My Lords, it is late. I will try to be quick. I want to pick up what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred to as “operation blank cheque”. The bit of the Bill that we are looking at here and that my amendment refers to is described in a sub-heading as “Functions of CCAs”. It consists of 15 clauses, 11 of which start with:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision”.
What is different about the other four? Well, in those, the same words appear but they are not the first words. The problem is that there is a concept, an idea, floating around, but with such a lack of precision that it is extremely difficult to pin down what we will get at the end of the day. My Amendment 116A amends Clause 30, which does indeed start with:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision”
and deletes subsection (4), which would suspend the operation of political proportionality.
I very strongly agree with all the other speakers in what has been said so far and support their amendments, but regarding this amendment, what is Clause 30(4) designed to achieve and why should it achieve it? The Local Government and Housing Act 1989 was not actually the original legislation. There was some preceding legislation introduced by Mrs Thatcher, who was fed up with Conservative councillors in opposition complaining to her about another large party, which shall be nameless, taking not just majority control but complete control of the committee system. That led, in their view, to serious injustice. Mrs Thatcher was persuaded of that point and the rules were introduced. Liberal Democrats at the time were strongly urging the same course of action. It was designed to stop an undemocratic abuse of majoritarian rule.
There would have to be a strong reason for suspending that in this arrangement. It will be a complex situation. We have enough experience here to know that getting a group of district councils and a county council together is not an afternoon’s walk in the park but a complex job, and the last thing that anybody needs to upset that applecart is the idea that there will be unfair or disproportionate representation, or “My council’s view is going to be squeezed out because of a distortion in the system.”
Others have spoken eloquently about that, but I just want to pick up the point about associate members. These are the individuals who can be appointed to join what are joint committees. This clause relates to the constitution of joint committees. It will have county councillors and district councillors. It may have associate members and they may have a vote in certain circumstances. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, pointed out that there is no limitation on who that could be.
We used to have an institution called aldermen. The majority party would appoint a sufficiently large number of its supporters to ensure that it never had
any difficulty in the chamber in passing its budget or anything else. Quite rightly, the institution of aldermen has long since been consigned to the dustbin. However, we have got it back here, with associate members. It will be explosive if you mix that in with the complexity of getting district and county councillors around a table taking decisions.
My question to the Minister is: in what circumstances could doing that enhance the Government’s proposal for CCAs? It is one of the many occasions when Ministers decide the regulations, but there is no indication of what factors are to be considered which might justify having any confidence in this proposition. Should not the factors that the Secretary of State considers at least be in the Bill; for example, “The Secretary of State cannot exercise Clause 30(4) unless the following conditions are complied with”? The noble Earl might like to suggest those conditions, those limitations or constraints, because on Report, I would want to include them in an amendment.
Of course, this is not the only clause that I might have made this amendment to: Clause 28(5)(f) is another where proportionality is being suspended—or may be if, at his complete discretion, the Secretary of State decides to do so. I want to hear what the Minister has to say about why he thinks that it is necessary or even slightly advantageous. If he has a plausible reason for that, will he go on and accept that it has to be codified or constrained in some way? If he cannot do any of those things, will he please accept my Amendment 116A and delete subsection (4) from Clause 30?