I must advise the Committee that if there is a Division in the Chamber while the Committee is sitting, we shall adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and we shall resume 10 minutes thereafter.

Clause 1: Democratic arrangements of principal local authorities

Amendment 1

I shall speak also to Amendments 22, 59 and 60. The first group of amendments removes the duty on local councils to promote understanding of their functions and democratic arrangements and those of connected bodies. Instead it replaces that duty with a responsibility to note the desirability of doing so. That may seem like a trivial drafting point, but I believe that it sums up what is wrong with the Bill and how the Government’s approach differs from ours.

Chapter 1 is, at first glance, a fairly anodyne requirement to promote understanding and awareness of a local authority’s function. I expect that the Minister will tell the Committee that those duties are required to enshrine good practice in statute, but I argue that it is emblematic of the way in which the Government seem to be operating. In the Bill we have new duties imposed by central government but they have no real practical meaning; there is nothing substantive in the provisions. I am sure that most, if not all, local authorities promote democracy in some way or another. It is in their interests to do so. Quite simply, there is no need for central government to get involved and to direct how local authorities communicate with their populaces. It suggests to me that the Government wish to be seen to be doing something—anything—but cannot really come up with anything fresh or new, so are resorting to tinkering and meddling.

The Minister may well have been taken aback by the sheer number of amendments which have been tabled to this part of the Bill, which perhaps indicates a feeling in the Committee that much of the Bill is unnecessary and unwarranted. I have tabled Amendments 1, 22, 59 and 60, to Clauses 1, 2, 3 and 4 respectively, as a means to get discussion going on this topic. The Minister will be glad to hear that I have not sought to strike out the clauses altogether. The sentiment that local authorities should promote understanding and awareness of their own arrangements and those of bodies which have an impact on the everyday lives of the people is not a difficult one to agree with. We on these Benches agree that local people should be able to access information readily about the services which they use and the authorities which provide them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, summed up the position neatly at Second Reading when she said that failing to support the Bill should not be seen as a refusal to support democracy simply,

“because democracy is part of the Title”.—[Official Report, 17/12/08; col. 862.]

There is no reason for it to be a duty. That is simply government posturing, saying, “Look, we’re improving local services because it says so in this piece of legislation”. Democratic engagement among local people will be boosted only when they feel that local democracy has a relevance to their lives. That means giving them a chance to exercise influence over, for example, planning law, waste management, the care they receive from local health boards or the quality of their children’s education. Only when that point is reached, when decisions are not taken by unaccountable quangos and people feel that their local representatives can make a real difference to their lives, can the Government say that they have successfully promoted local democratic arrangements. Until the Government start to act on their rhetoric, the duties in the Bill remain little more than that. The only practical effect is likely to be a new set of leaflets, dutifully produced to fulfil the obligations in the clauses and left standing in the foyers of town halls across the country. Unless the Government are willing to trust local authorities to exercise control over their functions and those of connected authorities, the duties in Clauses 1 to 4 are pointless—and pointless duties should not be enshrined in legislation. I beg to move.

I start with two declarations: first, to pass on the apologies of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who unfortunately is too ill to be here today—which means that she must be very ill because she wants very much to take part in the Bill. Secondly, I declare once again my interest as having served continuously as a councillor in the London Borough of Sutton for nearly 35 years. We made clear our position on the Bill during the Second Reading debate—I am grateful to the noble Baroness for quoting a very good summary of it given then by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. It is not that we are against the promotion of democracy; exactly the opposite is true. It is rather, as I said at Second Reading, that we see it as being properly the role of local authorities. It is for them to decide best how to do it in terms of their local circumstances, the nature of the local area and so on. It really is not the business of central government to prescribe, even to the extent and detail that is being done here, how local authorities should do it. As we go on through Committee, and particularly as we delve into the many amendments to be moved by my noble friend Lord Greaves, who has much experience of these matters, we will see just how difficult it becomes when you get into the detail of promoting local democracy, petition schemes and so on.

I turn to the four amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee. The first three, Amendments 2, 23 and 61, would insert the words “to use reasonable endeavours”. They retain the promotion of democracy as a duty, but not as an absolute duty. That is qualified by Amendment 21, which refers to,

“an assessment of the extent to which it is reasonable to incur expenditure”.

That is an extremely important consideration these days for any local authority. If they are to meet these duties, they must have regard to the amount of expenditure that it is reasonable to incur in doing so. It is a necessary qualification that should appear in the Bill. The Explanatory Notes give some indication of government estimates of expenditure. I am unclear as to how that estimate is to be translated into increased grant to local authorities to meet costs, especially for those London boroughs which are floor authorities, as most of them are, and receive no increase in grant for any and all purposes.

The purpose of our series of amendments is to make the promotion of democracy not an absolute but a qualified duty—“to use reasonable endeavours”. It is entirely right that local authorities should promote democracy—rather less right that government should insist on it—but, as always, it must be balanced by the need to assess the expenditure necessary to achieve the purpose desired.

I shall speak to the Conservative amendments in this group. I am likely to support them. Since this is the first time I have spoken in this Committee, I declare my interest as an elected member of Pendle Borough Council and, as a consequence of that, of various other bodies. I am not terribly excited by the wording of the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi,

“have regard to the desirability of promoting”,

which sounds as though it was written by civil servants rather than politicians. However, I understand what she is getting at. Throughout Part 1, I am going to be very critical, particularly of this chapter about promoting democratic involvement in various things and of the petitions section.

Since these things get written down, I ought to make it clear that I am not against public involvement in local government. I have been promoting it for the past 40 years, particularly when members of the Minister’s party were denouncing it as being entirely wrong in principle and in practice, and liable to undermine the whole fabric of local government, indeed, the whole fabric of society. It is excellent that the Government are now converted to the cause, but it is bad that they think that the way to promote local involvement is by detailed, top-down edicts of the kind that appear in the Bill.

If anybody doubts what I am saying, I shall call my noble friend Lord Tope in evidence. A very long time ago, just after he had been elected as the Member of Parliament for Sutton and Cheam at a famous by-election in 1972, a pamphlet was issued, purportedly written by him, called Liberals and the Community. It was written by three of us who were promoting the cause at that stage and because my noble friend had become an MP, we thought it was sensible to put his name on the cover. Many other Members of the Committee can testify that I have been campaigning on these matters for many years. I was hoping that the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, would be here. He said he would be. Perhaps I shall call him in evidence when he appears.

What is Chapter 1 about? The Government want to give local authorities a duty to promote. My noble friend suggests they should “use reasonable endeavours” and the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, suggests they should,

“have regard to the desirability of promoting”.

There are five pages of detailed legislation on the promotion of democracy. They are about telling people how the system of local government in their area works in the hope that that will get them more involved. They are about producing a map of the local structures. I have no objection to that; it is a sensible idea. In most places nowadays, everything is so complex that very few people have the slightest idea about who is responsible for what. In two-tier areas, it is even worse. There is a plethora of local quangos, partnerships, forums, local authority companies and all kinds of bodies, all of which have something to do and form part of the system of local government. If you asked me to write down the system in my own area, I do not think that I could; I certainly could not get an A grade in an examination on it because it is so complex. Some parts of it I deliberately keep well away from because there is a limit to what you can do.

In introducing his remarks, the noble Lord said that he supported the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, as well as those in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tope. Surely they are basically different, because the Conservative proposal is to take away a duty to do anything and simply have regard to desirability, whereas the Liberal amendment maintains a duty but says that the authority should use “reasonable endeavours”. Surely they are fundamentally different approaches.

The noble Lord cannot support both the Conservative and the Liberal amendment. Which does he actually support?

Those who tabled the amendments will speak for themselves, but my view is that both are based on the same underlying premise that this legislation is too prescriptive. Both are probing ways in which it could be made less prescriptive and more flexible.

I would like to follow the last few comments in which a question was asked of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. It occurred to me as the debate moved on that the constructive amendment of the Liberal Democrats is quite reasonable. I am not sure that it is really useful, but it is certainly constructive to insert “reasonable endeavours” before “duty to promote”. However, the Conservative amendment is completely destructive and not positive at all. I quite agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, that it is not a drafting amendment: it is not. It is a destructive amendment because it would remove completely the duty to promote and would insert words that may as well not be there at all. It states that the local authority “must have regard to the desirability of promoting”, which means that anyone can do anything they like. You might as well suggest that the whole clause should go—not just Clause 1 but all the other clauses to which amendments in this group apply.

Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats have admitted in this debate or at Second Reading that at the moment, local government and local democracy are at a pretty low ebb in terms of public regard. It is not as if there is tremendous public regard for local government and tremendous participation, other than in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. When something is being closed down, everybody turns up at a meeting so long as it is reasonably well arranged, but in the normal course of things, the people’s vote at local elections is lamentable. I would have thought that other Governments—when in power as distinct from being merely potential Governments—would realise that something needed to be done in the form of legislation. There should be a duty to promote local democracy and a duty to do various other detailed things. I would not go so far as the Government in laying things down in such detail in the Bill—a point of criticism which I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—but there should be a duty to promote local democracy. Increasing the ways and means of public participation in local affairs is wholly desirable. I do not see why any of the amendments in this first group should be passed.

Will the noble Lord comment on an interesting situation? The amount of involvement by people in local government and in local councils in particular is greater now than it has ever been. That is true in almost every local authority, yet people’s regard for local authorities is, as far as we can tell, at a pretty low ebb and possibly lower than it has ever been. How does the noble Lord square those two facts?

I find it difficult to believe what the noble Lord said. I dare say that if you choose two particular dates you could argue that interest in local democracy has increased, but in general that does not seem to be so at all. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to establish more clearly the point that he seeks to make.

The number of local initiatives that councils carry out nowadays—to hold meetings and set up forums and action groups—is higher than it has ever been and there is no doubt that more people than ever are taking part in them. In many places, there is so much consultation going on that people are suffering from consultation fatigue.

Finally, I do not know what proportion of local authorities not only allow but actively encourage people to go along to committee or authority meetings and take part in agenda items that interest them, but I guess that it would be a third. It used to be zero. The amount of and facilities for involvement are rightly higher than they have ever been, partly because people like us have been campaigning for them. The more people take part, the less regard they have for what they see when they do.

I now understand better what the noble Lord is saying. If he is saying that there are now many more examples of participation and encouragement thereof that one can point to than even 20 or 50 years ago, he is absolutely right. However, they are only examples. They cannot apply across the country as a whole. There is no legislation that requires all local authorities to do that. It is surely desirable, however, that the example of some local authorities should be followed. I come back to my basic point that participation in the vital matter of local elections is lamentably low.

I declare a couple of interests: first, I am a borough councillor in Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is unfortunately due to be abolished at the end of March; secondly, I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I am afraid that I find it difficult to believe that the legislation will make a huge difference to what we are talking about. We want to see more people involved and local government held in higher esteem. Oh, that it were that simple. It is honestly naive to believe that all that is written here will make that happen. It will not. I therefore hope that when the Minister responds to our discussions this afternoon she can explain to us where is the evidence base that the Government have used to bring forward this legislation that they think will make a difference to what happens in local democracy. We are going to spend a lot of time here and, at the end, it will be difficult to see a huge difference.

I would also like to hear from the Minister how the Government will monitor whether this will work. I see a problem with the Government repeatedly coming forward with legislation. We have an amendment to this Bill that amends an Act that was passed only in the last Session of Parliament. Something is wrong somewhere if we have to do this all the time. Nothing makes local government life more difficult than the continuous legislation and guidance that authorities must deal with. I say that from the heart as someone who has been a councillor for a borough that represents only 26,000 people and therefore has few officers to deal with the amount of legislation coming out. I would be interested to hear if the Minister has compelling evidence that this will make a difference.

People declare their interests in speaking to these matters. I speak as yesterday’s man. My active time in local government was the 1960s; by the 1970s, I had moved on to other things. Of course, I continued to take an interest in these matters. The Minister is entitled to feel somewhat aggrieved that the Government and the Bill are attempting to tackle a problem that we all know exists. I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, says about there being more opportunities and more initiatives to engage. He may well have evidence that, as a result, local democracy is now better or stronger, but it is not.

I have been on my council for 35 years.

Some people have sat on a council for so long that, if they do not resent it, they do not like the challenge. The Government should be commended for saying that, in 2009, there needs to be a stimulus. People may rearranged words and put emphasis on different words, but we are all about the same. Some people want to do something, while others want to do nothing. Doing nothing might be the answer, but the Government are entitled to say that, based on the evidence, there is a need to do something.

My noble friend has pointed out that the test of democracy may be the number of people who vote. I would be surprised if evidence can be produced to show that, consistently, uniformly, throughout the country, there has been a steady rise in the number of people who vote, and we should forget the outcome of the voting. An aspect of the Bill that I applaud is that it may encourage people in the communities we represent to wonder what they can do to make their democracy more vibrant.

I sit as joint president with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, on London Councils, which represents, as its name implies, the London councils. I do not think a claim can be made that any one part of the country which is dominated by one political party is better off than another. During the past 40 years, the Government of the day would have been entitled to come forward with legislation to remedy the problem. There is a problem and it will not go away. The Government are entitled not just to defend their stance, but also to have the endorsement of this Committee and the House to do what they can.

I declare an interest as a councillor for a mere 31 years. I also sit on various regional and sub-regional bodies, although I have just resigned as chairman of 4NW. I also sit on the regional development agency, on which I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has tabled an amendment. I believe that all sides honestly are saying that there are problems about local democracy. Members of the Committee on the opposite Benches have referred to two ways in which people can get involved. One is participation, which can mean two things. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right. The opportunity for people to get active in influencing local affairs probably has never been higher. Never in my 31 years have we been involved in more local committees and local activities to give people an opportunity to have a say on things. Unfortunately, those people who get really involved are a minority. Probably, the same people who get interested in one issue then get involved in other aspects of consultation. So there is a need to drive up those numbers and, again, we would want to share best practice.

My noble friend mentioned voting, which is a problem both locally and nationally. Whatever we do locally, we need to bear that in mind. In the case mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, there may be higher participation. But, inevitably, that is the nature of making decisions in local government. People have to make tough decisions.

As many Members of the Committee may know, recently, I was involved in running a referendum in Greater Manchester on improvements in public transport, but it became a referendum just on whether there should be a congestion charge. There was a 55 per cent turnout. In particular, young people, who do not normally take part in local elections, voted. Whereas the average turnout in Greater Manchester probably is about 30 per cent, for this it was almost twice that figure. On an issue about which people really feel involved and feel that they can influence, we can get participation in terms of voting. But I am not a great advocate of referendums, particularly after that experience.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to the complexities of local governance. We are not talking about only local government, but about getting involved in partnerships and other agencies, and about collaborating with other authorities, which is probably for the better. This Bill includes something on that. I wonder whether it makes sense to do things beyond local boundaries for the good of the people who we are elected to represent. These things are complicated, but we need to explain them in ordinary language that people can understand and not in the language of the Bill. Members of the Committee have mentioned the great danger of the Government trying to be too specific. But let us be honest and acknowledge that there is a problem which we must try to tackle.

I cannot match the distinguished lengths of service of other Members of the Committee, but I served on local authorities in west Yorkshire for a number of years in the 1970s and, like my noble friend Lord Graham, I have maintained a close interest. To some extent, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I am not too depressed about the desire of people to get involved in local government, local institutions and so on. If anything, there is a growing desire to get involved, which is not least helped by the internet and the ease of two-way communication. In a sense, we could be on the verge of a step change in involvement.

I agree with the Government on the sheer number of bodies which operate at a local level. That is due to the enormous decentralisation of a lot of decisions, which is to be welcomed. The number of things done by national government many years ago has reduced enormously. Clauses 2, 3 and 4 list many of those bodies. I will not read them all because it would take too long, but they include national parks, police authorities, waste disposal bodies, primary care trusts, joint waste authorities, magistrates, various monitoring boards, court boards, youth offending boards, and so on.

One of the problems that people face is, oddly, with the sheer complexity of all those organisations, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said. The Government are right in seeking to find a way in which some coherence is offered to people in local communities to explain what all these bodies are and how people who want to can get involved, in a common approach. If 20 or 30 bodies are all putting material out, all in a quite different way, from completely different angles and with completely different levels of professionalism and different degrees of intent, then you get one thing. If a local council or local authority is charged with ensuring that a cohesive approach is presented to people, so they know what all the bodies are and know, in a common language, what they do and how people can get involved, that will be a step forward.

Like noble Lords opposite, I agree that there is no panacea in that; it does not necessarily guarantee anything. But the current lack of coherence and the disparate way in which these things are presented or not presented creates a very confusing picture. What tends to happen is that a lot of people get involved in an issue because it happens to be very important to them at that time, but they do not get involved in other things. I suspect that many people get onto local authorities in that way—they used to, in my time. People would get involved in a local action group, become motivated and then get onto a local authority. I suspect that the same thing happens in many other ways.

The Government are on to something here. There is a problem and it would make a lot of sense to try to improve on the situation. I suspect that, if local authorities are given the duty to set matters out coherently, in a single manner, on a single website or a related website and have to present to people in a meaningful way, using a common language, how all these bodies are, how they all relate, what they do, how people could get involved and how it affects them, it would lead to a more coherent monitoring of what those bodies do. There would be a lot more comparison; people would notice that one body was getting a lot more people involved than another body, and ask why that was happening. At the moment, nobody sits down and reflects on that. If you are really concerned with magistrates’ courts, you are greatly interested in how they operate, but you do not really ask too much about what is happening with local primary care trusts or other bodies.

There is more behind the Government’s objective, as long as one is not carried away by what it can achieve in itself. As I understand the Liberal Democrats concerns, they are that we should not raise people’s hopes too much about what an organisational or institutional change can bring about. The Government are on to something; there is an issue here, and it is best addressed in a coherent way. I, for one, applaud the Government’s efforts to do so in this Bill.

I declare my interest as president of the Local Government Association. It may be worth reminding ourselves what the representative bodies of local authority government say about this—the LGA and the LGIU, to which some of us are indebted, because it services the All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group. These bodies representing local government are fairly clear on their position; they are not opposed to, and in principle support, a new duty on local authorities of a kind envisaged by this Bill. However, they are very anxious about this becoming prescriptive and about the already good examples of local authorities doing their own thing very well being hampered by central government having clear ideas that it must be done in particular ways.

The response to the question, “Why bother?”—why bother that central government has put a duty of this kind into a Bill?—can be both negative and positive. The positive response is that it sends out a signal to local authorities that this is a more than respectable thing to spend your time and your ratepayers’ money on. It is important that local government takes seriously the issue of empowering local people and promoting democracy. It gives a licence to people to get on with it and to fend off objection from those who ask, “Why are they spending our money, telling us how we should be better represented locally? What’s all this publicity and campaigning on behalf of empowerment?”.

That was an excellent start to our discussions on the Bill. I welcome a new cast in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. It is very nice to see him on the Front Bench alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. I am sorry that we do not have the pleasure of seeing the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, today, and I hope that she is better by Wednesday.

I thank all Members of the Committee who took part in that debate. The range of contributions was wide and it was important to expose complex issues, such as what we mean by “participation” and “influence”. I will not apologise for the fact that my speaking note is rather long, because I, too, want to expose some of those issues.

I am very grateful for the support of my noble friends and for their challenging questions on what was said by both opposition parties. I was grateful for the contribution of my noble friend Lord Best on where local government organisations stand. It was salutary to hear that. However, I am disappointed because I know that the accumulated weight of experience and wisdom around the Committee, particularly on the opposition Benches, does not make for great understanding of the intentions behind the Bill, which we have tried to express. There is a definite consensus around the Committee that these provisions are worth making but that it is a question of how we make them and how we balance the generally enabling framework that we want to create with the concern about some of the detail.

My noble friend Lord Borrie was right to call the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to account for his response to the two sets of amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said that this is not a trivial drafting point, and indeed it is not. Amendments 2, 23 and 6 and Amendments 1, 22, 59 and 60 are different. The latter group in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, is destructive. The noble Baroness said that she would be convinced when local people felt local government to be relevant. I would argue that that is exactly the point of this clause and this Bill. However, in order to perceive something as relevant, you have to have the information that enables you to understand how those decisions that affect your lives are made and what you can do about them.

Ultimately, we are not only about enabling people to engage more directly and influentially with local government, but about revitalising the base of local democracy and the services on which people depend. This is not an emblematic Bill as the noble Baroness suggests. It is not insubstantial. It addresses serious issues and ways of doing things. We have the balance right. The degree of detail—the how—will be left to local authorities. This clause and subsequent clauses create the framework to build on the best and let local authorities decide how they can make this work effectively in their local community for local people.

We do not agree that there is no need for a duty on local authorities to promote democracy, that it is unnecessary and onerous or that they are already able to do so. I shall explain why on the basis of the evidence. I have been grateful for this early discussion of the complexity that has emerged in local government in response to the many different challenges over the past decade, not least in the ways of doing things and emerging issues such as climate change and how to work with the third sector in the delivery of services. We have created a much more complex and dynamic landscape. The most telling point in this debate was made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, when he said that he does not understand and cannot draw a map of his own local authority’s decision-making structures.

I did not say that. I said that I cannot draw a map of the system of local governance. I can draw a map of the system of the local authority of which I am a member, but I doubt whether I can do that for the county council and everything else. That was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, was making.

I do not think that undermines my point because the Bill addresses the relationships and the flow of information between partner authorities. That is why it is so important.

I return to the question of why we need a duty and whether the form of words “to have regard” would be sufficient. It would not be sufficient. I return to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, about evidence. Why did the Councillors Commission think it was vital to have a duty? The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that the duty to promote democracy should be recognised as a core function of local authorities. The LGA supports the duty on the basis that it is not overly prescriptive and does not add to a council’s administrative and bureaucratic burden. I shall need to be able to reinforce that in what I say and put certain things on the record.

Commenting on the commitment to take the duty forward in response to the Councillors Commission report, the LGA stated that the duty to promote democracy recognises and reinforces councillors’ community leadership and is welcome, and that it would ensure that the duty would not be overly prescriptive and would be based on council best practice. We concur with that, and I hope that we will be able to demonstrate that that is the approach we have adopted.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, suggested that we should put—

The Minister is emphasising that the Government are not going to be overprescriptive, yet later we come to the clause where they have the right to give as much guidance as they like to local authorities about what they do.

When we come to that clause, we will discuss the nature of that guidance, what might go into it, why it is important to have that power and why local government will be helped by it. We can debate that when we come to it.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, suggested that we should throw all these back to the process in the community engagement White Paper. This grew out of that White Paper because the Councillors Commission formed the basis of it and what we took forward. In addition, the Local Government Information Unit, which is not shy about challenging our proposals, welcomes the duty to promote democracy and recognises the influence on these duties of two independent reviews: the All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group’s inquiry into the role of local councillors and the Councillors Commission.

What is the accumulated evidence that all those inquiries and bodies have unveiled? The Councillors Commission review recognised the importance of awareness of what councillors do. The evidence for action, presented to us by Jane Roberts, was overwhelming. An Ipsos MORI survey for the Local Government Association shows that only 32 per cent of people know, or know a fair amount about, what their council does. The two-tier authorities are in a more complex position. Research by Hands in 2007 showed a lack of awareness of the role of the councillor and confusion with the almighty “counsellor”. Struggling with that confusion is at heart of this proposal. My noble friend Lord Borrie spoke about the accumulated evidence of voter turn-out, about which we are all deeply concerned. The All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group, in its March 2007 inquiry into of the role of councillors, identified a lack of awareness of the councillor’s role as a key barrier to attracting potential councillors and proposed greater action from local authorities in attracting people to stand as local councillors. Perhaps I may sum this up with a quote from Jane Roberts’ report:

“People are unlikely to feel a sense of engagement with something they do not understand. The starting point for facilitating engagement locally is through communication”.

In response, the commission’s primary recommendation was that there should be a statutory duty on all principal authorities to facilitate democratic engagement by proactively disseminating clear and accessible information on how local governance works and what councils and councillors do; by facilitating more active civic participation; and by raising interest in and promoting the role of councillor, how to become a councillor and the activities of elected members.

We have specified some duties, but local authorities are able to determine the most appropriate ways to fulfil them for their local area. I am sure that they will build on the embedded work that already takes place to promote elections and community empowerment, using the techniques that they have already established. They will work with different partners in different ways.

We have made specific effort to keep the amount of detail in the legislation to a minimum. We have not specified, other than very broadly, the information that needs to be provided. However, we have had to build in safeguards. Much of the detail is about protecting local authorities rather than getting them to follow some strict, detailed prescription. We are very much aware of this.

My noble friend Lord Woolmer said that people grasp single issues because they either do not want to, or cannot, wrestle with the complex interrelationships of what the local authority does. Often, some of the solutions to those single issues can be achieved only if one understands the context in which the decision or situation concerned is being worked out.

Taking all this together, we want to encourage local government to be more confident and ensure that people know about local government processes and how to get involved. We want it to be available across the country. We have some outstanding local authorities which do excellent work. I know at first hand the work that is done in Essex, for example, which is the patch of the noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield. It is an example to many parts of the country. However, as my noble friends have said, many local councils do not do this work very well and some not at all. That is the principal issue that we have to address. We must have a genuinely fair way for people to access information and, therefore, democracy.

The Government are very cautious about imposing new duties on local government because we know the consequences. We have seen a huge improvement in services due to investment and changing practices. That is to the great credit of local government. There has been a massive increase in the quality of service, but, as my noble friend Lord Borrie pointed out, paradoxically, this has not been followed by a corresponding rise in the reputation of local government or the respect in which it is held. These are serious and debilitating difficulties if we look forward to what local government has to achieve in the next 50 years.

But—

It is new territory to put it in legislation in this form; it is clearly not new territory in the light of what many Members of the Committee have said.

It is absolutely appropriate for a duty on the new landscape in which we are working, across boundaries and in relation to the extension of local government autonomy that has been achieved and the huge and growing responsibilities that it undertakes. All that impacts on how local people are served, the range and type of services they can expect and how the place they live in is being shaped and changed. Indeed, it feeds the new appetite for influence. Members of the Committee are right when they say that people want to become involved. In my home town, which is a transition town, the community is alive to the sorts of decisions that local government must make if we are move to a low-carbon economy. People are looking for influence. This is about giving them some new choice and access. It is a proportionate approach. The duty plus the local discretion will achieve the right balance.

I am grateful to the Minister for what she herself said was a full, but helpful, reply. First, I respond to the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, who suggested that because I had been a councillor for rather a long time, I am perhaps a little resistant to change. The record will not show that he said that with a smile on his face, and I hope that he was not too serious.

There is nothing in this part of the Bill that represents a challenge either to me or to the local authority on which I sit. Certainly, my authority has been undertaking all the significant measures in here since shortly after the Liberal Democrats won control of it in 1986. Most of what we implemented in the 1980s we probably took from a handbook written by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in a previous incarnation. There is no challenge here, and neither I nor my colleagues are in any way resistant to what is in it. Our resistance, if resistance it is, is to the fact that it is in a Bill, not to the suggestions of what we should do.

All good authorities, of all political persuasions and none, have, I hope, been promoting local democracy for many years. For many years, we have had increasingly better schemes for receiving petitions, as my noble friend Lord Greaves made clear. Certainly, over my time in local government, the opportunities for involvement in local democracy have increased hugely and people have taken advantage of that. We have had reference to turnouts. I wish that I had brought my book of London election results with me. I looked before the Second Reading debate and turnouts now are not much different—in fact they are slightly higher—from the 1960s and 1970s in London. My noble friend Lord Greaves tells me that it is very similar in the rest of the country. They rose to a peak in 1990. Polling day in 1990 was a sunny day and there was also a change to local government finance at that time which was causing a degree of controversy.

In all of this, my noble friends and I hope that we are not giving any impression of complacency or the feeling that we do not think there is a problem. I acknowledged at Second Reading and I will do so again now that there is a problem. My noble friends and I have spent most of our adult lives trying to promote active and participatory democracy. I certainly do not feel that I have succeeded yet—far from it. It happens much less than it ought to. In part, our difficulty is not in acknowledging the problem, which is widely recognised in the debate that we have had in Committee, but in identifying the best solutions. I am far from convinced, frankly, that doing what is in the Bill, which many good authorities have been doing in one way or another for years, sadly without enough effect, is actually the right solution.

Perhaps this is not the time and place for a long debate about the right solution, but our problem is not what is in the Bill but the fact that it is in a Bill. It is much better left to local authorities to continue to develop their own schemes for local participation and to strive for that end as all good local authorities do. I acknowledge that there are poor local authorities, probably under the control of all parties and they are as much condemned by the good authorities that they are letting down as by any Minister, civil servant or Member of either House of Parliament. We will continue this debate for many hours to come in some detail, but I hope that I have set out our position a little more clearly. I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Graham, is nodding in assent. I have achieved one objective, at least.

I was not nodding off.

I thank the Minister for her detailed response. It has been an extremely informative start. We heard about the number of years that various Members of the Committee had served—35 years by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and 31 years by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh. Indeed, there was reference to papers being written by the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Greaves, although we did not quite get to the bottom of who wrote which paper and who put their name to it. What interests and intrigues me is that papers were being written while I was still in nappies.

There was also reference to the wording of the amendments drafted by us. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that I do not think that there is a civil servant in me. I may have an inner lawyer in the way that I have drafted these particular amendments. However, I would say to the Minister that there may be an inner conflict in her comments. On the one hand, she said that she trusts local authorities to make sensible decisions and that the Government wish to impose a duty, a “what”, but to leave the “how” to local authorities. However, Clauses 1 and 2 are quite prescriptive and detailed about what that duty should be. Therefore, the “how” is not being left to local authorities. There was some suggestion that the way in which Amendment 1 had been drafted was effectively destructive and destroyed the original clause. Well, that is an idea. We may bring it back in another form at Report. However, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I shall speak also to Amendment 7 in my name. If Clause 1 is to be in the Bill, there is a striking omission: the role and duties of a local authority councillor. It was said in the previous debate that that is still little understood. In my experience, that is so in all sorts of ways. Good councils of all persuasions are now operating shadow councillor schemes. I have been shadowed myself by a number of people who are not necessarily interested in becoming a councillor but who are interested in knowing more about what is involved and how the system works. It seems to me, and to my noble friend in whose name the amendment stands, that a very important part of the duties here should be the duty to promote a better understanding of the work and role of a councillor, which is inherent in understanding the democratic functioning of local government. I believe that the Bill would benefit from an explicit reference to that.

Amendment 7 requires local authorities to set out, as part of this instructive process, their arrangements for consultation. I would make a distinction between consultation, conducted under a number of options, any one of which might be adopted, and public information, which is sometimes called consultation, but which is much more about explaining to people why something has to happen, whether they are wholly in favour of it or not. It is setting out arrangements, explaining to people how a local authority takes its decisions, who takes the decisions and how the public may express their views and influence decisions. That is the purpose of Amendments 3 and 7. I beg to move.

Apart from Amendment 77, which is slightly different, I have Amendments 4, 6, 13, 26 and 28 in this group. Effectively, they are all the same but relate to different parts of Chapter 1. I shall deal with Amendment 77 first, which I tabled because there appears to be some duplication in the Bill. In Clause 9 at the end of Chapter 1 there are definitions of “principal local authority”, “democratic arrangements” and “local people”, which, according to the clause, all have,

“the meaning given by section 1”.

I imagined that the definitions refer to Clause 1, but they do not. The definitions in Clause 1 refer to the full definitions of “principal local authority”, “democratic arrangements” and “local people” and apply to the whole chapter, so the definitions of those three phrases appear twice in the same chapter. To encourage the Government to make the Bill three lines shorter, I have tabled Amendment 77. The Government could make my day and accept it, although it would not make any difference to anything because it is there already.

The other amendments relate to adding the words “and decision making” to wherever the phrase “democratic arrangements” occurs in Chapter 1 to make it mean what the Minister has said it means. Clause 1(3) defines “democratic arrangements” as being,

“arrangements for members of the public to participate in, or influence, the making of decisions”.

There is a wide range of agreement in the Committee that we want to see the promotion of those arrangements, which in general terms is very good, but it is a slightly odd definition of democracy. There is no doubt in my mind that encouraging people to take part in local governance in all sorts of ways—going to council meetings and taking part, going to public meetings and going to the kind of meetings which the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, was talking about—is all part and parcel of democracy. But it is only part of democracy. The real bases for the structure of local democracy are elected local councils, as my noble friend just said. Without elected local councils, there would be no democratic structure for anyone to take part in. It is an odd definition of democratic arrangements, but I will not quibble because what is being put forward is a good thing.

However, it is clear from discussion on the previous group of amendments that what is being proposed here is a duty on local authorities to set out the map for the structure of local governance in the area. The decision-making systems have to be set out and explained and people have to understand them before they can sensibly take part in them. That is the noble Baroness’s argument. But it does not say that here. It says that there is a duty to promote arrangements for members of the public to participate in the making of decisions. All that I am doing is adding the structure of the decision-making system to this part of the Bill that has to be explained and put forward to promote understanding of it.

People first need to know how decisions are made and who makes them. When people know that, they can settle to and try to influence those decisions. If they do not know how the decisions are made and who makes them, they just fire off letters to the local press attacking everybody regardless of who does what. The week before last, I went to a meeting of a body called Lancashire Local—Pendle. I do not understand why Lancashire County Council puts adjectives and nouns the wrong way round these days, but it is a bit like Team GB, I suppose. Lancashire Local—Pendle is a six-weekly meeting that Lancashire County Council holds for the district of Pendle. It holds one for each of the 12 districts in the county at which local things are discussed. Anything that the county is doing can be discussed and a few things have been devolved to these meetings to be decided. It is a joint committee consisting of all the county councillors representing the borough and the same number of borough councillors in each county. It is a step forward towards devolution in a very widespread county.

At this meeting, a gentleman made a vitriolic attack on Pendle Borough Council and Pendle councillors for the appalling mess that we had made, he said, of clearing the snow and ice in the bad weather we had before Christmas. The service that was put forward in Pendle was appalling—far worse than it has ever been in the past—but it was the responsibility of Lancashire County Council. It used to be run by Pendle. Two years ago, the county took the service back despite vigorous opposition from people including me—the whole of Pendle Borough Council, in fact. Nevertheless, we had it taken from us. The county said “No, we’ll do it. We’ll do a much better job”, and they made a complete botch of it. But the person who stood up and the various people who complained to the paper attacked Pendle Borough Council. Unless you know who does what, you do not know where, as the Government would say, to engage with the system. The purpose of the amendments is entirely constructive. It is an attempt to make this part of the Bill say what I understand the Government mean it to say.

I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 25, by which I simply seek to build on my earlier comments and those of the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Greaves. Clause 2 places a duty on the local authority to promote understanding of the functions of connected authorities. The Bill then goes on to list a great number of bodies, organisations, agencies, authorities and, perhaps I may say, quangos. My Amendment 25 is designed to emphasise the tenuous democratic nature of all those organisations because they do not enjoy democratic arrangements at all. The nature of these bodies is that someone else controls them. Someone else appoints their members, and someone else controls their budgets and priorities. That someone else may be the Secretary of State, but it is certainly not local voters. If the Government wish local authorities to promote understanding of these bodies, it is not unreasonable to ask them to put an extra paragraph on the Explanatory Notes pointing out that neither they nor the voters have very much to say on what goes on in these authorities. Indeed, I was almost minded to champion this clause, rather than seek to amend it, because if an understanding of the true democratic nature of these bodies was enthusiastically and honestly promoted, a backlash would surely arise when voters were made fully aware of just how impotent they actually are.

We have consistently argued against the creation of new quangos and criticised their lack of accountability. If the Government are serious about engaging local voters, boosting local democracy and encouraging people to participate, this lack of accountability will have to be properly addressed. Until they are ready to address that real issue, we might as well be honest about the current reality.

Again, this has been a very important debate and one with which I have a great deal of sympathy. May I say how pleased I am to see that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has joined us, and how much I appreciated working with him for so long? I am sure he will enjoy his Back-Bench career, being able to get involved in some of the things he was not able to before. It is very nice to see him taking part in the Committee.

This group of amendments focuses on the scope of the duties in Clauses 1 and 2. They seek to probe exactly what kinds of information councils should be providing. I am grateful for the opportunity to explore some of those issues, which have been very well raised for their salience.

The intent behind the amendments is, clearly, to ensure that the scope of the clauses is as comprehensive as is appropriate. I am happy to explain how I think the existing clauses already cover what noble Lords want to see. I shall do that very briefly, as I do not want to repeat anything that I said in the long debate that we have just had.

The intent behind Clauses 1 and 2, and the text, make it clear that, based on all the evidence that I have brought forward, we believe it is important for people to be genuinely and not just nominally involved in decision-making. That is why we have been so intent in our community empowerment White Paper on the need to shift power, influence and responsibility, and give communities more purchase on that. There is a long history behind that; the Councillors Commission showed that there is a fundamental failure of communication between most local councils in explaining how their councils work and what they are responsible for—and I thought that the example of Pendle was extremely telling—as well as who takes the decisions, at what level and how they are taken. What are the processes? Is it a committee structure or a small sub-group, and is it possible to get into these meetings? How can decisions be changed? Those are clearly among the most insuperable barriers to people becoming more involved.

We know that people want to know these things and think that there should be involvement. I saw some extremely interesting new polling from Ipsos MORI just last week, demonstrating the sheer enthusiasm that people have for getting involved. I do not think that it has been published yet, but it was extremely graphic about the real interest there is in local issues and involvement. That is not something that we are struggling with alone in Britain. The Councillors Commission reviewed international evidence. I was in Australia over Christmas and spent a morning—which I did not expect—talking to councillors in New South Wales about their attempt to try to re-engage better with local communities.

The only people who can make this happen are councillors. They have new forms of access to information that have completely revolutionised the way in which they communicate with local people. But where access is denied, people are being left out of the loop. Increasing and improving information on what they do, how and why is the business of this Bill and of local councillors.

Let us begin with the information that can and should be made available. I pay tribute to the many excellent councillors who are doing their best, but we need to ensure that in “democratic arrangements” we have all the elements necessary to make the difference as regards what people know and how they can use the information. On Amendment 77, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right that it is not essential to have the provision in lines 23 to 25. It was merely intended to be helpful and to put all the definitions together in the same place. If he will leave the matter with me, I will see whether there is a point to be addressed. I can assure him that I am game for anything that can shorten the Bill.

I am sorry, but that is exactly the kind of decision that gets people most worked up. In the previous debate, the noble Baroness said that the duties do not lend themselves to democratic involvement in rubbish collection. I must point out that rubbish collection and all the related issues of recycling attract the greatest democratic involvement. I therefore think that the noble Baroness is wrong on some of these issues.

I must confess that as soon as I heard myself saying that, I realised that it was a very bad example, as most probably was gritting lorries. Members of the Committee have already urged me to think about the matter, and I have said that the balance we are trying to achieve relates to it. We are not going to go into detail about the decisions, the areas of policy and so forth; we are making general requirements about the process. Clearly, the way in which it impacts on the different types of services and decisions will vary, but we are dealing with the way in which the decisions are taken. We must therefore be careful that we do not broaden the clause inappropriately and accidentally.

Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, extends the argument into the detail of the councillors’ work to add to the main duty in Clause 1 the requirement to promote the understanding of the duty of members of the authority as democratically elected representatives. He is right that it is important that that is understood. I believe that any duty to promote democracy worth its salt would include a requirement to explain to people about this role. We have already included it in Clause 1(2)(b) which requires councillors to promote the understanding of what councillors do. I believe that that is properly encompassed there and will include an explanation of their formal responsibilities and duties.

Amendment 7 ensures that the clause will enable people to contribute their views and requires councillors to explain how they do that. We agree that the intention behind this amendment is absolutely right. It is essential that people understand how their council will consult them and take their views seriously not only so that challenges can be taken up more easily but so that it is transparent if a councillor is not doing enough in this area. Clause 1(3)(d) covers consultation because our definition of democratic arrangements is the arrangements for members of the public to participate in or influence the making of decisions. “Influencing” clearly includes doing that via the consultation processes. I am very sympathetic to the spirit of these amendments, so I am happy to put on the record that these clauses encompass what noble Lords want to achieve. I am also determined that there should not be any doubt about that.

However, for all the reasons noble Lords have already given, we do not want to overload the Bill with detail, so we will set out in guidance the scope and the processes that will be covered in relation to the amendments. That will be useful. We will make it clear that we would like councillors to explain how councils and connected authorities work to involve the public and the different ways in which they do so.

In response to Amendment 25, I shall elaborate on what I have briefly stressed. I am not sure whether respectable and important democratic bodies, such as the Broads Authority, parish councils or strategic health authorities, would want to be dismissed as undemocratic quangos as the noble Baroness did. If she believes they are so undemocratic, it is important that the point of the Bill is to open up these processes so that people know who is on them representing the community, how they can be most effective and how they can be expanded. It is something that the bodies in question are sympathetic to. We have liaised with the relevant bodies to ensure that the connected authorities are signed up to carrying out their role. When we come on to those amendments, I will explain why the list is as it is. These bodies are keen to promote their work and their civic roles to a wider audience. Why should they not be when so much of their work can be made more effective if the local community knows what they do and supports them in it?

We have no reason to believe that they will not co-operate fully to explain the nature of their democratic arrangements. Should such a conflict arise, we have kept a reserve power for the Secretary of State to use if absolutely necessary, which appears in Clause 5(3), but we fully expect the information they provide to be information they already have to hand and want to disseminate to a wider audience. We are happy for councils to use website links and other technological solutions to ensure that there is no duplication. We will use the guidance to make sure that connected authorities’ functions and decisions are explained in an accessible way.

In conclusion, the provisions in Clauses 1 and 2 work together to ensure that the way in which councils and the connected authorities make decisions, what they do, which of those decisions are made by those in civic roles and which by employees, will all be encompassed by this duty. I hope noble Lords are persuaded of that because these are important issues. We are happy to try to meet the intent of the amendments in that way.

I listened with care to what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said—I enjoyed his example about snow clearing—and I listened with care to what the Minister said. Some time ago, the Minister and I both sat in a Committee on a Bill when I challenged the optimism with which the Government were reviewing the immediate future of the economy. One day, I shall look at precisely what the Minister said, but she implied that I had totally the wrong end of the stick and that the economy was in extraordinarily good shape. Events, on the whole, have betrayed her. She is exercising the same degree of optimism about what will happen as a result of this legislation.

I may be suffering from an experience similar to that described by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about the responsibility for snow clearing changing hands. I live in an authority which is undergoing the transition into a unitary authority, instead of a series of district councils, a decision which was not reached democratically on the ground, but which was imposed from elsewhere. I would not say that people where I live could answer an examination question on who is responsible for what now, but I am absolutely clear that the consequence of change is that it will be a long time before they work out who is responsible for what under the new system. I am hesitant about how well all this will work.

I have two main points. Early in her reply, whether to my amendments or not, the Minister said that if people do not know who makes the decisions or how the system works that is an insuperable barrier to getting involved. I do not think that is so. It may be the case, but in many instances people do not decide they want to get involved over a particular issue or under some initiative to encourage them to get involved and then say what they are interested in or concerned about. Sometimes they do that in quite an inappropriate place, having regard to the way in which the system works technically, but they are pointed in the right direction or their concerns are pursued in the right channels, although initially they do not have a clue who does what. It is not true to say that getting involved is impossible if you do not know who is responsible for the recycling or gritting or the allocation of funds to schools or whatever. Once you start to get involved, you find your way around the system and there are plenty of people to help you.

It is important not to deny that the central part of Chapter 1, the idea of providing people with the information about who does what in their area, is a good idea. I want to be quite clear about that. I am not in any way saying that that should not be done, but I just think that five pages of detailed primary legislation is not the way to do it.

My second point relates to my amendments and decision-making. I thank the Minister for looking at the duplication issue. This is a crucial definition. It is the definition which forms the keystone to this chapter because the whole chapter is about promoting understanding in these democratic arrangements. The definition, as set out here, is not satisfactory. It says that,

“‘democratic arrangements’ means arrangements for members of the public to participate in, or influence, the making of decisions”.

It does not say that it includes an explanation of the decision-making system in which they can get involved. If you want to get involved in things, you cannot necessarily turn up to a meeting and have your say because the decision may be delegated to an officer in the authority, or to another body, or to a private-sector body which may be doing it on behalf of the council. However, there are almost always ways in which you can, if you wish, have an influence, if only by writing a letter to the person who makes the decision or by getting some other body which does not actually have responsibility for making the decision to agree with you and pass on your views as part of the process of influencing the decision. What is in the Bill is therefore unsatisfactory as a crucial, central definition.

It occurred to me when the Minister was talking that I had put down the wrong amendment. I should not have attempted to write “decision-making” everywhere, but simply have changed the definition of “democratic arrangements”. The Minister said that she did not want to broaden it accidentally to include, for example, disciplinary procedures, appointing the caretaker, matters of commercial confidentiality et cetera. However, the advice that she is getting is contrary to normal practice and experience in local government. Local government is so at ease with the system that it operates that there are some matters that, if they come to committee, are usually called “part 2 items”; that is, decisions that are not made in the glare of publicity, and are not open to the press and public because they may be commercially sensitive or to do with individuals and their circumstances, be they personnel matters or otherwise. That applies right the way through. The distinction is very well understood in local government and at officer level. If I as a councillor try to put influence on an officer who has to take one of those decisions, I may well be out of order—although I may be able to put in some influence in other cases. That distinction is therefore very clearly understood in local government. Setting out the decision-making system in no way broadens the ability of people to interfere in matters which are by their very nature inappropriate for general public debate.

I am pleased that the Minister has recognised, albeit slightly too late for her own good, the huge political significance of refuse collection and gritting schedules. No councillor of any experience would ever change a refuse collection schedule shortly before an election; those who have done it have learned why they should not have. I see lots of nods of assent around the Room. I am afraid that it is reality.

My noble friend Lord Greaves explained the position very well. I simply endorse what he said about what, as far as I am aware, is certainly common practice throughout local government. We may need to give a little more attention to it. On the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hamwee to which I spoke, particularly those relating to the role of councillors, I understand that it is the intention they are covered by other subsections. By normal interpretation, they probably are, but what councillors do is so little understood—sometimes by councillors themselves—that we need to give more attention to it. Councillors generally—I am getting into difficult ground—are getting older and it is becoming more difficult, for various reasons, including pressures of everyday life, to attract younger people from different communities, so that we have a much more diverse representation among councillors. A number of authorities are trying hard to address those problems with limited success. In the context of this Bill and what we seek to achieve, we perhaps should give more thought to being more specific about the importance of understanding the role, function and nature of the work of local councillors in terms of achieving the local democracy that we all want and in whether we can find a better way to make specific reference to that in the Bill. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This amendment focuses for the first time in this Committee on local partnerships, which are extremely important as part of local governance. They hardly existed 20 years ago. All the signs are that they will not go away, but will become more important. It is impossible to draw a sensible map of the system of local governance without including all the partnership arrangements and partnership bodies, some of which exist as statutory bodies and some of which do not. Some just exist and have come about on a voluntary basis. The Government may say that they exist on a voluntary basis but local strategic partnerships are not really voluntary bodies. The Government say that we have to have them, but they have no basis in local government law. They play a different part in different areas, but they are important pretty well everywhere. Amendment 5 refers to local strategic partnerships and to crime and disorder reduction partnerships. Crime and disorder reduction partnerships are statutory bodies, but they are still partnerships of local bodies.

A few years ago, as these bodies were burgeoning, my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland, while he was still a councillor, asked the chief executive of Calderdale Council in west Yorkshire to draw up a list of all the partnerships, local trusts and similar bodies on which that council had representation, and there were more than 100 bodies. How local decisions are made cannot be described without including them. Some of us would call it the local “quangocracy” and we may think that they have gone too far. However, following the previous legislation that we discussed in the Moses Room, changes to LSPs and local area agreements have probably improved matters and have put the council more at the centre of what is going on than it was.

Nevertheless, it is complex and, for the purpose of the amendment, it exists. There are very often opportunities within these partnerships for people to go along and take part. Some of them are distinctly unfriendly and secretive in how they take decisions, while others—LSPs, for example—may have sub-committees, working groups or local forums set up under the auspices of the LSP, which are specifically there to involve people. So it is ludicrous to leave them out. Crime reduction partnerships are there to involve people, and people can go along and take part in them.

So there are opportunities, although LSPs exist in a sort of vacuum. They remind me of the old rhyme:

“Yesterday upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there.

He wasn't there again today

I wish that man would go away”.

LSPs are a bit like that—they are there, even when they are not there, in the legislation—and they are important.

Amendment 20 simply attempts to define a partnership for this purpose. I am not at all sure that it is the right definition, but I could not find the definition of a partnership in relation to local government in any legislation. The Minister may be able to tell me where it is, but I could not find it. So I am suggesting that a partnership means,

“a non-corporate body or trust whose membership includes the principal local authority and in whose democratic and decision-making structures the authority is represented whether by members or officer or both”.

I am quite sure that it should be there, however the Government feel that it should be defined. I beg to move.

The first partnership that I got involved with in my career was the City Challenge Board, which the Conservative Government insisted that we set up to get some money. We were always a very pragmatic authority. If there was any money involved and we were asked to set up a partnership, we would do that if we could get the money.

The noble Lord makes a point about the distinction between voluntary and statutory bodies, because that is not as clear as it might be. LSPs are now major players in monitoring local area agreements, so they do have a role. However, I did not understand what he said about partnerships within an authority area. If we try to map governance, in a sense there are partnerships beyond an authority’s area—sometimes in collaboration, formal or informal, with other local authorities, and sometimes with other bodies and private sector organisations within a wider field.

If we are trying to do something that people understand and which means something, my only concern is that we need to ensure we are talking about significant rather than marginal things. Otherwise, there will just be a complex geography map that no one will understand, not least those of us who are actively involved in local government. We need to bear in mind that, if we want something that will mean something and will help people get round the difficulties within local government, it has to be reasonably simple.

I wonder whether I could just reply. The amendments refer specifically to a body which includes the principal local authority. It might be the area of the authority and it might be smaller, but it could certainly be much bigger.

I shall make a very brief intervention based on the last two speeches. I recognise the complication of relationships that extend beyond authority boundaries. In the notable book written by the father of the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, describing actions in which he fought between 1917 and 1943, he quotes at the beginning of a chapter what the official history says and then describes what happened at large in the event. It includes the memorable moment in Waziristan when a group of officers who are planning an attack on a rebel leader meet to discuss the plan. The father of the noble Viscount, Lord Slim, produces the memorable sentence:

“The British army is always required to fight uphill and at the juncture of the two or more maps”.

The problem of the two or more maps is one which all of us who have had to deal with these things is familiar.

I support the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on the basis of another analogy. I was once responsible for securing the appointment of the chief executive of a Great British company to the board of another Great British company, but one which was in a technical field outside his own direct experience. At the end of his first board meeting, he told the secretary that the board’s agenda contained 89 acronyms that meant something to people in the company and that unless he was provided with a lexicon for them before the next meeting he would not bother to attend. In producing the lexicon, the secretary apologised because he had had to make inquiries about 55 of the 89 acronyms about which the chief executive had complained. There is an argument in favour of this sort of information being available. We cannot expect councillors to pass it on unless they have the information in the first place.

We have touched on a fertile seam about partnerships, which will return in later groups—for example, when we look at Amendments 47, 48 and 57. I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, made about the acronyms that now clutter the important partnerships. The range of partnerships has evolved over the past few years to deliver services that may previously have been delivered separately and to bring people together who may have been doing much the same job with different sorts of funding in different parts of the local authority. This growth in partnership has been necessary and evolutionary, and is a progressive way forward. It is a factor to be reckoned with and, in the context of what we want to achieve in Clauses 1 and 2, we have to be sure that people are aware of the range of mechanisms that shape, influence and deliver local services. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was right to bring this forward.

Many of them are done through partnerships, and the LSP is critical to that. We encouraged that in the local government White Paper, Strong and Prosperous Communities, and in the report of the Lyons inquiry into the future of local government. They are a fundamental part of the way in which councils, the police and other bodies make joint decisions about services that affect people and they play a key role in identifying local authority and policy responses through the LSP. LSPs are challenging organisations that have a uniquely important role because they bring so many statutory and voluntary agencies together. When they work, they work extremely effectively. As well as the LSPs, there is a range of specific partnerships to co-ordinate services for children or older people, or to regenerate an area within the local authority, as well as the crime and disorder partnerships that the noble Lord has already identified.

I am in sympathy with what he is addressing. However, we do not need additions to the duties to bring them within scope. Before I go on with that, in the past two debates I have been struck by the fact that noble Lords opposite are wrestling with what we wrestled with in framing the Bill. They want more detail and definition and for things to be clearer, but, at the same time, they do not want to expand the Bill. That would be the effect of putting some of this detail in it. In the first debate, the noble Lord was scathing about having eight or whatever pages on this, but in exploring these issues, we are exploring the necessity for the sort of detail that will enable people to get on and do the job without being hampered by confusions and ambiguities, and without overloading them by being overprescriptive.

While other partnerships and bodies may or may not be part of the formal decision-making mechanisms of the council, they fall within the definition of arrangements that the council has made to enable people to influence its decisions. For example, although LSP decision-making arrangements may not be the same as the council's decision-making process, the council will clearly be involved in what the LSP decides and therefore, so far as there are any arrangements for people to get involved in LSP decision-making, they would be covered by our duty.

That is the same answer that I gave to the previous set of amendments. They are covered by the duty, although not explicitly. The noble Lord is dissatisfied with that definition; I have listened to what he said. Essentially, it is part of the general values which we put on this activity and it is what we wanted to encompass. As such, when we ask local authorities to provide information on their functions and democratic arrangements, we consider that, and when we ask them to provide information on the functions and democratic arrangements of health, the police and the other connected authorities, we are asking them to include information on the partnerships in which they are involved.

On the final element of Amendment 5, the noble Lord proposes that local authorities should provide information on the democratic arrangements for other bodies in which the authority takes part and to which it has voluntarily devolved functions or in which it voluntarily shares functions with other participating bodies. We are not sure exactly what he means. If he is referring to delegated functions then that is not necessary as an authority has no power to delegate functions to any partnership. Where functions are delegated within the structure of the authority to officers, committees and members, the decisions made in this official capacity would already be covered by our definition of democratic arrangements.

So where local authorities have decided to contract out services to other providers, we would expect that the decisions made by the council about delivery of those services here—say, bin collection—would be included. I am afraid to say “bin collection” in any context now, so I shall have to find a substitute. On the other hand, the service providers themselves are independent, possibly commercial, entities which do not have public functions and would not have democratic arrangements in which to be involved.

The noble Lord seeks to ensure that partnerships are included both within the requirement on local authorities set out in Clause 1(1) and by adding to the list of connected authorities. As I have said, we have covered that. We would expect local authorities to be sensible in how they interpret this so that if the decision-making of each individual participant is within our provisions, they would also include information about how they go about making decisions within the partnership itself.

That is why we think that guidance will be a help. It will allow us to provide a clear steer to local authorities about the scope of information we expect them to provide, which will include partnership working. It makes better sense to do that in guidance than to put that kind of detail in the Bill. I hope that the noble Lord agrees with me.

I am grateful to the Minister for that long reply. I am not sure I understood it all. I shall read it and the Bill again. My initial reaction is that her basic premise that it is all covered by the duty has not convinced me and I think it is probably wrong. I shall have another think and take further advice.

The first point made by the Minister was that we want more detail in a Bill which, as we have said, has too much detail. That is a theme through many of the amendments in this and the next chapter, which is about petitions. We would prefer that the Government did not legislate on either of these matters, but persuaded councils to do them in other ways. If you legislate, there is a choice: one is to have genuine, in-principle framework legislation. It is our view that each of these points could be reduced to half a page: we could get it down on the petitions one but not on this one, because we want to probe more on exactly what Chapter 1 means. Our view is that you can cut it down to half a page and say to councils, “Get on with it and do it sensibly”. They will do it in different ways, in different places, but it will be in line with local circumstances and in line with local democracy.

Some councils will do it a lot better than others, but that is what local democracy is all about. Some will want to spend a lot more money on it and do it really well. Others will want to spend the minimum amount of money to fulfil their legal obligations and no more. There will be very different ways of doing it. That seems to us to be the diversity that comes from genuine local democracy and the way it should be done. There is a genuine ideological difference between us on this. The Government want to legislate and tie everyone down more and more to a uniform system for everything in every detail. That seems to be what is going on. We are against that and the principle behind it.

However, if the Government are going to legislate in this kind of detail, we must cover all the eventualities and make it comprehensive. You must make it work so that people cannot come along and say, “It does not apply to this or that”. In particular, you must make sure that it will not get in the way of current good practice. Therefore, you have to make it longer. You cannot get away from that. At the moment we have a very unsatisfactory halfway house.

As far as partnerships are concerned, the Minister said that because a service is contracted out, there will therefore be no involvement in the service delivery, but that may not be the case at all. The contracting out of the service might include the involvement of some people who receive that service or some of the local people in the delivery of that service. It may involve consultation with local area committees or even town and parish councils in the delivery of that service. It is not automatically the case that, just because something is contracted out to the private or third sector, there is no public involvement. That is wrong.

The second part of the amendment was kite flying and probing, as the Minister understood. There are further discussions to be had. To return to the basic principle of partnerships, we feel that partnerships, although perhaps not in this wording or in quite so much detail, ought to be in the Bill. Just because a council is a member of a partnership that does not mean that everything that partnership does will necessarily be covered by this duty. Some things the partnership does may have nothing to do with the council. Nevertheless, because the partnership itself is a public body, it ought to be included in this duty. I would ask the Minister to think about that.

My final point is that some partnerships, as the Minister pointed out, are statutory partnerships. They have a freestanding existence in their own right. They are not part of the council. The council is one of the partners in that statutory partnership. In those circumstances, I am not sure that the duty given to the council will automatically fall on that partnership, because the council will have lots of other duties, in all sorts of ways, that do not fall on the partnership. Statutory partnerships, such as the crime and disorder partnerships, will be governed by the legislation setting them up, so this is also something that the Minister should think again about. We do not think that it is a difficult thing to include so we do not understand the reluctance. Having said that, there is scope for further discussion and debate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This may be a convenient moment for the Grand Committee to adjourn for 10 minutes.

Amendment 8 is partly probing and partly in order to make an important point and to bring some of the discussions into the real world about how things actually happen on the ground. Amendment 8 refers to Clause 1(2) which includes a duty to promote understanding of how to become a member of an authority—or councillor as it is more normally called—of what councillors do and of what support is provided to councillors.

Amendment 8 is about the real world, in which most people, although by no means all, who stand for election to a council do so on behalf of a registered political party. It may be a national or purely local political party, a community group or a group set up to achieve certain local aims, such as when Boston Borough Council was taken over by the Boston Bypass Party, which was for the bypass, not against it. That was despite the fact that Boston Borough Council does not have the power to build a bypass because that is a county council function and Boston is in a two-tier area in Lincolnshire. Nevertheless, in order to have its name on the ballot paper and to promote itself in that way, it had to be registered as a political party. There are now many hundreds of political parties registered with the Electoral Commission. Most people stand for the main national political parties through their local branches.

Section 2 of the Local Government Act 1986 includes a prohibition on political publicity by local authorities:

“A local authority shall not publish any material which, in whole or in part, appears to be designed to affect public support for a political party”.

I am probing whether including basic information about local political parties that put up candidates for the council, such as their contact details or names of officials, in material that is given to people about how to get on the council would contravene this section of that Act. The following subsection modifies that in great detail, and I am not clear at all whether it is covered or not by this prohibition. We must be absolutely clear that it is not. If it is, the local authority is prevented from giving sensible information to people who genuinely want to stand for the council. The most sensible thing you can do is to ask people whether they want to stand as an independent or for one of the registered political parties that fields candidates in this area. If they want to stand for the Labour Party—I am told that there are still a few who do, daft though some of us may think it—the local authority ought to be able to point them in the direction of the Labour Party, or any other political party, as appropriate.

The purpose of the amendment is to probe whether the Government think that political parties are a part of the process, and whether the council should give real-world advice about how to get on it, not just how to get a nomination paper, get 10 signatures and hand it in. That would not do much good in most cases. Secondly, I am probing whether that would be allowed, given the prohibition in the Local Government Act 1985. I beg to move.

I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has suggested the amendment. It is quite plain that a key element of local democracy is the hard work and time given up by local councillors. They are the real grassroots politicians. It is vital that members of the public should freely and easily be able to make representations to them.

It also goes without saying that the vast majority of local councillors will be sponsored by political parties—in all likelihood by one of the parties represented in this Committee. To that extent, I can see the case for the noble Lord wanting to provide contact information. If you can get in touch with the local party, you should be able to get your message across to your local representatives. It would not be the only route, but I understand the argument that this is another strand of getting the flow of communication between voters and elected representatives.

However, I am not convinced by the argument put forward by the noble Lord that this is a necessary or even desirable provision to have in statute. Apart from the arguments deployed elsewhere that this is not the sort of detailed instruction we wish to see being given to local authorities in primary legislation, there is a deeper point. The noble Lord has made his case for providing simply contact information for political parties, to which I shall return. I am concerned by the words, “and other relevant information”, in his amendment. Who will decide what is relevant? How widely could that phrase be interpreted? I fear that political parties from across the spectrum may use that provision, however much in good faith they think they are acting, to use public bodies to promote their own aims. Promoting their own ideas is the right of any and every party. It should not be the responsibility of the local authority. It would be better to keep that distinction absolutely clear and not to allow any blurring of those boundaries.

I cannot see the need for providing even bare contact details of political parties. I agree that the contact details of elected councillors should be available in order for people to get in touch with those who represent them. However, any political party worth its salt should be able to publicise its own contact details. If a party wishes to promote itself, it should use its own resources and efforts. I and other Members of the Committee have campaigned for our parties and we know that, if a party is sponsoring a candidate for election, as well as publicising its goals and ideas, it should have no difficulty doing the same with its contact details.

I fear too that this amendment could have the unfortunate, although I am sure wholly unintended, effect of disadvantaging independent councillors or single issue candidates who are not sponsored by any party, but who are a fundamental feature of local democracy. For those reasons, we on these Benches cannot support this amendment.

I am disappointed to hear the response from the noble Baroness. My noble friend made it very clear that at this stage this is a probing amendment which raises an important point. We all share the wish to encourage people to become councillors. If an individual approaches the local authority and asks, “How do I do it?”, should the response simply be, as my noble friend said, to send them the nomination form and papers, let them go off to find 10 people to sign them and then send them in? That is what one needs to do to become a councillor. Or is it more helpful to recognise the reality in the vast majority of areas in this country? Most candidates are sponsored by the political parties and the reality is that on most councils most councillors belong to those political parties. There is nothing in this amendment to suggest that councils should promote any or all of the political parties. This is not about the promotion of the parties at all. It is simply to explain the reality that if a person wants to become elected in an area, they should at least consider going through a political party of their choice or understand the implications if they choose not to. It is a free choice.

The second part of the amendment raises an important point, which I come up against quite often, although not in this connection. How restricted does one have to be as a local authority in dealing with any matters that could be held to be party political? Certainly, I understood this amendment to be seeking clarification. It will be on record in Hansard. We may have to return to it. The position will be clear, whatever the Minister may say. Let me be clear—I am sure that my noble friend does not need me to say this—this is not about asking local authorities to promote political parties or to say to people, “If you want to be a councillor in this area, you will have to join the Labour Party”. It is simply for the local authority to say that most candidates will be sponsored by a political party. That is the reality. If a person wants to consider that, these are the contact details that we would ask each of the registered parties to supply. It is simply about relaying information. Of course, the political parties should do that, as I am sure they do, and will indeed seek candidates, but we are talking in this context about the role of the local authority as distinct from the political parties. Somebody who wants to respond to the local authority fulfilling this duty needs to know the reality of the situation. At this stage, local authorities need the reassurance that if they supply the contact details of their local political parties, they will not fall foul of this provision.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly pointed out that Clause 1(2) focuses on the council’s role so that members of the public are clear about what their elected representatives do and, should they be interested in taking the next step, how they might go about becoming a councillor and what support will be available to them should they be elected.

Amendment 8, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, takes this further by allowing councils to point citizens towards local political parties by providing the contact details and other relevant information. I reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said, about relevant information. It was a point well made. I assume that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is trying to plug what he perceives to be a gap in the information that members of the public will need to be given if they are to find out what councillors do and how to become one. The amendment would add an unnecessary level of prescriptive detail to the Bill. The Bill places councils under a duty to promote understanding of how to become a councillor. We expect this to include an explanation of the political party selection process as well as of the fact that people can stand as independents. In the region of 6 per cent of councillors do so.

In discharging this duty, some councils may wish to provide contact details for local political parties in a non-partisan way and in accordance with relevant legislation. We will set out in guidance that this is a route that some councils may wish to consider. I again reinforce what the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said; while Clause 1 places a duty on local authorities, let us not forget that there is an important role for the political parties in promoting democracy and encouraging local people to stand for office. It is open to all political parties to publicise their activities in an authority’s area, the work of their members who serve on the council and how people may become members of that party.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly pointed to Section 2 of the Local Government Act 1986, which prohibits publicity designed to affect public support for a political party. Local authorities are also required under that section to have regard to the provisions of the Code of recommended practice on local authority publicity before coming to any decision on publicity. As noble Lords will know, the code is commonly known as the publicity code. It was introduced in 1988 and last amended in 2001. It seeks among things to assist local authorities when making decisions about publicity to ensure that resources are not used to publish material that could be perceived as having a party-political purpose.

My department is consulting the local government sector and stakeholders on the future of the publicity code. The consultation seeks views on its effectiveness as an instrument for protecting public money while allowing councils to issue effective publicity to keep their communities informed of the services that they provide and encourage greater participation in local democracy. It would be premature to make changes to the rules relating to local authority publicity without considering carefully the responses received to our consultation exercise. The consultation was launched on 12 December; it is not yet clear in which direction the responses will send us. However, responses received will inform the guidance that the department issues to local authorities to support them in their new duty to promote democracy. The guidance will make direct reference to how the publicity code impacts on councils in their new role and will clarify what it does and does not prevent them doing. We will ensure that comments made by noble Lords during this debate are fully considered as part of the consultation exercise on the future of the publicity code and the drafting of any guidance issued by the department to local authorities. The consultation ends on 12 March 2009. We hope that a wide range of people will contribute their views. It is usual for public consultations of this nature to generate more than 1,000 responses.

Given what I have outlined, I hope that the noble Lord will be more reassured and will understand where our proposals are coming from.

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I think I have the answer to my basic question, but I shall come to that in a minute.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, that the words “and other relevant functions” is vague and kite-flying. It was put in precisely to generate a probing debate, and she was quite right to pick it up.

This comes back to the role of the council in promoting candidates to itself in any way. That is something that I have always been uneasy about; to put a duty on an authority to go out and get certain kinds of people or minorities or achieve diversity is an awkward duty because you are asking the authority to determine its own composition when it is meant to be a democratic authority elected by the people. That is a tangential question, but it is part of the problem.

If councils and other public bodies are to spend quite a lot of resources of different sorts in getting more women, ethnic minorities, young people—more Welsh people in Wales, perhaps, or more English people in Wales, or whatever the underrepresented minority is in a particular part of Wales—they are inevitably going to get involved in a political question. Some of those groups of people will be oriented more to some political parties than to others. The whole area causes me some unease. If it is going to happen, we need to be clear about it.

The Bill says that the council has to tell people who might want to be members what members of the principal local authority do. I can tell them what they do a lot of the time. They go to political party group meetings and take part in the local political party as part of their involvement in the community. That is what they do. If you say to people that they can be councillors on a council with three political parties, that there is not much chance of anyone else getting elected in the near future and that if they want to be councillors but do not want to go to local ward meetings or party meetings, take part in party campaigns in the area or go to the party group meetings, when they go to council meetings, unless they are very brave and have very strong views on things, they will very often vote how they are told to vote by their political party. In a more democratic party such as ours, of course, people go to the meetings where it is decided how to vote and take part in that process, then vote voluntarily with the majority. However, it works, they are working within a political context, which is what people will have to be told.

People who want to be councillors could also be told that, while they might be elected as an independent, with a lot of work and a lot of effort, if they were they would be on a council where everything was run through the political parties. They would not be part of the council administration in the remote future, unless there happened to be a fluky election where they personally held the balance of power, in which case for a year they might be, until it changed. That is the truth; it is the real world, and there is no point in not telling people about the real world.

The provision says that people must be told what support is available. If the political groups and parties are any use they will be a source of great support to the councillor. If you are not a member of a political party, you would not have that support and resource. Particularly if it was a big council, you would be on your own, in the wilderness. You might have the strength of personality to make some impact, but it would be much more difficult than if you are a member of a political party, unless you joined a dreadful, highly authoritarian political party and were just treated as muck as a Back Bencher, told what to do and not given any influence at all. That exists in all parties. It is the real world.

My question was whether Section 2 of the 1985 Act applies to giving sensible advice on the role of political parties in a particular area. Is that banned? I think that the answer from the Minister was that it is not banned. If that is a sensible thing to do in that area, within the reasonable limits of providing factual information, it would be possible. Both Ministers are nodding their heads; I shall put that on the record. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I also speak to Amendments 30 and 73. Through these amendments I seek to specify that the duty in Clause 1(1) to promote an understanding of an authority’s functions, its democratic arrangements and how members of the public can take part in them, includes a duty to provide that information in formats accessible to persons with disabilities.

Through these amendments, I am seeking to address a major democratic deficit in British society. No one can be in any doubt that we live in the information society today, if by that we mean an age in which we are bombarded by information from all sides as never before. The ability to handle this information effectively is critical to being able to participate effectively in society, avail oneself of its opportunities, fulfil one’s responsibilities and negotiate one’s way around the various institutions of society and the services it offers. Yet, for blind and partially sighted people, or those who are print handicapped in any way, the ability to do that is largely denied by the fact that the great bulk of that information is completely inaccessible to them.

Article 21 of the recently adopted UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, on freedom of expression, opinion and access to information, says that state parties should provide information intended for the general public to persons with disabilities in accessible formats and technologies appropriate to different kinds of disabilities, in a timely manner and without additional cost. Yet, in health services alone, a recent survey of blind and partially sighted people in the UK showed that 95 per cent of respondents had never received health advice leaflets or information from their local surgery in their preferred format; 96 per cent had never received letters from their GP, results of tests or other correspondence in their preferred format; 95 per cent had never received medicines labelled in large print; and the NHS is apparently unable to send out appointments in an accessible format.

The Benefits Agency sends out benefit letters to blind people in standard print. A DWP survey of public bodies, including government, education, health and emergency services, found that only one-quarter of all organisations offered information in large-print sizes; 8 per cent offered it on disc or CD; and as few as 4 per cent advertised the availability of Braille or audio. Although some of these materials were available on request, the survey found that approximately 40 per cent of bodies surveyed did not provide information in an accessible format at all. Even this Bill, an important piece of legislation, is printed in an inaccessible format—a nice irony. It may be said that it is available on the internet, which is definitely something, but it should not be supposed that that makes it problem free.

Coming right to the areas with which the Bill is concerned, RNIB—I declare my interest as its chair—through its “Information is Power” campaign has identified several areas of local authority responsibility, from council tax bills to community newsletters to recycling and refuse collection times, that remain out of the reach of persons with disabilities on account of their inaccessibility, despite the requirements of the disability equality duty to make sure that services take account of the needs of disabled people. I recently heard a story of a local authority that stated that it was not possible to produce a council tax bill and explanatory booklet in large print, despite the fact that telephone and utility companies have been producing accessible bills for years. Not unreasonably, the taxpayer refused to pay a bill he could not read. He subsequently received two red letters and a court summons from the council, again all inaccessible, but no accessible bill.

The fundamentals of a democratic and participative society require us all to be active citizens. No group of people is more anxious to play its full part, collectively and as individuals, than the disabled. The Bill aims to promote democracy, encourage civic engagement and improve understanding of the role and functions of local authorities. My amendments ensure that it does that effectively for blind, partially sighted and other disabled people. The Government have been instrumental in pushing for more equal treatment of disabled people and in attempting to identify ways in which they can be more involved in decision-making. Yet there is still a dramatic deficit in the engagement and interaction of disabled people with local government structures. Information is power, but only if it can be accessed and understood. Thousands of disabled people across the country are excluded from society, their local authorities and democracy by the simple fact that information and documents are produced in formats that they cannot read. At one time, it might have been thought unreasonable to demand that information be produced in a form in which a blind person could read it, but in the 21st century, making documents accessible is not rocket science.

The importance of local government for all our lives should not be underestimated. Local authorities are in the front line of service provision. They are responsible for the provision of decent schools, better roads, leisure facilities, the emergency services, waste management and recycling, and they administer council tax. Disabled people arguably have more contact with local authorities through social services than their non-disabled peers. We all bemoan the growth of apathy in our society. The purpose of these amendments is simple. They ensure that public bodies have to take active steps to ensure that the 2 million blind and partially sighted people who live in the UK are able to participate effectively in public life. They also provide a powerful tool to enable local government to empower individuals to have a say in the running of their communities and the delivery of services and create opportunities for disabled people to become active and included members of civil society. The new clause in Amendment 73, which probably ought to apply to connected as well as principal authorities, provides a light-touch method of monitoring how far authorities are complying with the duty I am seeking to have inserted in the Bill.

I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Low. He has worked tirelessly in this area, and I agree that if the Government are going to insist on this duty, information ought to be available in formats accessible to disabled people. I am sure that the Minister can assure us that this practice will be followed by local authorities across the country.

I, too, wish to support the amendments, not only because I agree with them in principle, but because the person who, many years ago, signed me up to a political party on my doorstep was herself partially sighted. When we were both elected to the local authority, we spent a lot of time trying to ensure that partially sighted people got the access to which we believed they were entitled and the kinds of things about which the noble Lord, Lord Low, has been speaking. We did not have to persuade very hard. We were Liberal Democrats, but although we were not running the council—it was a Labour-controlled authority—all the councillors were very co-operative in providing all sorts of assistance to enable my friend to deal with council agendas. We were all aware of the script that partially sighted people need if they are to read things. Council agendas were produced in large type so that my friend could deal with them. That takes me back to my early days on the council, in 1984, when we dealt with those matters.

Some councils have done that, but the noble Lord is quite right to say that people do not think about it. Very often, when one explains the situation to people, they are very happy to do it, as the council in Southampton was, but no one had thought about it. One of the reasons we managed to get ourselves elected was because we were campaigning as Liberal Democrats and we produced such things as Focus newsletters. My friend produced a talking version of the Focus newsletter in our ward.

I am very happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Low. I am sorry that in 2009 we are still dealing with this, considering we first tried to deal with it in 1984.

I fully concur with the spirit of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low. As always, he puts his case very powerfully. A fundamental principle behind the duty to promote democracy is to ensure that information is made available to those who seek it and promoted to sections of the community who are less engaged and under represented in the democratic process. We know that disabled people are underrepresented and it is important to address that deficit.

Amendments 9 and 30 seek to include a specific reference in the provision of accessible information to disabled people. The noble Lord has already raised the issue and although he is not as satisfied as he could be, he will be well aware that the Disability Discrimination Act already requires public authorities, including local authorities, to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people when providing services and delivering their functions. These duties include the requirement to provide “auxiliary aids and services”; for example, information in accessible formats, where it is reasonable to do so, such as Braille, large print or audio tape.

The expectation of this duty is that local authorities will, through their promotional work, target all local people, with an extra focus on under-represented and/or hard-to-reach groups such as disabled people. To strengthen this focus, we will be specifying this in the guidance, as well as explaining how the duties fit with other equality duties. Part of this promotional activity will necessitate that arrangements and information are made available in a form that best meets the requirements of a particular individual or group.

The amendments require that disabled persons are referred to in the legislation. Of course, disabled people are only one of a number of underrepresented or hard-to-reach groups as regards local democratic arrangements. The Government believe that it would not be practical or helpful to list what they believe to be under-represented groups. This may vary from area to area or service provision to service provision. For example, a minority ethnic group may be underrepresented in one local area but not in another. We would expect local services specifically for disabled people to have good involvement from that group in its decision-making processes. The Government believe that local authorities are best placed to understand the nature and circumstances of their community and the needs of local people.

The duty is currently drafted to require local authorities to provide information to local people. “Local people” are defined as people who live, work or study in the area. This means all such people including disabled people.

The statutory guidance which will support the Bill, to which local authorities must under Clause 6 have regard, ensures that the provision of information to hard-to-reach groups including disabled people is addressed. The guidance will be explicit in that there is an expectation on local authorities to make arrangements and provide information in a way that best meets the needs of specific groups; for example, the hearing impaired and people with learning disabilities. The noble Lord raises a crucial point. We would be happy to have his direct involvement, his experience and expertise in the drafting of the guidance for this area, as well as the expertise of key stakeholders with whom we will consult.

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply and to the noble Baronesses who have spoken in support of the amendment. I am more than a little reassured by the Minister’s response. His reference to the department’s intention to produce guidance to support the duty under subsection (1)—that is, to provide information to the public generally—is important and welcome. I would be very happy to be involved with the department in developing that guidance.

I also agree that it is probably not a good idea to spell out in legislation all the groups who might be covered by the duty to provide information. I recognise that, although I referred principally to blind and partially sighted people whose needs I know best, there are other groups, such as those with hearing impairments or learning difficulties, to which the Minister has rightly referred, to whose needs we need to pay attention.

Welcome as all of that is, I would have liked the Minister to go further. I thought that he would refer to the Disability Discrimination Act and the duty to make reasonable adjustments. The problem is that that legislation has been in place for some time, but there is still the democratic deficit to which I referred in moving the amendment. The legislation is in place, but it by no means does all that it was intended to do in this area. We need to do more to encourage it to have the effect that it was always intended to have.

The guidance on which the Minister has rested his case principally will certainly go some way, but I am inclined still to feel that it would help the guidance to bite if we had the duty, which I am seeking to insert, in the legislation. I will read carefully what the Minister has said and will reflect on it. Perhaps we could have a discussion before Report in the hope of reaching a form of words with which everyone is happy.

We would be very happy to meet with the noble Lord, Lord Low, before the Report stage.

I thank the Minister for that. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

I shall speak also to Amendment 11. This is not a major issue of principle in the Bill. It removes,

“a county or district council in England”,

to separate lines in the list of councils that goes on to include London boroughs, the Common Council of the City and so on.

This is a long-standing minor grudge of mine that the Minister will remember from the passage of the Planning Act. The Government have an insistence on grouping counties and districts together, with the word “or”, when it is really a list of this “and” that, all being principal councils. However, I discover that in Clause 10(3) of the Bill there is another list of councils and types of council which says,

“(a) a county council in England;

(b) a district council in England”,

with the implication of “and” throughout the list. All I am asking for is some consistency. Of course, the Government may change Clause 10(3) to what I do not want to see, but I would rather that they changed this one, subject to the amendment, to what I do want to see. Whichever it is, they ought to do the same thing in different parts of the same Bill. I beg to move.

Indeed I remember this debate on previous legislation. The noble Lord, as a champion of district councils, is right to raise this. In Clause 1, where we define principal local authorities that are required to fulfil duties on the promotion of democracy, that includes both county and district councils in England, as well as London borough councils, the Common Council of the City of London, and county and county boroughs in Wales.

As he has on other occasions, the noble Lord seeks to ensure a stand-alone reference to district councils in England. I am sure that, as we debate the substance of what the districts and counties do, we will go into the important relativities between them. We share the conviction that district councils are a vital level of local government in their own right.

I was going to say that this is simply standard drafting. Members of the Committee will understand that this argument has been cut away by this reference in Clause 10, which I must confess that I had not spotted. In the light of this, I ask the noble Lord what difference it will make if we separate them out. Does he think that something substantial will follow? However, I take the point that we need to be consistent within the Bill, and I shall harass our officials to come up with an explanation of why they cannot be the same. I shall discuss this with the noble Lord before Report. I would, however, like an answer to my question about why he thinks it would make a difference.

I am sure that a lot of things we argue about here, and a lot of things that the Government dig their feet in about, do not make any difference in practice. Legislation should say what it means. The word “or” is inappropriate here because, as the Minister said, it is both county and district councils. “Or” does not mean “and”; “or” means “one or the other”; “and” means “both”. The implication of a list with neither “all” nor “and” in it is that it is all “and”. I hope that I have not dug a hole I shall fall into on Clause 10(3).

Before the noble Lord withdraws the amendment, I should say—because I so often feel that I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on other amendments—that this is a very useful amendment. It represents the thoroughness that the noble Lord applies to this Bill. He has checked and the Minister has had to admit that she had not checked the contrast between Clause 10 and this clause.

I have only one thing to say in addition, which may be something of a nuisance but which I say particularly because the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, is sitting there. I notice the reference to Wales in the alternative. I am not quite sure why that is so. Consistency with the excellent point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would suggest that perhaps in this clause, subsection (3)(d) would be better separated out—and the same applies in Clause 10, which has the same wording,

“county or county borough council in Wales”.

If the noble Lord is right, I wonder about the inconsistency there.

In a couple of groups’ time, we shall try to remove those references to Welsh authorities in these areas. But the noble Lord’s point is absolutely right.

In the absence of both my noble friends, I shall move the amendment standing in their name and speak to Amendment 40, which goes very well with it. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is not very well—and I understand that my noble friend Lord Tope is required to be scrutinised by his local authority this afternoon. I hope that noble Lords will understand why he is not here.

I shall be very brief and I shall not be able to do this as well as my noble friends. As most noble Lords know, my noble friends Lord Tope and Lady Hamwee were members of the GLA. Their view is that it should be a little higher up the pecking order here. It is a unique authority—not a local authority or a district authority; in some ways it acts as a regional development agency, but it is a unique authority. That is really why they tabled this amendment. They feel that it is quite an important authority in London, and were not very satisfied that the districts in London would describe what the GLA did. That is why they want to leave out the GLA from Clause 2 in Amendment 40.

I hope that I have explained how they feel about this, and I hope that the Government can understand that perhaps they do not have the emphasis quite right on where the GLA should be.

I am interested to hear why the Greater London Authority is to be treated as a connected authority for the purposes of this Bill, rather than a principal authority. The GLA has a very large direct electoral mandate; it has a very large budget and a great deal of influence on how London does its day-to-day business. It has responsibility for the strategic administration of Greater London, which it carries out through the work of four bodies—Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Authority, the London Fire Authority and the London Development Agency—which might in the terminology of this Bill be described as connected authorities. All this would suggest that the GLA is much better placed in the principal authority’s category.

The GLA is not an agency of the London boroughs, or a remote quango. It shares local government powers with the boroughs; indeed, it was created to improve co-ordination between those boroughs. It seems odd to describe it in this context as a mere connected authority. Why does the Minister think that the GLA lacks the wherewithal to fulfil the duty to promote understanding of democracy yet that the borough councils are better placed on its behalf?

The noble Baroness has probed the meaning of local people quite extensively with these amendments. I agree that it is curious to have made the definition as it is made in the Bill.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, for moving the amendment. With Amendment 12, noble Lords are trying to address what they perceive to be an omission from the list of bodies to which the duties to promote democracy apply. I understand the intent, and I certainly echo what the noble Baroness said about the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and their understanding of the assembly and how it responds to its constituency. I am sure that they have seen that it might have a lot to say about democracy and how public input into its decision-making could benefit us all.

Let me explain clearly why the Government have explicitly excluded the GLA from the duty to promote democracy in Clause 1. The duty is primarily aimed at encouraging greater understanding of the opportunities that exist for members of the public to get involved in, and influence, the work of local public bodies. The GLA, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said, is a strategic body. It is important, on these grounds, that Londoners understand the democratic arrangements for the GLA and how they can engage with the work of the authority. City Hall has become central to the political life of London, with the Mayor having a national profile and considerable influence over the strategic direction of the capital and the assembly having a vital role to play in holding him to account on behalf of Londoners.

We have provided for that in a way that we think will be more effective, because the provision ensures that information about the GLA is provided to local people at the most appropriate level. Under Clause 2, London boroughs will be required to provide information on the GLA’s functions and democratic arrangements, and we expect the GLA will be happy to provide the necessary information to all boroughs.

Amendment 40 is consequential on Amendment 12, but it has the unfortunate effect of releasing the London borough councils from a duty to promote understanding of how the GLA works, how it reaches decisions and what its functions are. That would leave a worrying information gap which would leave Londoners at a disadvantage compared with the rest of the country. The point is that we have placed a duty on the London boroughs because they are in the front line, and they could and should be the first port of call for local people who want to find out about local decision-making. The information they give should provide a comprehensive picture of the democratic landscape, and how the work of councils at different tiers fit together, and that would be impossible without featuring the GLA.

Although some people may still go to the GLA for information, we believe that most will go to their local council as the body nearest to their local community. The new duties will allow people to consider their local council as their local ‘hub’ of information about how to participate in and influence democracy.

There is another complication. To have the GLA as a principal authority under Clause 1 would mean that it would be under the duty in Clause 2 to promote the functions and democratic arrangements of a wide range of local bodies in London. That would duplicate the work of boroughs, which under this duty will be doing the same, and would be complicated and confusing without necessarily enlightening or enabling the local community. I hope that I can persuade noble Lords of this and that they will agree that we should retain the GLA as a “connected authority” rather than a “principal authority”.

I thank for Minister for his explanation. I am afraid that he has not really convinced me and I am not sure when he will convince my noble friends either. The people who can best explain how a local authority works are those actually running it. Certainly, the GLA is important to London, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said. The various things that it does and the way that it operates are completely different. The role of the councillors is completely different. Therefore, you are expecting the London boroughs to be able to explain in detail how the GLA works, which I suspect they may not be able do well as the people who actually sit on the GLA.

I hear what the Minister says and I recognise that there is a difficulty because the GLA does not fit the parameters of any other authority, but I believe that my noble friends have a good point. I have a feeling that they will read what the Minister has said and may return to this on Report. The Minister certainly has not convinced me and I have a sneaking suspicion that he will not have convinced my noble friends. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

The amendments in this group discuss the place of Wales in the Bill. Why is it essential that Wales be included? Could the National Assembly for Wales and its Government not be given these responsibilities and be able to fulfil them more effectively in Cardiff than we do in this capital city? The Bill tries to involve more people and communities in their local affairs. To put Wales and its responsibilities in the Bill is a backwards step. The amendment gives the people of Wales full authority on the matters in this measure: devolution. If we accept these amendments—I am sure that the Minister looks favourably on them—it will be a step forward in the devolution process for Wales. Do we trust the National Assembly for Wales and its Government? Are we going to help them move forward? By withdrawing the references to Wales, we would be doing that. We would be trusting the National Assembly for Wales Government, which was set up by the Labour Government 10 years ago. Why not move forward a little more? England has enough problems of its own.

Hear, hear!

I am glad that others agree with me. The National Assembly for Wales should be given the chance to look at its own situation and see how the people of Wales could in their own way—our culture is different—be more involved in the decisions that affect their lives. I ask the Government to embrace these new opportunities not reluctantly, but wholeheartedly. I am certain that the Minister, with her Welsh background, will feel favourably inclined towards the amendment.

The noble Lord always has my respect for his defence and promotion of all things Welsh, but can he contemplate the situation prior to the Bill? Does he feel that, left alone, the National Assembly for Wales would, of its own volition, have taken some of steps that could be initiated by the Bill? He may have a point that there is a better place for the people of Wales to be as well served by legislation. It is government once removed if the initiative has to be taken here. However, we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is no good simply deleting Wales and leaving it unencumbered by any responsibility to do the kind of things that the Bill requires. I am intrigued by what the Minister might say. In his reply, will the noble Baroness indicate to us that he has in mind, or even knows, that there are moves afoot in Cardiff to do for the people of Wales precisely that which would have been done for them if Wales had been left in the Bill?

The noble Lord, Lord Graham, does not seem to understand what devolution is all about. We may think that it is a good thing for the National Assembly for Wales or Welsh authorities to do this or that, but the principle of devolution is that it is for them to decide within those areas where, by and large, the National Assembly for Wales has competence. Local government is one of those areas. It does not have complete competence over local government in the way that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government have over local government in Scotland, but it has substantial competence over local government. When Bills go through the Westminster Parliament, it is normal for the references to Wales to be permissive. Wales may be excluded completely, so that the Welsh Assembly makes the decisions. For example, we have the Planning Act, the Housing and Regeneration Act and a whole series of Acts under which Wales is graciously allowed to make its own decisions.

That is not happening here. In this legislation, it is being prescribed under Chapters 1 and 2 that Wales will have a system. The Bill says that it will apply in Wales unless the Welsh Ministers vary it. If they wish to vary it, they can, but they cannot not do it. We are not saying that the Bill should not apply to Wales, but that the powers of the Welsh Ministers and, therefore, the Welsh Assembly, should be completely permissive. In other words, the Bill says, “This will happen in England”. We are saying that it should say in relation to Wales, “This may happen, and it may happen in this form or it may happen in a different form as agreed by the Welsh Minister and the Welsh Assembly”. That is what is normally done nowadays in Wales. We do not understand why on these detailed provisions about the duty to provide this information and petitions, this Bill is different to what is now pretty well customary practice.

It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to debate the devolution settlement with the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. We do not see him often enough in Committee and I am very pleased that he is here. He knows that I always do my best by Wales, which is why I am in complete agreement with everything that he said. But I assure him that the answer lies in what I am about to say.

The amendments seek to disapply the provisions of the Bill so that the duty will not apply to county or county borough councils or connected bodies, or to community councils, in Wales; to achieve this by changing the process so that Welsh Ministers can make subordinate legislation in respect of the duty and to modify those provisions as they see fit; and to ensure that the petition will be equally valid irrespective of language. These provisions would give Welsh Ministers greater flexibility to make different provisions in relation to promoting democracy and to petition schemes.

There is absolutely no difference in principle in recognising that, in Wales as much as in England, local communities should have a greater understanding of the role of local government and public bodies, and that there should be a requirement on local government to do that. My experience in Wales is that people are more involved in local government in many ways because it is nearer the ground.

Why have we done this in this way? The answer is that Welsh Ministers asked us to. They requested that these provisions are applied equally to England and Wales. We trust the Welsh Government. We listened to what the Ministers asked for and we have provided it. So my response is predictable: Welsh Ministers are content with the provisions set out in the Bill. They have not sought changes or further flexibility. That is partly because they also appreciate that we are leaving the detail and the process to local authorities themselves to determine what is best for their local communities and relationships. We were in very close contact with the Welsh Assembly Government throughout this process.

I know that the amendments are there to provoke debate. However, just in case they should pass into law by accident, I should say that agreeing, for example, Amendment 133A—which would remove community councils from the list of bodies which Welsh Ministers could by order provide had arrangements for handling petitions—would be a serious blow to democracy in Wales. There are 736 community councils, which are equivalent to English parish councils, and only 22 unitary councils. The community councils are the bodies which are closest to the communities and identify with them. It would be totally unreasonable if this requirement were not to apply to them. A major concern is the serious risk that these amendments, if some but not all were approved, could lead to profound inequality between England and Wales. As my noble friend has asked, why should Wales be at any disadvantage to England in its citizens’ right to information about how councils work and how local people can be part of the process?

Before my noble friend replies on the substantive matters, perhaps I may say how fascinated I was by what the Minister said about community councils, which are exactly what in England we call parish councils—we might call them all sorts of other things now, although I have not discovered any that have changed their name yet. The Minister said that it was vital that community councils in Wales are given these responsibilities. Is she saying that that will apply in England as well by way of the provision which states that the Secretary of State may by order apply the provisions in Chapter 1 to parish councils? Is it the intention of the Government that this will be done?

The noble Lord will know that the configuration of local government in Wales and England is different. I know that an opportunity to debate the position of parish councils is coming up. I shall certainly look forward to giving him the full answer to his question at that point.

What we have here is an echo of the old “England knows best”. It is going back to colonial rule. I do not withdraw that remark. We are going back to a time when it was said, “We know best what Cardiff should be doing. Why have they not done it in the past?” A lot of things have not been done here that have been done in Wales, such as the Children's Commissioner and so forth. Why do we not trust the people of Wales? I do not think this matter has ever been discussed by the Assembly as a whole in Cardiff. I am not sure how far the consultations have gone or how the vote would have gone, if it had been put before a full sitting of the Welsh Assembly. Doubtless we will make mistakes, but we should be allowed to make them and allowed to plough our own furrow. We must forget that echo from the past.

Welsh culture is different. We speak about the Welsh language and what we should do piecemeal instead of placing it in the whole context of a Welsh language Act. We have to do that: it is not a case of putting in an amendment here or another word there. It is part of a whole cultural approach. Bearing that in mind, and there is a lot more one could say, I suggest that we should not forget this in its entirety. We will come to discuss things later on such as the way that we elect local councils. We have already discussed that in the Assembly. Scotland has already taken its own decision and implemented it. We in Wales would like to have the authority.

In 2011, there will be a referendum on the powers of the Welsh Assembly. We are looking forward to that in a very positive way. Today, we will ask the Government to think again about this. Let us make the mistakes that we will make and take the positive steps that we have taken. Perhaps we can agree this amendment when we discuss it further. Regretfully, this afternoon, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This is a more substantive group than the last one I spoke to. In moving Amendment 14, I will speak to Amendments 15 and 19 inclusive in this group. They concern the definition of “local people” in Clause 1(3). The definition applies to Chapter 1, which concerns the duty to promote understanding of local democracy and does not specifically apply to Chapter 2, which relates to petitions, which we will discuss in due course.

The issues relating to petitions are more important because a name or petition can be rejected if someone is not classified as a local person, whereas in Chapter 1, if information is being provided and promoted you cannot stop people receiving it. You cannot say that a person is not local and therefore cannot look at a website or whatever. It is more important later on. Nevertheless, the principle is first established here. It will be an important principle in any further legislation if the community empowerment stuff comes back in legislative form

My first approach to this would be to say that it is better not to try to define who local people are and leave that to common sense. As we have said several times this afternoon, central Government have put too much effort into trying to tie everything down. If it is to be defined in legislation, it needs to be sensible and it needs to have a clearer, more specific definition which, I would say, does not exclude people, or perhaps excludes people according to who needs to be excluded.

These amendments provide a series of options. No doubt, when the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has analysed them with her legal mind, she will tell me that some of them are contradictory, which they are. This is a series of options to find a sensible definition of “local people”. The definition in the legislation is,

“‘local people’ … means people who live, work or study in the authority’s area”.

That would make it exemplary and not definitive. In other words, I want to remove the word “means” and replace it with the word “includes”, which would mean that people are included, and not that others are not included. That would be perfectly reasonable.

A second logical way to do it, although not necessarily reasonable, would be to leave out the words “work or study” and just apply it to residents of the local authority area. There is a logical reason for saying that the residents in the area are people who apply specifically to that local authority. However, why should not the people who work in the local authority be included, particularly if they are entitled to stand for the council? People who study in the authority—full-time students—are perhaps a reasonable group of people to include. They might include people who go to school or who go to college over the border. In the next group of amendments but one we shall be discussing over-border issues. That widens the situation considerably, but it means that if you are a 17 year-old student who happens to cross a border to go to school, you are included, but if you live just the other side, you are not included, although you might be part of the same community and use lots of facilities provided by that council. It is not clear why the words “or study” are there. It also potentially includes part-time students, people who do just an hour’s night-school class or whatever. I do not think it has been thought out very well.

Amendments 16 and 17 add property owners. To use the words “people who own property” is probably not exactly the right wording; it should be people who have an interest in a property. Why should you not have a right in relation to a local authority if you own property in that authority’s area? You may well be a landlord who owns a dozen houses and have lots of dealings with the environmental health department or with the housing benefit department or whatever, or you might be someone who has interesting relationships with the local planning authority and you are trying to get planning permission for something. Why should you be excluded? If you are a property owner or a tenant, you have a right to stand for the local authority, so you already have a statutory right.

I am saying that the more you include, the more you think others should be included. The real purpose of the amendments is to try to take away all the definitions and just say “local people” or if you want some definitions make it inclusive and not exclusive.

Amendment 18 adds,

“or use facilities provided by the authority”.

Many councils provide all kinds of facilities such as schools, leisure facilities, parks, subsidised bus services or whatever which are used by people who do not live in the authority but who have a perfectly reasonable interest in what the authority does, in making their own representations and in taking part in the local democracy of the authority which makes the decisions. Those of us who are members of local authorities get petitions from people who do not live in the authority because what we are doing affects what they are doing and their lives.

Amendment 19 points out that the franchise is different from what the Government are proposing and that there are people who are entitled to stand for the authority who do not come within their categories. They surely have a right to make representations and take part in democratic debate in the authority. Indeed, there are people who are entitled to stand for the council who do not come within the category that the Government are putting forward.

The purpose of these amendments is to suggest that the Government should be as general and inclusive as possible and should reject my detailed amendments that suggest additional categories in favour of removing all categories. They should simply say “local people” and leave it to common sense.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has probed the meaning of “local people” quite extensively with these amendments. I agree that the definition is curious. It is restrictive but nebulous. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right to question how we define “live”. How much of the year must a person spend in his home to qualify? Is it six months and a day or all the year round? What about owners of second homes? I am sure many Members of the Committee will have something to say about how they would be defined because of where they live most of the week. What about people who own property but do not live in it for whatever reason? Are they included or excluded?

The noble Lord made other suggestions about people whose connection with an authority is just as substantial as those who are covered in the Bill. It seems that anyone with a connection to the services provided by a local authority could be said to have a sufficient local connection to warrant inclusion. A person who studies occasionally in a local authority’s area may have less interest in the working and functions of that authority than someone who regularly uses the service that the authority provides, even though he may live elsewhere. It could be argued that someone who chooses not to participate in the life and prosperity of a local authority does not need to have the local authority dutifully promoting itself to them. These are not arguments that I wish to pursue to a ridiculous degree because the Government could get themselves out of the tangle of definitions of who must be considered as a local person simply by removing the duty.

To my surprise, I find myself in agreement with quite a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said because he gave examples of people who have a connection with a local area but do not come within the Government’s definition. However, I cannot agree with one general point he made. He would alter the word “means” to “includes”. As this arises out of a duty on the local authority to promote understanding, and the Government intend that to be a serious duty, the local authority must want a clear definition of to whom the duty is owed. To have it at large would leave a great deal of undesirable uncertainty. The noble Lord has made a case for examining closely, and perhaps altering, the definition, but I agree that there should be a definition.

I am grateful to noble Lords for contributing to this debate. It is important that we understand the reasons for this definition as opposed to any of the other definitions suggested by the amendments or in debate. I shall explain the intention behind the existing definition of local people and the care that has gone into drawing it up.

Members of the Committee know that we are looking to require local authorities to help local communities to understand more about democratic processes, and so on. That includes all parts of the community—young people and old, those who are working and studying and those not in work, people with disabilities and all ethnic and faith communities. As I have said several times already this afternoon, this is about invigorating local democracy and the control that people feel they can exercise over everything from the quality of care for older people to their councils taking action to mitigate climate change. We have to balance that, as it is a large ambition, to ensure that we are fair to local authorities as well. We do not want to create a duty that is overly burdensome to local authorities—and noble Lords would certainly try to stop us doing that. We also want to establish a clear and understandable definition, and we believe that these terms, “live”, “work” and “study”, in their normal understanding, do that for us.

One reason why we cannot just say “local people” is, because, without a definition, as my noble friend Lord Borrie said, it would be very unclear who was included. It would make it very difficult for local authorities to know whether they had complied with the duty. Clearly, that is going to be extremely important. Consistent with the overarching approach that we are taking to trust local authorities to interpret this in a way that makes sense and in the spirit of the duties they owe to the communities, we have arrived at this definition. But it is also important that we provide such help as we can through guidance that will identify the nature of those groups of people whom local authorities should seek to reach. We will also suggest some methods to provide the relevant information to the local people.

On Amendment 14, I appreciate how the noble Lord has wrestled with this issue. It is complicated and it is important that we get it as right as we can. Amendment 14, by using the word “includes”, potentially broadens the group of people to whom the principal local authority is to promote understanding. The noble Lord argued that if there is going to be such a duty, it should reach the widest number.

Amendments 15 to 19 seek to alter the definition from “live”, “work” and “study” to one that is cumbersome and wordy, and includes people who live or own property or use facilities provided by the authority,

“or who are otherwise entitled to be registered as a local government elector for the authority or who are qualified to be a member of the authority”.

In choosing that wording, the noble Lord has abandoned any interest in people who work or study in the area. In so far as we are trying to provide an opportunity for young people who are engaged in education at all levels, we thought it important to include that opportunity, because they are young people who will be directly and intimately affected by any changes in the education system and who would want to get involved in any improvements. That would include any university students.

We also think that the terms that the noble Lord has come up with are extremely burdensome. With the term “use facilities” in Amendment 18, where does it end? Where are the boundaries here? Is it reasonable to try to impose a duty on local authorities to promote democracy for people who happen to be walking down one of the local streets, using the facilities? You could interpret it as broadly as that. Should Westminster City Council have a legal duty to promote democracy to the thousands of foreign visitors who happen to pass through the area during the course of a year? Should an authority be under a legal obligation to respond to petitions raised by transit passengers through an airport located in their area? Obviously, we would like to see Westminster doing all those things, but we are not persuaded that it is reasonable to impose legal obligations on it to do so.

On the second definition, “owning property”, our definition will capture the huge majority of people who own property and live in the area. The addition in the amendment puts an unnecessary burden on local authorities to promote democracy to people who do not live in the area but who may own property. That raises some major issues about how that could be exercised. Again, it is an unnecessary burden to place on local authorities.

We are looking, for example, at people who do not technically reside in the area. They could be absentee landlords or people with second homes. Do we want those people to understand the benefits of democracy? Of course we do. However, to bring that within the existing definition effectively is an onerous burden. We considered all sorts of formulations. We have not just thrown this together at the drop of a hat. We considered the term, “on the electoral register”, but that excluded too many people: the young, the homeless and the recently arrived. We considered the term “use services”; that was too broad.

The one thing that “live, work or study” has to commend it is that, in each case, there is an address that an authority can be sure either is or is not within the area. It provides a full scope for people who have a genuine interest and are genuinely affected by the services there. Linking to an address is also a clear criterion. It would be pointless and extremely expensive otherwise to pin down exactly who is to be included in this sort of definition. We do not want council officers to have to be engaged in the exercise of tracking down every last person. We want to give them, as simply as possible, an indication of the categories of people that they should be aiming their activities at. That is what we have done. With the best will in the world, the amendments are not a substantive improvement on that.

We would clearly want to offer additional help in the guidance to ensure that everybody had a clear understanding of what we meant. We would certainly be consulting on that. That would include suggestions of how local authorities could provide the relevant information across the whole range of media now available to them.

We have tried hard to deliver the intent of the clauses in this definition. I appreciate the noble Lord’s effort and how he has opened up the debate. I am sorry that I cannot accept his amendments; I genuinely think we have something that is about as robust and useful to local authorities as it could be.

That was all very interesting and, I am afraid, confirms me in my view that this is all a shambles. It is not robust and clear at all. I want to find some polite words that I can use in this Committee. The Government are running amok in a field full of cows and do not quite know where to go.

I was grateful for the partial support of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, but he really ought to stop standing up and saying that he is surprised to agree with me. He will find that we agree with each other on a large number of things. We should not be surprised, and should recognise when we disagree that that is okay.

When I listen to the Minister on what the councils will do, practically, to carry out this duty, I find myself wondering what it is. I think that they will print some leaflets and have them available in appropriate places. Appropriate places would be town halls, libraries and leisure centres, and then they could send them out to community centres and things like that. However, a lot of the people who will pick up leaflets in those areas will not fit into the Minister’s categories. They will be people who have gone to the swimming pool because it is a good one, but they live in the next borough. Or they will be people who go to the library but do not actually live in the area. Perhaps they will be second-home owners who only live there part of the time. They might be on the electoral register. The Minister says that her categories are clear, but the question of who lives in an area is far from clear for people with two or more homes.

This is not clear at all, and targeting leaflets in sensible places will reach people who are not in the Minister’s categories automatically and rightly. The Minister said that people have addresses and that a leaflet may be distributed or that the information might go in one of the free council newspapers that are churned out. That is fair enough, but they go door to door. They are not targeted at people who live there; they are targeted at the addresses that exist there at any given time.

The Minister said that there will be an address for all these people. There will not be an address for students. Will the council get their addresses from educational institutions and mail them out to them wherever they live? There will be addresses for workers perhaps. I cannot think that the council will contact all the employers and everybody who has a shop in an area but does not live there, and find out where they live in order to mail them out. I do not see that that is practical. One cannot target those groups in the clear, specific way that the Minister is talking about.

There will be a website. The obvious place to put information about who does what and how to get involved, which is what we are talking about, is the website, but that targets people with access to computers; it does not target people who happen to live, work or study there—although the people who study are more likely to look at computers than a lot of the people who live there.

The Minister’s arguments do not stack up. I am in favour of targeting institutions or places where people go for information such as this. One can have displays and people can pick the information up. Many of those institutions are the places or facilities that people go to because they are good, such as swimming pools, but those people do not necessarily live in the relevant local authority.

I understand that “includes” may not be a sensible word, but the Minister should abandon all attempts to define local people. Everybody knows who the local people are in a particular place. They belong to all the categories that we have been talking about and they do not necessarily live exactly within the boundary of the authority.

The idea that vast resources will be devoted to targeting everybody individually is nonsense; the resources will not exist. Councils will target sensible means of communication such as websites or local newspapers and sensible places where people might pick up the information. Otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said, it would mean a totally unacceptable increase in the council’s costs.

I am not in any way persuaded by what the Minister said, but I shall as always read it carefully. I do not know whether it is a sufficiently important issue to bring back at a later stage, but I ask the Government to think again about this. It does not matter too much in Chapter 1; but when we come to petitions, it will be crucial. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

This may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until Wednesday at 3.45 pm.

The Committee stands adjourned until Wednesday 21 January at 3.45 pm.