Localism Bill

My Lords, the ingenuity of the noble Lord’s colleagues defies description. I certainly welcome this sensible amendment. However, it is timely to say a word in favour of the leader and executive model and, in particular, to draw attention to the one part of the recent publication by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, with which I agree. In relation to elected mayors, the paper makes a strong point. I told him that I agreed with something he had written and he was surprised. The relevant part is the emphasis that he makes about the need for a strong and independent scrutiny function, with which I entirely agree under whatever system is operated—be it mayoral, leader and executive or a straight committee system. There are those who are still in love with the old-style committee system; the notion that you have a collection of Socratic city elders engaged in philosophical dialogue about the affairs of state in a particular borough or authority. I am bound to say that that does not accord with my own experience, particularly after serving for many years as chairman of committees, leader of the council, and so on. When I departed to the Siberian power station of the Arts and Recreation Committee, having given up the leadership and any other executive position—by choice I may say; it was self-imposed exile—I discovered that as a back-bench member of the traditional committee system one’s influence was pretty limited. When you are in the chair you can move things on quite briskly: you have an agenda and you get it through. When you are a back-bench member you usually have a political group meeting beforehand. It may last about an hour and there are 12 or 15 of you, which gives an average of four or five minutes each. The point of the formal meeting is to get it over with as quickly as possible. In reality, very little of the purported scrutiny takes place in the traditional committee system nor is there very much influence over policy. That was summarised for me most effectively one day—I hope your Lordships will forgive this brief anecdote. I had missed a committee meeting of the Arts and Recreation Committee but went to the next one. I read the minutes, which said that a member had raised a question about birds eating the grass seed in the Leazes Park allotments. I thought to myself, ““Has it really come to this?””. We had an £800 million budget, with goodness knows how many problems and opportunities to debate, and the most the member could think of to raise at a committee meeting was birds eating grass seed at an allotment. I do not say that that entirely characterises the committee system, but there is some danger of that happening. The main thrust of my, perhaps somewhat tedious, observations is to recommend that, whatever the circumstances, there must be a strong and independently sourced scrutiny role, not only to hold the executive to account, because perhaps too much of scrutiny has been based on a retrospective look at the actions of an executive, but to look forward, and, as it should be, in an unwhipped forum, at policy, development and so on. That is not incompatible with a committee system, but in reality, in my experience, it rarely took place that way. It needs a push for strong scrutiny and I hope that irrespective of the provisions of the Bill, the Government will encourage authorities to maintain and enhance that scrutiny role, whatever type of authority they are and whatever model of governance they adopt. I certainly would not oppose these amendments to give councils the option to choose their own system.