Localism Bill

My Lords, this amendment probes the material about the referendum and the question published by the local authority holding the referendum. Clause 53(4) says: "““Subject to subsection (5), the principal local authority may publish, or arrange for the publication of, material that is designed to encourage support for or opposition to the question to be asked in the referendum””," while Clause 53(5) says this applies only to referendums which are, "““held in response to a petition””," from the public, ““or a request”” from a member or members of the authority and that the authority can, "““incur only such expenditure as is reasonable””," whatever that may mean. I am moving this amendment to take out those two subsections as a means of probing how they will work and what they mean. I have also put down Amendments 128Y and 128Z, which say that if the local authority produces material in support and/or opposition to the question, it has to do so in a fair and balanced way. It has to give, "““equal prominence to the arguments””," on each side. That mirrors what happens in national referendums, where the Government, or the Electoral Commission on behalf of the Government, publish statements which say, ““On the one hand, vote yes; on the other hand, vote no””. They put a fair and balanced argument. In this new world of local referendums, it is not clear to me whether local authorities are going to be able to churn out publicity on one side only, or to be strongly in favour of one side and against the other, and whether that is intended or desirable. This is a very important question that needs careful bottoming. My understanding is that the Electoral Commission has expressed some concern about this and believes that there should be balance, although I was looking for the stuff that I think I have had from it before this debate and I could not find it. I cannot quote exactly what it is saying but it would be interesting to have a definitive view from the Electoral Commission on this matter, certainly before we get to Report. It is fairly obvious that this is an important matter and that there may be different views on it, but our view is that a council ought to be putting out fair and balanced publicity, if it wishes to put out publicity at all. It ought to have the option not to spend any more money than it is already and to keep out of the argument altogether. The Bill suggests that it can because it says: "““the principal local authority may publish, or arrange for the publication of””," with the clear implication there that it does not have to if it does not want to. Particularly where a referendum is tied in heavily with the local political argument and where referendums and local elections get intertwined, as I think will be inevitable, it will be dangerous for local authorities to get involved on one side of an argument. The political party running a local authority may strongly be on one side with the party in opposition, which might be ready to take over if it wins enough seats, on the other. For the local authority to weigh in with public money in those circumstances seems to me to be wrong in principle. I am not saying that people should not campaign; people should campaign, but they should go out and organise their own campaigns. Amendment 128AA seeks to put some controls on expenditure on this kind of publicity in a referendum on which the local authority spends its own money. It seeks to harden up the word ““reasonable”” by saying that it has to be approved by a meeting of the council. The meeting of the council that determines that a referendum should take place should also decide whether the local authority spends any money on it and how much; it should set a budget for it, because, in any case, this will be all be money outside the council’s agreed budget. I assume that councils will not put contingency sums in their budget in case they have referendums. They will all be hoping that they do not have any, from that point of view. They will not want to put the council tax up or cut other services at budget time in order to put money aside for referendums, so I assume they will not do that and therefore it may well need a supplementary vote by the full council anyway, if it is a full-scale referendum and is costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds. Where is it going to come from? The council will have to decide, so it would be part of that. I would only put forward Amendment 128AA on the basis that the council was going to be even-handed. The council being able to vote sums of money to one side in a highly politically contentious question is a very dangerous way forward. This is put forward as genuinely probing, to find out what the Government’s views are, but it is also a considerable concern that might need a bit more thought before Report.