Localism Bill

My Lords, perhaps I may comment briefly on the standards issue, not least because I tabled an amendment yesterday about standards committees that unfortunately has been printed as part of the amendments to the Education Bill. Members of your Lordships’ House will, therefore, not have seen it. I fully understand the predicament that that puts us all in. However, this relates directly to what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said. Perhaps I may express some views on the Standards Board and standards committee issue. For a number of years, I have been deeply concerned about the performance of the Standards Board and that whole standards structure. After a lot of thought about how you might actually make it work better, my amendment proposes a prescriptive way forward that might avoid some of the problems that we have experienced in recent years. We have had problems because the structures of the Standards Board for England and the standards committee under it have worked badly. There have been too many spurious references to it, often followed by detailed press interest in the accusation that has been made. There have been some very poor decisions, many of them reported in the media, and a number have been successfully challenged in the courts. There should not be a structure that ends up with successful challenges in the courts, in a quasi-judicial system, being pursued by local authority standards committees. People’s reputations are at stake here, and we have to do it a bit better. However, the time is not right for a wholesale change in the standards system, because the general public have a right to expect that a council has a code of conduct, and, in my view, that should not be voluntary. It should be statutory and there has to be a standards committee that can look into any allegations or complaints that the code has not been followed. However, this is quite different from the register of interests and, for example, a failure to declare an interest. Indeed, a potential example was discussed a moment ago. My solution is simply to propose that we might consider, between now and Report, a provision that a relevant authority should have a standards committee, but that such committees might be established jointly between relevant authorities, which is particularly important for parish councils. That is because the structure of a standards board for an individual parish council is hard to deliver. It would cost a great deal, for one thing. The role of the standards committee is to assess cases brought before it against the code of conduct of that relevant authority, but the membership must have a majority of independent members. They would be appointed against known principles, and have an independent chair. Those councillors who currently serve on such a committee, coming from their own local authority, would no longer do so, because otherwise there would be a real doubt in the mind of the general public as to whether there is any real or perceived bias in a judgment that is reached. I would have other members in a minority who have been elected members of a local authority, I propose for at least four years, but they should not currently be members of a local authority and would not have been a member of the relevant authority to which the committee relates. In other words, you put a barrier between those who make the decision of a standards committee and those whom it is investigating. You would have to have an appeals system. My amendment suggests that the Secretary of State should establish by regulation an appeals system at a national level, and I propose that members would be former chairs of standards committees, all of whom at present are independent. Maybe we will come back to that issue on the third day but I hope that there may be a way for us to preserve some form of standards committee. Even in this structure, most councils are going to want to do so; otherwise, they do not have a means of investigating a complaint on the voluntary code of conduct. It is a very serious matter because the public perception has to be that everything is being done properly and is above board. So I do not support a voluntary code of conduct and I do think that there is a very strong case for a standards committee for each relevant authority—but possibly combined across several—to be considered.