Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

The clause raises a contentious point and we on these Benches strongly oppose it. It provides that a petition can require an officer to be called to account; in other words, it moves a constitutional issue in a way that fails to recognise the role of democratically elected councillors, who are the representatives of their community. It fails to recognise that responsibility for everything that a council does lies with the elected members in the final analysis. I am really using shorthand. I am very aware of the time and I am also aware that the Government are prepared to discuss this with us between now and Report in order to deal with the concerns. Of course, overview and scrutiny committees will themselves require officers to come before them, but that is a matter for the members. If members of the public said, ““We need to have X hung out to dry””, in a method akin to a kangaroo court or a witch hunt, perhaps against a junior officer, that would be entirely wrong. It is for the members to summons the officers. I asked CIPFA whether it had any comments on a later part of the Bill concerning auditing. Rather to my surprise, I received a copy of its response to the improving local accountability consultation, which concludes that, "““the current framework provides effective reassurance to the general public””—" it refers to the duties of the chief finance office and may well refer to the monitoring officer— "““and would be concerned about any public right to petition to hold officers to account cutting across the existing statutory arrangements and may prejudice the actions of the Responsible Finance Office or Auditor in respect of public expenditure””." I had not expected support to come from that area—certainly not when what I thought that I was asking about was auditing local authority companies—but CIPFA is absolutely right. As I understand its briefing, the Local Government Association is also opposed to this measure. It made suggestions about enabling authorities to require the appearance of chief officers and others from, essentially, partner authorities. However, I think that that was in the spirit of, ““If you’re going to do this, you should do that as well””. I did not table those amendments because I did not agree with the underlying principle. This is a very contentious clause. I think that, again, it has failed, as has the whole of Part 1 of the Bill, to understand what representative democracy is about. We oppose Clause 16.