Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who is standing in for her two noble friends. The amendments address principally the issue of the petition organiser. Amendment 115 looks at publishing information on a website. Clause 12 requires one of the valid signatories to a petition to be designated the ““petition organiser”” in order for a petition to be valid. As noble Lords have said, Amendment 95 would remove the requirement for someone to declare themselves the petition organiser for the petition to be valid. Amendment 102 is consequential, removing the definition of ““petition organiser”” from the clause. Amendment 108 seeks to take a pragmatic approach to situations where a petition organiser has not been identified. It requires that, where no petition organiser has been identified on the petition, or made themselves known to the local authority, the authority consider the first valid name on the list to be the petition organiser. I accept that this is a clear and simple approach and would solve the problem of the local authority having a point of contact. I fear, however, that it could be considerably less attractive to someone who had been deemed petition organiser rather than having volunteered for the job. It could come as quite a shock to someone to discover that, having put their name to a petition, they had been thrust into the position of primary contact with the authority, with their name having been published on its website and having to take decisions on whether to request a review of its response. It might put someone off signing a petition in the future. That is not to say, of course, that petitions should be dismissed out of hand because a petition organiser has not been identified—I need to make that really clear. We would expect an authority presented with something that is manifestly a petition but which fails to identify an organiser to do the sensible thing and contact one of the signatories. In the two examples that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, gave, we would expect Bradford and Sutton would do the sensible thing and pick up the phone and say, ““We could do with an organiser on this one””, and seek one out. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will not press Amendment 108. Amendments 107 and 125 take a different approach to communication in situations where a petition organiser has not been identified. Amendment 107 would require the local authority to send written acknowledgements to every valid signatory of the petition. Amendment 125 would require the same approach in relation to notification and the reasoning behind the authority’s response to the petition. Both amendments would allow the authority to take these steps in whatever way it considered appropriate. Nevertheless, a requirement to contact every valid signatory to a petition inevitably conflicts with the principle that we make this as easy as possible for local authorities. There would be nothing, of course, to prevent an authority deciding to communicate directly with every signatory of a petition if it considered that that was appropriate in the circumstances. However, it should not be required absolutely of them in every case. I also make it absolutely clear that the Government’s intention is that ““written acknowledgement”” should include electronic communication whenever that is appropriate. For example, if there is an e-mail address, that is easily done; correspondence could be sent in that form. I hope that I have reassured noble Lords, and that they will agree not to press the amendments. A petition is inherently about the power of individuals—I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, made that point. It is about organising as a group to call for action. Putting in place measures to ensure that they are taken seriously means that the role of a petition organiser is an important one. It is not unreasonable to ask that people consider this as part of the way they organise themselves in submitting a petition, and identify someone to take on that role. We hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said about people abusing that situation; that is something for us to think about. However, as with the clause promoting democracy, it is the council’s responsibility to talk to people about their responsibilities as well and say how they can organise petitions properly and capacity-build people who might be anxious about that situation. There is one further amendment that touches on the issue of petition organisers. Amendment 115 would place a new requirement on local authorities to publish on their website details of valid petitions, including the name of the organiser and the way in which they will consider them. Clause 14 already requires that local authorities must notify petition organisers of their response to petitions, and that they must publish this notification on their website. The amendment would require local authorities to publish details of petitions at an earlier stage, and to do so for all valid petitions received, whether or not they related to matters about which the authority had any control, were vexatious or abusive, or were the same as other petitions received in the previous six months. I see merit in the noble Lord’s suggestions, but I wonder whether this is an issue, as he also suggested, that might be best addressed in guidance rather than in the Bill. It is right that we leave that discretion to authorities. One can imagine circumstances, for example, in which publishing details of abusive petitions, including the name of the organiser, could inflame community tensions, especially at a local level. However, the noble Lord makes a very important point. I welcome his views and would be happy to discuss this with him further before Report. In the mean time, I ask him not to press his amendment.