My Lords, in moving Amendment 19B I shall also speak to Amendment 19E, which must be the longest amendment I have ever tabled in 19 years in your Lordships’ House.
Amendment 19B would remove the statutory requirement to publish certain notices in the local press, and Amendment 19E, which runs to nine pages, lists the 163 enactments that require publication of statutory notices in the local press. I am grateful, I assume, to the Local Government Association for that list of 163—it certainly was not my homework. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause would remove the statutory requirement to publish in a newspaper. Subsection (3) still requires a local authority to,
“publish the notice, advertisement or other matter in question in such a manner as the local authority thinks is likely to bring it to the attention of persons who live in its area”.
The requirement to publish statutory notices in the local newspaper was introduced in 1972. We lived in a completely different world 40 years ago where we would not have envisaged the enormous changes in communication and media opportunities that have taken place over that time. In 1972 a statutory notice in a well-read local newspaper quite probably was the most effective way of communicating with residents. In 2013, I would suggest that a frankly rather boring, hard-to-read notice published somewhere in the middle and back pages of, perhaps sadly, a much less well-read local newspaper, is the least effective way of all the opportunities now available to communicate any information to anybody, whether they be local residents or people with professional or organisational interests.
It is high time for us to remove that statutory requirement, something which has long been championed by local government. Indeed, a survey by the Local Government Association indicated that 84% of councils believe that there are less expensive and/or more effective ways to disseminate information contained in public notices. The only surprise to me is that 16% of authorities apparently do not share that view, although I suspect that they might be in the “did not respond “or “do not know” categories.
I have yet to meet members of the public who regularly look for and read statutory notices in the local newspaper. I will leave for another day the question
of how widely read and circulated local newspapers now are, certainly in London, and how wide their reach is. Again, the Local Government Association’s survey suggests that in 54% of council areas—not London in particular, but council areas generally—local newspapers reach less than 40% of the population. Of that 40%, very few will be reading statutory notices. If this amendment were enacted, it would still of course be possible for a local authority to place a public notice in a local newspaper if it wished to. It may on occasion think that that is a desirable thing to do, but it would no longer be a statutory requirement.
We all know the considerable financial pressure facing local authorities, which is no doubt increased with today’s announcements. However, local authorities have spent a little over £26 million in the past year paying local newspapers for the cost not of general advertising but of statutory notices. They pay another £17 million, voluntarily and entirely properly, for general advertising. That is something that they can do of their own volition, but the £26 million is something that they are required to do by the 163 statutory enactments listed in Amendment 19E. I can think of little greater waste of money. I have said earlier that statutory notices are possibly the least effective means of communication. They must certainly be the least cost-effective means of communication.
Some of this is born of the understandable concern over the demise of many local papers. The demise of the regional press is an important issue which we have debated previously; it is not really a debate for this context. However, I do not think, and I do not think that anyone else thinks, that requiring the publication of statutory notices—in effect requiring local authorities to provide a £26 million-a-year subsidy to local newspapers—is in any sense the answer to the demise of and difficulties facing local media due to the changing world of communications. That is a much bigger force than that with which we are here to deal. Continuing this requirement seems rather Canute-like, facing the incoming tide of the change in how people receive their communications, which is no longer through statutory notices.
Rather more concerning to me—and something of which I was less well aware—is the fact that the LGA survey to which I referred found that 42% of local councils are charged by their local newspapers a higher rate for public notices, which they have no choice but to publish in the local newspaper, than exists for general advertising. That is perhaps a matter between the local authority and the local media, but nearly half of local authorities in the country have found that to be the situation. There is, again, something seriously wrong there.
We raised this issue at Second Reading and the Minister kindly wrote to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and sent a copy to all of us who took part in the debate. There was an interesting section headed “Statutory notice”, in which she responded to some of the points that I had made. She said that it was a contentious issue, but I am not sure that it is. It is in the sense that local authorities have long said that this is a waste of money and they do not want to do it, but whether that is contentious or agreed by 84%—but not, perhaps, by
the newspaper industry for understandable reasons—may be another matter. She concluded that section of her letter with the following comments. I want to quote from it because I would like to expand her remarks. She wrote:
“This is an issue that the Government continues to take seriously and look at. The Government will continue to work with those who have an interest in the future of statutory notices to better understand the key issues and evidence. We are currently exploring the scale of current requirements placed on public bodies”—
I hope that my Amendment 19E gives some indication of the scale of the requirement—
“and other sectors to put notices in newspapers. However, the Government has no plans, at this stage, to include anything on statutory notices in the Bill. It is more important that we take time to properly consider this complex subject rather than reach rushed conclusions”.
I am not sure that we are rushing this as the matter has been under consideration for many years. However, what we have before us now is the fairly rare legislative opportunity to repeal a very outdated statutory requirement and replace it with one which better reflects the 21st century complexities of communication in a multimedia society.
I hope that before the Bill concludes its passage in the other place and perhaps returns to this place—which may well occur towards the end of this year—the Government will reach conclusions on something which is hardly a new or surprising issue and take the legislative opportunity provided by the Bill to repeal that out-of-date 1972 requirement. I beg to move.
4.45 pm