Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

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 trying to show some of it by saying that we on these Benches acknowledge that there is a considerable problem in the form of a democratic deficit that needs to be fixed. Our concern is: does the Bill actually understand what the problem is? If it does not, it is unlikely to bring forward the right measures to solve it. That is our concern rather than blindness to real issues or a belief that everything is all right. 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. The United Kingdom was one of seven where the Council of Europe—not someone as biased as me but the Council of Europe—assessed that central control, certainly in England, was growing not reducing. That is a Council of Europe assessment to which we would do well to pay attention. 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. 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 London borough council the day after the GLC was abolished. We had no choice but to set up lots of joint boards and joint bodies to try to help London to function because there was a substantial democratic deficit. It was not all bad—it helped London borough councils to work more effectively together—but it was certainly not the answer to the democratic deficit in London. That deficit took 14 years to be rectified. I am not going to stray into a debate on how well, or otherwise, the Greater London Authority has done that. 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.