Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

No, there is not one; we cannot find it. I am following that up with some—I will not say colleagues, because they are members of other parties—members of Salford Council whom I know and I will report back. There is some concern that this whole business is to sort out Salford, but I cannot believe that that is the case. The Local Government Association particularly supports amendments to delete Clauses 12, 13, 14 and 15, to remove the prescriptive elements of the legislation relating to petitions and to allow local authorities to decide individually what petition schemes would best suit their local people. We are saying exactly that, and we will be saying so right through the petition clauses: set the general duty, either by inviting councils to do it or by putting it in legislation, and then let them get on with doing it in a way that suits them. I quote from the LGA briefing: "““The LGA believes the Government could be much lighter in its approach by just setting out the … duties and then leaving it to local authorities to decide what works best for their communities and residents. If the government is transferring power and influence to local authorities and citizens then councils should have the ability to take up issues on behalf of their residents with other public service providers””." We have also been trying to track down the infamous survey that the Minister keeps referring to, in which only 30 per cent of councils are alleged to deal with petitions properly. My information from the LGA is that the survey was in September 2007 and was in response to the question whether a council had an automatic response to petitions. One-third of councils responded that they had an automatic response. That is not to say that other councils did not respond to petitions, however; it is simply that they did not have a formal response mechanism laid out. In practice, I think that the great majority of councils have something in either their constitution or their standing orders, or they have a convention or working arrangements that are well understood locally, by which petitions are dealt with. There are very few councils that do not take petitions and deal with them seriously. For the Government to base this whole legislation on that survey is entirely wrong. My amendment, therefore, would sweep away this huge, ridiculous, detailed, prescriptive, top-down stuff and replace it with a simple half-page clause. I am not suggesting that it is perfectly honed, but it covers the main points. A principal local authority would have a duty to receive and deal with petitions. It could refuse to accept them if they were unlawful, vexatious or abusive. It would have to acknowledge every petition that it received and it would have to consider the contents according to its own democratic decision-making procedures, not a system laid down by the Government. It would have to include a provision that would allow a petition to be presented to a meeting of the council, to its executive or to any committee of the authority. The authority would have to make a decision in relation to the contents of each petition that it received—that might mean taking action or not taking action, and clearly ““action”” could be referring to some other body that was more responsible, with or without a recommendation—and it would have to inform the petitioners of its decision and state the reasons. It would have to put that all on its website so that everyone could see what the petition said, who signed it and what decision was made. It would have to keep a register of all the petitions that it received. Moreover, I have actually defined ““petition””, which is one thing that the Government have not done; they define petition schemes, valid petitions and active petitions, but they do not define a petition, which is interesting. Something like that is all that is needed. Let local authorities get on with it. I am tempted to say, ““Let a thousand flowers bloom””, but I will be accused of being off-message if I do. Give local people on the ground a chance to do it and you will find that they will do it differently but, by and large, properly; in many cases they will do it a great deal better than by grumpily having to implement a highly bureaucratic scheme dictated by eight pages of legislation and reams of guidance imposed from above. At the very least, why will the Government not give that a try? If I am completely wrong and it does not work, we can come back and impose this detailed legislation. It will work, though, because in the main local authorities are sensible bodies composed of sensible councillors and officers. In imposing this as it stands, the Government are making themselves look quite ridiculous. I have two motives in moving this amendment. The first is to have a sensible system and, in particular, to remove the danger of abolishing everything that is going on out there at the moment. The second is to save the Government from their own folly. I beg to move.