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The Bill’s aim is to set out public bodies which have a clear remit in facilitating democratic participation in their decision-making and ensure that they share that information with the relevant local authority for it to promote to local people. It is not its aim, however, to include those without such a remit. Without a clear rationale for what bodies other than those listed in the Bill should also be included as connected authorities, there is a real risk that many public and voluntary bodies could end up being required to provide information on arrangements which are not part of their remit. Therefore, we cannot support the amendment.
6.30 pm
Lord Greaves: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, which I shall come back to in a minute.
The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said that our case is that lots of local authorities are doing this already. With regard to the reference in Chapter 1 to the duty to promote public understanding, we are not particularly making that case. Some authorities may do it very well and most will do it to some extent, but what is proposed in the Bill is quite new for most local authorities. That is why we are keen that it should be done as well as possible. It should not be overly onerous—an issue we might have to raise another time—and it should provide useful information to people, not useless information. That is the basis of what we are saying. We are in favour of the fundamental principle behind Chapter 1, but we are against these five pages of detailed prescription. We do not think local authorities are doing this already.
The noble Lord also talked about diversity of approach and best practice. He said that we have to ensure that best practice covers the whole country. The problem is that if central government ties down local authorities and councils to the degree it always want to, you never find out what best practice is because everyone is doing something the same way—the way the Government think is best practice at the time they impose all this detailed regulation. The only way you can find out what is best practice is by allowing what the noble Lord described as a diversity of approach across the country. We are in favour of local democracy and the diversity of approach that it brings, along with the understanding that some councils will do things well and some less well. That is a matter of local democracy which cannot be avoided, but it also produces best practice in some areas. There might be different best practices, a best practice here and a best practice there, and both may be good—the rest of the country could
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I accept that the amendment is at the slightly extreme end of the spectrum of what I am trying to say, but for goodness’ sake tell councils what you want them to do and let them get on with it. Stop trying to tie them down in detailed rules and regulations. And, yes, if an elected council believes that some local organisations should be put under the duties set out in the Bill, that should be their right; they know their situation and they know which local organisations need to be on the list. I do not see what is wrong with that. Equally, they will look at this list and say, “Some of these organisations do not apply here, and therefore we are not going to do it”.
It may be that this argument can be pursued better under the scrutiny sections. I do not know; we will look at that. For the time being, I am disappointed in the Government’s response, although not terribly surprised. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendments 52 and 53 not moved.
54: Clause 2, page 3, line 43, at end insert “but this power shall only be used if the authority ceases to exist”
Lord Greaves: We finally come to Amendment 54, which seeks to restrict the powers of the Secretary of State under Clause 2(6). Clause 2(6)(a) states that the Secretary of State can add persons to the list of connected authorities. I am not challenging that. Clause 2(6)(b) states that the Secretary of State can,
such a connected authority. However, if they comprise a valid authority, why should the Secretary of State be able to remove them?
Reference has been made to the whims of councils. I sometimes talk about the whims of Secretaries of State whose decisions often seem to become erratic over time. That is not because they change their mind but because Secretaries of State change so often. Who knows, we may have a change of government before too long. I say “may” because personally I would not count on it. People ought to understand that Secretaries of State change. We say that if an organisation is valid and the list is valid, the organisation should not be removed, and that the Secretary of State should be able to remove organisations only if they cease to exist. If the Government want to remove an organisation, they should legislate for that. The Bill says that the Secretary of State can change functions. We argue that he should be able to do so only if the functions of the authority change, and in order to introduce more functions. This seems fairly straightforward. We are trying to give local authorities more power and the
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Lord Hanningfield: I apologise for jumping up to speak. I am anxious to support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, as regards a change of government. This amendment is very similar to several that Conservative Members of the Committee moved right at the beginning of the Committee stage. We feel that this legislation gives too many powers to the Secretary of State. We therefore endorse this amendment, which seeks to curtail those powers. I would still advocate limiting the powers of Secretaries of State in this regard even if a change of government occurred. I agree with the noble Lord that successive Secretaries of State within the same Government can adopt different attitudes. Local authorities should decide this matter rather than the Secretary of State.
Lord Patel of Bradford: Amendments 54 and 55 clearly seek to limit the Secretary of State’s—or, in the case of Wales, Welsh Ministers’—order-making power in Clause 2, which allows government to amend the list of authorities that are considered connected authorities for the purposes of the duties to promote democracy.
The purpose of the list at Clause 2 is to ensure that councils are clear on the minimum list of connected authorities about which we want citizens to be provided with information. We want citizens to be informed about the key decision-making bodies in their area, how they can influence them and how they can get involved in helping to make important local decisions. The order-making power included in Clause 2 allows the Secretary of State to keep the list up to date and relevant. We believe that this is a balanced and sensible approach. Similar order-making powers can be found in other legislation and the power builds in an important flexibility in relation to the duties related to the promotion of democracy. The power gives the Secretary of State the flexibility to add new connected authorities or remove them where principal local authorities no longer think a connected authority is relevant to them.
To some extent I understand the noble Lord’s concern that the Secretary of State should not be able to remove bodies from the list willy-nilly, perhaps as a result of one of the bodies lobbying the Government because it is not happy with the effort involved in providing information. I appreciate the concern, but that is exactly why we have built into Clause 2 a requirement that any change to the list is consulted on with the local government sector and other relevant bodies; councils’ views on the matter will be clearly sought and listened to and changes will not be made in the face of obvious opposition from local government. In addition, any proposed change to the list of connected authorities will also be subject to the negative procedure. It will be scrutinised by Parliament, and noble Lords will be able to raise objections and have them debated in the House. In any event, as a matter of law the Secretary of State must act reasonably, and so would have to have a reasonable justification for any change.
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My main concern is that the amendment fails to recognise that there may be circumstances where removing a body would be perfectly legitimate. For example, local government itself might decide that a body is not relevant to the community and that it is actually burdensome on the council to have to continue collecting information that is no longer useful to local people. We also make the more technical point that if an authority ceases to exist in statute, references will be removed consequentially from the legislation, so the order-making process will not need to be used for this purpose.
Amendment 55 seeks to amend Clause 2(6)(c). Let me explain what this paragraph does. The background to the wording is that one of the activities we have included in the list of connected authorities, the National Offender Management Service, is a function that is carried out by an agency of the Secretary of State rather than by a separate connected authority. This is brought in by reference to the functions of the Secretary of State under the Offender Management Act 2007, as set out in Clause 2(2)(c). Clause 2(6)(c) simply gives the Secretary of State the same power to add or remove activities from the list as she has in relation to other connected authorities. In this case, however, instead of adding or removing persons, the Secretary of State is able to add or remove her own functions. The legislation enables changes in the functions of the Secretary of State or for local circumstances to be taken into account, ensuring that information remains relevant and up to date. The amendment seeks to limit this power so that it can be used only if the functions of the Secretary of State change, but it ought to include the functions carried out by the authority in the local area.
The aim here is the same as in the previous amendment—to limit the occasions on which functions can be added or removed from the list. Again, we think that this amendment would limit the legislation unnecessarily. Clause 2(6)(c) is needed so that should changes in circumstances in the future make it desirable to add additional functions to the Secretary of State, it could be done. We may want to add functions that are not new and which were not previously considered relevant to this duty, or to remove functions that no longer seem to be relevant to it. The amendment would not allow us to do either. Our intention is to ensure that the information remains as relevant to the local community as possible and that any such change is also subject to the requirement of consultation and, as I said earlier, to the parliamentary process to be undergone before the change can be made. Of course, the legal requirement to act reasonably also applies. With those assurances, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Greaves: I shall certainly withdraw the amendment in a moment. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, for his support. I have to confess that I did not understand a word the Minister said in relation to Clause 2(6)(c). I hope that he understood it when he read it out. I shall have to wait until it is in print and take it to bed with me and try to understand it. What a happy life I lead. As I listened to the explanation,
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On the main point, which relates to the first amendment in the group, I repeat the basic argument. The noble Lord said that there is no problem in setting up a huge, convoluted, bureaucratic, time-wasting, money-spending system for one connected authority or one local authority because it will be done only if local government decides that it is a good thing to do.
That was the implication of what he said. It will not be done because the organisations do not like it, or whatever. It will really be done only if local government wants those changes. If local governments want those changes, let us accept my amendment and let them do it. It will be done without all this convoluted bureaucratic system of consulting everyone in the world, going round in circles, producing a parliamentary order and everything that that involves—all the people who you have to employ to do it and all the cost.
This is a wider question: the present system of government in this country is crackers. I blame computers, because they make it possible. The whole thing takes far too much time, far too much bureaucracy and far too much organisation, and far too many people are employed to do it. One hopes when the economy gets better that they can be doing useful jobs. I despair about the whole thing. In that sense of despair, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 54.
Amendments 55 to 58 not moved.
6.45 pm
Clause 3 : Monitoring boards, court boards and youth offending teams
Debate on whether Clause 3 should stand part of the Bill.
Lord Tope: We have given notice that we feel that Clause 3 should not stand part of the Bill. We have spent much of today discussing what should or should not be on the list and what should or should not be included. We feel that independent monitoring boards, visiting committees and court boards are going too far from the roles and functions of local authorities and local governance and really have no part in the Bill.
As with every part of the public sector, it would certainly be better if the public were better informed and had a better understanding of its role and function, to the extent that it is possible; and if they were more involved in what it is doing, to the extent that it is possible. That is not what local authorities should be there to do. In some ways, it is even misleading to
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I feel a little differently about youth offending teams, not least because in another life I am an executive councillor for community safety and I have political responsibility for a youth offending team in my local authority area. I simply do not understand why the work of the YOT would not be covered more than adequately by the earlier parts of the Bill and therefore why it needs to be in this clause. So for rather different reasons, I include that in our wish to remove the clause. Amendments 63 and 67 are consequential on Clause 3 not being part of the Bill. For as long as it remains part of the Bill, obviously they will not be moved.
Baroness Warsi: I support the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in his opposition to Clause 3 standing part of the Bill. I had not added my name to his on the Marshalled List, as I had hoped that my earlier amendment, which altered the duty on local authorities to promote understanding of the functions of these bodies, might have been seen as a kind of halfway house. However, I was denounced from the government Benches as being destructive. We on these Benches have never been opposed to the spread of information about services, but we do oppose the imposition of a duty on local authorities to promote such information.
That duty becomes even harder to justify when the services in question have only a tenuous link to the functions of the local authorities. I am interested in understanding today the similarities between the three bodies listed in the clause, other than the obvious one that they relate to criminal justice. What is the reason for including these bodies, and what is the link between them and the local authority? Is it a link of control, authority or finances? Why should local authorities promote these organisations or their democratic arrangements?
The purpose of the Bill is to promote involvement. How far is public involvement allowed in each of these three bodies? How far can members of the local community get involved in them? Is the extent similar for all three bodies? Again, to return to the very basic point that I made earlier today, does the Minister accept that taking responsibility from individual organisations that rely on public involvement to demonstrate transparency and giving it to local authorities is disempowering local communities? The best way to empower local communities and get them involved is to ensure that there is a direct link between them and the organisation in which they seek to get involved, rather than having a third organisation, such as a local authority, on whom a statutory duty is imposed to promote that organisation’s role.
Baroness Andrews: I am grateful for the opportunity offered by the clause stand part debate to explain why we have included these bodies and, I hope, to answer the questions that have been raised by both noble Lords. I hope that I did not offend the noble Baroness by describing her amendment as destructive. I certainly
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I shall explain why the clauses are there as they are. I take the point about the amendments, too, and will address them in what I am going to say. In Clause 3, we seek to require local authorities to promote an understanding of what people in these roles do, how a person can be a member of these bodies or take part in them, and what is involved in doing so. The noble Lord said that he did not think that local authorities should do that in respect of these bodies, and he asked why the youth offending teams were not included. The three bodies identified in the clause all have lay civic roles, so there is a distinction between them and the youth offending teams. We can talk about those teams outside the Committee if he is concerned about that.
It is very important to distinguish between the two types of duties that we are discussing. The duties in Chapter 1 are aimed at citizens’ understanding of two things: first, the democratic arrangements of those public bodies—the governance and decision-making arrangements—which we discussed yesterday and which are covered in Clauses 1 and 2, and, secondly, the civic opportunities for citizens to play a role as a lay person on a range of public bodies, which are covered separately in Clauses 3 and 4. I want to be clear that we are looking not for information about democratic arrangements but for participation.
Why have we included these bodies? Quite simply, they are important local bodies. What they do has an impact on the local community. We are dealing with independent monitoring boards, which help to monitor the day-to-day life in local prisons or removal centres and ensure that proper standards of care and decency are maintained; and with courts bodies, which make recommendations to improve the administrative services provided by the courts. We want the public to be aware that they can serve as magistrates or IMB members. There are an important number of lay roles that can be filled by people from the local community. There are quasi-judicial or inspectorate roles or roles that relate to the administration of justice.
It is the same challenge again: to ensure that a more diverse range of people put themselves forward for these significant posts. These are the people who ensure that prisons and immigration centres are properly run. The posts are created to give people from the local community an input to reflect local values. If we mean to do this, surely we should get people on to these bodies who reflect the full range of the local community: young and old, a wider range of ethnic and faith groups, disabled people and so on.
Baroness Warsi: I thank the Minister for giving way. Is she saying that we do not trust these organisations to promote themselves and encourage participation from a more diverse range of people?
Baroness Andrews: Not at all. I was just about to say that at the moment that is not the case. All these bodies are keen to achieve better levels of representation in the communities they serve; so much so that they
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Baroness Warsi: Will the Minister explain the ways in which the local authority could go further? Some of these cluster recruitments have involved people going out, speaking in the community, holding public meetings, putting out information and literature and running mentoring and pilot schemes. How would the local authority go further than that? If that has not worked, how will the local authority’s arrangements work?
Baroness Andrews: That is a good question. We are not imposing these requirements on the public bodies. In our dialogues, their representatives have invited the local authorities to assist them in this process. They welcome this approach as another way in which more people will know about what is possible, how they can be involved and how to take up these roles; it will promote more joint working and joint information. How the local authorities do that will be up to them, but a single point of information and contact could well alert people who are really interested in these sorts of bodies, and for whom an involvement in them would be a natural extension to what they are interested in—those who are working with victim support, for example, or who are doing other things in the community—to how they can be connected to local organisations. Is the noble Baroness saying that that is not worth doing, I wonder?
Such is the narrow spectrum of the community from which these roles are normally drawn that anything we can do will be positive and helpful. The more effectively that we can promote opportunities, which we can do in different ways, the more likely we are to ensure that local people are informed and come forward. We can take a step forward and ensure that the roles represent the communities. Local authorities support our proposals to promote the possibility of taking part and becoming involved and to reach out to communities in different ways, particularly those that are currently underrepresented. Making the links between the different initiatives that aim to encourage people to take on civic roles is admirable and necessary.
With regard to the clauses, we have tried to move the barrier and act with a light touch, whereas the effect of Amendment 63, for example, would be that the council would be required to promote understanding of these bodies, whether or not the information supplied by the bodies had relevance to what we have just said. The suggestion is that councils should promote the
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Amendment 67 would remove monitoring boards, courts boards and youth offending teams from being subject to the order-making power, but as I argued earlier, the provision is provided simply for the contingency—we do not expect this to be the case—that for some reason there is a lack of co-operation. Again, this is very much a power of last resort.
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