Mr Clive Betts
MP for Sheffield South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“I wholeheartedly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, both its content and its tone. I would like to ask about his discussions with our colleagues and allies in other countries who are looking to implement similar sanctions.”
“I offer two congratulations: first, to my right hon. Friend and constituency neighbour, the First Secretary, on her well-deserved promotion—I am sure she will do an excellent job. Secondly, I congratulate her and the Prime Minister for their real commitment to devolution, which I have wanted to see for an awfully long time.”
“I apologise for the fact that—as I have explained to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will have to leave straight after my question to chair Westminster Hall. I thank my right hon. Friend for doing this very challenging piece of work. I think that the theme of fairness, for the people who need benefits and for taxpayers, is right.”
“On the other hand, so many constituents with really serious conditions get turned down for PIP, and can get it only if they struggle through the appeal system, sometimes without any help at all. So the system is not fair to anyone at present.”
“When the previous Government let the contract, we were in a situation in which procurement could not properly take account of the past record of companies, and I understand that the Government have now changed that.”
“I will dive very deeply into the question, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Chair of the Committee sends his apologies for his absence; he is presently in a Committee meeting.”
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“If we take the projections forward to 2018-19—the Chancellor has indicated clearly his intention that there will be no rowing back from further cuts—there will be another £26 million on top. That money cannot be found without cutting into statutory services, because there is no leeway at all on discretionary services. The figures that Sheffield council has produced for its current spending show that 38% of the budget goes on care for adults and children. What is often forgotten, however, is the contractual commitments that councils cannot get out of. The whole waste collection and disposal service in Sheffield is contracted to Veolia. Modifications can be made at the margins—there is already an alternate weekly bin collection—but long-term commitments in the incinerator and waste disposal contract cannot be altered.”
“They are not councils of any one party persuasion, and they are not solely in metropolitan or rural areas—they are councils across the piece. We know that the Department for Communities and Local Government monitors that matter, and we hope it is talking to the LGA about it, because it is a serious problem. The graph of doom has been mentioned, and whereas three or four years ago it was a bad idea that might happen at some stage, it is now a serious prospect. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge mentioned the situation in Barnsley, and I will obviously talk about Sheffield. There will have been £182 million of cuts between the beginning of this Parliament and 2013-14—the council has had to make those reductions. On top of that, we know that in 2014-15 and 2015-16, a further gap of £80 million will have to be bridged.”
“Those comments have been repeated by Conservative authority leaders such as the one in Kent, who says that there is no more capacity to keep on making cuts while keeping local government services sustainable. The LGA states that, on top of the 43% cuts in this Parliament, there will be a gap of another £15 billion if the cuts continue to 2020, which local government simply will not be able to find. We know from its briefing—I have also had discussions with it about this—that based on the Government’s current forecast, there are 56 councils whose current levels of spend are 15% higher than their income is likely to be by 2015-16. There is a gap of 15p in the pound between their income forecasts and their current levels of spend, so some of those councils will get into serious financial difficulties.”
“That is true of many northern cities, which are the ones that we expect to be the powerhouse for growth and for rebalancing our economy. They are receiving the largest percentage cuts. We can add in the cuts to the fire service, and there are also the new proposals that will redistribute health money away from cities such as Sheffield, because there will be less recognition of need in the formulas. Cuts in different services in the same areas will multiply the effects. It is not just Labour authorities such as Sheffield that are saying that the cuts cannot be sustainable but the Local Government Association and Sir Merrick Cockell, who is a very reasonable man. He speaks well for local government as a whole on behalf of a Conservative-led, cross-party grouping that says the cuts are unsustainable.”
“Why have local services been picked out for larger cuts than anything else? My second point is about the distribution of the cuts. We can argue about that, and everyone will have their own view, but it seems slightly unreasonable that Sheffield, despite all the demand for local services from local people and all its problems and challenges, should have received cuts of about £200 per head of population, whereas down in Windsor the cuts are £40 per head of population—five times less. I know the Minister will say that it is because cities such as Sheffield get more in grant, so they have more grant to cut. However, why have they had more grant than elsewhere in the past? We can argue about fine amounts, but essentially it is because they have more problems, more challenges and less resources than areas such as Windsor.”
“Do Ministers somehow feel that the services that people receive from libraries, sports centres, environmental health, parks and street cleaning are less important than anything else? I suggest that they are not. Do they believe that local government is somehow less efficient and therefore has more ability to make cuts without damaging services? I do not think there is any evidence of that—indeed, the evidence has shown the opposite over the years. Local government has generally been more efficient and more effective in bringing about efficiency savings. Or, in the phrase that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) used, is it simply about the Government contracting out the responsibility for making the cuts to somebody else, namely local councils? I suspect that that is probably the reality.”
“First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) on his new responsibilities as a shadow local government Minister, which are well deserved. I am sure he will do just as well at holding the Government to account as his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), whom I congratulate on her achievements in the job and wish success in her new job. The Local Government Association, whose figures I believe are accurate—it is a cross-party, Conservative-led group—states that in the course of this Parliament, Government funding to local government will be cut by 43% in real terms, which is more than twice the level of cuts experienced across government as a whole. Why is that? I hope the Minister will respond to that question.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but I would add that it is not just Labour councils in the north, with all their problems, that will face that situation. A number of smaller councils in the south and south-west will face almost a meltdown situation in the next few years if the same policy is continued.”
“I am against the referendum proposals and against capping.”
“The one tax that local government controls is council tax, which is now virtually frozen because of actions by this Government and the previous one. I want to be critical of them both. We had the nonsense of capping under the previous Government—I spoke against that a number of times in the Chamber—and the nonsense of the referendum under this Government. That is not about democracy but about trying to control local government spending. The idea that central Government should have to call a referendum if they want to change income tax or VAT is clearly nonsense and no Government would ever allow it. Local councils ought to be elected and then free to raise the money. If the electorate do not like it, they will vote for somebody else, and that is what democracy at local level should be about.”
“That would stop councils simply complaining to the Government that they do not have enough money while others have too much. That happens in Denmark, which has a grown-up system. They sit down and negotiate between local and central Government about the amount of money to be passed over, and local government then makes the redistribution between different local authorities. That has worked for a long time. I would have thought most Ministers welcomed with open arms the idea that they would not be responsible for every allocation to every council in the country. Let us see how radical Ministers can be. The LGA was brave in putting forward that proposal, so let us at least look for radical solutions.”
“There will always be an element of redistribution—we have great inequalities in our country so redistribution will always be necessary—and there will always be a case for some element of Government grant. One problem is that, at present, that element all comes from business rates. Because of that, some sensible ideas the Government have had about localising business rates have become convoluted and complicated because those rates both reward development and try to redistribute from those areas with greater resources to those with the greatest need. In principle, however, that is to be welcomed, although in future we will still need an element of Government grant for redistribution. Why not take up the LGA’s proposals, give the money to local authorities and allow them to distribute it?”
“A bit ironically I suppose, the one good point that might come out of this is that local government is now less reliant on Government grants for funding. Government grants have been cut by nearly half, so a bigger proportion of money comes from taxes that local authorities raise. If we are to look forward to vibrant local government, a less centralised state, and localities being less dependent on central Government for funding, and if we are to be localist and look at the balance of power and the things the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is doing, we must not simply go back to where we were and recreate the grant systems. We must also consider how we can make local government more financially independent in the future.”
“There is quite a lot of evidence that there is a real difficulty for local economies. In the past, the larger grants were generally directed at authorities with real difficulties, often in areas where industry had been run down. Those areas often had a higher reliance than others on public sector expenditure, and my hon. Friend is right that the reductions in that expenditure are having a disproportionate impact on those communities. As I said, we are in a serious position. I do not think Ministers recognise where we could be heading—perhaps they hope they might be in another job by the time it happens. We can all wish for better things for ourselves, I suppose. Let me move the debate forward in a slightly different way. We are where we are, but where will local government go in the future?”
“No one understands the system any more, which is an attack on democracy and accountability. My hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) in his new role will probably not want to comment on this point, but if we are to reform council tax and make it fairer, the relationship between the value of properties and the amount people pay should be reformed. Those in very expensive, large houses should pay more, but why bother with a mansion tax? All we have to do is increase the higher council tax bands, and ensure that the money that comes in goes to local government and does not get siphoned off by the Treasury for other purposes. That is why I am against the mansion tax—I put that on the record to ensure that I have been critical of what both Governments have done.”
“Of course I understand that and any council would want to try to minimise increases in council tax. However, let us also make clear that cost of living increases can come from a local library closure because people have to buy books instead of borrowing them for free, or from the closure of a leisure centre when a family has to book into a private club that involves a lot of extra cost. Cost of living increases can come in other ways, including through cuts in public services. I also argue strongly that it is nonsense to have local government’s main tax based on a valuation carried out in 1991, and it is ridiculous that 20 years on we have not had a revaluation. The previous Government, this Government, and the previous Conservative Government all bottled out—it is all too difficult. In the end, we have a completely unrealistic situation.”
“We rightly focus on the impact of the cuts, but we should also look at how we deal with the situation in future. The cuts the Government are inflicting on local government are unfair. There are not only cuts on local government, but on local services that people greatly value. Those cuts should not be that much greater than the cuts in the rest of government. The distribution of those reductions is unfair. At the same time, we must recognise the current situation and that we have a challenge for the future. How do we address it and make local government more financially independent? How can we give local government greater means to raise resources for their local services? If we can meet that challenge, it will be good not merely for local government and local councils, but for local communities, democracy and accountability.”
“We also need to reform capital finances—for heaven’s sake, the cap on the housing revenue account is nonsense. Everyone who has looked at the issue can see that prudential borrowing rules apply to every other aspect of local government finance in the capital, apart from housing. Let local government be free to build the homes that people need, and let Treasury control move back from local government borrowing. The prudential rules exist and can be audited, and local authorities can be held to account. Let us also hope for Government support for the LGA’s idea of a municipal bond agency, so we can return to a situation in which people can invest in their communities through bonds, with a good rate of return, so they can see where the money is going to improve services locally. There are lots of good ideas.”
“The amount paid to the municipality is greater, because the services it provides cost more and are more important to local people. That is how Sweden operates. I know that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has looked at designating a certain percentage of income tax for local councils. That is a step forward, but why can councils not vary things? If councils want to vary services and local people want better services and to pay for them, why can there not be differences in different parts of the country? That is a challenge and a debate to be had. There is no one solution at this stage, but at least let us start to think radically about a way forward. We cannot simply go back to the idea that it will all come from central Government and council tax.”
“At least, however, the issue of how we can get more independent sources of funding for local councils has been raised. Why not look at income tax again? I remember the Liberal Democrats when they were a radical party putting forward new ideas, not just agreeing with the Conservative party about things. They used to promote local income tax. I disagreed with them then because they wanted to replace council tax. I suggest—there was a report on local finance by the Select Committee in the previous Parliament—that we have local income tax as well, and make the local authorities responsible for a bigger percentage of the money they raise. The Communities and Local Government Committee recently went to Sweden where people’s income tax demands include an amount for central Government, an amount for the county, and an amount for the municipality.”
“There is a case for review on whether band A should be also split, and there is a good argument for that to make the whole system fairer. We must also look for other sources of funding for local government. I welcome the report by Mr Travers that the Mayor of London has initiated, which is a good contribution to a debate on how local government should be financed. I am not saying I agree with all the recommendations—the report is about London in isolation, although I am interested that the core cities are starting to engage in the argument, which raises questions about the rest of the country—but it is good that the Mayor has stimulated that debate. He has invited me and other Members to meet him to discuss that issue, and the Communities and Local Government Committee may initiate an inquiry into the matter.”
“The Minister just mentioned reserves. Does he not understand that it is not an issue of rural or urban, or Conservative or Labour? It is about councils looking at the black hole that is coming, as the forecasts show, and which the Chancellor has identified in the spending review, and making prudent decisions on how to spread the money available over a number of years in order to try to do their best to protect services. If Ministers just keep rubbishing that as councils holding on to reserves for their own sake, they do a disservice to hard-pressed local authorities.”
“There is always a worry, particularly in these times of great financial hardship for local authorities that—this is an added problem for councils to tackle—the support that councillors receive gets cut back. If anything, councillors, need more support and training, given the very difficult decisions they are now making. That is a decision for local authorities to make, but again, in this area, Ministers’ voices could be raised. They could say, “Well, all right, it is down to councils, but when large sums of public money are being spent, it is important that the people making those decisions have as much expertise and skill as possible and that they get the required training.” Making sure that happens is a challenge for councils up and down the country.”
“New people coming in with fresh ideas—particularly those from different backgrounds, including younger people, people from the BME community, and more women—will always change the way of thinking and come up with new ideas and solutions. That should be welcomed, and we should encourage it. We welcome the Local Government Association’s Be a Councillor programme. We thought that was excellent. We wanted to encourage it, widen it and get local councils involved in the promotion of democracy in their areas. We thought councils could do that. They do not have to do it on a party-political basis—of course not. They can simply encourage young people to get involved in the democratic process, and that would be good. We looked at performance and training.”
“Representatives from the parties gave evidence to us, and we were encouraged and pleased that they all seemed to recognise the problem. They have different ways of addressing it—women-only shortlists is something we do in the Labour party, but I know that the Conservative party is not convinced by that—but at least everyone who gave evidence appreciated the problem and wanted to do something about it. However, we were not always convinced, in the case of any party, that the promises made at national level were necessarily being communicated, dealt with and implemented at a local level. All the parties still have to look at and deal with that challenge, but if we get this right, we can encourage a lot more people to come into local government. That will help stimulate local government and create a greater vibrancy.”
“Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) is here, and in his previous life as a Minister, he spoke about what I thought was an important concept: he said that it was not a matter of postcode lottery, but of postcode choice. We should not be against postcode choice; if councils make that choice rationally and properly, we should encourage them to do so as an important part of localism. I certainly think that, and I believe that the Committee would concur. On the composition of councils, we were concerned about the age of councillors, the balance of men and women, and the balance of those from white and BME communities. They are not representative, they do not properly reflect their communities, and that is not healthy for democracy. To some extent, we recognise that it is the political parties’ job to sort that out.”
“The Secretary of State’s use of terms such as “guided localism” and now “muscular localism”— which he used about the planning changes— “suggests an inability to let go of the reins and embrace the concept fully. This can be frustrating and confusing for councillors and councils wishing to make the most of localism.” That is not just a concern of the Select Committee; it very much reflects what councils and councillors, of all political persuasions, have been saying to the Committee. We made that point in our recommendations because if we really are going to say that powers are being passed over to councils, and that they will exercise them according to local conditions, we cannot always second-guess them and criticise them when one council does something in a slightly different way from another. The hon.”
“Over the summer, we have heard how councils can better manage their parking arrangements, how parking can be organised on double-yellow lines, and how they can put their bins in better places. They have been accused of being democracy duckers for not holding referendums, because they did not put the council tax up by more than 2%. Most of those matters are for local councils to decide. If the Secretary of State is always second-guessing things right down to the minute detail, it gives the impression that somehow councillors cannot be trusted to get on and do the job they are elected for. One of our recommendations said: “We remain concerned about the Government’s mixed messages on localism.”
“The working relationship with local enterprise partnerships is another change, as are public health changes, on which we also did a report recently, the commissioning of adult care and the development of combined authorities. Those are big challenges for councils. At one time, one could be a councillor for 10 years and nothing much would change in terms of how councils ran. An awful lot has changed. It changed in previous Parliaments, and it has changed a lot in this Parliament. It is a bit challenging for councils to keep abreast while carrying on doing their important and difficult job. The Committee said—perhaps this is one area where the Minister will not necessarily agree with me—that we were not always sure that ministerial comments were helpful to councils in doing their job.”
“It gives a much more meaningful role for all the councillors in a local authority. We recognised and recommended such action, and we thought that the LGA could play a role by identifying examples of good practice, not so that everyone would do things in the same way, but so that individual councils could be aware of what happens in other areas as well. We were pleased with what we saw in Sunderland. We know that councils are going through a time of great change. The localism agenda has certainly produced changes, as have the housing revenue account reforms, which the Committee welcomed, and the city deals, which is one of the best things that this Government have done. In my authority, thanks to the city deal, the council is taking on powers over apprenticeships and economic development. That is positive.”
“It was right that Government should push powers down to councils—we can have views about how well or badly that has been done—but councils should be encouraged to do so as well, in a variety of ways. It would be down to local councils to do that in their own way in their own area. Circumstances will be different in different parts of the country, but we certainly encouraged that in our report. When we did a report on the co-operative council, we went to Lambeth, where my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed), who was then the leader of Lambeth council, showed us examples of what happens on the ground. My neighbouring authority, Barnsley, has just produced a report about developing area and ward budgets on a stronger basis. Again, lots of councils of all political persuasions are doing that, and it should be welcomed.”
“When we visited one of the local area committees, we said to the leader of the opposition, who happened to be a councillor in that ward, “What do you make of all this?” He said, “As a ward councillor, I think it’s great. It actually works. I have influence, and I can get things done in my local community. My local community can come to me knowing that. That has been a change. But as leader of the opposition, I think it’s a long step backwards, because now I have many fewer things that I can complain about to the local newspapers. Things are done better and more responsively to the needs of local constituents.” I thought that that was a powerful and honest message. When we did our report on localism earlier in this Parliament, we encouraged councils to look at the second level of localism and devolution.”
“Even where the cabinet system has been introduced, councils have responded to it and dealt with it in different ways, but there is clearly now a role for front-line councillors who represent their community—they have been called facilitators, civic entrepreneurs and a variety of other names—to go out and engage with their communities in a practical and meaningful way. Different councils do that differently. We saw evidence in Sunderland of a proactive approach to training and encouraging councillors, setting up area committees with area budgets and an area manager and encouraging councillors to meet and work with other public bodies, schools and voluntary groups. Those councillors had some power and influence to get things done in those communities.”
“The fact is that 69% of councillors are men, 96% are white and 45% are over retirement age. They are not reflective of their communities in that sense. That issue was clearly flagged up at the beginning in the information that the Committee received. We know that the role of councillors is changing significantly, and we reflected that. The development of the cabinet system over the years has changed councillors’ role, as has the fact that they are involved in scrutiny. Scrutiny committees did not exist when I was a councillor back in the 1980s.”
“They were playing a vital role, but they had decided that being a councillor was not for them, or they would have liked to be councillors, but had found certain obstacles in the way. That helped better inform our understanding of the situation. It was an important start. We also considered the surveys that had been done on the composition of councils. It is worrying—I know that the LGA is worried—that the average age of a councillor in this country is 60. I want to make it clear that there are many excellent white male councillors of retirement age doing a very good job, but equally clearly, there are many women, young people and people from black and minority ethnic communities who could be doing a good job as councillors but are not. We considered that challenge right at the beginning. It certainly influenced our discussions thereafter.”
“I asked a colleague who remembered me from the Association of Metropolitan Authorities many years ago, “What about your role now as a back-bench councillor?” He said, “Clive, I’m not a back-bench councillor; I’m a front-line councillor.” I thought that that change in mindset was important, and we took our report heading from it. We took evidence formally. We had a speed-dating session. I was not quite sure what that was, but essentially, we got in a number of people, and Committee members went around individually and chatted to them for 10 or 15 minutes each, taking information, ideas and views from them. That was interesting, because we did not really invite councillors; we invited people who had been councillors and given it up for whatever reason, and people who were community activists but had decided not to be councillors.”
“Some were cabinet members, some were leaders and some were councillors whom we at first termed back-bench councillors. We took evidence from them at those seminars, organised by the Local Government Association. We had an interesting visit to Sunderland to see what councillors were doing on the ground. I see the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) nodding his head; I think that we all found it interesting. They were genuinely trying to devolve power to local councillors and local communities. That is where the title “Councillors on the Frontline” came from.”
“Our inquiry first considered who we wanted to take evidence from and how we should take it. Obviously, we called Dame Joan Roberts, because of the Roberts commission. It was a useful starting point for looking at what had been done, but apart from that, we considered the matter afresh. We took evidence from people; we did not go back to see what had or had not been agreed in the past. We considered the role that councillors perform and the current barriers and obstacles to their performance. We took formal evidence from a variety of organisations, and, in the end, from the Minister, but we also tried to go out and search for evidence in a slightly different way. We began with a seminar of councillors from a variety of authorities and of different statuses within authorities.”
“It gives me great pleasure to introduce the report by the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, “Councillors on the Frontline”. The title was changed between the initiation of our inquiry and the eventual production of the report; I will explain in a moment how the term “Councillors on the Frontline” came about. It was changed from “Councillors in the Community”, the first name that we chose. Councillors do a vital job. I might even get agreement from the Minister on that. Perhaps he will not agree with everything that I say from now on, but that is certainly not a bad place to start. Councillors are on the front line of service delivery and democracy, and they are the lifeblood of our democratic system. I feel strongly about the importance of the role that they play.”
“We got the evidence clearly that councillors, in some cases, were not well paid. We did not agree with the idea of having a national rate for councillors, because we recognise the big differences in the job that councillors do in different authorities, and in the jobs that various councillors do. However, we were generally persuaded that councillors had the right to expect an appropriate level of compensation for the time and loss of earnings. Both are important; it is about the time that councillors put in, often at weekends and evenings, but it is also about the time that those in work give up, and the loss of earnings as a result, which is often a risk.”
“We think serving as a councillor in your community is something we should encourage people to do”, having that ministerial steer would be helpful. Do a review. Work with the LGA. At least recognise it as a problem, Minister, because it is a problem, as was clearly shown in our own evidence. I am getting towards the end of my comments. We also raised the issue of allowances. Given the press comments and ministerial responses made initially about our report, one would have thought the only thing we said was that all councillors should be paid more. Actually, we did not say that anywhere in the report. We raised the issue of allowances because it was raised with us in evidence as a problem—it was an evidence-based report; that is what Select Committee reports are. We did not recommend, as I say, that allowances should be increased.”
“Again, there is a worry that such things get squeezed and scrapped when councillors are, understandably, trying to protect front-line services from cuts. We looked at what is happening in the Ministry of Defence. We made the following recommendation: “The Ministry of Defence is giving serious consideration to the ways in which employers can be encouraged to support military reservists. The Department for Communities and Local Government should conduct a similar review. We recommend that the Government consult on how employers can be encouraged to provide support to their staff who serve as councillors.” We are not saying that it has to be exactly the same as the MOD, but at least if the Government were out there saying to employers, “We think this is important.”
“One reason was that young people start off, perhaps prepared to make a sacrifice about having a job, but eventually, they have to get a job, and the employer starts saying, “I’m sorry, time off really isn’t on—well, maybe we can find you half a day every fortnight.” They cannot really do the job in that regard. We heard from a councillor—I think she was a Conservative councillor—who said she was trying to get a job, and the jobcentre told her to take the fact that she was a councillor off her CV, because if anyone saw it, they would not employ her. That is really worrying. We ought to give proper attention to that, and the Government have to address it as well. Councils can help councillors by providing better admin and clerical assistance.”
“It is easier for retired people than it is for people who work, which is why more retired people tend to go on councils. That is a fact, but it is also a challenge and a barrier. I remember a time in Sheffield when all the major steelworks would almost vie with each other. One would say, “We’ve got two councillors on the council”, while another would say, “We’ve got three.” They all saw giving time off as a badge of honour. I accept that it is easier for large organisations employing thousands of people to do that than it is for small businesses, but it is a challenge to try and ensure that being a councillor is an opportunity open for many people in all walks of life. As part of our process, we talked to young people, some of whom had been councillors and had given up.”
“It is also important that we try and reach out to potential councillors and potential candidates, and that parties and local councils work on that as well. We looked at the barriers, why we have an unrepresentative group, and why certain people feel it is just not for them. Perhaps they would like to be a councillor, but they do not become one. Time is a factor. Flippant comments are often made, such as “Well, it’s only a part-time job, a few hours a week.” I do not think it is; the ward work alone can be demanding. Cabinet members clearly have larger time commitments, but if someone is on a scrutiny committee and they are going to do what we saw in Sunderland, where ward councillors are taking decisions through area committees and are spending money, that is also a time commitment.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that—I think—but I will not be led down the road of discussing a debate that happened in Parliament this morning. However, I think there is a case for such training. I pointed out the major financial changes in local government that councils are having to deal with, but of course, we have to deal with those as Members of Parliament, too. On our Committee, for example, we have tried to get more briefings from the Scrutiny Unit in Parliament, which is an excellent resource, and from the National Audit Office, which is trying to work more closely with us, so that we can understand some of the complicated technical issues—which I am sure that the Minister can explain to us, if he wishes, at any point in time. We are all trying to grapple with these issues, and I agree that training is important for us as well.”
“The responsibility in that regard is for parties as well as local government itself. We have considered the councillor’s role, how it is different in different authorities, the challenges for councils and the LGA, and the barriers to becoming a councillor. We have considered the challenges for employers, for councillors and for Government. As the Select Committee said in the report, we want councillors to be “at the centre of community life, well known and respected by those they represent, and empowered to effect change within their local areas.” Democracy at all levels depends on the health of the councillor population. We hope that the Government will play their part in giving front-line councillors the support that they need.”
“The LGA has said today that it is concerned. The legal advice that it has received is that the lobbying Bill as written could prevent councillors from engaging in campaigning and lobbying of Government in the year before the election; they could be caught by the rules. Can the Minister give an absolute assurance that that is not the case and, if there are any concerns, that he will talk to his ministerial colleagues to ensure that those concerns do not become a reality? In our report, we have raised issues that are very important. We hope that we have started a debate about the important role of councillors, the challenges that they face in that role and the help that they can be given to perform the role better. We have looked at how we can deal with the gaps—the fact that councillors are not reflective of their communities.”
“Well, okay, if the Conservatives think that all members of the Select Committee are cynical and sleazy, I suppose that we will have to live with that. [Interruption.] Perhaps we will not. The idea that the hon. Members for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) and for Harrow East were not merely cynical and sleazy but involved in a plot with the Labour party to cream off money is a little too far-fetched for the chairman of the Conservative party to try to justify. I am sure that in the debate today the Minister will want to distance himself from those comments. I have a challenge, which the LGA raised with me this morning, for the Minister. I refer to the lobbying Bill—the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Although it does not come under our report, it does affect the role of councillors.”
“One Conservative councillor gave this response, which was communicated to the Committee secretariat: “it’s great to have a bunch of volunteers running everything but when you are responsible for a budget of over £900 million is this appropriate?” Of course it is not. Of course councillors are not volunteers. They are doing an important public service and should be properly rewarded. Most councillors are not in it for the pay, but the idea that they are volunteers and scout leaders is not correct. Then there was the other comment—I think that it came from Conservative Central Office—that it was “a cynical and sleazy move by the Labour Party” to put councillors’ allowances up so that the Labour party could cream a bit off the top and gain more money.”