Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I have some sympathy with the position taken by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), having seen the cases involving Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg of Westminster city council and the London Mayor, which there is no time to go into. However, I shall focus on amendments Nos. 250 to 252, which, in effect, have been tabled on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair, and give effect to the recommendations of our 11th report and our subsequent monitoring report. In our view, there is no doubt that that the Bill’s proposed extension of the scope of the conduct of local authority members that may be covered by code of conduct engages members’ right to respect for their private life under article 8, and their right to freedom of expression under article 10, of the European convention on human rights. We believe that there is a real risk that those two articles will be breached. In January 2005 the Committee on Standards in Public Life considered the question in its 10th report. It recommended that the model code should make a clear distinction between private and official conduct, and that private conduct wholly unrelated to an individual’s official capacity should fall outside the ethical framework. The most obvious example of that was the case of the Mayor of London, in which the High Court allowed the Mayor’s appeal on the basis that the code of conduct did not apply because the Mayor was not acting in his official capacity and the code did not extend to regulating the Mayor’s private conduct. So far, so good. However, it appears that the Government want to overturn the decision of the High Court through the proposals in the Bill. In proceedings in the Public Bill Committee, the Minister for Local Government confirmed that the policy objective was to bring within the code instances where members who were acting outside their official duties received a criminal conviction. He said:"““We are trying to say that the code of conduct should not cover a councillor’s private life, with the caveat that if a criminal conviction was involved, that should be taken on board by the standards committee.””" We welcome that clarification, but that is not what the Bill actually says. As it stands, the Bill provides for a power which, on the face of it, is capable of being exercised so as to make the code of conduct apply to any private conduct of a member. In our view, that is highly likely to give rise to breaches of members’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression under articles 8 and 10. There is nothing in the Bill to confine the power along the lines that the Minister suggested. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman told the Public Bill Committee that hon. Members might"““have the impression…that we are trying to do the opposite of what we are really trying to do””," and later added that"““the law has to be widened and clarified so that the code can be narrowed.””––[Official Report, Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Public Bill Committee, 1 March 2007; c. 419-21.]" The members of the Joint Committee simply do not understand that rather puzzling explanation, and we see no reason why the Bill should not expressly state the exact extent to which the code should apply to private conduct by members—for example, by providing that the only private conduct to which the code applies is conduct that has resulted in a criminal conviction. The second problem that remains is that the Government’s intention appears to be that any criminal conviction, however minor, should be capable of counting as conduct that could reasonably be regarded as bringing a member’s office into disrepute. That would mean that speeding tickets or other regulatory offences of a minor nature would be within the scope of the code of conduct. We agree with the Committee on Standards in Public Life that only private conduct resulting in a criminal conviction relevant to the member’s official duties should be within the scope of the code of conduct. We corresponded with the Minister and we were not satisfied with the outcome of that correspondence. As the Bill neither states the basic principle that private conduct should not be covered by the code, nor defines an exception to that principle, such as cases in which private conduct has resulted in a criminal conviction, we remain of the view that we should press our amendments. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to that point in the time that he has to reply. If he does not, amendments of a similar nature will inevitably be tabled in the other place, and they will almost certainly be made. We are trying to give effect to the Government’s stated policy, which we think is a reasonable approach. If it were a question of restricting the code to relevant criminal convictions of a sufficiently serious nature to impinge on someone’s ability to serve as a councillor, we would say, ““So be it,”” but unfortunately the Government amendments simply do not do that. Our Committee wants legislation that says what it should say; it should confine itself to the narrow requirements of policy, which are acceptable, and not go beyond them, as the legislation does, and impinge on articles 8 and 10 of the European convention on human rights.