Clause 41 - Report by local authority in
Anti-social Behaviour Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 74, in
clause 41, page 32, line 25, leave out 'seven' and insert 'twentyone'.
This is a short point. All that I want to say, without too much of a pun, is that seven days, which is what the Government have proposed in clause 41, is too short. I was encouraged in tabling the amendment, which is a serious one, by the comments of the leader and the chief executive of Surrey Heath, the main local authority in my constituency. I meet the leader and the chief executive regularly, and every time I do they say that even though the Government want to ensure that powers are given to local authorities, the difficulty is that there are costs associated with those powers, and the Government do not provide the funding to accompany the new obligations imposed on local authorities.
At this point in the afternoon, I do not want to start a huge new debate about local authority finance. When I left the Chamber earlier, there was much discussion of that issue in relation to education funding. Such a debate would not be appropriate here, and would probably be out of order. However, this matter is an example of something about which I hope the Government will have second thoughts. Even if the Minister cannot say today that he will agree to a time scale of 21 days, I hope that he will consider the suggestion seriously in the spirit in which it is put forward, and perhaps introduce it later as a Government amendment. Even 14 days—although I have suggested 21—would be better than seven.
It is far too onerous an obligation to expect small borough councils such as Surrey Heath—and there are local authorities that are even smaller, more rural and more remote than that—to produce such a report in seven days. That is all I need to say about the amendment, but I do so in the knowledge that I have the full support of my local authority chief executive and of many other local authority chief executives and leading officers. The Government should not force local authorities to act within such a short time scale. It would be better and more flexible if the time scale were extended to 21 days.