Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

We are back to what was underlying some of the discussion earlier: the arbitrary nature of some of these decisions. I am not talking about serious criminal behaviour here. Some events that take place, because someone picks them up, takes great personal offence at them and determines to pursue them, end up with a councillor being disqualified, but, to be frank, they are no different from circumstances that go on all the time in many places—probably most places. That is the difficulty. I happen to know about two of the cases the Minister has referred to, and in both of them the decisions were disgraceful. They were overly penal convictions. I hesitate to use the word ““conviction””, because these are not legal cases, but in effect that is what it is, whether being a councillor is part of your life or, nowadays, you do it full-time. You are being treated differently because someone decides they want to go for you. It is as simple, and as honest, as that. I have two points. First, there is a clear rule that applies if you are convicted of an offence that carries a penalty of three months or more in prison, suspended or not. That is an objective criterion, in the sense that it is a penalty laid down by the court in relation to an offence, and it has been arrived at through due process with proper rules of evidence within a court. The problem is that the standards board’s rules of evidence and the way it reaches decisions on cases are not of that calibre. They are administrative punishments rather than punishments through the normal rule of law. It is unsatisfactory that that can happen. Secondly, councillors under these circumstances are being treated quite differently from members of other legislative assemblies. They are being treated differently from MPs, Members of this House and, as I understand it, Members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Councillors are being treated more severely under these circumstances than anyone else, and that cannot be right. That is why some of us have great difficulty in accepting the fairness of the system so far as disqualification is concerned.