Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

This was an interesting debate that was full of real common sense. In moving his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, spoke about the situation as it is has pertained to date, not about the new regime, which is exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, described it. Everything will start off at the local level and there will not be a circular process of things being referred up, coming back down and so on. The monitoring officer and the local standards committee will deal with the first challenge and only in very specific circumstances will a case be referred to the Standards Board. That is the context. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was right when she said that the most effectual methods of disciplining behaviour and raising standards are the culture of the council, constituency pressure and elections. However, there has to be a discipline for instances where those all fail and things go wrong. My noble friend Lord Graham and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, were right that there are instances where people behave badly, and there have to be arrangements for that. The reason why we have those arrangements was set out in the Graham report, which looked at the operation of the national standards board and came to other conclusions. It made the point that this was better done at a local level. We have followed those recommendations. This amendment would sweep away any ethical regime. The noble Lord said that he does not expect us to accept it and, once again, he is right. However, he has raised interesting questions about the sociopathology of local politics and what one can do to achieve integrity and good behaviour while at the same time having a discipline regime that takes care of vulnerable people and people who misbehave. The noble Lord asked whether this has made a difference. One could argue that there is evidence that, if it had not made a difference, there would have been more reference to the Standards Board itself. Recent research indicates that 93 per cent of councillors support the code of conduct—what it is there to do and how it does it. Eighty per cent said that maintaining high standards is one of the most important issues in which they are involved. One can see why when one considers the fact that many people feel that the conduct of members is one of the most important issues for authorities. Trust is low, and we return again and again in our discussions on the Bill and in the House to how to restore and nourish trust in politics as a whole, and to the connection between the elector and the councillor or politician. Indeed, the health of our democratic institutions depends on trust, and poor behaviour by a small number of people can have a disproportionate and damaging effect. It is also interesting that 44 per cent of councillors also said that they thought that standards had increased in recent years. That is a significant percentage. It seems that more people would prefer to have this than not to have it.