Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

That is absolutely right. I take that point. The amendment does not envisage substituting the ethical regime that we have now with any other arrangements. In that case, it would remove local government from many other parts of the public sector that have ethical codes that we expect people to abide by. There is no reason why local government should be exempt, but that is the nature of the amendment. We take the point that the current regime has been attacked for being overly bureaucratic and centralised and lacking in local ownership. Our proposals are designed to tackle that. On the trivial nature of complaints, to which noble Lords have drawn attention, the Standards Board rejects straightaway 75 per cent of the complaints that it receives and there is no investigation, so there is clearly a mechanism for filtering out trivial challenges. Again, we take the point that one cannot control human nature and that there are always unpredictable situations, but our proposals are very much based on the conviction that high standards of conduct are more likely to be maintained if local authorities take most of the decisions about conduct. Noble Lords also talked about the culture at the Standards Board. I believe that such a culture is much more likely in a local situation in which people know the people involved and where it may be possible to take a more proportionate, more sensitive and more commonsensical approach. This will be helped a lot by the fact that we have introduced independent chairmen on standards committees for local areas. That is an important development. Moreover, if people feel that they are not going to get a fair deal from the standards committees, they can always refer their complaint to the Standards Board, which, under the new regulatory rule, will look carefully at any complaints that are made about the behaviour of standards committees. Indeed, part of the Standards Board’s function will be to offer guidance and support to generate better and more consistent practice in the operation of standards committees. That is one reason why we want the Standards Board to remain. The system will be less bureaucratic and will promote greater ownership. It will make the role of the Standards Board at local level more transparent and more likely to promote and maintain a culture of high standards of behaviour. For that reason, I cannot accept the amendment. We believe in the need to maintain consistent standards across the country, retaining the Standards Board very much as a light-touch regulator to oversee the consistent operation of the new committees. The noble Lord asked a couple of other questions. We are aware of the issue of conflicts of interest when a councillor represents his electors. He will know that the code of conduct was recently revised to make it clearer and more proportionate, which has certainly been welcomed. The regime is more relaxed about personal and prejudicial interests, to allow councillors to speak up. That was overdue. I ask him to bear in mind the principles that we are trying to follow in this revised regime—namely, local ownership, local control, being more sensitive, learning the lessons of the Standards Board and being careful about trivial complaints and litigious elements—while maintaining the Standards Board but as a lighter-touch body, as I said. I think that the balance is right. It has certainly been welcomed and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to live with this as it develops.