Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I, too, completely agree. The example given by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, proves why we need a definition of who should be eligible to submit petitions that includes the phrase ““live, work or study”” and why we need a clear and accessible petition scheme. He is right that we are talking about common sense. That is what I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, in relation to his last point, and I shall say it again. There is nothing to prevent a principal authority responding to a petition which either duplicates a recently received petition or raises a matter which is outside the terms of reference of a petition scheme or does not fulfil it. Councils can do that in addition to their formal petition scheme, and I am sure that they will go on doing that. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has been rather rude about the Bill. I accept that he does not like the principle of it, but I have to take issue with his remark that this is something that civil servants have dreamt up. That is not fair to officials, who work hard and conscientiously; it is not fair to our parliamentary draftsmen, who work very hard to put matters into proper legal language and ensure that they are as clear as possible. Ministers are responsible for these policies; we do our best to improve the well-being of our communities, and that is what the Bill is about. It is about improving the accessibility of influence and enabling our communities—those who do not normally think of themselves as being influential or having any voice or power in the community—to exert more influence. When the noble Lord talks about the rules and regulations we have constructed, particularly regarding thresholds, I think that we are living on a different planet. My argument on thresholds is that, with one exception, we have made no rules. The threshold limits will be set by local authorities according to their circumstances. They may well have a threshold for a policy issue which covers the whole community, such as council tax. But they may well specify that a small issue such as allotments which affects fewer people can have a different threshold. It is entirely up to local authorities. All we are providing for is that, if the council feels it has to call a full council meeting, it has to have a maximum ceiling of 5 per cent. If authorities choose to set a nominal threshold of one or two signatures, as Birmingham Council already does, it is up to them; they can do that. In this legislation we are trying to protect councils from being legally required to spend time that they judge to be excessive in responding to petitions. We are trying to make sure that they do not feel that they have to respond to so many petitions that petitioners will end up with a superficial response. That would not serve any purpose. That is why we are leaving it up to authorities. It is not our aim to increase paperwork for councils. There is a contradiction in the noble Lord’s argument: he wants more prescription but, at the same time, he accuses us of being too prescriptive. In this very important area, we are not. Overall, permitting local authorities to set appropriate thresholds would best deliver our principles of allowing local people to have their say and to receive a response, while building on best practice and protecting councils from unreasonable burdens. Amendment 129 raises related issues. It seeks to remove the power for the appropriate national authority to make orders or issue guidance on the thresholds for valid petitions which trigger an acknowledgement, a full council debate and a hearing of a senior officer. This power is useful because it helps to minimise requirements on councils. We will abide by this principle in issuing any guidance, but I do not think that there should not be any guidance at all on these issues. Guidance is intended to clarify and assist. It can give local authorities a clear idea of what is expected, and we will work with local authorities to make sure that it is fit for purpose. As I have said, we intend to issue a model scheme and suggest thresholds in guidance, which councils can choose to adopt if they wish. This model scheme is a guidance, a starting point, and we will work closely with the sector. As with other examples of guidance, councils will not be required by legal obligation to slavishly follow what is contained in it. I cannot for a moment think that councils such as Essex or Sutton would believe that they would be. From the drafting of the chapter it is clear that councils have considerable discretion to create and operate their own schemes within the framework set down. The principal authority will simply set out in its petition scheme how many signatures are needed to trigger a full council debate. We want that number not to be inappropriately high. We have suggested that we will set a maximum threshold in the White Paper Communities in control: real people, real power because we do not want to exclude appropriate and legitimate requests for such a debate. Apart from that, there are no plans to intervene unless there is evidence that councils are setting thresholds so high as to make their petition schemes nugatory. I hope the noble Lord is reassured that we do not intend to use guidance or orders to place additional requirements on councils. I have more sympathy with what the noble Lord said about the date. It would be open to councils to respond to petitions which are not dated, and I am sure that many of them would choose to do so. The point about the date is that it is useful for authorities to have a sense of how quickly signatures are collected. A petition which has generated a huge number of signatures in a fortnight is likely to suggest greater urgency than petitions which have accumulated signatures over a long period. The noble Lord referred the Committee to several petitions which did not contain dates and spoke about the lack of confidence of many people about how to make a petition. Again, I will add this to our discussion when we meet to talk about his concerns. Clause 12 provides that a petition is validly signed if someone signs it and states their name, address and the date. Amendment 103 seeks to provide that valid petitions are not invalidated by some signatures not meeting these requirements or by their not being signed electronically. I do not think that there needs to be an express provision in the Bill for this. Certainly, principal authorities will have no lawful basis to refuse to respond to petitions signed by 5,000 people just because one or two signatures were not dated, and so on. I do not think that there is ambiguity in how the legislation is framed at this point but, to the extent that the noble Lord is afraid that there is, I hope that my clear statement on the issue will reassure him. Clause 14(1)(c) provides that principal authorities do not need to take substantive steps in response to petitions which duplicate those dealt with in the previous six months. Amendment 121 would remove the exclusion of petitions on the same topic as one received within the last six months. This would mean that local authorities were required to respond to repetitive petitions. All we are trying to do here is to protect councils from unnecessary work; it also identifies for local campaigners that there are time limits, which will focus what they are trying to achieve. I can see that six months is an arbitrary figure and that different periods might be appropriate. A year would be too long to wait. I take the point that that would be unfair, if new information came to light. I think that six months is a happy medium. I am inclined not to accept that amendment. Amendment 97 removes the requirement on authorities to respond to a petition in electronic form only, when made using the authority’s e-petition facility. Certainly, a petition signed by a number of people, scanned and e-mailed to the authority but not made using the e-petition facility is not a petition in electronic form for our purposes. That would count as a paper petition and would be considered in the same way, because it would not have gone through the other formulation. I can see that, on the face of it, removing the requirement that, to be valid, petitions in electronic form can be made only through the authority’s e-petition facility would have some merit. The noble Lord spoke powerfully about that. It would require a response to electronic petitions created on sites such as Facebook and the WI, but there are some serious practical problems here. It would be quite difficult to work out whether a petition was validly signed. For the e-petition facility, the authority can establish what counts as a signature. Clause 12(4) provides for that, and I said the other day that there is a requirement for the e-petition scheme to include a UK postcode. With e-petitions outside a local authority’s control, there would be no way to know what conditions applied. Also, it would undermine part of what we are trying to do, which is to bring everything together in one place. It also renders prompt feedback difficult. The amendment would also make it much more difficult to integrate petitions into other parts of the local authority’s website and its decision-making procedures. Lambeth recently announced an e-petition facility which allows a petition organiser to link a petition with an up-coming council, forging effective links between decisions and petitions in their areas. Integration is possible only when an e-petition facility is provided by the principal local authority and the petition is made through that facility. In any case, in response to questions raised by the noble Lords, Lord Hanningfield and Lord Greaves, local authorities do not have to reject these petitions; they can answer them as they choose to, as they do now. They have the discretion to accept them and respond to them. They will not be legally required to do so, but they will be able to respond to them as they wish. In the spirit of the debate, we seek to encourage people to take advantage of new technologies if they have local concerns. I shall consider further whether current drafting would mean that petitions were rejected on technical grounds. I shall go on thinking about that.