My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, on the code of conduct, as regards publicity, and in general, it would be fair to say that the code is probably reasonably well observed among the majority of authorities. There could be occasions—I say “could be” because that is how we need to put it—in which a number of authorities breach all or part of that code, in which case it would be essential that the Secretary of State was able to take action. If it is a large number, there would, presumably, by definition be some really serious element that had come about so that the Secretary of State needed to be aware of it. However, this could do with a further look at in Parliament, and further consultation. We fully accept that that would need parliamentary time.
We already know of local authorities that are breaching the code in terms of a number of publications—what is in the publication and what relates to them at the moment. Since we now know about these it would not be sensible to have to wait and waste a lot of time in delaying taking the direction to stop them, getting them to comply, getting that matter dealt with and moving on.
We have responded in as straightforward a way as we can to the DPPRC’s recommendation, except for on this one area. Indeed, it may be that these individual directions to these individual authorities and would be the most that would be applied. I do not expect there
to be many; as always, with these things, there are those who breach and cause trouble for the rest. However, there is no doubt that we would expect or hope to continue with the provisions in the Bill as have been outlined and, for the reasons that I have said, that it makes sense to get individual local authorities to stop what they are doing as quickly as possible. They are probably just breaching individual aspects of the code.