Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 164: 164: Clause 67, page 42, leave out lines 18 and 19 The noble Lord said: I hope I know where we have got to and what we are doing. I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 165 and 170 and to the Question whether Clause 70 shall stand part of the Bill. Clause 67 sets out what will happen when an elected executive leader leaves office for whatever reason, how the vacancy will be dealt with and whether there will be by-elections. Amendment No. 164 would leave out lines 18 and 19 on page 42, which read: "““But the term of office of all the members of an elected executive ends if the elected leader ceases to hold office””." As the Bill stands, if an executive leader leaves office at any time during the four years, the whole of the executive will be deemed to have lost their seats. They will no longer be councillors or members of the executive and the work that they have been doing will cease. The Government might seek to persuade some councils to experiment with this so they need to explain why they think it is a good idea. It is certainly a recipe for instability; one of the Government’s watchwords in favour of their proposals is ““stability””. It will leave a council without an executive for whatever period it takes to fill the vacancies, depending on how they are going to be filled. If there are to be by-elections—it is suggested that there could well be by-elections—that could certainly be a period of two months. I am not quite sure what the provision for calling a by-election in the event of an elected leader dying, resigning, being sacked, being put in prison, or whatever, will be. I assume that election regulations will be produced to cover this. Assuming that they are similar to the regulations which apply to local elections generally, the minimum period of time in which the by-election could take place is a bit less than six weeks. It could be quite a lot longer than that, depending on the provisions—up to seven weeks, or perhaps two months or even longer. The Government must explain what they think will happen in that interregnum, how the work of the council will continue, and why it is a good idea that other members of the executive who have presumably been working away on their portfolios and collectively running the authority should be booted out while that is taking place. It seems wrong or, at least, a recipe for uncertainty and instability. Amendment No. 165 replaces a little item in the Bill that says that the Government may, in effect, by regulations explain how the office will be filled if an elected leader or member of the executive dies. I have set out some provisions which are, to some extent, contradictory, because they form a probing amendment to find out what kind of things the Government are thinking of if this happens. Perhaps I should have tried to amend Section 41 of the Local Government Act 2000, but it does not matter because this is a probing amendment. It is a question of finding out what the Government think should happen. I shall go through them quickly. Paragraph (a) probes whether there will be a by-election, and if there is a by-election, whether it will be time-limited. Will there be a by-election if there are only three months or one month to go before the normal round of elections starts when nominations will be sought for a new leader? Does it depend on the new elected leader and his team having a longer period? How will that work? If the vacancy is not to be filled by a by-election, should it be filled by the council in any circumstances? If an elected executive member ceases to occupy the post for whatever reason, will there be a by-election or can the leader simply appoint somebody to the team or, as has already been suggested by the Minister, may there be circumstances in which the vacancy is not filled? Could it be filled by the council? If the executive is too small—if there is an executive of five and three people resign, die or whatever and there are only two left—is there provision for filling one seat to reach the minimum of three, or would the executive be returned to its previous size? How would that happen? Would there be a by-election for a mini-slate of three? If there was a by-election for a mini-slate of three, could we go back to people saying, ““No, we want six””, ““We want only one””, or whatever? Could there be different slates? From the information we have had so far, it does not seem to me that this has been thought out at all. Subsection (7) states that there shall be regulations. I am probing to see what the Government think they should be. Subsection (8) states in the normal way—I say ““normal”” but this is a very abnormal situation—that if a vacancy on the executive is filled by a member of the council, there would then be a council by-election. Subsection (9) covers the transitional period and how a void—a complete absence of an elected leader and elected executive—would be filled for however long it takes to fill it because otherwise the council would be left leaderless. I do not think that is what the Government want. Amendment No. 166 is not in this group, but I shall speak to it now as it would be to the advantage of the Committee to speed things up a bit. It is about the strange proposal set out in the proposed new Section 40B of the Local Government Act 2000, which is set out on pages 42 and 43. We discussed it a little yesterday.