected option.
The Government are not anti-referendum, but pro-council. There is no reason why a referendum on a mayor should not take place. I shall explain the conditions in which it would apply. First, as the noble Lord said, subsection (5) of new Section 33E will allow authorities to choose to make their proposals subject to a referendum. They will continue to have that choice. They will be aware of their electorate and be cautious of the matters that the noble Lord mentioned.
Secondly, local people will still be able to petition their local authority to hold a referendum on its executive arrangements where they feel strongly about it. That ability is not being taken away. It could be a referendum for a mayor-and-Cabinet executive and all other models.
The third condition applies to all the executive models. Wherever an executive model is put in place following a referendum, local authorities will be required to hold a referendum on any proposed change to a different model. They would be able to implement the change only where the proposals were supported by the referendum.
However, if none of those situations was to apply, the council would still be unable to move to a mayoral model without inviting the views of local people. A new model could not be foisted upon them without consultation. Local authorities which intend to change their arrangements will be required to consult their electorate and any other interested parties in their area, such as businesses and the voluntary sector, before drawing up proposals.
Where councils go on to draw up proposals, they will be required to make them public by making available for inspection at their principal offices a document that sets the proposals out. People will be
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In short, the change that we are proposing will provide an important additional option whereby a council can move to a directly elected mayor if it resolves to do so. It is right for the democratically elected representatives of an area to be able to take such a decision. They decide local taxes; they create an area’s sustainable community strategy. I do not understand the rationale for their not being able to decide the form of local governance for their area. I am sure that all noble Lords share our belief and confidence in representative democracy, the case for which was well put by my noble friend Lord Graham.
I understand the intention behind the noble Lord’s amendments, which seek to give the public greater say over executive arrangements. However, as I have set out, significant new and existing opportunities for the public to express their views are available.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I think that when the Minister reads what she has said she will realise that she was digging great holes for herself, at least in terms of logic. She said that she was not sure why a council should not decide its model of government, but we have spent a lot of this afternoon being told by the Government that councils are not allowed to decide their own model of government but are allowed to choose only between some very narrow, restrictive models of government laid down in great detail from above. That is the whole basis of our deep concern about this Bill. The arguments that the Government are using are being used, once again, in favour of the things that the Government want but are not being used when other people put forward things that they do not want.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, said some interesting things. He talked about people making a choice every four years at a general election. I am not quite sure what general election votes have to do with whether you have an elected mayor. However, I understood what he said about referendums. I am not a great fan of them—
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, it is not just that, broadly, every four years we have a general election—which of course is not the field that we are discussing—but that every four years people vote locally. That is what I meant to imply.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, in our area people vote every year locally, and long may we continue to do so. I say “we” because local elections are ones in which noble Lords are allowed to take part. We are not banned from them as we are from general elections.
The question that has to be asked is that if the Government are saying that there is no right to a referendum on a proposal for an elected mayor, why have people got that right now and why have they had it for the past seven years? Why was it thought
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The Minister said that if the people do not like the decision that the council makes they can have their say at the next election, but that will be too late because the whole system of electing the council and mayor will already have changed and it will be irrevocable in most places. The Minister said that she was pro-council—
Lord Greaves: My Lords, I do not think that it is mine. If it is, it has come on by itself.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Your number is up.
Lord Greaves: My Lords, my number is up. I do not understand these things. I think that there are buttons on it that turn it on when you pat your pocket.
The Minister said that there is no reason why a referendum will not take place. I have to ask her to consider those words. The reason a referendum may not take place is that a council decides not to have one. If a council proposes an elected mayoral system under this Bill and decides not to have a referendum, there will be no referendum. I accept that there will be a referendum in some cases but when the noble Baroness says that there is no reason why a referendum will not take place, the reason is that the council will decide not to have it.
I forecast that there will be bother in some places as a result of this and I shall not enjoy watching it. I hope that it is not anywhere near me. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 90 to 93 not moved.]
Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 94:
Clause 64, page 38, line 43, leave out “the end of the permitted resolution period in” and insert “an appropriate period of time during”
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 95 and 109. These amendments apply to the provisions for a new executive or a move to executive arrangements and seek to remove the restriction on the time when a local authority may pass the relevant resolution. They
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