Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

Just to give people a change, we can talk about petitions. The problem with irony is that it does not look very good in Hansard, because nobody can understand it. Amendment 89 relates to petitions which are not valid or active under the Government’s scheme. The amendment states the position clearly. We had some discussion about this on Monday, and I think that the Government will say that nothing will prevent the local authority from doing as the amendment suggests. We have spoken about whether councils will nevertheless regard the Bill as the maximum rather than the minimum provision. We will continue with these discussions as we wrestle with this part of the Bill over the next few weeks. I have had a specific request to raise the matter on behalf of the City of London Corporation. It is not a body I normally have a great deal to do with, but Mr Double, the Remembrancer of the corporation, has written to me. He says: "““It is part of the custom of London (what is now the City of London) that local communities, gathered in wardmotes, should be able to petition the Court of Common Council (the City’s administrative arm) to ensure that issues of local concern are addressed. By this method, individual voters can secure direct involvement with the decision making body. The Court of Common Council is required to respond to such petitions and usually does so by referring to the issues raised to a committee for detailed consideration and a report.""It cannot be the intention of the Bill that such examples of effective local democracy should be displaced by the new provisions. Amendment 89 provides an opportunity for the Minister to confirm that existing arrangements””—" that is, in the City of London— "““are unaffected by the new provisions””." I am very happy to ask that question on the corporation’s behalf. Amendment 96 amends Clause 12(1)(e), which excepts a petition, "““made under and in accordance with any other enactment””." The amendment is tabled partly to probe what that means. Taken together with Amendment 98B, which would insert a new subsection, my amendment is intended to clarify the position. It sets out a number of instances where it seems to us that the council will find difficulty in applying the Government’s scheme to specific circumstances that apply. Yet if a petition appears to be valid, it will have to be dealt with according to the statutory scheme. In order to probe this issue, I shall set out examples of some of the difficulties that a prescriptive, top-down, nationally imposed scheme may have. One difficulty relates to petitions made under and in accordance with any other enactment. An obvious example is a petition for a mayor, but there may well be others. The second is a petition in connection with a planning application that is under consideration by the authority. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, pointed out on Monday that petitions about a planning application will have to be dealt with there and then as part of the planning process and regarded as a representation in relation to that application. It would be ridiculous to deal with such a petition in any other way; therefore, it would have to be outside the scheme as laid down. Yet that does not appear to be the case in the Bill. The third is a petition made in connection with a licensing application. Exactly the same situation applies as to planning applications. If someone is applying for a licence to run a taxi or to amend the opening hours of a local pub, for example, the council makes a decision in a quasi-judicial capacity under the legislation applying to that kind of licensing. Yet the petition itself could hardly be said to be made under, and in accordance with, an enactment. The enactments allow people to make representations but not necessarily a petition. The fourth is a petition made in connection with the annual budget-making process of the authority. This is the most important example each year of an instance where the council is making decisions according to a set timetable—it has to. There is no point in a petition going through a convoluted system under the Government’s requirements if it comes in the day before the council’s budget-making meeting; it clearly has to be reported to that meeting and considered at it as part of the budget-making process. That is so obvious, and it is what a normal council will do as a matter of course in a common-sense, pragmatic way, which is our argument throughout. There may be matters generally in connection with an item due to be discussed at an early meeting of the council, a committee, a sub-committee, the executive, any other body or at a public meeting of a cabinet member who has delegated power to make decisions—sometimes those decisions are made in public by a cabinet member sitting as a chairman but making decisions as a one-man committee, which is a strange way to make decisions but an open and public way for one person to do so. Whatever decisions are made, if they are made quickly, the petition clearly has to circumvent all the other processes and simply be put to the meeting of whatever body is making the decision. It is so obvious, and it is what a sensible council will do. Yet the Government are trying to tie councils up in red tape, and people might well be able to come back and say, ““My petition wasn’t dealt with correctly under the scheme, as you just considered it the day after the meeting and rejected it, without giving it the full consideration the scheme says it must have””. Councils carry out all kinds of public consultation. More consultation takes place nowadays than ever before, by a factor of probably 10 or 20, perhaps more. A lot of people complain that there is too much consultation; they do not want to be consulted again and just want councils to get on with it. Nevertheless, consultation is built into all kinds of things the council does. The council sets out a consultation process. Sometimes it is a statutory or semi-statutory process, as under the local development framework. On this particular issue, the council just decided to carry out consultation and then set up the scheme. It is ludicrous for a petition on a matter regarding that consultation process to be considered in any way other than as part of that consultation process and for the council to have a petition scheme preventing that happening. I am sure that noble Lords with experience in these matters can probably think of lots of other circumstances where the Government’s tightly organised scheme will not fit. Amendments 96 and 98B seek to set out some of the problems that the government scheme is likely to cause, to show the complexity of the issue and the need for flexibility. Amendment 127 simply removes the Government’s rather feeble attempt to deal with this problem, compared with the much more positive and rigorous way of dealing with it as set out in these amendments. I beg to move.