Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

It is wonderful to see the Liberal party so joined up, discovering their amendments synchronised by accident. I am very happy to answer the questions raised by Members of the Committee. The noble Lord asked why we framed the Bill as we did. Amendments Nos. 216B and 216F seek to require overview and scrutiny committees to publish any report that they make and executives or councils to publish every response to such a report. Amendments Nos. 216C, 216D and 216E would seemingly narrow the instances in which executives or councils must respond to reports by requiring them to respond only to those published by an overview and scrutiny committee. I shall explain why I believe that the Bill is correct. The Local Government Act 2000 enables overview and scrutiny committees to make reports and recommendations to their executive or council where they feel that it is appropriate, and they may determine whether it would be helpful to publish these reports. This Bill builds on these sensible provisions and requires executives and councils to respond to reports and recommendations and consider what, if any, action they will take. Where these reports or recommendations have been published by the overview and scrutiny committee, the executive must publish its response. Together, these provisions grant overview and scrutiny committees the freedom to decide where it would be helpful to make reports and recommendations and to consider whether these should be published, so placing them in the public domain. However, Amendments Nos. 216B and 216F would require an overview and scrutiny committee to publish any report or recommendations that it makes and an executive or a council to publish all responses to reports of an overview and scrutiny committee. I shall explain why we do not think that this is very sensible. These amendments would severely undermine the discretion of overview and scrutiny committees in relation to making reports and recommendations. For example, where a scrutiny committee reviewed a matter and concluded that it should make a report to its executive or council, perhaps on a sensitive matter such as community cohesion, but not publish it, it would not be able to exercise its discretion; the report would have to be in the public domain or not made at all. There are sensitive issues in local politics where such discretion should be retained. Not only would this requirement make this process more bureaucratic, but these amendments also indicate a lack of trust in the judgment of overview and scrutiny committees. The noble Lord will surely agree with me on that. If the committees were required to publish everything in the way that the noble Lord suggests, they could become risk averse and very cautious, whereas we want to see them taking a robust and far-reaching role in contributing to local decision-making. Amendments Nos. 216C to 216E would achieve much the same effect. They would not place a requirement on scrutiny committees to publish all their reports but they would require an executive or council to respond to the reports and recommendations of an overview and scrutiny committee where those had been published. There will be legitimate reasons why a scrutiny committee does not always want to publish its reports, but the matter would still justify a response. These amendments go in the opposite direction to the previous amendments and would prevent this. The noble Lord’s amendments seek to provide improved transparency. However, we should be very careful about making these sorts of requirements because they would reduce discretion and therefore effectiveness and they could sometimes raise rather problematic issues about whether it is wise and helpful to have things in the public domain if they are very sensitive or to prohibit a response being made just because the report was not published in the first place.