My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 79, 82, 83, and 84. All these amendments relate to audit and scrutiny, and issues that I think are extremely important if the public are to have confidence in the combined county structure, but those principles, of course, apply to any structure in local government and to any combined authority structure.
Amendment 77 would ensure that the combined county authority cannot refuse to publish a report of an overview and scrutiny committee. This is a probing amendment, for the Minister to explain that indeed it is possible, as I propose in Amendment 77, that an overview and scrutiny committee can
“make its reports public whenever the overview and scrutiny committee believes publication to be in the public interest”.
I simply seek the Minister’s confirmation that is actually what is intended, because I do not think it is actually in the Bill—maybe the words are there and I have simply missed them.
Amendment 79 in my name would prevent a CCA restricting the work of an overview and scrutiny committee without good reason. I think this is really important because an overview and scrutiny committee must have independence to operate without undue influence by the parent committee. Therefore, my amendment simply says that a CCA cannot unreasonably withhold permission for some work of the overview and scrutiny committee taking place.
Amendment 82 relates to whether recent members of a political party can qualify as “an appropriate person”. Amendment 83 is on the same subject or principle. It seems to me that the Bill actually permits someone to be appointed as “an appropriate person” the day after they have resigned from a political party. I have proposed five years: if you are really going to be “an appropriate person”, surely you can be appropriate only if you are not recently associated with an individual political party—five years is a probing proposal; some other period might be relevant. I feel very strongly that you cannot have people appointed as an appropriate person who have very recently been a member, perhaps a prominent member, of any political party. I hope the Minister will be able to put my concerns at rest.
Amendment 84 would enhance public confidence in the audit process by increasing the number of independent people on the audit committees. At the moment, the Government have put one person in the Bill. I think one person is inadequate. What if there were one person and that person’s only contribution to a meeting was to apologise for their absence? I have proposed three people: then if somebody is not present at a meeting, at least somebody is more likely to be present. The general public are now increasingly aware of some of the problems around the audit process in local government: I think that six local councils are now in special measures under the Treasury.
One of the reasons the public have concern is that they are being asked, in some places, to pay much higher levels of council tax to make up for losses that the council has created. The audit function—as opposed to just the overview and scrutiny function—really does matter. To have only one person appointed as an independent person seems to me to be insufficient. Given the concerns that can arise so very quickly
about investments and the administration of current expenditure that may go wrong, audit committees play a very important role in giving the public confidence that the taxes they pay are being properly spent. I hope very much the Minister can indicate that the Government understand why just a single independent member of an audit committee is not sufficient. I hope she will confirm that there will be at least two independent people—though I would prefer three, it could be that there should be four or five—for that is the basis of audit. It is and should be run on the basis of independence. I beg to move.