Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Tope, began his speech, I thought that I had persuaded him. He began by saying that he wanted more understanding on the functions in this clause and how people become involved, that the magistracy needs to be more diverse and that assistance from local authorities was desirable. Then he backed off from the notion that we should make sure that this happens by including a duty that is consistent with the rest of the Bill. I will try again to explain why it is so important that these functions are also captured by the duty. I will state briefly what the clauses do and why. We had a long but—largely due to me—rather confused debate on this in Committee. I will make sure that this is now on the record. Very briefly, the information to be provided, which is captured in Clause 3, will include information about how the bodies function; what they do; how a person can be a member of, or take part in, these bodies; and what is involved in doing so. The duty does not require councils to explain the decision-making arrangements of the bodies. The difference between these bodies and those listed in Clause 2 is that the bodies listed in Clause 2 have broad responsibilities and offer a wider range of formal and informal opportunities for ordinary members or sections of the public to be involved in their decision-making. The bodies listed in Clause 3 are different. Their functions relate to the administration of justice services, so it is not appropriate or necessary for their decision-making arrangements, other than their civic functions, to be included. In carrying out their functions, they simply seek to recruit ordinary citizens to serve on them and to fill the important lay judicial and inspectoral roles from the local community. These roles include monitoring the day-to-day life in local prisons or removal centres, ensuring that proper standards of care and decency are maintained as part of an independent monitoring board or making recommendations to improve the administrative services provided by the court as part of the court board. These are important functions within the community. There has long been concern that the pool of people who take part is not broad or diverse enough. There is a genuine appetite among the organisations, and a real need, to ensure that a more diverse range of people put themselves forward. For example, the recruitment of new members is critical to independent monitoring boards, not least because many IMBs are currently understrength. The difficulties of recruiting new members, especially in low population areas, where many of our prisons are located, and of ensuring that membership reflects a broad range of ages and backgrounds are a constant challenge for IMBs. That is one good argument for why this should be a duty. The aim, therefore, is to spread awareness of the work of the organisations among groups that are underrepresented and people who may be unaware that such opportunities are available. As I said, the people who do this work are not as representative of their populations as they might be. Only one-third of court board members are women, according to figures from June 2008. Nationally, 80 per cent of magistrates are over 50 and the average age is 57. Although the proportion of IMB members from black and ethnic minority communities is around 7 per cent, the proportion of members of these communities on individual boards hardly mirrors the composition of the local population. The bodies named in Clauses 3 and 4—lay justices, IMBs, court boards and youth offending teams—are committed to the promotion of their lay roles. Their ambition is to attract a wide and diverse range of people to take up those roles. They or their representatives have all welcomed the opportunity offered by inclusion in this clause to further promote their lay roles, in addition to the work that they already do to attract a wider and more diverse range of people to take them up. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, was concerned that the duty might have a perverse consequence, where the fact that the council was committed to promoting greater diversity or understanding of the bodies’ roles would demotivate the bodies themselves from doing so. I hope that I can address the question raised by the noble Lord. It is understood by the bodies concerned that we intend to build on what they do, amplify and enhance it and spread the word further, to ensure that the roles are promoted even more widely and to take a joined-up approach across different public bodies to make it more likely that citizens will be able to access information and get involved. We are not in any sense imposing those requirements on the public bodies in question. We are not saying that councils are superior to those bodies. We are not saying that they will be able to come up with amazing feats to inspire people that the bodies are less capable of doing themselves. We are saying that giving councils that role means that there will be an additional opportunity, an additional focus, with greater attention generated and a boost given to the efforts that the bodies themselves are already making. There is an argument for additional effort in this area and for saying that that will be achieved only by imposing a duty. That will help to increase publicity about roles. The council can provide a single point of contact for and will reach out to those who are not already aware of a specific role but who may be helpful to the organisations concerned and interested in finding out what is on offer. I am concerned that, if responsibility remains solely with the bodies concerned and that help is not provided, we will be stuck in the current situation where, in many cases, only people who already know about the bodies or have a professional interest can approach them for information. We want it to be made clearer to the public what those bodies do and how to take up opportunities. We think that requiring local authorities to promote information about their important range of local roles means that they can be promoted more effectively and coherently. Clause 4 deals essentially with lay justices, commonly known as magistrates. The same arguments apply. The noble Lord asked me about the question raised by my noble friend Lord Borrie. We thought about that. He mentioned the fact that the tribunals were not mentioned in Clause 3. We have reviewed that since Committee. We have confirmed that, as they operate at national level, they do not meet our criteria for inclusion. The Tribunals Service at the Ministry of Justice confirms that it does not consider tribunals to be appropriate to be included in the duty. I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising the point and for allowing me to explain why it is not included.