Localism Bill

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who makes my point. The complaint against him was politically motivated, whereas the one against me was made by somebody who was trying to get a particular decision on a planning issue and, effectively, trying to bully councillors not to get involved. There were several such cases, and whether someone has such politically motivated Standards Board cases, or whether the case comes from a slightly different angle, depends on which part of an authority they represent and the biggest issues there. I do not want to get into which party takes the most people to the Standards Board, but I feel that the Labour party has been slightly unfair on our coalition colleagues. In the city of Leeds, Labour councillors formed a queue around the block to take others to the Standards Board. Indeed, one Labour councillor in Leeds, whom I am to going to name in the Chamber, took many people to the board over things that he considered to be a problem when Labour was in opposition, but now his party is in power and he is still not getting the information he wants, he is still pursuing the complaints. Even his own leadership say that they cannot keep control of him. Do not get me wrong: the mindset behind establishing the Standards Board was correct. Credit should go to the previous Government for setting it up to demand the highest standards, but in reality and in practice that is not how it has worked, and it has become a useless tool that stops people writing in a manifesto what policies they would like to pursue. The board has been twisted and manipulated. The former Mayor of London was taken to the Standards Board over a comment he made, and luckily he received the ruling that it had been made in his personal and private life, but what ruling was given to us councillors? It stated, ““If someone comes up to you in the pub, you must say, 'I am sorry, I am not a councillor.'”” Come on, let us get real. Either we engage with our public, talk to people and understand things, or we become part of a robotic system in which the public are further distanced from us. I guess that the vast majority of Members engage locally with their constituents, going down the pub, talking to people in the high street, getting information from what people feel is happening on the street and talking to them about it. Local councillors cannot do that any more, because unless they declare at the outset, ““I am not discussing this with you, come to my surgery at this time,”” they run a risk, and that represents a big disconnect from and disservice to the public. That was an unintended consequence of the Livingstone case, but whether we agree with his comments or not, that is not the issue, because they occurred in his private life, and the case should never have gone to the Standards Board. We do have protection of the public: it is called the ballot box. That was always my argument as a councillor when it was said that someone was going to the Standards Board. There is a ballot box, whereby people can be voted in or out, and if someone were seen to be wholly corrupt it would not matter whether they were in the safest seat in the country, they would be voted out.