My Lords, before I turn to Amendment 71, I place on record a very personal—and it is not just mine—support for what the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said a few minutes ago about the vital importance of allowing tiers of local government to decide for themselves how they want to organise their decision-making processes. That is fundamental.
In terms of one of those tiers of local governance, we have already heard throughout the course of today’s deliberation frequent reference to the importance and the role of district councils. That is what Amendment 71 is about. I noticed that, during the deliberations on a number of groups, concern has been raised about quite how district councils are going to fit in to the new structures that are being proposed. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said—I counted it—on five separate occasions during her last contribution, “It’s all very complicated” or “It’s all incredibly
complicated”. I say to her that my Amendment 71 provides a solution which brings enormous simplicity to the whole issue.
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Before I do so, I will remind the Committee why district councils are so important. After all, they deliver 86 out of the 137 essential local government services to some 22 million people, which is 40% of the population of England. Those services cover things such as waste collection, street cleaning, housing, economic development, planning, leisure, recreation and many other things. It is important to remember that they are also better known, more popular and more trusted than other tiers of government. They have a higher name recognition, for example, than county councils. The public believe that district councils are much more likely than other tiers to take their views into account in the decisions they make. A recent survey said that 62% of people thought that of district councils, compared with only 32% for county councils and, for those of us who have been or are involved in it, it is sad to know that only 6% of the population believe that central government take their views into account. The public believe that district councils are best placed to understand and deal with social issues in their area and to boost local economies. It is interesting that in two-tier areas, the district councils get a higher satisfaction rate than the county councils.
Amendment 77 is an attempt to explore further the debate we have been having about how these important district councils fit into the CCA plans. At present, as I understand it—the Minister was very helpful earlier in setting the scene in answer to the noble Baroness—the district council might become a non-constituent body, depending on the decisions of other people, but there is no certainty about that. The powers that district councils will have are uncertain, because they are determined by other bodies, and whether they will have a vote is also uncertain, because other groups will decide. An additional complication was raised by my noble friend Lord Shipley when he asked why a non-constituent body should have a vote at all.
One of the issues was the problem of district councils having their powers removed without having any say in it, and I am pleased that some progress has been made—back in November, Michael Gove made a Statement, and we have amendments coming up later that, we hope, will address that concern. It seems to me there is a simple solution to all of this. Currently we have constituent members, which are either a county council or the unitary district council for the relevant area. Amendment 71 simply proposes that we add district councils to that list. It would provide a neat and simple solution; it would ensure that there is no problem with powers being stolen from people, because they would be involved in the decision-making on all the powers that they currently hold, and so on.
Of course, I entirely accept that the Government have concerns about that, believing that district councils could outvote the others or perhaps even have a veto, but these are issues that can be resolved. We note that in Clause 11, there are already powers for the Secretary of State to make regulations. I simply propose to the
noble Earl not only that he accepts the amendment, as I hope he will, but as he has very generously offered us a round table to discuss many of these complicated issues, that that could be added to the list of things we look at. I hope that the very simple solution to all the concerns people have expressed about district councils is accepting Amendment 71.