Mr.
Jackson: I have respect for the hon. Gentleman and the
question was fair. However, at that stage, ultimately, the sanction of
the voters of Scotland and the other parts of the UK came into play.
That is not any kind of analogy.
In the Bill,
the Government seek to take away what authority and autonomy local
government have left by forcing them into prescriptive schemes for
petitions on the basis that they do not know what is good for their
local area. For that reason, we want to divide the Committee on the
stand part debate.
Julia
Goldsworthy: I am not sure that I will be talking in quite
such hyperbole as the previous speaker. However, I wonder whether the
Labour party will draw some lessons from the example just raised, in
which an unpopular policy was introduced that resulted in the Prime
Minister losing her job and being replaced by somebody else. Perhaps
this is the policy—perhaps this is the one—that will
drive people to revolt. I suspect not.
Mr.
Goodman: I would not push the analogy too far because the
party in question won the election afterwards.
Julia
Goldsworthy: I will not push the analogy too far. The only
analogy that I begin my remarks with is that, once again, it is
groundhog day because the first question has to be: why is this in
primary legislation? If No. 10 can introduce an e-petition system on
its website without the need for primary legislation, it begs the
question of why we need to have this set-up for local authorities in
primary legislation. I doubt whether anyone in this room thinks that it
is best practice for councils not to respond to petitions. Everyone
thinks it is a good idea to ensure that councils are as responsive as
possible in whatever way
possible. 5.45
pm
Dan
Rogerson: Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the
Bill says nothing about how councils should respond to a letter or a
telephone call? Perhaps we need some primary legislation to inform
council offices how long they should take to respond to a letter, which
paper they should use and whether it is in the right sort of
envelope.
Julia
Goldsworthy: My hon. Friend is exactly right. If we are
going to specify how councils should respond to petitions, why not
specify how they should respond to debates, after how many rings they
should answer the phone, what their working hours should be, how many
times a year they should sit, the details of their scrutiny committees
and how many visits planning officers should make? If this is where it
starts, where does it stop in terms of the Government ensuring that
local authorities fulfil their duties and are as responsive as
possible? That is something that should be decided at the ballot box.
If people feel that their council is inaccessible, they will have the
opportunity to elect members who will stand on a platform to make their
councils more responsive. The more responsive the members are,
presumably the more likely they are to get
elected.
Ian
Stewart: Does the hon. Lady, in her calmer moments, not
realise that there have to be certain basic standards across local
government? Surely it is the role of national Government to help to set
those basic
standards.
Julia
Goldsworthy: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting
point. To follow the logic of that argument, one would expect central
Government to be setting those standards and abiding by them
themselves. Instead, the very Department that imposes these standards
on local authorities, has no policy for dealing with petitions. It does
not even count the petitions that it receives. There is no common
standard set for any Government Department and even this Parliament has
no clear procedure for dealing with petitions. Most of the petitions
that get presented ultimately disappear into a beige sack; no one ever
sees what happens to them.
If the hon.
Gentleman’s argument is that we need consistency, why are we not
applying the measure across the board? Why are we not setting down
standards that ensure that all public bodies respond to petitions in
the same way so that if people submit a petition to Parliament, a
Government Department or the Prime Minister they
know that there will be consistency in the response that they receive?
Should not the same be true of other bodies making decisions about
public spending in their area, such as strategic health authorities,
primary care trusts and all the other organisations we discussed in
respect of previous clauses? If there is a need for consistency, and if
that consistency would help people to understand how the process should
work, why not apply the measure across the board? Why are we singling
out local authorities in this
way? Mr.
Jackson: The hon. Lady and I are in danger of agreeing on
too many things. Is there not a huge chasm between this
micromanagement, interference at local level and the undermining of
local autonomy and what we see in our casework in dealing with
organisations such as the UK Border Agency? We routinely receive
letters as Members of Parliament acting on behalf of constituents
telling us that it will be two years before cases are even looked at.
Is that not a huge chasm that the Government should be looking
at?
Julia
Goldsworthy: The Government should be looking at that. If
this is about trying to get people to understand how the process works
and to have an impact on it, it should cross cut all Departments. The
hon. Gentleman implies that the Government’s motivation behind
all this is that they cannot help but centralise. That might be one of
their tendencies, but I wonder whether the reason the provision is in
the Bill is that we have so little on the legislative agenda. They
thought that they could throw that in to provide an afternoon’s
debate—it was an act of desperation to get something on the
legislative agenda. We thought that a general election might have been
and gone by now. So very little is on the
agenda. My
main concern is that, by singling out petitions, the Bill might give
people the impression that, if they have a problem, petitions are their
only possible recourse. In reality, however, many other options are
open to them, should they receive a service with which they are
dissatisfied or a decision be made with which they do not agree. As
will be seen in the discussion on later clauses, councils’
complaints procedures might be far more effective in resolving problems
with individual officers. By putting petitions at front and centre,
people might get the impression that they are the only way in which to
register discontent. In some cases, however, they are not the most
effective way in which to highlight or to resolve problems that
individuals might
encounter. It
comes back to a fundamental misunderstanding by the Government. The
problem with petitions is similar to that with consultation, which has
become a dirty word, because people think that it simply pays lip
service to the decision-making process. For example, during the Post
Office consultation, people had no impact on the outcome. They were
basically told, “You will have an opportunity to have your say,
but then we will do what we planned to do anyway.” That is why
people are frustrated. There is no lack of understanding of how the
process works. Petitions are not a miraculous way in which to address
people’s frustrations.
The key thing
that people want is this: if they have a problem or disagreement, their
involvement must have the potential to impact on the outcome. However,
the provisions in the Bill do not provide for that, basically because
it is impossible for primary legislation to set out
how people’s involvement, through petitions or anything else,
will impact on the decision-making process. That is what people care
about. Clause 11(7)
reads: “Subject
to that, nothing in this Chapter affects the powers or duties of a
principal local authority in relation to any petition to
it.” Basically,
that means that councils will have a duty to respond to petitions, but
not to ensure that they have any impact on any policy or
decision.
Mr.
Jackson: Again the hon. Lady makes a strong point, and it
was made also by the Local Government Association: it is disingenuous
of the Government to refuse to devolve further powers to local
authorities while, in this Bill, making more onerous commitments on
their behalf. In its response to the Bill, the LGA
wrote: “If
the government is transferring power and influence to local authorities
and citizens then councils should have the ability to take up issues on
behalf of their residents with other public service
providers.”
Julia
Goldsworthy: The key issue is not that councils should be
required to respond to members of the public in their area; it is about
what we can do to enable councils to be more responsive to the wishes
and needs of the people living in the area. This part of the Bill,
especially clause 11, does not address that point. I fear that it is
just another example of how the Government, in their proposals, are
missing the point. They are not hitting the target. People want the
ability to impact on the decision-making process. They do not want to
feel that they have simply been consulted to death, only for the
original decision to be taken anyway.
That key
issue has not been, and cannot be, resolved through primary
legislation. It can be resolved only by genuinely devolving more power
and resources to local authorities. We then have to give people the
power at the ballot box to make their choices, if they do not feel that
their council has done the right thing. It seems that the Government
are terrified of letting go and allowing local authorities to be
masters of their own destiny. To me, that is what is so depressing
about so many of the provisions. I never doubted the willingness of the
right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears) to engage with people, but
if these proposals are the answer, I wonder what the Government think
that the question
is.
Ms
Winterton: Apart from the slightly odd intervention about
draconian, dictatorial imposition on local authorities and individuals,
what has emerged from the debate is that the Committee believes that
petitions have a role to play in allowing local people to express their
views and to hold their local authorities to account. Indeed, the
Conservative document, “Control Shift—Returning Power to
Local Communities” talks about petitions signed by more than 5
per cent. of local residents within six months being able to trigger a
referendum. Obviously, the Conservative party approach to petitions
recognises their role and, in that case, talks about being able to have
a referendum. Therefore, I hope that there is not a huge difference of
opinion on petitions having an important role to play.
Lots of
remarks have been made about central Government. The CLG website
clearly signposts people to how we deal with petitions, confirming that
the Department already responds to all petitions and aims to do so
within 20 days. From 9 July details of petitions received by CLG will
be published on the site alongside the response. The Downing street
e-petition has been extremely successful—something like 27,000
petitions have been accepted for response. The Downing street petition
system does not respond to petitions that are offensive to
sections of society, but all petitions are acknowledged and, once
petitions have closed, they are either passed to the Prime
Minister’s office or sent to the Department. Where a petition is
signed by at least 500 people, signatories receive an e-mail detailing
the Government’s response to the issues raised. We are certainly
setting an example at the national Government
level. I
want to draw the Committee’s attention to a Local Government
Association survey of 102 councils in England—something like a
quarter of the sector— which found that only 28 per
cent. of councils guarantee an automatic response to petitions.
However, at the same time a YouGov poll found that, if a
response were guaranteed, 84 per cent. of people would be more
likely to sign a petition to their council and more than half
of people would be more likely to organise a
petition. With
regard to the point made by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne,
if a petition is simply ignored—there is, as I said, rather a
lot of evidence that that happens—people will not know whether
the points raised in the petition have been responded to. She was
saying, “Well, they can make up their minds at the ballot
box”, but if they do not know what response there has been to
their petition, it is very difficult for individuals to know whether
changes have been made—sometimes, frankly, changes might well
have been made. However, if people do not know about it, because no
response was given, it is more difficult to make that judgment. That is
why we are setting out a procedure that enables people to respond to a
petition. That is one of many procedures that we have brought forward
to ensure that petitions become an effective way for local people to
express their
views. Question
put, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Committee divided: Ayes 8, Noes
5.
Division
No.
10] Question
accordingly agreed to.
Clause 11
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
12Petitions
to which a scheme must
apply 6
pm
Dan
Rogerson: I beg to move amendment 40, in
clause 12, page 7, line 36, after
‘enactment’, insert ‘or relates
to a planning or licensing
application’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment 41, in
clause 12, page 7, line 36, after
‘enactment’, insert ‘or relates
to a planning or licensing application, or to a matter on which the
authority is at the time of the presentation of the petition, carrying
out a formal consultation process in which the petition may be
included’.
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