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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

moved Amendment No. 78: 78: Clause 62, page 34, line 36, leave out ““by the executive leader”” and insert ““according to rules set out in the constitution of the council”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 78 I shall speak also to the other amendments tabled in my name in the group. First, I apologise for being unable to be here on Monday, and I am not sure that I ought to be here today. But never mind, I shall struggle on for a bit. These amendments follow on from the group just spoken to by my noble friend Lady Scott. They are about the nature of good leadership and local democracy, and how the two can be brought together. My noble friend alluded to the worry shared by many of us that the Government bang on about leadership—which may be good or bad, but if it is strong it is okay, it seems—but they do not talk very much at all about democracy. Good local government involves both good leadership and strong democracy, and that leads us, as my noble friend said, to have a series of important fundamental differences with the Government. Some are philosophical differences, if you like, but many are practical as well. We do not think that even in the short run—and certainly not in the longer run—the kinds of models the Government are putting forward will result in good local government as I have just defined it. Amendment No. 78 relates to who appoints the executive on a council. At the moment—this is set out in legislation—councils have a choice: they can elect a leader at their annual meeting and the leader can appoint the executive; or the annual meeting of the council can appoint the executive as well as appointing the leader. Many councils will be shocked and horrified to learn that they are not to have the ability to appoint what is now, in councils with executive arrangements, the overriding body, the committee, which runs the authority and takes the executive decisions. The idea that that body as a whole, and each of its individual members, will not be able to be appointed by the council is not understood at all. Since we left these discussions at the end of the Committee stage just before the Summer Recess, I have been asking people whether they know what is in the Bill and what they think of it. I found that a huge number of councillors have not the slightest idea that such matters as this are being put forward. I am not proposing that councils should have to do what I think is right, but I am suggesting they should continue to have the choice they have at the moment: that the arrangements for appointing the executive should be made by the authority. If the council wants to have the executive appointed by the leader, so be it; if it wants to have the executive appointed by the council, let it have it appointed by the council. But to force councils into a position in which one person then decides who is on the executive is wrong. As my noble friend said, in councils which have no overall control or where control is changing, this is a recipe for many messy rows. Amendment No. 83 seeks to leave out Clause 63 which relates to the discharge of functions. The Minister was very honest: she said that she wants the leader to have all powers to make decisions and that this is the way to run an authority. I beg to differ. Good local government is a matter of discussion, debate and of coming, it is hoped, to a consensus. Very often a consensus is reached, but where there is none, a vote is taken. To put all decision-making in the hands of one person is fundamentally wrong. Many councils will come to arrangements where this does not happen because if you want to be leader of a council you will not be elected leader unless you have agreed in advance to devolve the decision-making to the kind of arrangements which exist at the moment—to the executive, to area committees, to individual councillors or whatever. But the ability of a leader to take back those decisions is entirely wrong and ought not to be in this legislation. I therefore seek to delete Clause 63, which would leave the existing mayoral arrangements as they are but would remove the ability of councils to have all power to the leader on all executive decisions. That is not right. I have not had chance to read the second ELG report of 5 October, although the first report was somewhat equivocal and its conclusions were based on the way it did its research. I will read it with interest but will look with great scepticism on the view that only by giving power to one individual are you going to get good local government. The opposite is, in many ways, true. Leadership is not about one person. Good democratic leadership is about a whole series of people. I should declare an interest, since we are at the start of Report, as a member of Pendle Borough Council and of the executive of that council. I was thinking about how many people on that council are in leadership positions. If you include the leadership of opposition groups, it is getting on for half the council—more than 20 out of 49—who are in genuine leadership positions in different ways. That is how good local leadership should be spread around. There are other amendments in my name in this group. Amendment No. 128 is specifically about the case of councils in no overall control and the period in office of the leader. We had a lot of discussion about that issue in Committee and I will not go into it again, but many of us believe that having a leader elected compulsorily for four years is not a good idea, particularly where there is no overall control or control of the council changes from time to time, perhaps quite regularly. The amendment puts forward a fairly modest proposal that councils can have in their constitution a provision that the four-year appointment does not apply if the council is in, or goes into, no overall control. That seems sensible in order to make that kind of situation work. If we do not do that, the possibilities are obvious: a lot of trouble, silly arguments and politicking when people ought to be getting on with running the council. That is exactly the kind of thing the Government say they do not want, but it is what will happen if leaders are appointed for four years in situations of no overall control. The Government will say that those leaders can be removed, but putting down a motion of no confidence in a leader to get rid of him is an extreme move. No doubt the processes of politics in many councils will work behind the scenes, but they ought not to. As my noble friend said, in many places in the past seven years local government has certainly become a lot less transparent and open. Amendment No. 129 ensures that council constitutions contain a proper procedure for removing a leader who has lost the confidence of the council. If that does not appear in a council’s constitution, what is a council to do if the leader has genuinely lost the confidence of the council and refuses to go? That is a crisis situation that will bring the council to a halt and throw its operation into chaos in all sorts of ways. If there is going to be a four-year leader, there must be a procedure for removing him. The Minister will say that we can do that anyway, but if it is in legislation that a leader can be removed and a council has not removed him, that is a recipe for the lawyers getting involved. It is essential that the provision that a leader who is elected for four years can be removed should appear in each council’s constitution, and that procedure should be carefully and clearly set out because that is a crisis situation for a council and the rules need to be set down clearly. Amendment No. 131 is a tidying-up amendment dealing with what happens if a leader has been removed. It contains some provisions relating to the new leader. I will listen to what the Minister says about it with interest before I say anything else about it. Perhaps I will not need to; perhaps she will satisfy me that everything is OK as far as that is concerned. The Minister said that if there is one leader, it is clear who to praise and who to blame. That set alarm bells ringing. To some extent local government is about praise and blame because people have to be re-elected, but it is not a praise-and-blame game. It is not a television ““reality”” show, where people are voted in or out at the whim of the moment. It is far more important than that; it is about people working together co-operatively, collectively, collegiately—all the things, as I have said, that the Labour Party used to stand for. Now, apparently, it stands for ““leadership””, which a few years ago would have been called Stalinist if people were being polite, and would have been called other things if they were not.