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Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

My Lords, I will address the point about the relationship between two forms of publication and the Local Government Act with pleasure. I did not over-egg that argument in Committee, so I have a chance to say something about it now. I will also address the other substantive points. Amendment No. 195 would require a local authority or an executive to publish its response to the report of an overview and scrutiny committee, including where the committee had not published its report. Some of our debate will turn on the idea of what it means to publish in this context. I shall explain why we are not convinced that this amendment is necessary or helpful. The Bill does nothing to alter or undermine the current framework and rights in relation to access to information. Section 21(11)(a) of the Local Government Act 2000 provides that overview and scrutiny committees are to be treated as committees for the purposes of Part 5A of the Local Government Act 1972. That is, unless exempt or confidential, as defined under the terms of the 1972 Act, overview and scrutiny papers, including committee reports, will be in the public domain by virtue of the public right to attend meetings and inspect documents. The only exclusion is whether they are defined as exempt or confidential. In fact, as noble Lords know, local authorities generally place agendas, meeting papers and reports, including those of overview and scrutiny committees, on their websites to make access to the documents easier and to fulfil their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there is currently no obligation on them to do anything over and above the requirements in Part 5A of the Local Government Act 1972. Clause 128, which inserts new Section 21B into the Local Government Act 2000, strengthens the position in two positive ways and has two aims. First, as we set out in the White Paper, it will for the first time require that councils or their executives must respond within two months to the reports of overview and scrutiny committees. Those are important new powers. I should explain that new Section 21D, also inserted by Clause 128, provides that these reports will be subject to Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972. Secondly, new Section 21B(2) provides scrutiny committees with an explicit additional power to publish their reports beyond the requirements of Part VA. We are in the realms of definitions and semantics because the definition of ““publishing”” in Section 21B goes much wider than keeping copies open to inspection; it means physically making copies freely available to the public, other than at council premises. To match that requirement, Section 21B also provides that the executive or council must provide a reciprocal level of publicity to any scrutiny report. Where an overview and scrutiny committee makes a report on, for example, the playgroup facilities in an area and gives additional publicity to a report or recommendations that is over and above its regular approach to access to information—for example, sending every playgroup or nursery a copy of the report—the executive or authority must give equivalent additional publicity to its response and ensure that it is read by the same people. This is to ensure that local people get to hear of the response to reports and that they know that action has been taken. That is, of course, about promoting accountability, engagement and trust. However, it would not be helpful for executives or councils to be required by Amendment No. 195 to publish in this way every report of the scrutiny committee. The argument for discretion is important. Everything that authorities do, unless it is exempt or confidential, will be published in some form, but it will not have that additional publicity. Authorities and executives will be required to make their reports publicly accessible under Part VA of the Local Government Act 1972, unless they are confidential or exempt. That is, responses to scrutiny committee reports will be required to be in the public domain under those terms. In Committee, Members were concerned that new Section 21B provided some sort of exemption over and above the well established principles of confidential or exempt information. I can assure noble Lords that it does not. We are simply providing for reciprocity where scrutiny committees give additional publicity. It is a useful provision for additional openness to this process. I hope that the noble Baroness will welcome that and, maybe, withdraw her amendment.