Localism Bill

My Lords, I want to make only three points at this stage of the debate. We are here on the fourth day in Committee on this Bill and I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, with what I have to say is some dismay. I have certainly not had his committee’s report drawn to my attention, so I have not seen it. No doubt it is in the Printed Paper Office nestling among the volumes of other papers for us to pick up. I recognised almost all the papers set out there as things I have already. This is really a question of how the House works. From what the noble Lord said, the committee has made important recommendations, but they will have to be dealt with on Report, once we have had a chance to look at them. I doubt whether amendments could be tabled, debated and approved in the remaining days of the Committee stage. This does seem to be something that the House authorities might like to take note of. I appreciate the difficulty of the committee, faced with this huge Bill from another place. It had its Second Reading and we then moved fairly smartly into the Committee stage. However, this is not a very satisfactory way of proceeding. We ought to have had those recommendations before we started the Committee stage, but we did not, although I understand that it is no fault of the committee. My second point is that, in welcoming the amendments that have been tabled by my noble friends, I should like to say particularly how much I appreciate the way the Government have listened to the representations made in another place about the question of a petition that might be called for by the Greater London Authority. The suggestion they have come up with, that there needs to be a 1 per cent vote in every London borough before the GLA has to call a referendum, is a wise one. As my noble friends have suggested, it will prevent a fuss in a particular area, one that might arouse considerable public opposition, forcing the GLA to hold a referendum at huge cost—estimated at somewhere between £5 million and £12 million depending on whether it happens on the same day as another election. The Government’s suggestion that a 1 per cent vote in every borough would trigger the obligation to consider whether a referendum should be held therefore seems absolutely right. My third point arises from representations that I have had—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Best, will be interested in this—from the Local Government Association. Noble Lords may remember that, on the second day of Committee on 23 June, I expressed some dismay that the opportunity had not been taken in the Bill to follow through the general power of competence, which Clause 1 gives to local authorities, by substantially lightening the burden of central direction on them. I said during my brief remarks then that both the London Councils—I declare an interest as a joint president—and the Local Government Association, of which I am a vice-president, had said, ““Yes, Patrick, we agree but it would be an entirely different kind of Bill””. I remarked in my speech on the difficulty of trying to amend the Bill to try to remove some of what I see as retaining an over-complex power for central government to tell local authorities what to do and how to behave. Giving a general power of competence requires trusting the local authorities to do things in a sensible way. They are accountable to their local electorate if they do not. I think that the Local Government Association saw that as a bit of a challenge. It has produced for me a list of amendments designed to return to local authorities the responsibility for deciding when and how to conduct a referendum. That is the good side. Unfortunately, somehow I only received that yesterday afternoon when I was engaged on other business. By the time I was able to turn my attention to the e-mail from the Local Government Association, it was clear that we were already too late. I will make the case that the LGA has decided on and give notice that I may wish to return to these matters on Report. The LGA makes the point, just as I did on the second day in Committee, that it seems absurd in this day and age that central government should retain such an overwhelming control over how local authorities continue to manage their business. It draws attention in particular to Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Bill and the whole question we have discussed of holding a referendum. The LGA says: "““This section of the Bill is symptomatic of the difficulty Whitehall has had in translating Ministers’ localist ideas into legislation. Instead of freeing local people, and their councils, to decide how best local consultation and challenge should take place, the Bill lays down an extremely prescriptive process, managed from the centre, determining exactly how localism should work on the ground””." I have every sympathy with that sentiment. My only regret is that, like the report of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, it has come to me rather late. There will be another opportunity and, as I said, I will want to raise the matter again. I shall want in particular to ask that it should be the local council rather than the Secretary of State who determines the threshold for a petition to trigger a referendum and that the Bill should allow the local council rather the Secretary of State to determine whether a petition or a signature thereon is acceptable—and decide what is a local matter. That is spelt out in the Bill as something that the Secretary of State has to determine, not the council, which strikes me as being little short of absurd. I want also to see the local council, rather than the Secretary of State, determine the conduct of its referendum, including choosing the date and deciding how to publicise it, who is eligible to vote, how votes are counted and so on. Are the councils not capable of doing that? There may be some that will fall short but so be it: if we are serious about localism and about pushing decisions down from central government to the local level, we have to trust the local authorities to deal with that. I am much encouraged by seeing nods all round the Chamber and I am only sorry that, because of the late arrival of these suggestions, we are not able to discuss them on specific amendments this afternoon. I will want to return to this matter. The Local Government Association has now risen to the challenge that I threw out at Second Reading and produced proposals which would involve removing quite large elements from this part of the Bill in order to make sure that it is local councils that decide how they are going to run their own affairs, not the Secretary of State.