Localism Bill

I thank noble Lords. I am sort of having a second bite of the cherry within the group, because I can talk specifically about the proposals of my noble friend. I hope that I can really reassure him. He talked about appeal structures and the like and the need to maintain them—and of course human rights legislation provides for this. But in actual fact the sanctions that the Secretary of State intends to provide for in regulations under Clause 18(2) will be relatively low-level sanctions based on powers of discipline that councils already possess. It is not our intention to confer any new disciplinary powers of the sort that would give rise to a need or expectation for a bureaucratic appeal process. I cannot support Amendment 98M, which would insert a new clause relating to parish standards, although I understand the interest in it. The legislation as currently drafted gives parishes the power to have a code or a standards committee if they would like. Parish councils are free to make arrangements to work jointly with other authorities. My noble friend is mistaken if he believes that advice is not available to parish councils. The last Government published the Quality Parish and Town Council Scheme; it was published by the department in 2003, and it gives information about model charters whereby principal and local councils in England can work in partnership. That document can be viewed on the DCLG website. We intend here also that the regulations to be issued by the Secretary of State under Clause 18(1) will specify that the registration of parish members' interests will be carried out by the monitoring officer of the district within which the relevant parish falls. There was some talk about the criminal sanctions for failing to register, and I note noble Lords’ concerns on that. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked, too, that he might be a party to discussions that we might have before Report on those issues, and I would like to assure noble Lords that we would be happy to discuss that aspect of Clause 19, relating to breaching regulations under Clause 18. With that, I ask my noble friend Lord Tope to withdraw the amendment.