Mr Desmond Swayne (New Forest West, Conservative)

Can the Minister explain subsection (1)(a)? It concerns

''A parish council subject to any of the duties in sections 3 to 6 of the Local Government Act 1999''.

Looking at those duties, it is clear that they are not a menu. Clause 3 (1) says that

''A best value authority must make arrangements to secure continuous improvement''

and clause 3(2) says that an authority must consult, and lays out those with whom it must consult. Clause 5(1) says that

''A best value authority must conduct best value reviews'',

and, under clause 6(1)

''A best value authority must prepare a best value performance plan''.

In each case, a best value authority must conduct all those functions; not any function, all of them. It troubles me that we should state that a parish council is subject to any of the duties, because if it is subject to one of them, it is subject to all. Is this merely a question of a loose use of language—in which case I shall be satisfied because it is not that grave—or have we missed something that is implicit in the use of ''any'' and about which we should be aware because of its implications in the clause?

Mr Robert Syms (Poole, Conservative)

I want to flesh the clause out in more detail. When I was a rural county councillor with 6,000 or 7,000 electors, I had some 11 parishes in my area. Can the Minister tell us whether a grant of £30,000 per year is open to any parish, of whatever size? Does that just relate to town councils in areas in which parish councils turn themselves into town councils? I notice that the grant is of £30,000 per year, not up to £30,000 per year. Is that a standard block grant that would not be varied if the council hit a particular target? Can the Minister give me a definition of size, an idea of how many councils qualify and some more detail as to what would be expected from a parish council in order for it to qualify for the £30,000 grant?

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

We now move to a slightly different subject; best value parishes. I assume that ''parishes'' includes town councils and parish meetings.

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

Yes.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

That is helpful. I assume also that it applies only to England. I understand that only 41 parishes currently satisfy the best-value criteria to qualify for the £30,000 grant to cover the audit and corporate costs of carrying out work relating to the best value functions; for example, performance bands and management reviews, and the functions helpfully read out by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West, contained in the Local Government Act 1999.

How much money has the Minister's Department set aside for the next three years to deal with the provisions of subsection (2)? Is the Minister constantly reviewing which parishes should receive best value status? Is an announcement likely soon on more whether more parishes will be given best value status?

I have a slight problem with parish meetings, because many parishes are small hamlets; sometimes a group of only two or three houses. Would it usually be relevant for them to have best value status? Even if it were relevant, would they be willing to manage the increased duties? Will the Minister confirm that the best value status lasts for only a year? If not, how long does it last, and how can parish councils plan for what they have to do?

Is there a mechanism for parishes to review whether they have reached the objectives set out in their plan when applying for best value status? What are the criteria for determination of best value, and is there a regional basis for awarding best value? Will the Minister give a fuller explanation? He unusually failed to give one when we last debated parish councils. Even if only the best value parish councils are required to take on extra duties, it follows that others are taking on fewer duties. I presume that those others must be the local district or borough councils. What will happen to their budgets as a result of devolving duties down to the parish councils?

We fully approve of as much power as possible being devolved down to parish councils, if the parish councillors feel able to take on those extra duties. It is entirely in line with our policy of devolving down to the lowest possible level, but I should like to hear from the Minister how it is expected to work.

We approve of best value councils, with the best being encouraged to do even better, but how will the mechanism encourage the laggards—those at the bottom of the pile—who do a pretty lousy job on behalf of their communities? How will the mechanism encourage them? Will there be some form of twinning, or will the best value councils be able to give advice to poorly performing parish councils?

Finally, I reiterate what I said at an earlier sitting. We hear not only anecdotally but from our constituency correspondence that a number of parish councillors are resigning because of the increasing complexity of the tasks being imposed on them. We must be mindful of the fact that we want to encourage a broader spectrum of the community to become parish councillors. If parish councillors do not wish to take on those duties, the duties should not be forced upon them.

The auditing regime that is envisaged may be a problem, because a large part of the £30,000 grant will be spent on the increased complexity of the audit requirements. I suspect that those increasingly complex audit requirements will be beyond the grasp of some parish councillors. If they feel that things are going on that they cannot fully grasp, one should not be surprised if they feel disinclined to continue to be parish councillors or, indeed, decline to stand for the parish council in the first place. That would make the system work a little less well than it does at the moment, so I wonder whether some of the measures are counter-intuitive. I should be grateful if the Minister gave us a reasonable explanation of how the provisions will work and say what new functions parish councils would have to carry out.

Mr John Pugh (Southport, Liberal Democrat)

Much has been made of the Minister's munificence so far, and this seems to be another opportunity for him to show some minor munificence. What he said in response to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight showed some munificence, but it was not based on firm criteria. It was not, however, an act of caprice, as the hon. Member for New Forest, West suggested, although Ministers have acted capriciously in the past in relation to certain London boroughs and favouritism towards individual parish councils could be shown in theory. I notice that many clauses refer to the Minister acting as he sees fit, and I wonder whether anything in the Bill or in regulations that I have not so far discovered would prevent any Minister—maybe not this Minister—from acting capriciously and giving out small sums of money to selectively favoured authorities.

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

We have had an interesting short debate. I hope we will be able to make quick progress through the next few clauses, which are straightforward and demonstrate munificence. The Committee would be disappointed if we did not have good time to debate the highly innovative business improvement district programme in part 4.

Turning to the various points raised in the debate, I should first define a best value parish. In answer to the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), there is no risk of the clause being used capriciously because a best value parish is defined as one that has a budgeted income of at least £500,000 over three years. We are currently considering the years 1997–98, 1998–99 and 1999–2000, so there is no scope for a Minister to vary that definition. Any parish council with a budget over that amount is defined as a best value parish and will be expected to meet the best value objectives, which is why the obligations referred to by the hon. Member for New Forest, West are included.

The Government have decided that such bodies should receive financial assistance in the form of a £30,000 grant, which, in response to another question from the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), will be a fixed, not a variable, sum. Once the powers are introduced, that will be paid every year from now on to parish councils that qualify because of the size of their annual budgets.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

Is the Minister saying that, under the current criteria, only 41 councils qualify?

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

Yes.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

Will he say how many more expect to qualify and how much money he has put aside to cover the project for the next three years?

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

With the best will in the world, I was coming to that, but I was answering the questions of hon. Members who spoke first.

The key point is that there are specific provisions for authorities whose budgets meet the criteria. Therefore, there is no scope for capricious use of ministerial discretion. The money will be a helpful addition to the income of those authorities to help them meet the obligations of best value and to deliver efficiently to their local communities. As the hon. Member for Cotswold rightly said, there are 41 such

authorities. Although he highlighted the variations in size of parish councils generally, he will appreciate that the provision applies only to larger ones that have significant budgets. It is in everyone's interests that proper provisions should be put in place for organisations that are dealing with substantial amounts of money; more than £500,000 a year. I hope that that deals with the hon. Gentleman's point about parish meetings, which might technically be eligible. They would not quality unless their budgets were of the size that I mentioned. It is a far-fetched scenario that a parish meeting covering a small area would qualify as a best value parish.

The hon. Gentleman asked how much money had been set aside for grant. The answer is about £1.2 million in each of the three years. On the basis of recent trends, we do not anticipate any significant variation, but there will be some adjustment and we will therefore be prepared to make additional grant available if other parishes become eligible.

Mr Robert Syms (Poole, Conservative)

I presume that the definition of income concerns revenue income. One occasionally hears about small parish councils selling playing fields for housing and generating considerable capital receipts. That does not happen very often, but there are occasions when a few parish councils end up with small pots of money. Would those parish councils qualify if they raised £500,000 from the sale of a relatively small piece of land? If the Minister does not have an answer now, perhaps he could let me know in writing.

There is a category of local authority called chartered trustees, which followed reorganisation in the 1970s. Is a town run by chartered trustees—they may have a large budget—wholly excluded from the Bill?

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

I shall give the hon. Gentleman a written reply to his detailed question, but I can make it clear to him that the provision is designed to meet the costs of authorities with significant revenue budgets. It is not designed to encompass large, one-off capital transactions, which may occur in individual cases.

The hon. Member for Cotswold asked whether the assessment was on a regional basis. The answer is no because the criteria apply to budget size rather than to any other factors. He also asked whether best value parishes are discharging extra duties. In some cases the answer is yes because they have agreements with their local district councils to discharge certain local functions. He rightly highlighted that those arrangements are often advantageous because they ensure an input from small, local communities, which is to be encouraged. The agreements are between two tiers of local government—the district and the council—and I expect them to continue.

Where there are relatively large unitary authorities, whether they were created when the Conservative party was in government or by the Government's regional government proposals—I made this clear at the meeting of the Association of Larger Local Councils a few months ago—I would expect to see more scope for devolution. It is important that people

are locally in touch with services, and an effective parish council is a good way to achieve that.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold, Conservative)

It seems to be the trend that smaller parish councils are encouraged to work together. Under the proposals, is there a possibility that two or three councils could aggregate their budgets and functions to qualify for the best value grants?

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

The arrangements apply to existing parishes. If there were a proposal for an amalgamation of parishes into a new parish, we would look at the criteria. However, it is not possible for an administrative arrangement to be reached to enable a group of parishes to get through the barrier. The purpose of the £30,000 is to enable those authorities to discharge the responsibilities imposed by the best value regime, which is rightly all about ensuring proper auditing and observing respect for the proprieties of public office.

That brings me to the hon. Gentleman's point about the resignation of parish councillors, of which there have been some. I understand from the standards board that some parish councillors have not felt able to sign the basically straightforward undertakings to comply with the standards that apply to all people in public life, whether they are at parish council level, our level or local authority level. The standards board is an extremely thoughtful body that is approaching its responsibilities in a sensible and practical way. It advises me that there is nothing unreasonable about the application of those standards to parishes, which, as the hon. Gentleman will recognise, can take responsibility for substantial sums of money. Their budgets can be larger than that of a small district council, in which case the borderline between a parish council and a district council simply does not justify a different code of conduct.

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

Does the Minister agree that some of the requirements imposed by the standards board appear to be intrusive and disproportionate, particularly for very small parish councils?

Mr Derek Conway (Old Bexley & Sidcup, Conservative)

Order. Before the Minister is tempted too far into the subject of probity, I hope that he will address his remarks to the clause, as we are not dealing with the requirement at present.

Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich & Woolwich, Labour)

Thank you, Mr. Conway. I shall say a very brief no to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight to indicate my view, which I have already set out in response to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Cotswold. I shall not stray further into that territory.

We all believe that probity and honesty in public life are fundamental. It is right that all authorities should meet such obligations, and parish councils are not exempt. The provisions encourage and assist authorities to meet high standards of organisation and probity. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 36 ordered to stand part of the Bill.