I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is an important Bill for solving the problem of health and safety interfering with small charities and community groups that are trying to do the right thing in their community but sometimes get bogged down in the bureaucracy of local government. The Bill will make local authorities accountable for health and safety decisions that they take about events, and it will offer citizens a route of redress when the local authority cancels events or when members of the public consider that the local authority’s conditions on an event going ahead are over-zealous, unreasonable or disproportionate. In particular, it will give members of the public the right to a review of a negative decision.
The Bill also makes specific provision for the local government ombudsman to treat complaints related to health and safety decisions about events differently from how it responds to other complaints. It provides for the possibility of a fast-track process to allow the ombudsman to examine those decisions and overturn them or recommend that they be reviewed rapidly—hopefully within 14 days. It is also intended that the Bill will go some way towards halting or even reversing the risk aversion that seems to have developed in our local authorities over recent years. That risk-averse culture is what makes the Bill so necessary.
The inspiration for the Bill comes from Lord Young of Graffham’s 2010 report, “Common Sense, Common Safety”, which was produced after a Whitehall-wide review of the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture. In his forward to the report, the Prime Minister expressed clearly the genesis of the Bill when he wrote that newspapers were reporting even more examples of senseless bureaucracy that gets in the way of people trying to do the right thing. He said that we should put a stop to senseless rules that get in the way of volunteering, and that we need a system that is proportionate, not bureaucratic, that treats adults like adults, and that reinstates some common sense and trust. Treating adults like adults and not letting bureaucracy get in the way of communities coming together to hold events, celebrate local anniversaries or mark a special event in the national or local calendar is one aim of this Bill.
I am sure everyone knows a story about health and safety, or a decision taken by a local authority that could politely be described as over-zealous. I have a couple of examples with which I hope you will allow me to indulge the House, Mr Deputy Speaker. A pancake race was held on pancake day in St Albans, but health and safety officials decreed that because it had rained in the morning, competitors would be required to walk rather than run. Apparently the announcement was met with playful and friendly banter from the crowd, but one can only imagine how people will have responded on that occasion. There are examples of a ban on sparklers. Anyone who is planning on celebrating bonfire night in the near future will know how charming and decorative sparklers can be—indeed, I suggest they are
almost an integral part of bonfire night, unless someone happens to be at a display in Newcastle, Gateshead, Manchester or Lambeth, where sparklers have been banned. One presumes that hot soup and sizzling sausages might also be banned on account of their danger.
Finally, a recent example of just how far the culture of an over-zealous, disproportionate application of an unbalanced approach to health and safety has spread can be found at a village cricket team in Norfolk—the county where the Minister has his constituency—which has been forced to relocate after the council introduced new rules banning the use of cricket balls on its pitch. I suffer at home because my wife has banned the use of cricket balls in the house—my son and I have both been disciplined for that—but a cricket pitch is probably a reasonable place to expect to use a hard cricket ball.
The Bill tries to redress some of those issues, and proposed new section 22A(2) to the Local Government Act 1974 states that if a local authority in England prohibits or restricts in some way an event on health and safety grounds, it must give written notice of the decision, and the reasons for it, to the applicant or event organiser. Local authorities should already be doing that; it is not unusual and we would expect that to happen, but it does not on every occasion. Proposed new section 22A would also require local authorities to carry out a review of the decision if requested, and reply within 15 days explaining whether it is to be confirmed, withdrawn, replaced or varied, and the outcome of that decision must be provided in writing. Once again, one would expect a local authority to do that already, but that is not the case in every circumstance. The Bill is silent on the mechanics of such a review, which allows local authorities to determine for themselves what process to go through and how it will work, so that they can design their own systems and the most cost-effective way of responding to applicants.
If local authorities behave as they should, there will be no extra cost whatsoever. The system will work perfectly well, and the current system of inspecting health and safety and ensuring that our constituents and local charities are safe will carry on as it always has. If they behaved as they should, a review would not be needed. Any local small charity that was holding an event would apply for a licence and be given permission, with no over-zealous constraints, so that the event could run as planned.
If an issue could not be resolved locally, a complaint could be made to the local government ombudsman. If the complainant considered that they had suffered an injustice arising from maladministration of that decision, they could forward it to the local government ombudsman. Clause 2 would amend section 28 of the 1974 Act to give the local government ombudsman power to adopt different procedures for different categories of any case, including a fast-track procedure for certain cases—so what I am proposing would be legally possible. The expectation is that the ombudsman would use the fast-track procedure to deal with complaints arising from decisions of local authorities to ban or restrict events on health and safety grounds, so that if the recommendation by the ombudsman were that the decision be revisited, the authority would have the opportunity to do so before the event took place. That is important. If someone is
faced with such bureaucratic nonsense, the ombudsman would have the opportunity to step in to allow the local authority to rethink its decision and for the community event to continue as planned. Unfortunately, the ombudsman does not have the power to overturn a decision, but it can recommend that a decision be revisited. If that is not possible, the ombudsman does have the power to recommend compensation. If the time scale does not allow the event to go ahead, but the ombudsman finds in favour of the applicants, compensation could be paid for their losses.
The Bill would not affect the important and necessary health and safety legislation that exists to protect employees and the public in the streets. We need to curb the over-enthusiastic and over-zealous implementation of health and safety legislation without putting members of the public in any danger. If someone were to propose letting members of the public dive off a high board into 12 inches of water, common sense would say that that was dangerous and pretty daft. Health and safety legislation has a role in looking after our constituents, but when it gets to the stage of making the players of a game of conkers wear goggles so that they are not injured by flying sections of conker, we have gone from conkers to bonkers.
Occasionally, there is less to a story than gets reported, but the stories do seem to keep coming. The Health and Safety Executive has even set up a myth-busting section on its home page. I commend that website to Members and the public to educate themselves. Anyone who thinks that the health and safety culture is a myth should consider such examples as the library that instructed borrowers not to take books into the toilet, the school that banned a sports day morning session because of dew or the village hall that ruled that washing up after events could not be done by hand but a dishwasher had to be used. Those stories, and hundreds like them, make a compelling case that this is a serious issue.
Communities should not be dissuaded from coming together, whether it is to raise money or celebrate a local or national anniversary. The health and safety culture puts extra barriers in the way of those communities who want to get involved and support each other. The Bill should help to block the actions of some of the over-zealous members of our local authorities. It would not only make local authorities more accountable for their decisions but encourage them to think more carefully about them. It would give applicants and event organisers a means of redress when events are cancelled by an authority on health and safety grounds, if they consider the restrictions unreasonable, and, crucially, help to halt the risk-averse culture that has developed in our authorities.
I hope that in Committee we can examine how the Bill might effectively address issues that have arisen over the years and that small charities, women’s institutes and others will be able to hold community events without some local authority staff being overzealous in their application of the licensing procedures. It is a simple Bill, with not many lines to amend, and I am hopeful that the Government will support it. I thank the Minister and his team for their support so far and other Members who have pursued this matter, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who first raised it, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).
Lord Young’s 2010 report, “Common Sense, Common Safety”, which followed a Whitehall review of the operation of health and safety laws and the growth of the compensation culture, made recommendations on the compensation culture, low-hazard workplaces, raising standards, insurance, education, health and safety legislation and local authorities:
“Officials who ban events on health and safety grounds should put their reasons in writing… Enable citizens to have a route for redress where they want to challenge local officials’ decisions. Local authorities will conduct an internal review of all refusals on the grounds of health and safety…Citizens should be able to refer unfair decisions to the Ombudsman, and a fast track process should be implemented to ensure that decisions can be overturned within two weeks. If appropriate, the Ombudsman may award damages where it is not possible to reinstate an event. If the Ombudsman’s role requires further strengthening, then legislation should be considered.”
The Government accepted these recommendations, and the Bill addresses all of them, so I hope we can move forward with it.
The Bill would insert new provisions into the 1974 Act requiring local authorities to provide the event organiser or person applying for a decision with written notification of a decision when the authority stops an event or imposes conditions or restrictions on health and safety grounds. It also provides that the applicant or event organiser can request a review to be completed within 15 days and that the Local Government Ombudsman may identify categories of complaints and require that these be investigated faster than others. On finding that the process to arrive at the decision involved maladministration, the local government ombudsman can recommend that the authority undertake to pay compensation.
This is a timely Bill; indeed, it probably should have been brought forward a little earlier. Obviously, Government business has not allowed it to come to the fore hitherto. I hope that, with Government support and the support of my colleagues, we can move forward and put the Bill on to the statute book to allow those community groups to continue to do the good work they do in raising money for charities, marking anniversaries and celebrating the sort of community events that hold our society together. I commend the Bill to the House.
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