Localism Bill (ways and means)

I am glad that Ministers are still so interested in my website—it makes it worth all the effort of keeping it up to date. I shall speak first to amendments 36 and 37, which are related to new clause 12. They are intended to protect a list of the most important duties of local councils from the powers that the Secretary of State wants to take in clause 5(1) and (2). I should remind the Minister that he did not answer my question about new clause 12 not applying to clause 5(2). I see that Ministers are looking at the Box and seeing if they can find some inspiration over there. As I said on Second Reading, the Secretary of State's power under clause 5(1) and (2) is chilling, because it would allow him to"““amend, repeal, revoke or disapply””" any statutory provision. The Government can keep calling that barrier-busting, but it will still end up being the same swingeing power. The difficulty for those who are opposed to it is that it would leave local councils and the people who use their services at the mercy of the ideology of the current Government and Secretary of State. I know from the debates that we had in Committee that some of the Ministers were opposed to giving Secretaries of State such a level of power in previous local government Bills, and spoke against it. Perhaps they would like to think about why they have had such a change of heart. Since our debates on the Bill started, the Department has launched its review of the statutory duties of local councils. That means that the nature of the power in question, and how it will be used to sweep away what councils are starting to see as burdens, is now much more under the spotlight. The Government's focus on duties as ““burdens”” has caused alarm and great concern to people who rely on the services of their local council. Their concern about the extent of the Secretary of State's powers to sweep away councils' duties is greater because of the language that the Government are using to describe the vital duties on which people depend. In the review, councils and the public were asked to specify the bureaucratic burdens that they wished to throw away. In fact, Ministers have allowed all the duties of councils to be listed, and voted on, as ““burdens””, ““red tape”” or ““bureaucratic barriers””. In using that language, they do not appear to have considered the importance of many of the statutory duties of local councils. Strangely, we now find ourselves bartering to try to find out which particular duties might be safe and protected from the Secretary of State. The Department's website states that the only duties that might be protected are those on libraries and child protection, but the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), ventured in a recent letter to The Guardian that allotments were also safe. It is not reasonable to have only vague reassurances on three out of all the duties of local councils. We have therefore tabled amendments 36 and 37, and I say to Ministers that they must be clearer about protecting the vital duties of local councils—duties that legislation has created, which provide important protections and services on which people rely—from the power that the Secretary of State wants to"““amend, repeal, revoke or disapply””" any statutory provision. Members should make no mistake about it: there are real concerns about that power. Professor Luke Clements is a leading expert on community care law, and in an article about the statutory provisions that could be swept away by the new power, he stated:"““The list includes large swathes of the Mental Health Act 1983, the Children Act 1989 as well as virtually every community care and carers statute. The suggestion that protecting children or frail elderly people from abuse could be…'burdensome' is further evidence of the coalition government's disdain for the very notion of a welfare state.””" He said of the Government's approach:"““It is a contempt that has already created a largely lawless regime where fundamental rights, such as the right to a face-to-face assessment””" and"““the right to have assessed needs met regardless of resources…are openly flouted. It is a regime that fuels the daily news stories of disabled, elderly and ill people being failed by public bodies, and experiencing neglect and extreme indignity. In the face of this, the response of the coalition government is not to strengthen the law, but to suggest that it be trashed.””"