Report (5th Day)

Part of Localism Bill – in the House of Lords at 8:45 pm on 10 October 2011.

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Photo of Lord Greaves Lord Greaves Liberal Democrat 8:45, 10 October 2011

My Lords, I am very grateful for the long and comprehensive explanation. I am sorry-I have a cough, but I shall try to keep going until I get a drink of water. Thank you for that; I am glad that some of my elders and betters have got important things to do. I shall try not to spill water on the Bench.

I am grateful to everyone who has taken part in the debate. I shall simply say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I think that there are major problems with the whole of this Bill in urban areas, but these are matters to which we will come back time and again. To the noble Lord, Lord True, I will say that I do not think that the Liberal Party ever stood for workers control. There was a slight difference in the 1960s between the young Liberals and the party as such, as my noble friend who was in the young Liberals with me at the time will no doubt confirm.

The more explanations I hear about this, the more questions seem to come. I am extremely grateful for the efforts made to explain it all, but some of the answers that we get confirm that there are difficult questions that have not been resolved. As for the coalition programme and open public services, in a sense they confirm my concerns. Involving employees and staff in running or even handing over services to groups of staff is something quite different and requires a different approach to that of a community right to challenge. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that employees have to be seen as a group, as a body, and not as individuals. When councils recognise relevant bodies in the community, as I read it, they are recognising voluntary groups. They are recognising community groups. They are recognising parish councils representing the community. However, when it comes to employees, any two or three or half a dozen people seem to be able to come along and ask to be recognised as a relevant body, whereas what they seem to be is a group of individuals. I think that if transferring services to staff is going to be successful, it has to be done by negotiation and agreement across the staff, not just by two or three individuals, who may be disaffected because they have not been promoted and think they ought to have been, or who may be senior members of staff who think that they can run things perfectly well but do not have the support of everybody in their departments. There are serious problems here that will come out in practice. I suspect the matter will come back to allow a better and more comprehensive view of it.

As the Government have said in all the briefings, they would have to show how they propose to engage their staff in their proposals. Surely they should have engaged them and got their views before they put the proposals in, not afterwards. We were told that this would take up a lot of time, energy and resources, but if asking the people who are going to be working in this enterprise is going to take up too much time and energy, how on earth are they going to find the time and energy to put in the sort of comprehensive bid that, we are assured, is an absolute safeguard that it is going to be a serious bid?

Bulky Bob's gets raised quite a lot in your Lordships' House. I suppose most of us have been there to see it at various times, and it is great. However, Bulky Bob's has done what it did under the present system by agreement and negotiation with the councils and the communities in which it works. It did not do it by challenging them from outside. In a sense, I do not think that it is a good argument for the Bill at all.

We are grateful for all the policy statements in the briefings that have been produced, even if some of them seem to confuse more than help. In Committee my noble friend the Minister said he hoped that we would have draft regulations by this time, so that at least we could look at them rather than the much vaguer policy statement. I know that he has made strenuous efforts to try to achieve that. It has not been possible, but it is not his fault at all. However, when we see the regulations, I think that we will have a better idea of whether this is going to work and how it is going to work. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 197CA withdrawn.

Amendment 197CB not moved.

Amendment 197D

Moved by Baroness Hanham

197D: Clause 69, page 61, line 1, after second "body" insert ", other than a public or local authority,"

Amendment 197D agreed.

Amendment 197DA not moved.

Clause 70 : Timing of expressions of interest

Amendment 197E

Moved by Baroness Hanham

197E: Clause 70, page 61, line 20, leave out subsection (5)

Amendment 197E agreed.

Clause 71 : Consideration of expression of interest

Amendment 197EZA

Moved by Lord Greaves

197EZA: Clause 71, page 61, line 26, at end insert-

"(1A) The Secretary of State may by regulations specify an annual cost of a relevant service at or above which level a relevant authority may reject an expression of interest.

(1B) An annual cost of a service that is specified under subsection (1A) shall be set at the level at or above which a full open tendering process is required to take place by any Act or regulations."