Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tope, for the gracious way in which he introduced this first debate on Report. We went over this Bill in great detail in Committee and I am very glad to share our understanding with him. Clearly we are all very much in favour of promoting democracy and we recognise that there is a problem in so far as we would like to see a livelier and more engaged local democracy in our communities. We have that common ground between us, so I will carry on trying to persuade him to support me on things with which he may, strangely, disagree. In this short debate, I will address the noble Lord’s amendments and speak to my own and I will briefly recap what the duties to promote democracy set out to achieve. Clause 1 places a duty on all principal local authorities—including county and district councils, unitary authorities and London boroughs—to promote an understanding of their decision-making arrangements and those of various other public authorities that provide or influence the provision of services in their area and to promote existing opportunities to participate in those arrangements. Local authorities are expected to promote such understanding to people who live, work or study in the area. It is an ambitious intention, but, as it is set out here, it is relatively modest. I take my noble friend’s point and should say that we have tried to balance it so that it is not overloaded by detail and certainly not overloaded by prescription. In essence, we want to encourage greater involvement in local democracy and we start from the premise that there is a lack of understanding. We aim to ensure that people know what services the council and other public bodies operating locally provide, what councillors do, how decisions about services are made and how people can participate in and influence them. People will then stand a better chance of getting involved in local politics, which, as I have said, means standing not just as a local councillor but also as a magistrate or school governor. The duty is intended to ensure that the relevant information is available to those who seek it and that it is promoted beyond people who would normally get involved to those who are less engaged and therefore underrepresented. In Grand Committee, we spent some time discussing the evidence and I do not want to repeat what I said at that time. The Councillors Commission, having considered the evidence, thinks that this is a vital way forward in the effort to revitalise local democracy. Indeed, evidence continues to come forward. Recently, officials have been seeking to add a question to the citizenship survey about what people think of their councillors, but the proposal had to be dropped because in the trials that we carried out not enough people knew who their councillor was or what they did for the responses to be meaningful. That is a serious finding. Also in Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Best—he is not in his place—speaking as the president of the LGA, said that the duty to promote democracy should be recognised as a core function of local authorities and that the association supported the duty on the basis that it was not overly prescriptive. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, gracefully acknowledged, we are trying hard to achieve a light-touch approach. The duties are not prescriptive; they set out the scope of what we are asking local authorities to do, but we have not suggested how they should go about it. For all the reasons that we have given in debates in this House over many years, we do not lightly seek to put duties on local government. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, pointed out the dichotomy between the measurable achievements of local government —the real successes that we have seen in improving services as measured by the CPA over the past decade—and the perception of the community that local government is somehow still not up to the mark or even failing. Local government has faced many challenges over the past years and it is frustrating for those working in the service to know that their achievements have not been accepted by the local community. We are trying to address issues of reputation and perception as well as seeking to engage more people through attracting them to serve in local government. We need to do this for all the reasons that we have discussed so that we can ensure that future councils are shaped by a more diverse range of people who reflect the views and experiences of the full community. However, what is gratifying is how local government has already responded positively to the duty to involve, which comes into force in April. It marks the next step in making sure that people have the opportunity to become involved because they know how to do so. We heard examples of councils doing something along the lines of what we seek; indeed, many are doing it very well. However, it is not done well or at all in other places. Therefore, in the duty in Clause 1, we are trying to ensure that every person, no matter where they live, is able readily to access the information and knows how to seek it out. We want all local authorities to see promoting democracy as a positive and essential part of their core business. We recognise that it is a new responsibility, although it is bound to build on existing work. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, is right to say that we have addressed it in terms of a new burden and so have provided additional funding. I take his point that the funding is not ring-fenced, but it has been provided. By requiring local authorities to promote understanding of the council and the connected functions of other related authorities, we seek to send a clear message that encouraging local people to become involved in shaping the services that they receive really does matter and can make a difference. I understand where the noble Lord is coming from in his Amendments 1, 7, 14 and 16. We debated the issue in Committee. The concept of "reasonable endeavours" is perfectly sensible but he will not be surprised when I say that it muddies what we see as a clear and unambiguous duty on local authorities, especially as authorities would be expected to do only what is reasonable to meet any duty, including this one, unless there was some absolute standard of compliance on the face of the legislation, which is certainly not the case here. The provisions are intended to set out the scope of the expectation but with no detail about how local authorities should discharge their duty; we trust in the ability, creativity and commitment of local authorities to develop the best approaches to putting that duty into action. Amendment 2 seeks to clarify the information about councillors that local authorities will be required to provide. I agree that this is an important part of what we are asking local authorities to do. We set out previously that we considered it essential that the role and the functions of councillors should be covered. The noble Lord has anticipated my reply, because in Clause 1(2)(b) there is a duty to promote understanding of, ""what members of the principal local authority do"." However, he was right to make the argument and to refer back to the Councillors Commission, because the statements in the subsections indicate a proactive commitment to promoting democracy. As my noble friend said, we do not want to overload the Bill with too much detail—we are caught between a rock and a hard place however we do this—but the spirit of the Councillors Commission lives on in that clause. Amendments 5 and 6 are brought forward by the Government in response to issues raised in Committee. This is an example of how much we value the experience on the other side of the Chamber; I certainly listened to the arguments. One of the most important debates that we had was around the need for the duty to promote democracy to capture partnership working. We are tabling these government amendments to seek to make explicit our intention that the duties to promote democracy include the work of local authorities and connected authorities which is reflected and developed in partnership with others. This may be the first time that we have captured that in legislation. It is important and I am grateful to noble Lords for promoting the debate. Whether this is through a formal partnership arrangement such as CDRPs and LSPs, or a loose partnership that is set up for a specific issue, we want to ensure that they both fall within the scope of the duties to promote democracy defined in Clauses 1 and 2. This is a significant development. We have seen a flourishing of these partnerships in scope and diversity, particularly local strategic partnerships, which play a key role in the democratic and decision-making arrangements in relation to the community strategy, bringing together statutory bodies and the third sector, making vital decisions in support of the local area agreement process and so on. There is a general sense in many places that these bodies are not transparent enough and that the general public have little awareness of what they do and thus, inevitably, little chance to influence or take part in them. So, as part of our commitment to greater openness and influence, we want to ensure that that no longer remains the case. This duty as a whole is designed so that local authorities will promote understanding of the opportunities for people to participate in and influence the making of decisions, as well as of their connected authorities, for the reasons that I have explained. It was recognised in our debates in Committee that this can be achieved in partnerships. We agreed that this should be recognised explicitly under this duty, and amendments were laid in Committee both to the main duty under Clause 1, where noble Lords sought to include a requirement to promote understanding of the democratic and decision-making arrangements of partnerships, and to the list of connected authorities under Clause 2, to which noble Lords sought to add specific partnerships. I explained that the requirement to promote understanding of the local authorities and the connected authorities would be bound to include their involvement in partnership working, but I understood that what noble Lords really wanted to achieve was an explicit recognition of the important role that partnership working now plays in shaping services and the life of the community. We have therefore sought to find a way to amend the legislation that will achieve all our aims. It is not possible to name all relevant partnerships, or even specific partnerships. We have therefore expanded and clarified the definition of "democratic arrangements" so that it clearly includes work taken forward in partnership. The clause refers to, ""arrangements, in relation to any authority, for members of the public to participate in, or influence, the making of decisions"," to which our amendment adds the words, ""by the authority (including the making of decisions by the authority in partnership or conjunction with any other person)"." That means that, where councils have a duty to promote the understanding of democratic arrangements and of Clauses 1 and 2, they will be required to provide information about how partnerships are composed, what they do, how they work and how they make their decisions as part of a partnership. That would apply to Clause 1 in relation to decision-making by the council and to Clause 2 in relation to decision-making by the connected authorities. The amendment will ensure that councils have to explain about, for example, the LSP’s role in the local area, how that relates to the work of the council and the connected authorities and how the public can participate in or influence their decision-making. I hope that noble Lords will agree that this is a useful and positive amendment that improves the Bill, that it clarifies the intentions behind the duty and that, essentially, it will improve the awareness of local people and their influence on the decision-making process as a whole.