Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 197B: 197B: Clause 78, page 53, line 23, at end insert— ““(c) after subsection (10) insert— ““(11) An appointed councillor may not hold an office under this section.””.”” The noble Lord said: This is a more substantive group of amendments on the proposal to have appointed parish councillors. I make no apology for tabling a group of amendments that I hope will draw from the Government the reason why they think that a proposal to appoint a number of councillors over and above the agreed size of a particular parish council is a good idea. In doing so, I refer to what I said earlier about the great variety of parish councils and town councils at the moment, to which my noble friend referred. Some of them are quite small and modest and operate at small village level. Others are quite substantial and are usually in large towns. They have taken on quite considerable functions over the years, often in co-operation with the district council or perhaps county council, and have considerable budgets of several hundred thousand pounds or more. They are not quaint, rural meetings of the sort that may have been considered but a serious and important part of the local government structure, particularly in places where there are large districts or unitary authorities, and they represent the town council in a very real sense as well as in a legal sense. They represent the elected element of the civic society and civic structure in the town. It is bizarre that we should reintroduce people who, to many of us, look like local aldermen who could simply be appointed and did not have to be elected. The Government must give us a pretty good explanation before we will accept that. I talked before about Borchester. That might have been an association of mine because I had lunch today in the House with two members of the town council of Dorchester, the county town of Dorset, which is a substantial operation. They are both active councillors at county level, at district level and at town council level, and they both said that the town council gave them the most satisfaction as councillors. They go to town council meetings, which are the only places nowadays where there is a committee—the Government may hold their hands up in horror, but there is—there is an agenda with items that they discuss, and people put their hands up for propositions at the end. Decisions are taken and perhaps carried out within a few weeks or two or three months. You have the old-fashioned satisfaction of being a councillor, making decisions and seeing things happen in your town. That is the sort of thing that happens. I explained this proposal to the councillors, one of whom spontaneously said, ““Well that is the old alderman””. We got rid of aldermen in 1974. I am not sure when they got rid of them in London, but it was 1974 in the rest of the country and perhaps a bit later in London. I do not think that we want them back. This seems to be a bizarre proposal. The system of co-opting parish councillors, particularly in some of the more rural places, came about because it is often hard to get recruits to sit on the parish council. But that is co-opting up to the limit and filling the vacancies, which have been agreed. This proposal is to have extra people and it is not clear why. If the parish council, like any council, wants a committee to run a local amenity—the village green, village hall, local park or whatever—under the provisions of the Local Government Act it can already co-opt people to that committee to take part in discussions. It is not clear why this provision is needed. Therefore, I have put down these amendments. Amendment No. 197B is a carry-over from the previous group and concerns why the provision about the chairman not being an appointed councillor should not apply also to the vice-chairman, since the vice-chairman might well be in an important position of taking the chair. At the annual meeting, if the chairman is being re-elected, it may be that the vice-chairman will take over while the election is taking place. Because the most important job of a vice-chairman is to substitute for the chairman when he is not there or is otherwise unable to act, why does it not apply to the chairman? The second and fourth amendments in the group are about regulations and guidance, and there seems to be some confusion in saying that the Secretary of State ““may”” make regulations. It seems to me that, having appointed councillors, you have to make regulations; otherwise goodness knows what might happen. It then says that they have to take account of guidance. I think that the guidance should be struck out and that the regulations should be clear. How the system, with which I do not agree, works needs to be set in stone. Amendment No. 199 is to probe who the Government think are appropriate people to be appointed. Should they have to be local government electors? Should they be people who are qualified to sit on the parish council, which is a wider group than electors because it extends beyond the boundaries? Can it be people who are involved in the parish in some other way through membership of a local organisation, people who have given distinguished service or whatever? The Government say, ““Well, perhaps all these things””. In that case, why can these people not stand for election in the normal way? How many appointed councillors can you have? I am probing that question in new subsection (3)(b) of Amendment No. 99. Can it be more than a third, less than a third or what should it be? How will they be appointed? Should they be appointed at the annual meeting? Should they be subject to confirmation by the parish meeting? All parish councils have to have an annual parish meeting where everyone who lives in the parish can turn up to vote on propositions. Should appointed people at least be subject to some democratic confirmation at the annual parish meeting? Do they have all the rights of parish councillors or should they be non-voting? Local authorities can co-opt people to any of their committees, but they have to be non-voting, which works very well in some local authorities. These are important matters. Just because we are referring to parish councils at a very local level, we should not think that these are not important issues. The idea of appointing people to positions in democratic authorities in the local government structure is a very serious matter which needs probing. I put down the amendment about the alderman with tongue-in-cheek, as the Minister will have realised. Yet, whenever I explain this matter to people, they say, ““Oh, it’s parish aldermen. Why do we want those?”” I am not putting down a serious proposition, but it is a serious point. It will be difficult to persuade some of us that this is a sensible and not a bizarre proposal. I beg to move.