§ 3.24 p.m.
EARL ST. ALDWYNMy Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales that they, having been informed of the purport of the Local Government Bill, have consented to place their prerogatives and interests, so far as they are concerned on behalf of the Crown, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
§ THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE)My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Aberdare.)
§ On Question, Bill read 3a, with the Amendments.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHANI OF SAINT MARYLEBONE)My Lords, I now have to call Amendment No. 1, but perhaps I should draw the attention of the House to the fact that the three Amendments on the Marshalled List, Amendments Nos. 1, 4 and 16, cannot be read except in connection with the Bill as amended on Report, and the printed copy of the Bill which is before your Lordships is the Bill as it was amended on Committee. Therefore, I propose, in calling Amendment No. 1, to point out to your Lordships that the text of the Bill as amended on Report on page 6, line 45 should be:
of metropolitan district councillors are held, and …
§ I call Amendment No. 1.
2013§ Clause 8 [Constitution and membership of Greater London Council and London borough councils]:
§
LORD GARNSWORTHY moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 6, line 45 (as amended on Report by Amendment 31), after ("of") leave out ("metropolitan") and insert ("non-metropolitan").
§
The noble Lord said: My Lords, Clause 8 deals with the constitution and membership of the Greater London Council and the London borough councils. The Amendment I move is to what was line 45 of page 6 of the Bill as it was before Report. It is to leave out "metropolitan" and insert"non-metropolitan "after" of". The word "metropolitan" was inserted at Report stage. I said then that it was a matter of regret that the Amendment had not been introduced at the Committee stage, since this would have permitted a freer discussion of its merits. I asked that some further thought might be given to the points of criticism I had made, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, said that he would be glad to look at it again. He repeated a little later, at column 1687 of the OFFICIAL REPORT for October 17:
I will certainly look at it again.
§ I indicated that it might be necessary to table an Amendment at Third Reading. This matter was dealt with only on Report, on Tuesday, and because of the time factor, and in the absence of any indication as to whether or what thought had been given to the matter, I had no alternative but to table this Amendment last evening, since manuscript Amendments are not allowed on Third Reading.
§ May I say that I have no criticism to make of the noble Viscount? This Bill has placed on Ministers in this House a very heavy burden. It has been, not only for them but I think for everybody taking an active part in it, a somewhat gruelling experience. Whatever blame there is must be attached, I think, not to Ministers who have been responsible for this Bill, but to the very unsatisfactory arrangement of the Government's legislative programme in this and the other place. Further, I fully understand that the noble Viscount has many other responsibilities ranging over a very wide field, and that he has been considerably stretched. May I say that this week I have admired the 2014 manner in which he has endeavoured to discharge the variety of responsibilities that have been placed on him.
§
I asked him on Report whether there has been, or whether it is intended that there shall be, any consultations with the London Boroughs Association. I should certainly like an answer on that point, because I think that, as the clause is now worded, the London boroughs will be committed to annual elections. When the noble Viscount was speaking on Tuesday he said, and I refer to column 1687:
… there was a firm undertaking given earlier that no order would be made under this subsection (2) against the wishes of the London boroughs.
May I now quote what was said by Mr. Graham Page when the matter was before the other place? On July 17 at columns 116 and 117 he said:
On the issue of annual or quadrennial elections, we have taken powers to proceed by order, after consultation with all those concerned. The last thing I wanted to do was to rush it into the Bill. That is why we have taken those powers for the Secretary of State. In using the phrase `taking powers' I am repeating what my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) said. We are taking those powers for the benefit of the Greater London Council and the London boroughs to enable us to do what they want us to do. I assure my hon. Friend that there is no question of the Secretary of State ordering something which is not wanted by those local authorities.
§
The position of the metropolitan districts—and it is what is proposed in the Bill for metropolitan districts that will apply in London as the clause now stands—is set out on page 4 of the Bill at Clause 6(1)(b), which states:
every metropolitan district shall be divided into wards, each returning a number of councillors which is divisible by three".
§ LORD GARNSWORTHYThen, my Lords, if I may quote Clause 7—
§ LORD GARNSWORTHYI think the Minister has the point, so I need not weary the House by reading it. But it certainly lays down that one-third of the council will retire every year. In case there is any doubt about that, may I 2015 refer to page 238, paragraph 4, which certainly lays that down. If the Minister will look at paragraph 4, towards the bottom of the page, I think he will see that I am accurate in what I have said. Therefore, this will mean annual elections for London, except in the year of county elections. London has always had triennial elections; it is traditional. The requirement to have three member wards, or multiples of three, will cause a tremendous upheaval in London which, again by tradition, has a varying number of councillors for wards, some having one, some having two, some having three or four or even more. London was reorganised some ten years ago, with consequent upheaval. Ward boundaries were completely redrawn, and I am informed that some of the reorganisation of wards was not completed until this year. If the Minister is to require three member wards, the whole system will have to be upset again. The effect of my Amendment would be to keep options open and to allow unfettered consultations to take place.
Clause 7(4) reads as follows:
Subject to subsection (5) below, a non-metropolitan district council may in pursuance of the requisite resolution request the Secretary of State to provide—That would appear to me to be in line with what I understood the Minister to mean when he dealt with the position in July. I hope that I have clearly understood the position under the Bill, because my motive in putting this Amendment forward this afternoon is to be as helpful as I possibly can be to ensure that in the case of London they have the choice, that consultations—when they take place—will be unfettered, and that it will be possible for the London boroughs themselves to decide which is to their advantage and to their liking. The Amendment also confers on them the same degree of choice, the same element of freedom, in regard to this matter as non-metropolitan districts have throughout the 2016 rest of the country. My Lords, I beg to move.
- (a) for a system of whole council elections, that is to say, the holding of the ordinary elections of all the councillors of the district simultaneously; or
- (b) for a system of elections by thirds, that is to say, the election of one-third, as nearly as may be, of the councillors of the district at the ordinary elections of such councillors in any year".
§ 3.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSSMy Lords, may I first very sincerely thank the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, for his kind words about me? I am sorry that I was half-witted about this matter the other day, but it is a very difficult point of drafting and the noble Lord need make no apology whatever for coming back to it. The Bill in the present form is, I promise him, right. His Amendment would add uncertainty and possibly lack of powers to make the choice that he and I both want. May I try to explain to him why? It is the most subtle point that I have come across for a long time, and it has taken me practically all morning to understand it myself.
The situation is this. Under the Bill, the metropolitan district councils will get elected, as the noble Lord said—I am not taking into account at all the transitional provisions; I am talking about when the system gets properly under way—as to one-third in the first year, another third in the second year, a third third in the third year and in the fourth year there will be a rest. That is the year of county elections. There will be no elections for the metropolitan districts in that year. That is the invariable position under the Bill for metropolitan districts. For non-metropolitan districts, the prima facie position, the normal position, unless they do something about it, is that all the councillors will get elected every fourth year being a year about half-way between the county council elections. But they have a choice, if they want it, to have an order made, district council by district council, by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to go over to the metropolitan district council system so that they, too, will have a third of the council elected in the first three years of the cycle and then a fallow year in the fourth. Therefore, when this system gets fully into operation, some non-metropolitan district councils will be on the four-yearly election basis for the whole council, and some may choose to go on to the other system which the metropolitan districts will all have.
What we want to do is to ensure that the London boroughs have the fullest possible choice open to them—because 2017 I entirely agree with the noble Lord that my right honourable friend in another place made the statement which the noble Lord read out—and we do not wish in any way to circumscribe the area of consultation which will take place before any change occurs. Therefore, we have the situation that we want to get the Bill right so that the orders can be made in the widest number of forms possible. There are three possibilities. The London borough councils might want to stay as they are and have all council elections every three years, all members coming up and standing together every three years. That is the present system. They might want to go over to a system, which is the normal system for non-metropolitan councils, whereby they all get elected every fourth year instead of every third year. Or they might want to go over to a system whereby they are brought into line with the metropolitan districts and have elections of a third, a third and a third in the first three years, and then a fallow year in the fourth. We want to make perfectly certain that we can bring about all three of those situations.
As to the first, it is perfectly plain that that will be achieved if no order at all is made. Therefore, if that was what was wanted there would be no need to use the powers under Clause 8(2)(b) and (c) at all. What we want to make sure is that we can carry out the other two options under the powers in the Bill. Now we can and I will tell the noble Lord how. If they want to go over to a system of electing all their members not once every three years but once every four years then one looks very carefully indeed at Clause 8(2)(b). The wording here is crucial because the order can secure that the ordinary elections of London borough councillors are held in years in which ordinary elections of metropolitan district councillors are held—not in the same years, but in years. All one has to do, therefore, is to choose a year or a series of years at four-yearly intervals (I have done the mathematics, and it works) when the metropolitan district councils will be having one of their three phases of election, and then one turns over the London borough councils, so that they have the full council election in any one 2018 of those three years. By that method they can change over from a three-yearly to a four-yearly cycle using the words in Clause 8(2)(b) alone. I have done the mathematics on the number of years that are required, and it will work. There will be a four-yearly cycle which coincides with there being an election for one of the one-thirds of the metropolitan districts in that year.
The other choice—that is to say, if they want to go over fully to the metropolitan district council system of having four-yearly cycles but with elections of one-third of the members in all of the first three—requires an order under Clause 8(2)(b) and Clause 8(2)(c), because, first of all, under Clause 8(2)(b) you say that there will be three elections of a third each (that is, again, years in which the ordinary elections of metropolitan districts are held, so the order covers that) and then, under Clause 8(2)(c), you secure that for the fourth year the councillors so elected do not have to retire as they do under the present law, but can continue to stay for the fourth year without there being any retirement. That is the way it would work. I agree that it is exceedingly complicated, but that is the way it would work.
My Lords, I do not want to take this too fast because I know that it is extremely complicated. May I just mention the point about three-member wards? If the London boroughs wish to remain on a triennial cycle of elections for the whole council, there is no necessity for them to alter the number of members per ward. If they want to go over to a four-yearly cycle of the whole council, there is no necessity for them to alter the number of members in a ward. Only if they wish to adopt the metropolitan district council system and have one-third of their councillors retiring for the first of each of the three years of the four-year cycle do they require to go over to a three-member ward system. Therefore, there are two choices left to them whereby they do not have to do it, and one whereby they can. My Lords, I have explained the system. The drafting of the Bill allows all those three options to be open to the London boroughs, for them to consult about it to their hearts' content with my right honourable friend.
2019 If we put in the noble Lord's "non-metropolitan districts" instead of metropolitan districts" as in the Bill, we get into the position that there will be two different forms of election going for non-metropolitan districts, one of them being the normal system of a full election every four years and the other, in some cases, being the metropolitan district pattern. In those circumstances, which, in law, are the years in which ordinary elections of non-metropolitan district councillors can be said to be held? There will be no general pattern; and there is doubt, I am advised—and I must say that I agree with this—whether there would be powers, under that wording, to make all the sorts of order that we both agree should be made. I assure the noble Lord that all the options are open under the wording "metropolitan". If we use the wording "non-metropolitan", there is certainly doubt, and there could be challenges in the courts about anything other than leaving the system as it is. I have studied this very carefully. I am sorry if I have given an obscure explanation, but it is the very best I can do after a good deal of study and discussion. I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied that we have looked at this matter carefully, obscure though it is, and that the fullest range of options is open, and will remain open, to the London boroughs under this drafting.
§ LORD LEATHERLANDMy Lords, earlier this afternoon one of the noble Lords on the Government Front Bench said that he wished to clarify something. I think we are involved in a process of clarification once again, and I think I am capable of following everything that has been said by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. I simply want to clarify it a little further, and perhaps I can best do that by asking three questions. First, how will this consultation with the boroughs take place? Will each individual borough be consulted, or will the Association of London Boroughs be consulted? Secondly, will some of the boroughs be able to choose to have elections of one-third of their members every year; and, thirdly, if they do, will some 2020 others be able to choose to have the whole council retiring and being re-elected each three or four years?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSSMy Lords, if I may, with leave, answer the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, I think it is important that we should get as much clarity into this matter as possible. As I understand it, the preliminary internal thoughts among the London boroughs themselves are being put together by the London Boroughs Association, and it will probably be with them that the consultations are held, for the reason (and this is in answer to the noble Lord's second question) that they all have to go the same way. They cannot switch about, one doing one thing and one doing the other. They will therefore have to form either a common or, at any rate, a majority view as to what is to be done and this, I think, would be most satisfactorily achieved through the Association.
§ LORD GARNSWORTHYMy Lords, may I say how grateful I am to the noble Viscount for the very full explanation that he has given? It is indeed a very involved matter. I am not a lawyer, but I am fairly certain that I have grasped'what he has been explaining to the House. The advantage of this debate is that it will probably, or at least possibly, alert somebody in the other place to the points that we have been considering, and it will give them an opportunity to study what the noble Viscount has said here this afternoon. I have very great respect for his legal knowledge and ability, and at the moment I certainly cannot challenge anything that he has said. But I think the Commons, since the introduction of the word "metropolitan" was itself an Amendment, will have an opportunity, if they see fit, further to amend the clause. In those circumstances, I trust that your Lordships will feel that this debate has been worthwhile. I certainly feel that I have been justified in raising the point, and with your Lordships' permission I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
2021§ Clause 80 [Disqualifications for election and holding office as member of local authority.]:
§ 3.48 p.m.
§
LORD GARNSWORTHY moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 56, line 28, at end insert—
("(6) In this section "joint committee" shall mean a joint committee appointed pursuant to section 101(1)(b) of this Act and "joint board" shall mean a joint board all the members of which are representatives of local authorities as provided by section 174(1)(e) of this Act.").
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, this clause deals with disqualifications for election and holding office as far as membership of a local authority is concerned. During the progress of this Bill I have tried at each stage to reduce the limitations that apply to some of those working in local government. I have been unsuccessful, and I wish to carry that fight no further on this Bill. I think that at least something has been gained by the discussions on Amendments that have been moved by myself or by my noble friends, since the position as to persons working for joint boards or joint committees has been somewhat clarified.
§
Subsection (1) of the clause reads:
Subject to the provisions of Section 81 below a person shall be disqualified for being elected or being a member of a local authority if he—
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, for the definitions he gave as reported in col. 1733 of the OFFICIAL REPORT for October 17. I will spare your Lordships quoting what he said. It is there in the Record and for my purpose this afternoon that will suffice. I submit that what the Minister said is most helpful, except that what he said is not in the Bill, and when it becomes an Act it will matter little what he said. If a case arises and is taken before the courts there is going to be some considerable difficulty, and whoever hears the case will say, "It does not matter
2022
what the Minister said; I have to decide the issue on the words in the Act".
§ I suggest that if the definitions of joint boards and joint committees are written into the Bill along the lines of my Amendment the intention of Parliament will be clear. There is a great deal in Part VI about them. Clause 174 covers joint boards. I have tried to be helpful. It seems to me that defining here what is meant when the words "joint board" or "joint committee" are used would be extremely helpful and would avoid a great deal of trouble. I hope that the Amendment will commend itself to the Government and will be acceptable to your Lordships. I beg to move.