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6.45 pm
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, not only to the House but to the Front Bench and to speaking on the Bill. I took careful note of a number of things that she said. She said that the Bill is not the answer to the problems; does little to deal with the real problems; is full of half-baked ideas; is full of fig leaves; is a form-filling exercise; is an apple pie Bill; is a green-belt-up-for-grabs Bill; undermines empowerment; is a congestion-charge-by-the-back-door Bill; is an attack on local democracy; is a mishmash of meaningless powers; allows powers to seep away from local people; and chips away at accountability. With a friend like that, who wants enemies? She nailed her flag to the mast straight away and maintained her reputation for blunt, plain speaking.
The noble Baroness’s experience in local government is much more recent than mine, which goes back more than 50 years. What the Government have done is very ambitious. No one in this House ought to decry ambition, but the Bill may be too ambitious for the circumstances and resources, and it may be too ambitious to achieve, especially at local government level. I hesitate to think that on a wet Thursday night in Edmonton I would go round knocking on doors asking, “Can I interest you in stimulating your democracy?”. I know what the answer would be; I would get very short shrift. So, it ain’t what you do; it’s the way that you do it. Provided that all sides of the House recognise that something has to be done—and I do not think that they do—we can examine the Government’s proposals.
When I read the papers, I noted that the Minister and her advisers have not dreamed up their proposals out of the air, but have consulted and have brought forward ideas that are broadly approved of by wide sections of the people. Of course, they do not approve politically as the job of opposition is to pick holes in
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We are trying to make the service from the centre—Whitehall—and the locality to the people that we serve more effective. I can answer the question, “Where were you when you heard the news of President Kennedy’s death?”. I was in the civic centre at Enfield creating the new London Borough of Enfield, which came into being in 1964. I later became leader of that council. The people of Edmonton, Enfield and Southgate—three very different economic, social and cultural communities—were spatchcocked into one political identity. My near neighbour and friend, Iain Macleod, whom I fought at the 1966 election, had a great deal to do with the creation of the London Borough of Enfield. When we had our first election, we won by a massive majority—31 to 29—and, as good democrats, we looked at the 10 aldermanic seats, decided to make our lives easier and took all 10, so the borough started with 41 to 29.
Of course, things quickly changed. In 1968, the people spoke and the election returned 51 Conservative and nine Labour councillors, and we were out in the wilderness for a long time. The point I am trying to make is that by spatchcocking them in to a situation where they had to produce an answer, three separate, politically diverse places were fused, which had not appeared to be possible, wanted or needed. It took them many years to find the answer, but they did. Politically, the borough has gone backwards and forwards and no doubt that will continue. I am not put off by the size of the problem, nor am I put off by the solutions which may appear in the Bill. Kindly, I would say to my noble friend, the term “regulation with a light touch” comes to mind. Before these things are set in stone—that is, in statute—I hope that careful consideration is taken of the impact and that local people are brought in in order to see exactly what they want.
This Bill provides for us to look at a number of situations in the light of 2008-09. Those who have been involved in local government, and in life, for a number of years will realise that there have been enormous changes. When I reflect on my activity as a young man who wanted to become involved, a range of people and organisations—churches, businesses, groups and clubs—were not only there, but they were known to young people. Now and again when people are in trouble I hear, “Well there is nothing for young people to do”. There was nothing for young people to do when I was young or at any time. You have to look for it.
We miss the determination of parents to make sure that their teenagers are funnelled into meaningful activity. When I was young, there were very few cars, very few televisions, no foreign holidays or any holidays at all for some, and no affluence or money. If we are serious about increasing participation in our democracy, we in this House and at Westminster have a responsibility—it is not an overriding responsibility—at least to put forward ideas. Whitehall can identify, can expose the needs, provide the cash and provide the leadership, but on the ground, in the localities, we rely
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I look on this as an opportunity Bill; as providing the opportunity for those who wish to take part to do so. It will not be easy because some local authorities will say, “We have done it all. It failed. We will not do it again”. Or they may say, “We do not need your advice because we are all right”. Would you believe that there will be local councillors who, because their fiefdom provides them with an opportunity to return election after election, will ask, “Why should I go about stimulating the opposition or those who are involved?”? It will not be easy.
While I have lauded the Bill for what it contains, I cannot let pass this opportunity to express my disappointment that it does not contain provisions to bring greater equality in a spirit of civic pride and service, which I have raised in this House on three occasions. I refer to the honourable and distinguished realm of the Guild of Freemen which exists in many towns and cities throughout the land.
The Guild of Freemen is descended from medieval times and perpetuates trades and companies which have played a part in the history of our nation, but governed as they are by local and national bodies, the fact remains that statute restricts the membership of local guilds to males. By parliamentary procedures and devices, and using the Private Member’s Bill route, I have brought forward three times the Borough Freedom Bill, which has passed through all its stages in this House. I see the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, is in his place. On more than one occasion he has spoken in support of this measure. It is an equality Bill, designed to provide for female as well as male family members to inherit the freedom of their father on his death. The sad fact is that because of parliamentary procedures, we have not been able to make progress. I intend to put down an amendment which will provide for a borough freedom Bill. I cannot believe that in this day and age such an equality measure, once it has been carefully explained and scrutinised in this House and in the other place, will be resisted.
I do not expect the Minister to be able to say anything today because the amendment has not yet been tabled, but I hope that this proposal will make progress both here and in the other place. I rest my case.
6.58 pm
Lord Tope: My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Graham, because in recent years it has usually been he who follows me and immediately demolishes my arguments. I am not going to return the compliment—
Lord Graham of Edmonton: You could not!
Lord Tope: I probably could, my Lords, but I am mindful of the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Smith, that this is the season of goodwill, and I am
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The debate has been called wide-ranging, and I think that it has been both interesting and thoughtful. I must confess to having been distracted early on by the reference by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, to an exotic box of chocolates and later by my noble friend Lord Greaves to cans of soup—I thought that it was alphabet spaghetti, not alphabet soup. However, I now have our official party line from the Front Bench: we are going to describe this Bill as a mashed fig and apple pie Bill. I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and aside from his less than generous references to local government, I disagree with him on one point. He suggested that the title of the Bill before us is more “eloquent”—I think that was the word he used—than those of the Bills that he and I used to consider: the annual local government (miscellaneous provisions) Bills. I think that that title would be much better for this legislation, and a lot easier to say.
As always, I shall declare my interests. I am a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton and a member of its executive. I am also a governor of a junior school in the ward that I represent. That does not make me an apologist for local government; quite the contrary because, as in any profession, those of us who dedicate most of our lives to improving standards and to working in a particular area probably feel the most strongly about those who let us down. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith, said, there are bad councils, poor councils and weak councils, and there always will be. We in local government probably feel as strongly about them as anyone else, not least because they let down our reputation collectively. Anything I say will not, I hope, be interpreted as an apology for poor local government—it is not.
I want to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Smith, on one point. He rightly referred to the 18 years of Conservative Government when this country moved in the opposite direction to the rest of western Europe by becoming more and more centralised while every other country was becoming, each in its own way, more decentralised.
One of the great pleasures of my local government life was to be present in Strasbourg in 1997, within weeks of the election of the new Labour Government, when the European Charter of Local Self-Government was signed. I believed genuinely at that time that there was a wish to move in the opposite direction to what we had known for the past 18 years. That intention was there then, but I saw a couple of years ago a report from that same Council of Europe, whose Charter of Local Self-Government it is, that much of the Council’s work, through its Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, is to monitor democracy in its 41 member countries. It assessed in 28 countries whether the degree of central control was growing or reducing.
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Not surprisingly, my greatest interest is in Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill. Again in the season of goodwill, I will join with the noble Lord, Lord Best, in welcoming the fact that Part 1 recognises the important role that local government has to play in reducing the democratic deficit and in helping people to know, understand and participate in local democracy. That I welcome. I worry that the Government and the Minister, in her good opening speech, seem to believe that putting this in a Bill would contribute to reducing the problem. All good local authorities—I would suggest all local authorities—already do all this work, although of course some, or probably all, could do it better. So while it may be welcome to recognise the role by making it a statutory duty, that will not of itself bring about any greater improvement.
This suggests that we have not really understood and analysed the problem. It is not only a problem with local government but with government in the widest sense of the word, and until we know and understand that, no amount of trying to tell people how their local council works, when they really do not want to know, will make any significant difference.
I turn now, with some trepidation, to the issue of petitions. I was genuinely surprised to hear last week that three-quarters—I think today we heard it was four-fifths—of local authorities apparently do not respond to petitions. I do not claim to have knowledge of what every local authority in the land does—of course I do not—but it seems incomprehensible that a local authority could not respond to a petition. I think that perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Smith, is right.
I asked myself, “What is the position with my own local authority?”, and consulted my council’s constitution, which of course I carry with me everywhere, as a dedicated executive member. It tells me that the chief executive must report the receipt of every petition and it even tells me what a petition is; it gives petitioners the right to address the council, the executive or the local committee; it gives us the right to question petitioners and for them to respond; it gives people who may have a different view from the petitioners, which might particularly be the case in planning applications, the right to address the committee and answer questions; it gives rights to delegations to speak—we have set up local committees where the residents participate in the process of the committee, but nowhere in this huge document could I find anything that said that the council must acknowledge receipt of the petition or respond to the petition. So we do all of what I have just outlined but apparently we do not respond to the petition. The Minister may need to look more deeply at what is meant by “responding to petition” because I find it completely incredible that 70 or 80 per cent of local authorities do not respond to petitions. My bet is that the vast majority of councils now do what my own council has been doing for over 20 years: respond fully to petitions.
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I think everyone who has addressed this issue today has urged the Government not to be so prescriptive. I join with that. Speaking as one who does not have quite as much experience as the noble Lord, Lord Graham, but who over the past 30 years has at least had to wrestle with council standing orders and, so often, had to suspend council standing orders that did not quite envisage the circumstances in which we found ourselves, I know that the more you try to be prescriptive in setting out the rules and regulations, the more barriers you inevitably create to free participation and involvement.
The Government feel it necessary to legislate to require councils to receive and respond to petitions—so be it. I cannot be against that; it is what they are all doing already. But I ask the Government: please do not try to stipulate in legislation or in regulations how every local authority has to do it, how you describe what a petition is, and so on. My noble friend Lord Greaves described very well the different circumstances that apply in different areas and different parts of a local authority. If we are really going to engage with local communities and get community empowerment, we need fewer rules, regulations and restrictions. The fewer we have, the more likely we are to succeed.
I was interested that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, warned us about expecting too much of petitions. I was trying not to have too much sympathy with him but I know where he was coming from. One needs, too, to understand that while people will sign petitions they are not necessarily the be-all and end-all, and that responding to a petition cannot always mean agreeing with it. That is neither desirable nor possible, although if petitioners present a petition, possibly with thousands of signatures, and for very good reasons—often legal reasons—a council cannot agree, those petitioners are not going to go away happy and feeling satisfied with the state of our democracy. That is inevitable, and I am sure we will spend some time on it. I urge the Minister, as has everyone else who has addressed this point, to think carefully about what really needs to be in a Bill that will refer to petitions.
With regard to scrutiny, my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who is a much greater enthusiast for the scrutiny role than I am, perhaps because I am a member of an executive, said that she was far from convinced that we need to have a statutory scrutiny officer. I share her doubt; again, to have one is missing the point. For the scrutiny role to be effective, it needs proper officer support. I seem to remember saying so when this was coming in nine years ago. Unless there is scrutiny support that is separate and different from that which is advising the executive, it is not going to function properly. Of course there should be greater support and strength for the scrutiny function within local authorities, but that is not going to be achieved by designating an existing council officer as “the scrutiny officer”. That just creates yet another unnecessary statutory post that does not answer the question.
I will say nothing now about leaders’ boards, except that they were said to be addressing a very real democratic deficit and I accept that there is such a deficit. At the risk of straying into the territory of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, I remember becoming leader of a
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I would be cautious in suggesting that these proposals will correct or address the gap between central government and what I usually call “substate government” at a regional level. We need to address properly and effectively the issue of—I shall just call it “government at regional level”, in case I provoke the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith.
I said last week in response to the gracious Speech that I judge local government legislation not by whether it will make the worst any better, because that is usually easy, but by whether it makes the best better. I see nothing in the Bill, certainly not in its first two chapters, that will make good councils into better councils.
7.10 pm
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I hope that the calls of “Hear, hear!” are not too premature. This has been a long and interesting debate and it is a privilege to speak at the end of it. I am grateful to the Minister for her introduction of the Bill and for all the contributions. I may pick up on one or two points if my memory does not fail me completely.
In discussing this subject, we are debating the nature of democracy—which of course means different things to different people—particularly the nature of local democracy. My experience suggests that the vast majority of people do not want to be interested in politics. They may want to take an interest in their community on specific subjects; most people require an issue if they are to get involved. The majority of our citizens would rather lead their lives, successfully and peacefully, without the interference of government or regulation if that were possible. Of course, the taxman is universal and problems are always occurring, so every now and again everybody becomes involved in the particular issue that interests them at that time.
The plea for greater interest in local elections as an indicator of interest in what is happening in local communities is simply not a real measure. The only hope we have if we believe in democracy and local government is to assume that those who do not vote assent. By and large, that is true. It may be humiliating for us as politicians, but that is largely the situation. People get involved when there is a particular issue that bothers them.
I was very interested in the description of this Bill by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, as a box of chocolates. It may well be so, but we all have different tastes; there are chocolates we like and those we do not like within any box. Not only that, there are some manufacturers
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I was here when the Labour Government first arrived in 1997, and one aspect of that occasion was the fascinated realisation that there was a wonderful game of musical chairs. We all found ourselves sitting somewhere else, but the speeches stayed exactly where they were. I look forward to that happening again in the not-too-distant future, as it undoubtedly will.
I read the first part of the Bill with a sort of déjà vu. I got involved in local government at a time when the authority of which I was a member controlled colleges, further education colleges, the police authority, the fire service, magistrates’ courts and the Probation Service. These were all functions under and within the remit of the county council. The other great joy was that central government subscribed less than 50 per cent of our funds. We were masters in our own house. I remember warning then that, when that contribution went over 50 per cent, we would be lost. Now it is more than 80 per cent. I understand, because of that wretched word “accountability”, the need for the Government to feel that they control local government expenditure, even though the proposition is hopelessly wrong if they believe in local democracy.
That leads me to a different aspect of this Bill. Of course, the responsible authority will do its best to explain all the workings set out in Part 1, but to invite someone who is not responsible to explain adequately to someone who is interested something for which they have no direct responsibility is a slight misconception. Obviously, they would gather all the information that they could, put it together in the most presentable form and hand it out—but to ask them to explain it is unreal. I have no doubt that we will continue to have problems in this area, whatever happens, because new people will come into the field of play; they will develop and move into an area. There will always be people asking questions but, personally, I have always taken the view that if you want a question answered it is best to ask the person responsible for the situation. Making an authority responsible for informing about a wholly different group of authorities somewhat misses the point.
The other point that I want to make arises later in the Bill, regarding the economic prosperity boards, which the Secretary of State can establish by order after consultation with the participants, and whose membership and voting arrangements he can determine. I may have misread the Bill—I see the Minister looking at me—but there seems to be no requirement for local authority agreement to the Secretary of State’s proposals. In Clauses 83 to 89 we run into that problem. The local authorities may review the performance and propose changes in the course of time, but the initial proposals come from the Secretary of State, who does not have to agree to the local authorities’ revised proposals.
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