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Localism Bill

My Lords, I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, takes the same attitude to temptation as St Augustine did to chastity. There is another line about temptation that we might want to consider: ““The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason””. It seems that this amendment is in fact the other way round: it is doing the wrong thing for the right reason, potentially. I noticed the typing error that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to in subsection (2)(a), but I think there may be another typographical error, or perhaps an error in drafting. Subsection (5) says: "““A community governance review … shall have a presumption that a new parish will be created””—" and I will come back to that point. Subsection (6) goes on to say: "““The provisions of this apply only insofar as they do not prevent action being taken on the request made under this section””." It is not clear to me what that means. Does it mean the provisions of the previous subsection, or does it mean the provisions of the whole clause? I am at a loss to understand what that implies. However, I agree very strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Newton, there is no case for there to be a presumption that a new parish should be created on the simple fact that a request has been made by a neighbourhood forum that might constitute 21 people, of whom a majority of 11 against 10 would therefore trigger not only the whole process but a presumption as to its outcome. It seems a ridiculous proposition given that we are presumably talking about areas of several hundred people, if not thousands of people, possibly, in an area the size of an urban ward or a significant rural community. The clause also requires the commencement of a review within three months. That might be all right if there was to be one review, but supposing there was a rash of applications from these neighbourhood forums, is a local authority obliged to commence reviews on all of them in that timescale? It does not seem at all realistic. There certainly should be a method of facilitating a legitimate demand—or a widespread demand, let us not prejudge the issue—for the creation of parish councils or town councils. They have a perfectly proper place in our system of local government and that should be facilitated, but this clause really goes much too far in that direction. Nor is it the case that, once created, all of these bodies are trouble-free. Your Lordships will be aware, from the debate about the standards boards and the need for codes, that most of the complaints that arose under the existing procedure actually came from parish councils. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who is not in his place at the moment, will no doubt have told your Lordships of the case in Newcastle where a council inherited three parishes on local government reorganisation, and one inner-city area opted for a parish council. That particular grouping did not seem to perform very effectively, to the extent that Councillor Shipley’s colleagues in his political group decided that they would go in and in effect take it over, which they did—by perfectly legitimate democratic means, I should say. These places are not without their problems, although they can certainly contribute to an enriched local democracy. However, there is one other issue in which, again, the drafting is perhaps defective—certainly it raises an issue—and that is subsection (2), which says: "““A request may be made to create a new parish council for … the area of the neighbourhood area together with the area of an adjacent parish council””." Is it not conceivable that there may be more than one existing parish council? Certainly there are contiguous parish councils in my authority; there will be in other authorities, particularly urban authorities, I suspect. You may well find a community between the two wishing to align with both rather than one, and creating an entirely new structure. For a variety of reasons, I suspect I may find myself—unusually—agreeing with the Minister when she replies and, I hope, says that she may want to take this away and look at it, but that she cannot agree the amendment as it stands. Certainly that would be my position.