Local Government (Audit Practice)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:53 pm on 28 July 1983.

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Photo of Mr Derek Spencer Mr Derek Spencer , Leicester South 5:53, 28 July 1983

I am glad of this opportunity to address the House for the first time. I arrive here with a majority of seven votes. It is an exhilarating experience. I feel as though I have pitched my camp on the side of an abyss. I look out and the prospect is exciting, but at the same time it inculcates a proper sense of the laws of political gravity.

On 9 June the electors of Leicester, South put out one Yorkshireman and put in another. My predecessor, Jim Marshall, represented the constituency from October 1974, and he did so with the characteristics to be expected of someone who had the good fortune to be born under the white rose. He represented it with plain speaking and energy, and, as he dons his pads for his new venture, no doubt he will ruminate somewhat ruefully on the difference between a ball that shaves the off stump and the one that just clips it. I wish him well in his new endeavour and thank him on behalf of the people of Leicester, South.

Elections in Leicester, South can sometimes turn on very fine events, and I am not referring to a matter which will have interested hon. Members, that of absent voters on holiday. I am referring to two other matters, the first being voters who happen to be in hospital in the time leading up to the election.

In Leicester there were 400 patients in the Leicester general hospital during the time leading up to the date when applications for postal votes had to be made. An administrator in due course applied on their behalf for postal votes, the papers arrived and they were duly filled in. But they did not return to the returning officer until 20 minutes after the closing date, so they were disallowed. Another hospital in Leicester asked for papers for people to vote by post, and although it was sent a number, they were never returned. A third hospital did not even bother to ask.

But it was not there that the chance events ended. They went even further and related to the mechanics of voting, which in a number of respects are still lodged in the horse and buggy days, for in respect of the perforations which must be on the ballot paper a strange situation occurred in Leicester, South. In one of the recounts—at about 4 o'clock in the morning—the agent for the Labour party quite properly asked that the ballot papers should be scrutinised for perforation marks. So they were held up —all 55,000 of them—and it took a considerable time, rather like checking bank notes, although by that time enough was known about the likely outcome of the election for us to attach to them a value much greater than any bank note.

When that exercise had been performed to everybody's satisfaction it was found that 46 of the papers did not have a perforation mark and therefore were declared invalid. Of those, 27 had been cast in my favour and 19 for Jim Marshall. In other words, there was a difference between us of eight in respect of disqualified papers. If those papers had been valid and the figures had been the other way round, hon. Members would be listening to a familiar voice now. If they had not been cast away, I would have more than doubled my majority at a blow.

The Leicester, South which I inherited from Jim Marshall is rather different from the Leicester, South which he inherited from Lord Boardman in the autumn of 1974. The noble Lord is still remembered with affection in this House and I pay tribute to him on behalf not only of the electors of Leicester, South but of the whole of greater Leicester for the public service he has rendered for many years and for the help he gave me in the months leading up to the general election.

It is right that I should speak of Leicester as a city of enterprise and religious toleration. It has historically been a city of both, and in recent times there has been added to it a new dimension, in terms both of enterprise and of religious toleration.

Those who have been in this place before will be no strangers to the composition of the electorate in Leicester, South. About 27 per cent. of the electorate is Asian in origin. The members of the Asian community came to south Leicester, for the most part, during the past 10 years. Some of them came as refugees from Uganda. Some came in spite of the efforts that were made by the Labour group on the city council to direct them elsewhere by placing an advertisement in the Kampala Times that stated that Leicester was full, its resources would not allow it to take any more immigrants, and that those who planned to go to Leicester should go elsewhere. There was no greater signpost to Leicester as a haven of rest and refuge for those seeking it, and consequently they came in large numbers.

These people added to the small businesses that were already there by the businesses that they brought with them. They have had the same difficulty in setting up and maintaining their small businesses as the host community has had in the face of the high and sometimes unconscionable rate levels that have been levied by a Labour city council. The reaction to rate levels of that type knows no bounds in culture nor in background. There has been a welcome for such measures as have been introduced by the Government in the Local Government Finance (No. 2) Act 1982 and consequently in the code of practice that is before us.

The enterprise that the Asian community has shown in setting up its businesses alongside existing businesses and contributing significantly to employment opportunities in the city is to be found in another area. Its enterprise is not limited to business; it extends also to education. In 1981, Councillor Michael Cufflin and a number of friends set up a new grammar school in the tradition of the great Elizabethan grammar schools, one of which I had the honour to attend, and so many of which, if they have not escaped into the private sector, have been destroyed, lamentably, by the Labour party. Michael Cufflin, together with a number of colleagues, established a new grammar school in Leicester. It is prospering and it will prosper. It is heavily over-subscribed.

The efforts of Michael Cufflin and his friends have been matched by the Asian community. It too, despairing of the effects of compulsory comprehensive education upon its culture, has turned away from it, and a number of Moslems attached to the Asfordby street mosque have set up a secondary school for girls to ensure that their culture prospers.

Leicester has also shown a good example in religious toleration. Sikh gurdwaras, Hindu temples and Moslem mosques now dot the landscape, together with the synagogue which has been there for most of the century. The Ukrainian church is in another part of Leicester. In travelling across south Leicester one moves, in effect, across half the face of the world. Those who talk about a somewhat narrow approach to Britain's culture and religion would find it a salutary journey.

Having taken that journey, I turn to the motion via the place where I spent about five years before my arrival in this place—the town hall in the London borough of Camden where I spent the early hours of many mornings. I was often there at 3 o'clock and 4 o'clock in the morning—shades of things to come. At full council meetings in Camden there has been, until very recently, no guillotine and no time limit upon debate. As I spent my time there, far from agreeing with the words of the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) about councillors apparently being answerable to the local electors, I concluded that they were answerable to no one. Far from implementing the policies on which they had been elected by the local electorate, they were using all their energies in repealing the policy of central Government and sending the ratepayer the bill. Consequently, I decided to have recourse to the district auditor. I complained to him no fewer than 17 times when I became the deputy leader of the Tory group.

The complaints went to the district auditor regularly and he acknowledged them. The months ticked by and from this watchdog of the public purse there was not even a snarl, not even a baring of teeth. I despaired of any action being taken and then one day, quite suddenly, he took me and the Labour group entirely by surprise. Without any warning he leapt forward, figuratively, and grasped them by the collar, sank his teeth in and carried them off kicking and squealing into the High Court. He alleged by way of repetition of an argument that I had put before him that a settlement which the council had entered into of the dirty jobs strike in the winter of discontent, which no doubt has not entirely disappeared from the recollection of Labour Members, was unlawful on the ground that the council had broken national ranks, caved in and paid up to their friends in the trade union movement without bona fide negotiations. That argument was placed by the district auditor in front of the High Court.

The contrary argument was: "We were negotiating bona fide in the teeth of a legitimate industrial dispute. We may have paid more than other boroughs did, but we were acting honestly." They might have said under their breath, "We acted honestly even if we acted a little foolishly and with not too much steel." That was the argument of the Labour councillors. After many months the High Court declared in April 1982 that the councillors had not acted unlawfully.

That experience showed, for anybody who cared to consider it, how unsatisfactory was the system as it then stood. It gave no effective redress to the ratepayer and it involved the councillors in a long-drawn-out wrangle, during which time they wept crocodile tears and alleged that they might lose their homes. They complained that they were being treated harshly and that they had merely carried out the policy that they had been elected to implement.

The House may think that it was an unsatisfactory state of affairs from both points of view. So I welcomed the contents of the Local Government Finance (No. 2) Act and looked forward to something which would have teeth. If my optimism increased momentarily, it was quelled by what I heard from the hon. Member for Blaydon, especially when he said that the code of practice received almost the unequivocal blessing of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). That statement cannot be construed as a compliment in places where ratepayers are anxious to see that their interests are protected fully.

That situation applies as much in Leicester as in Camden or elsewhere. The code of practice and the enabling Act give the Minister powers to keep those matters under review. If the teeth that have been planted by the code of practice prove to be long enough, so much the better. It may be that the new Audit Commission and the new auditors will have learned their lessons in the light of what has happened. Perhaps an early snarl and an early growl will do the job. That will be a better approach than docilely doing nothing for a long period and then suddenly taking what may be criticised as draconian action.

I hope that the new commission will exercise its powers early and gently rather than late and fiercely. If that happens, some of the fears that I harbour about the code of practice will turn out to be misplaced. The hon. Member for Blaydon referred to paragraph 26 of the code of practice which might confirm one's misgivings. It states: The auditor should not be deflected from making a report because its subject matter is critical or unwelcome The new auditors who are the inheritors of the district audit function, whether they have moved from the public sector or are coming from the private sector, will walk in a field which will cause them to be subjected to unwelcome and party political criticism. That should be made known. The attempt to put steel into the spine, where it is feared that there is and will be none, is a defensive posture, which I do not entirely applaud. Perhaps my fears will not be borne out by events.

I welcome the code of practice, as far as it goes, and on behalf of the citizens of Leicester, South I shall keep it closly under review.

It has been said that all political careers end in tears—perhaps that is an exaggeration which is typical of the warp and weft of modern political life. Within a short time of my arrival in Parliament I heard a not-so-private sob of anguish. Perhaps there are still tears of disappointment drying in the eyes of some people who thought that they were in safe Labour seats. I hope that, when it is my time to leave Parliament, I leave as I came—with a smile.