My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 28, 30, 33, 35, 36 and 37. Before doing so, I must, for the first time in your Lordships’ House, declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, now for very nearly two weeks. It gives me great pleasure to do so, and to begin by not doing what the LGA will not wish me to do. The LGA remains resolutely opposed to Clause 38; we will have an opportunity very shortly to look at that. The preferred position of the LGA—and, I think I am right in saying, of all the political groups in that body; it most certainly is the position of my own Liberal Democrat group there—is that it would prefer to see the deletion of the clause entirely.
I have tabled this collection of amendments because I recognise that the Government will not be able to agree to do so because the terms of the coalition agreement state:
“We will impose tougher rules to stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers”.
That is what is in the coalition agreement, and the Bill is the vehicle that the Government have chosen to implement that part of the agreement. I accept that I, too, am bound by that agreement. My clutch of amendments is therefore an attempt to meet the terms of the agreement which I personally signed up to, as did my party. However, it is targeted, rather than the broad-brush approach that the Government seem to have at present.
The problem with Clause 38 is that it is rather more than a catch-all, although it does apply to all local authorities. It gives the Secretary of State power to intervene, regardless of whether the local authority is complying with the code or not. That is not in accordance with the coalition agreement which is quite specific about dealing with unfair competition. In reality, it means that those authorities—if there is more than one—which are producing a weekly newspaper, paid for by commercial advertising that arguably might have gone to a local commercial newspaper, are in competition with that local newspaper. That part of the agreement attempts to give some protection to local newspapers going through a difficult—probably terminal—period. Whether that is a correct analysis of the situation for local newspapers—and it certainly is not a complete analysis, nor is it a subject for debate today—that is the position we are in.
Amendments 25 and 28 seek to limit the rather wide-ranging power that the clause currently gives to the Secretary of State and to target it on those authorities deemed to be in breach of what is, at the moment, a voluntary code. That gives the Secretary of State the power—which he feels is insufficient at the moment—to deal with a real problem and not just the threat of a possible problem. We all accept—and the Minister has said many times that she accepts—that the overwhelming majority of local authorities, regardless of their political complexion, are complying with the code, have shown no signs of not doing so and are certainly not coming under the terms of the coalition agreement.
Amendment 25 and Amendment 28 are the targeted approach. Amendment 30 and Amendment 36 simply extend the period in which the Secretary of State has to give notice of a direction from a very short 14 days, which includes non-working as well as working days, to 28 days. This is in accordance with best practice; it is certainly in accordance with common practice. It gives a local authority a reasonable, though not a long, time to make its case if it feels that the direction is misplaced—as any local authority in that position is very likely to do; otherwise it would not have put itself in that position in the first place.
Amendment 33 and Amendment 35 state the method by which the Secretary of State has to inform an authority. At the moment the clause is silent on how this is to happen. I have a horror that it is likely to be done via a press release from the Secretary of State—something for which he is quite well known. The first the local authority might know of the fact that it is the target would be if it were to receive something through the media in the language that the current Secretary of State is renowned for using. So these amendments state how the Secretary of State must issue that direction.
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Amendment 37 asks the Secretary of State to take into account whether acting outside of the code is in the best financial interest of the local taxpayer. When the Minister replies, I hope that she will say a bit more about what exactly is to be caught by making this code statutory. Local authorities seem to have a lot of concerns that restricting their publications is inadvertently going to cause them to spend more money promoting policies or matters not of political but of public interest—such as public health. There is quite a lot that a local authority has and will have to do in raising and publicising such issues and in campaigning. The briefing quotes examples ranging from job advertisements to information about bank holiday opening hours of recycling facilities. I find it hard to believe that the Secretary of State is going to intervene because he believes that a local authority is in breach of a publicity code over the bank holiday opening hours of recycling facilities. However, this is an example of the sorts of concerns—real or exaggerated—that local authorities have about making a code statutory.
Since we all agree that very few local authorities are currently or likely in the future to be caught by this, I hope that the Government will consider what more they can do. Perhaps the Minister can give further
reassurance that—as things stand, and as we expect them to stand—the vast majority of local authorities which comply voluntarily with a voluntary code and are not a cause for concern, will not be affected if and when this becomes a statutory provision.
I am proposing this group of amendments to try to remove the blunderbuss approach that seems to be worrying a very wide range of authorities. That is why all parties in the LGA are concerned. It is not because their local authorities are in breach of the code; it is because of the wide-ranging powers that it is giving to the Secretary of State. These are entirely contrary to the much talked about—but not so often seen in practice—localism to which my Government, and many of us in my Government, are committed, which is a targeted approach. I think that most of us here would accept that there is a problem with the activities of one or two local authorities going too far perhaps with a commercial weekly newspaper, or occasionally in party-political rather than in general political terms, and that that problem needs to be dealt with. Clearly the Secretary of State feels that the powers he has at present are inadequate—although I do not recall the Minister telling us why they are inadequate—and the coalition agreement implies that this is so.
I would like to take this a little further and obtain some clarification about what exactly may be caught by these provisions. I have seen it said that when this is enacted it will mean that local authorities will no longer be able to lobby their own local MPs. That has been said, although I find it hard to believe. Perhaps I may ask the Minister what will be the position for those local authorities that, for instance, might wish to oppose a third runway at Heathrow Airport, should that become a probability or even a government policy. Are they able in the interests of their own local taxpayers to express a view, which is almost certainly an all-party view within that local authority, even if it is contrary to government policy? Will the local authorities on the line of HS2 be allowed to express a view—again, I suspect that it is likely to be an all-party view as well as the view of an overwhelming majority of residents in that area—which may not comply with government policy or with views that I personally hold, although that is not material?
If they are able to speak on behalf of their residents in opposition to government policy, how far does that go? Before long, we would come to welfare reform issues. Of course all of us accept that a council should not use public money to operate on a party-political basis, but how far can it go in being able to reflect the views of local residents on an issue of wider national concern, regardless of party politics? I suspect that all of us would say that it is the responsibility of the local authority to represent and to argue the views and interests of its local residents, and if it did not, or it felt inhibited in doing so, then it would be failing those residents. So these are the sorts of issues that the move from a voluntary code, with which the overwhelming majority of local authorities comply willingly, to a statutorily backed code—with all the accompanying concerns, issues and fears, groundless or otherwise—starts to raise.
This batch of amendments is an attempt to target the remedy, where remedy is needed, and not to cause the widespread concern that is currently held. I beg to move.