Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

My Lords, contrary to the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, some of us are desperate to be in on the discussions on the Bill, but government business managers seem to be trying to prevent us. I shall say no more about that, having made the point in support of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. I declare my usual interest in these matters as a member of a district council in England. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on the delivery of her speech and on the content, which I thought was in some respects better than the content of the Bill. We will discuss all that in future. I thank my noble friend Lord Tope—I was going to call him Councillor Tope—for undertaking the onerous task of winding up for the Liberal Democrats so that I do not have to do it. I thought that this was a bits-and-pieces Bill when I took off the wrapping paper and threw away the tinsel. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, who is not in her place at the moment, thought that it was a box of chocolates and the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, suggested that it was soup. If it is soup, it is of the alphabetti spaghetti kind, with lots of different bits that you hunt around for. If it is a box of chocolates, it contains some of those chocolates that look wonderful but are just a shell with nothing inside and others that have very hard toffee inside that breaks your teeth. Nevertheless, some of the chocolates are of rather better quality than that, so I will not be too churlish. I want to speak on Part 1, which is on local democracy, and follow on from what I said in a debate on the White Paper that I had the privilege to sponsor earlier this year, in the previous Session. I will try not to repeat everything that I said then—I will not have time—but the bits on local democracy in this Bill are really quite thin. We are expecting more in a draft Bill later. Chapter 1 is on the publication of information on how people can get involved. It is, I suppose, a good idea and we will look at it. Chapter 2, which covers petitions, is extraordinary. I am enjoying myself telling people that the Government are proposing eight pages of primary legislation on how to propose a petition to your local council and watching their faces break into a great grin. It is not a grin that shows that they think it a wonderful idea, but a grin of astonishment. How daft can this Government get on some things? What is local democracy? This Bill describes it as ““democratic arrangements””. Clause 1(3) states that, "““‘democratic arrangements’ means arrangements for members of the public to participate in, or influence, the making of decisions””." Well, yes, that is part of local democracy—a very important part of local democracy. When I started as a councillor, I was told that I was some sort of red revolutionary for suggesting that it should be allowed. Nowadays it is much more generally accepted, but it is not local democracy and it is not democratic arrangements. An elected local council is at the very heart of local democracy—it is the central feature—just as Parliament is at the heart of democracy at a national level. Local authorities provide services, facilities, community leadership, a forum for debate about all manner of issues and a means by which local communities can find an advocate for those things they need that are provided by other authorities. People’s ability to take part in what a local authority does is vital, but this process has to be bottom-up. It comes, for us Liberals, from the personal autonomy of people in the community, who come together in a voluntary way, by voluntary association, to put their views to the authority and to take part in it. They do this as individuals, as groups, as organised pressure groups and sometimes as an informal wave of opinion. This process is messy; it is much messier than civil servants, Ministers and drafters of legislation like to think. It is diverse and, in many cases, it is confrontational. In some cases, it is not confrontational but well ordered and organised, taking place according to the guidelines for public consultation that the Government lay down, but in many cases that does not happen. In many cases, the authorities try that organised, well ordered approach and it does not work, because people decide that they want to take a more revolutionary or confrontational—I was going to say ““revolting””—attitude. The processes may break down. I have been to many public meetings when people have been standing up and shouting at the people on the platform. I have done it myself, many a time—rather a long time ago, I hope, but perhaps not. I have also been sat in the chair at public meetings where people have been shouting at me. These are all perfectly legitimate processes, which have to be managed and coped with, but it is not all nice, easy, safe and organised. Very often, politics comes into it; political parties and local pressure groups get involved. That is all very legitimate and all part of the process—but, again, one sometimes thinks that, given the way in which the Government look at local participation, they want to depoliticise the whole process. I joined the Liberal Party and grew up in it when Jo Grimond, as leader in the early 1960s, started talking in a big way about the importance of public participation in decision-making and provision of services. It had fallen out of fashion for a long time since the war, but it has increasingly come into fashion since then. However, we must also understand that you cannot make people do this. When my own council was working out some of its targets, it had an absolutely stupid target for the number of people turning up to address its area committees. We scrapped that; we said that it was nonsense. If the committee goes through a period when there are lots of controversial things to discuss, there will be lots of people there; if it goes through a period when there are no controversial things, there will not be many people turning up. It is just the natural ebb and flow of things. These are not things on which people can be judged in that way; people have a right not to take part. People have been celebrating the birth of John Milton just over 400 years ago. He is a great hero for anybody who believes in the concepts of liberty. He wrote in one of his poems: "““They also serve who only stand and wait””." It was a poem that he wrote on his blindness later in life. People have a right to dissent from a system that is trying to get them to take part. They have a right to sit at home grumpily and say, ““We don’t want anything to do with this””. They also have a right to take part in different ways and to choose not to turn up to a well ordered public meeting but, if they want to, to organise a march through the streets—to go hammering on the door of the town hall to hand in the petition instead of coming in an orderly way to the council meeting. The Government are trying to fit people into a system that they think is how things should work, rather than one that people will actually take part in. The responsibility of bodies such as local councils is to provide structures for participation that are open and accessible, which provide information on how to do it and on who takes decisions, which are responsive, but which accept that in many cases people will do things in different ways because that is how things are—and doing things in a different way is just as valid as the way laid down by the Government. All the rules set out in Chapter 2 on petitions seem a bit dubious on those grounds. It is typical of the Government’s approach, illustrated here, that they identify a problem, notice that there is a diversity of experience out there that is organised and spontaneous, produce a White Paper and legislative proposals, and then legislate. In legislating, they impose rules and uniformity on a top-down basis. If they are not careful, that will destroy everything that they are trying to do. Of course, we welcome the conversion of the Government—and the Labour Party over the years—to a much more participative, community-based way of making decisions locally, delivering local services and providing local facilities. But it must be understood that local communities are all different and local councils are often different in different areas. Local democracy is a large, complex and diverse beast. It is difficult to fit it into a one-system-fits-all approach. Everybody and all the parties are now in favour of localism. However, localism is just a word. We can all unite around a word. The problem is what that word means in practice. We continue to have grave doubts about the willingness and ability of central government to devolve seriously to local level. The Government do bits here and there and then take a bit back and then another bit. Reviving local democracy is not just about looking at how things are done in each area, although that is very important. It is vital that the Government let go of powers. In addition, when they give powers to local government—this is the case with existing powers, too—they should not try to set detailed rules, regulations, legislation and guidance, which everybody is then expected to follow to the letter. If the Government want to let go, they really have to let go. The first part of the Bill is misguided in the way in which it tries to introduce what basically is a sensible idea—the ability of people to petition their local council. The fact is that the vast number of people in this country can petition their local council. When they do so, whatever the surveys that the Minister quotes say, the council takes it seriously, discusses the issue and tells people what it is doing about it. That is the truth on the ground. If the Government want to put that in legislation, that is fine, but not by eight pages of primary legislation and goodness knows how many more in delegated legislation and guidance.