Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

Amendment 8 is partly probing and partly in order to make an important point and to bring some of the discussions into the real world about how things actually happen on the ground. Amendment 8 refers to Clause 1(2) which includes a duty to promote understanding of how to become a member of an authority—or councillor as it is more normally called—of what councillors do and of what support is provided to councillors. Amendment 8 is about the real world, in which most people, although by no means all, who stand for election to a council do so on behalf of a registered political party. It may be a national or purely local political party, a community group or a group set up to achieve certain local aims, such as when Boston Borough Council was taken over by the Boston Bypass Party, which was for the bypass, not against it. That was despite the fact that Boston Borough Council does not have the power to build a bypass because that is a county council function and Boston is in a two-tier area in Lincolnshire. Nevertheless, in order to have its name on the ballot paper and to promote itself in that way, it had to be registered as a political party. There are now many hundreds of political parties registered with the Electoral Commission. Most people stand for the main national political parties through their local branches. Section 2 of the Local Government Act 1986 includes a prohibition on political publicity by local authorities: "““A local authority shall not publish any material which, in whole or in part, appears to be designed to affect public support for a political party””." I am probing whether including basic information about local political parties that put up candidates for the council, such as their contact details or names of officials, in material that is given to people about how to get on the council would contravene this section of that Act. The following subsection modifies that in great detail, and I am not clear at all whether it is covered or not by this prohibition. We must be absolutely clear that it is not. If it is, the local authority is prevented from giving sensible information to people who genuinely want to stand for the council. The most sensible thing you can do is to ask people whether they want to stand as an independent or for one of the registered political parties that fields candidates in this area. If they want to stand for the Labour Party—I am told that there are still a few who do, daft though some of us may think it—the local authority ought to be able to point them in the direction of the Labour Party, or any other political party, as appropriate. The purpose of the amendment is to probe whether the Government think that political parties are a part of the process, and whether the council should give real-world advice about how to get on it, not just how to get a nomination paper, get 10 signatures and hand it in. That would not do much good in most cases. Secondly, I am probing whether that would be allowed, given the prohibition in the Local Government Act 1985. I beg to move.