Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 215DA: 215DA: Clause 121, page 78, line 5, leave out from ““matters”” to end of line 7 and insert— ““( ) A member of an authority who exercises the power under subsection (1)(c) shall have the right to address the committee or sub-committee when it is discussing whether to exercise any of its powers under subsection (2) in relation to the matter, and if and when it does so.”””” The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendment No. 215DB. They are about the rights of councillors within the proposed system and within their authority generally. I referred to the report of the inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group into the role of councillors, and I shall not say anything more about that now. However, I hope that we will find an opportunity to discuss that report in this House; perhaps it would be a suitable Question for Short Debate, when they come back in the new Session. I find it thrilling to be here discussing councillors and what they do. Thirty years ago, I got a job as, effectively, the local government officer of the Liberal Party in our redoubt in Hebden Bridge in the Pennines. I spent a lot of time advising councillors on what they could do, how to do it, how to get things done and how to find their way through the particular system and culture that existed in their council. It is important that councillors are able to do that, but there is vast variation in the cultures of councils and the ways that they work, so I have tabled these amendments. Amendment No. 215DA gives a member of an authority the right to address the overview and scrutiny committee that is considering his call-to-action request. In some ways, I had to pinch myself when I tabled this amendment because I asked myself which councils would not allow that. In the local government culture that I come from, councillors have always been able to attend any meeting of any committee, whether they are on it or not, and often take part in it in an informal way by asking permission or sometimes under the written or standing orders. That has been the case at county and district level. I regard it as something that should happen automatically, but I know from experience and from my colleagues that there are councils where it would be regarded as a heinous offence that should not be allowed. I think it ought to be written in as part of the process to strengthen it and make it work better. I tabled Amendment No. 215DB knowing that there are some councils where some of the powers that be—senior staff and councillors—will do anything they can to restrict the ability of back-benchers to take part or to be influential. There are councils with a very centralist culture, which I would call a very Stalinist culture, although I am not saying they are necessarily left-wing or right-wing as it applies across the board. The purpose of this amendment is to set out that those things that already happen in councils should not be restricted by this new right. It should not be regarded as being the maximum right of councillors, but the minimum floor. For example, there are many councils where a councillor already has a right to refer a matter to a decision-making or other body of the authority, whether that is a committee, the executive or a member of the executive or cabinet taking a decision that has been referred to it under the new arrangements. There are many councils where councillors can make representations to such decision-making bodies in person in public, and there are many councils where anybody—never mind a councillor, any member of the public—can turn up to a committee and can have their three or five minutes’ worth—whatever it is in the standing orders—on an item on the agenda before the decision is made. I sit on a council where hundreds of people do that every year. We regard it as normal. Twenty years ago, it was thought to be revolutionary, but now it is happening in more and more councils around the country. It leads to better decision-making, and it certainly leads to people believing that decisions have been made after taking account of what they said. That should continue and should be expanded in councils that do not do it. The danger of putting this in the legislation is that councils will think that it is how they have to do it and that they must go this far, but no further. I do not expect the Minister to think that this rather long amendment ought to be put in the already long Bill, but I hope that when the Government are giving statutory guidance on the various clauses about the community call to action they will give councils very strong advice that what is proposed is a minimum, a floor; that it should not under any circumstances be regarded as a maximum right for the public or councillors; that it should not affect existing rights for members of the public or councillors; and that they should go beyond it. That is the spirit of this amendment. I hope I shall get a generous response and look forward to the Minister’s reply. I beg to move.