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Local Authorities (Conduct of Referendums) (Council Tax Increases) (England) Regulations 2012

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her careful explanation. Of course, as she will be aware, this is a very substantial volume of regulations. It runs to over 120 pages. It contains a huge mass of detail and therein lies my reason for rising to my feet. Let me say straight away that I am totally convinced about the Government’s policy of getting rid of rate-capping—and no one did more rate-capping than I did between the years of 1983 and 1985—and substituting for that the right of the public to decide whether a rate is excessive or not. I have made no secret that I totally support that. It is exactly the right procedure, which we need to do. It is in line with the devolution of power to local communities and giving the people the right to have their say. However, I find the detail—the mass of prescriptive detail—in these regulations extremely difficult to accept. One must ask why it has to be set out in such minute detail. After all, the regulations try to prescribe the question to be asked. That may be quite reasonable and I heard what my noble friend said about that. There has been a considerable correspondence with the Electoral Commission on that and it has a good deal of wisdom on this. I think that it is right that it should be listened to. It is not wholly satisfied with the question that appears in the regulations, but I will not pursue that question. My question relates to the rest of the prescriptive detail, which has to be asked. For instance, why do the regulations have to set detailed limits on the amount that may be spent in the course of the referendum? Why does it set a limit on campaign expenses? Why are these things necessary? We are supposed to be devolving power to local authorities and to local communities. Why does it need to set the time when a referendum has to be held? Why does it put in place procedures for challenging and questioning results and so on? It seems that these are all details which local authorities should be perfectly capable—with their local communities —to decide. Of course, there are the massive detailed rules on the conduct of referendums when there is already procedure in existence under earlier legislation and, indeed, the regulations are based on this I appreciate what the Minister said about the matter having been approved by another place, although the exceedingly short debate, which was held on this in the other place on 2 February, began at 8.55 am and finished at 9.08 am. According to my calculation, that was about 13 minutes, and that was for a matter that is right at the heart of the Government's devolution policy. They want to ensure that local authorities and local communities have a say and I am astonished that, at the other end, they felt it necessary to devote so little time to what I see as a substantial issue. Matters do not stop there. The Government have sought to prescribe in some detail what is to be regarded as an excessive rate proposal. Of course, it is complicated if you try to set out all the details and if you set them out centrally, which is what my noble friends seem to have decided to do. Even the departmental officials have recognised that there are some very peculiar anomalies in the way in which the system will work. I have here an annexe which was attached to a letter from the Local Government Association, but I also have an annexe which was attached to a letter to chief executives and a number of others from an official, Mark Rickard, in the Department for Communities. That letter sets out the situation, without any apparent apology or understanding of the unreasonableness of it. To put it very briefly, a local authority can determine, in an extreme case, a nil increase in its own rates and yet still, as a result of the levies, be subject to a referendum. Why? No doubt my noble friend will want to answer that. Others may have a substantial increase which ought to be the subject of a referendum but, because various adjustments are made, lo and behold, it is not. When one looks at the list of authorities, based on a calculation made by the Local Government Association of some 31 authorities, where there will be an effective tax increase by the local authority of below 3 per cent, it ranges from 2.05 per cent for Manchester to 2.99 per cent for Wolverhampton; 31 authorities could set a rate below the 3.5 per cent limit which the Government have prescribed in the order and yet still be liable to face a referendum. Why should that be so? I have tried to get to the bottom of this. I have tried to look through various papers and so on to get to grips with this to see what has happened and why it has to be like that and I confess to my noble friend that I have not found an explanation that would seem to justify these extraordinary figures. I think it stems from the fact that the Government are trying to spell this out in a mass of prescriptive detail; but this is a Government who, as we debated at some length during the passage of what is now the Localism Act, are supposed to be devolving authority to local authorities and to local communities. It is to my noble friend's great credit that she and her colleagues in the department accepted a good many of those arguments and the result was that we sent back to the other place 100 pages of amendments. When I met the Secretary of State, I said to him, ““I am sorry that we are sending you back a great many amendments””. He said, ““I know, they’re absolutely splendid””. I said, ““But Eric, it was your Bill””. That is extraordinary. They went through the other place without any opposition at all and nothing came back, but here we are at it again. During the debates on the Bill, a great deal was said about dealing with a very deep-rooted attitude of mind which certainly is to be found in departments and also, as my noble friend Lord Tope said, within local authorities themselves. Many of them expect to be told what to do. It may take a generation before we grow out of this excessive dependence on detailed central government regulation. It is probably too late to think of changing this order now. I do not know what the noble Lords opposite may want to do when this order has to be taken on the Floor of the House. I certainly would not think there was any point in trying to vote it down or anything. I simply mark a note of protest. Why does it have to be like this, producing such extraordinarily anomalous results? It is largely because everything is being prescribed centrally. The Local Government Association has made its own view very clear. I should declare an interest as one of its many vice-presidents. It said it believes, "““that referendums are useful exercises when required, but, in keeping with localism, the decision whether or not to hold a referendum should either be up to local people, on the basis of ""a petition, or up to the council itself. Thus it should be up to local people to petition on … whether a referendum should be held, and—if so—what principles should be used, and not based on a centrally prescribed level of council tax increase over which a referendum must be held””." It went on to say that it is very disappointed by the form in which this regulation has been made. Yet when the rate support grant settlement was debated in the other place on 8 February, my honourable friend Grant Shapps said very clearly: "““In most cases in which a council wants to increase council tax by more than 3.5%, local people will have the chance to vote. Let the people decide—that is what localism is all about””.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/2/12; col. 368.]." There is precious little left for the local people to decide; on the basis of this, it has all been prescribed by central government. I really must make a protest on this and I hope that when Ministers are confronted with these detailed proposals from their officials about how the policy should be implemented, they will send them away and say, ““Look, we are in favour of localism. We want local people to decide and to make up their minds, and we want local authorities to run these things. They do not have to be told every single detail””. I am sorry if I appear a bit cross on this, but it is not a new song. I sang it all the way through the proceedings on the Localism Act, and I find it disappointing that this still persists. I finish on one more note. I attended a very interesting meeting last week, convened by Sir Merrick Cockell, the chairman of the Local Government Association, and Graham Allen MP, the chairman of the relevant Select Committee in another place. What was it about? It was about trying to establish a new concordat between central government and local government, so that there is far more recognition of the right of local authorities to make their own decisions, accountable as they are to their local electorates. Since then I have heard one or two gloomy words of prognostication, saying, ““Well, it has all been tried before and nothing has ever happened””. I hope that my noble friends, with their commitment to localism—to letting local communities and local authorities decide—might be able to buck the trend and try to make something of this. I commend what is being said by the group chaired jointly by Graham Allen MP, and Sir Merrick Cockell to see whether they can offer something positive in this regard, so that one can see that this process really has been taken on board and is being carried forward. We do not divide on things in here and I certainly would not want to divide on this on the Floor the House, but I hope that my protest is not out of place.