Local Government: Nolan Principles

10:59:00

I will call Alberto Costa to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up,.

I beg to move, That this House has considered the effectiveness of the Nolan Principles in local government. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the Nolan principles, which are selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. Those seven principles embody everything that we, as elected representatives, should strive for on behalf of our constituents. They are the guiding principles for anyone in elected office. MPs and elected representatives at all levels of local government are overwhelmingly public-spirited and dedicated people who always embody the Nolan principles in their work. Having served on the Privileges and Standards Committees for the last five years, which I am honoured to now chair, I have seen at first hand that elected representatives do, at times, sadly fall short of the principles.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. Does he agree that for most honourable people, the desire to live up to the highest standards of the Nolan principles is inherent? For people who do not live by those principles, however, there must be more than a suggestion—indeed, there must be a requirement—to stand by them.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome intervention, with which I entirely agree. Not only should publicly elected councillors—at parish, town, local authority, district and county level—be obliged to follow those principles but, importantly, a code of conduct developed and underpinned by those principles should have teeth. What he is ultimately saying is that there must be appropriate sanctions, as there are for us as Members of this House. For some of those Members who fall short, sometimes those are cases of minor lapses—moments of frustration or poor judgment—while other times they are severe errors, with devastating consequences for colleagues, staff and the reputation of elected office. Such errors are not unique to elected representatives; to err is human, and no human being is without flaws. That said, it is right that elected representatives, while undertaking their public duties, are held to a higher bar. That is not about their private lives, but about the work that we, and local authority councillors, do in the course of our public duties.

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate on the Nolan principles, which I have been very interested in for a long time, working in public service. In a digital-first world, with so much of our lives documented and undertaken online, does he agree that there is a greater necessity for a reimagination of the Nolan principles?

That is an interesting point. I must confess that I have not considered it, so I would welcome any further information or a further briefing from the hon. Member on what he means by that, particularly in my role as Chair of the Standards Committee. The Nolan principles must ensure that elected representatives are held to account properly, at every level of local government. In Labour’s plan for local government reorganisation and a new structure, the way that standards are dealt with must not be neglected. I hope that the Minister will say a few words on local government reorganisation, and how he thinks the Nolan principles and any code of conduct might underpin that. I think we can all agree that the current regime is failing. Issues of misconduct, bullying and harassment in local government—parish, town, county and district—have become worse. I know of parish councillors in my constituency whose lives have been made a misery through months and, in many cases, years of verbal abuse, intimidation and harassment from fellow councillors. In Leicestershire, one instance of constant harassment and relentless, vexatious complaints resulted in a parish council officer dramatically resigning during a parish council meeting. I have no doubt that hon. Members have witnessed or heard similar stories in their constituencies. Those bad apples make up only a small minority of councillors but even so, according to a 2017 report by the Society of Local Council Clerks, “15% of parish councils experience serious behaviour issues… 5% are effectively dysfunctional as a result of them.” So where does the current regime fall short? First, there is no clear definition of bullying or harassment in the Localism Act 2011, which leaves it to monitoring officers to interpret vague codes of conduct inconsistently. What is serious in one district area is dismissed in another. Town and parish councils have no internal mechanism to investigate breaches of conduct. At the same time, principal authorities are also powerless to enforce meaningful sanctions, except in cases serious enough for criminal referral. The 2018 Ledbury town council case exposed a major flaw in the system. The council was forced to pay more than £200,000 in legal fees for trying to sanction a councillor through an internal grievance process. That highlighted a fundamental problem: parish councils lack the power to act independently, while principal authorities have no real enforcement mechanisms. Accountability falls into limbo unless there is clear criminal conduct. My speech is not about criminal conduct; it is about the issues that we as Members of this House are familiar with—bullying, sexual misconduct, harassment and the like. If the public were able to hold rogue councillors—the minority—to account properly at the ballot box, I would be less concerned, but the gaps in legislation are made worse by the democratic deficit, certainly at the parish level, where elections often lack enough willing candidates to ensure true accountability. In the May 2015 elections, for example, only 20% of eligible parishes contested their vacancies. The ballot box rarely holds councillors to account, and even if it does, it can often be too late. We know that accountability problems will be more pronounced in areas that have a unitary authority, which is the direction of travel under this Government, as parishes may be given even greater powers due to the abolition of district councils. I hope that the Minister can comment on what consideration the Government are giving to that specific point or, if he is unaware, that he will write to me after the debate. For now, I encourage the Government to consider the following steps to strengthen accountability, and to protect town and parish councillors and those who work for town and parish councils. First, I suggest amending section 27(3) of the Localism Act 2011 to give a clear definition of bullying that explicitly covers persistent verbal abuse, intimidation or behaviour that causes significant distress to other parish or town councillors or those who work for parish or town councils. That would give monitoring officers of principal authorities a firmer basis on which to act, and would set a threshold for escalation, distinguishing heated debate from harassment. The next step would be to mandate standards committees in all principal authorities, which would be tasked with impartial investigations, deciding on allegations and imposing sanctions. Those committees, supported by truly independent persons, would bring consistency, credibility and impartiality into an appropriate disciplinary system. Here in the House of Commons, as part of the Committee that I chair, we have seven lay members alongside seven Members of Parliament, and as the Chair, I do not have a vote other than in the event of a tie. That means that the seven lay members provide the impartiality that the House wants when disciplining its own Members.

The Nolan principles also apply to officers working in the public sector. I am a regional mayor, as well as a Member. I am aware that a regional mayor in the east of England is currently talking with a chief constable about officers under the previous mayor making decisions that should have been made by politicians—in other words, the normal rules and policies seemingly being circumvented. It troubles me that the interim officers who work for local authorities or regional authorities move on quite quickly. They do not stay very long, and if something questionable is subsequently found, they are not bound to take part in any inquiry. That means that the Nolan principles can be completely circumvented; it drives a coach and horses through the good principles. I agree with everything that the hon. Member has said so far, but does he think there should there be a special circumstance or a modification to the rules to allow those officers, who keep moving around and carry on working in local government, to be held to account? I also ask the Minister what the Government will do to make sure, where questionable things have happened, that the local authorities to which those interim officers go are alerted about that. Those local authorities should know that irregularities have taken place.

Order. Can we have shorter interventions in future?

I thank the hon. Member for his welcome intervention, which highlights another issue that I am not entirely familiar with. Although this debate is concerned with elected officials, he rightly asks about what happens if people charged with the oversight of the Nolan principles as independent officers move on to other jurisdictions. There is, of course, the contract of employment that underpins the individual’s duties, but there may well be a lacuna in that area. Again, I would welcome the hon. Member writing to me with a further briefing so that I can ascertain whether there is a link to ensure that that would not damage the mechanism that I am proposing to the Minister, which is for independent officers to have more appropriate oversight. As I have indicated, mandating in all principal authorities standards committees, tasked with impartial investigations and deciding on allegations, would bring consistency. Thirdly, I suggest amending legislation to make parish councils formally accountable to their principal authority, which currently is not the case. That could include annual governance reports, direct intervention powers for serious breaches, and the provision of training to prevent issues from arising. Those are basic, bread-and-butter issues in which we as Members of Parliament are encouraged to take a more active part, particularly when it comes to training. Parishes should retain autonomy, but the principal authority should act as a backstop for serious failures, reinforcing local governance without reverting to a centralised control such as the standards board. Finally, we must address the absence of robust sanctions. There is a total lack of sanctions when councillors at parish, town and local authority level have been found wanting, with the exception of criminal conduct, which is dealt with separately. The power to suspend councillors —say, for up to six months—for proven bullying or harassment is essential. Currently, a counsellor can shrug off the consequences and return to the next meeting unchecked. Instead of facing the consequences, effectively nothing is done. That has an impact not just on the proper functioning of the parish or town council, but on the staff working for that parish or town council, who may themselves be the victims of the bullying or harassment. Worse still, I have heard of cases where entire councils have resigned in despair, powerless against a single disruptive individual. Suspension would offer immediate relief to victims and signal that misconduct has a cost, as it does here in the House of Commons, and as we have proven over the past few years. Much of what I am saying echoes the 2019 review by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which called for councils to suspend councillors without allowances for up to six months. The Government rejected those proposals in 2022, citing risks to free speech, and I sympathise with that, but the new Government’s 2024 consultation on sanctions suggests a welcome shift. Perhaps the Minister can say a few words about that. We must not return to a time of bureaucratic excess and politically motivated complaints threatening freedom of expression. That is not what I am arguing for, and that is not what we see in the House of Commons. But with reports of bullying rife at parish levels and changes to local government structure in the pipeline, it is time to reconsider the recommendations of the 2019 Committee on Standards in Public Life report. I encourage the Government to take the opportunity they now have with local government reorganisation to make a positive impact by ensuring that what we see applied to all of us here in the House of Commons is mirrored in some form to other valued elected public officials.

11:18:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond, and to attend this debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) for securing it. A key commitment of this Government was to strengthen the standards regime and integrity in public life. Specifically, that means a very active commitment to working together to create a fit, legal and decent local government sector that is equipped to rise to the challenge and opportunity of increased devolution of power and resources from Whitehall. Our proposals to achieve that were set out in the “English Devolution” White Paper, published in December last year, which included measures to fix our broken audit system; improve oversight and accountability; give councils genuine freedoms to work for and deliver in the best interests of their communities; and, with particular reference to the theme of this debate, improve the standards and conduct regime. We are wasting no time in getting on with the task. The day after the “English Devolution” White Paper was published, we launched a 10-week consultation on strengthening the standards and conduct framework for local authorities in England. The consultation, which closed on 26 February, sought views on reforms to the standards and conduct regime so that the public can have trust and confidence that all councils in England can be effective and well governed. Although he did not go as far as I might, I think the hon. Member for South Leicestershire was hinting that the previous Government, in the early part of that Government—with the removal of the standards regime and the audit regime, and measures such as the removal of councillors’ pensions in England—engaged in what many of us now reflect were, in large part, acts of municipal vandalism. They took away the architecture that allowed local government to thrive. The challenge is big, but we understand that we need to take significant steps to improve the situation. All of us here today know the seven principles of public life—honesty, integrity, objectivity, accountability, selflessness, openness and leadership—which have underpinned the ethical standards of all public office holders for the last 30 years. They are, and have been, the foundation of the code of conduct for Members of the House, the ministerial code and all who serve in local government and the wider public sector. Doug Chalmers, the current chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, gave a speech at the Institute for Government in November last year on the 30th anniversary of the establishment of that committee. In that speech, he reflected on the three golden threads that Lord Nolan had set out that need to be delivered alongside the Nolan principles—first, the code of conduct; secondly, independent scrutiny; and thirdly, education. As Lord Nolan acknowledged, the Nolan principles were not a code of conduct, but the values that would underpin a code. An effective code needs to clearly detail the behaviours that those in public office must observe to repay the public’s trust and confidence, as the hon. Member for South Leicestershire referred to. The principles are a foundation, but the behavioural code is not quite there. There are examples in the councils that the hon. Member mentioned, and actually in some councils right across the country, of bad behaviour being far too common. That cannot stand. While the standards proposals that the Government have been consulting on are for whole system reform, at their foundation is the proposal for a mandatory code of conduct. We believe that a mandatory code is vital to achieving consistency across all the various types and tiers of local government. The current regime simply requires all local authorities to adopt a code that is consistent with the Nolan principles. Some take the de minimis approach of simply listing the seven principles. Others have very detailed local codes. That lack of consistency is not helpful to the system overall. It is confusing and means that we cannot have confidence that all are judged to the same standard equally across the system. That does not happen in the devolved nations. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have mandatory codes of conduct in place, based on the Nolan principles but setting out detailed interpretation of the expected behaviours.

Where there are bad behaviours, that often results in significant legal costs to the local authority and settlement payments. The Government are giving more powers to combined authorities. Does the Minister agree that where a combined authority incurs significant legal costs and settlement payments relating to staff who have left, whether employed or interim, that information should be shared in a timely fashion with board members? If so, will he write to me to confirm that that is the Government’s position?

We have set out a very clear expectation about transparency and all authorities, whether they are local authorities or combined authorities, always acting in the public interest and being up front about information that they hold. That expectation is clear. I can respond in writing in more detail.

Can I press the Minister on that point? Does that transparency include sharing those settlement payments and legal costs with the authority’s board members? It strikes me as remarkable if those costs are not even shared with board members. He has very helpfully clarified that he expects transparency. I would like that transparency to be with the public—perhaps he can say something on public disclosure—but can he at least confirm that the information should be shared with board members?

I will follow up after the debate on the example that the right hon. Gentleman is referring to. I commit to finding out a bit more information through the Department and will respond in writing. As a matter of principle, it is not unreasonable to expect that board members, as opposed to the wider public, are informed about matters of financial relevance to the operation of the board. That seems fairly self-evident to me. If he provides more information on the particular case, which I am not familiar with, I will certainly come back to him on that. I am enormously grateful for the more than 2,000 responses that we received to the Government’s standards consultation. We are working at pace to analyse the results. We will think carefully about how to take into account the views that were expressed for each of the proposals that we have set out. The Government response will be issued in due course, and after its release, we will continue to work actively with local government on developing detailed implementation. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire mentioned reorganisation, and although I completely acknowledge the examples of poor behaviour that he identifies—I have witnessed such things in some authorities, too—I would be careful not to attach local government reorganisation as an inherent risk to the standards and behaviours of councillors. I think this is cultural, and it is about a lack of framework and, honestly, slightly a result of a standards regime that has not got teeth. There are some members who know that what they are doing is not right, and that that is not just about free speech, but about abusing the position they hold and the freedoms. We often see that relationship, where elected members who are holding court in the council chamber attack officials on the top table who have no power to respond themselves. We see that power imbalance taking place. I suspect that most elected members who are behaving in that way know exactly that their behaviour is not okay, but they also know that the standards regime has no teeth to deal with that, so what are the consequences? I would be careful not to attach that behaviour to the reorganisation point, because we want to rebuild the system from the ground up, so that every council in England—whether they are part of the 21 counties going through reorganisation or are among the rest—is subject to the same robust standards regime that does have teeth. Let me return to the subject under debate by dealing with some of the points about not allowing the system to be used for political ends and how it has to be held up to all scrutiny at all levels. This is about having a proportionate system that can hold up to scrutiny and be tested, but it has to be mandatory. It must have sanctions that matter, including the power of suspension, the power to withhold allowances, if that is correct, and the power for premises bans, if there is a safeguarding risk at play. We have examples where councillors can be on police bail for sexual assaults, and during police bail, they can attend council meetings and attend the premises. That clearly would not be acceptable to most members of the public, but the current regime allows that, and that cannot be allowed to stand. Perhaps more controversially, the system should include disqualification in some cases for more serious breaches.

Will the Minister address my point about interim officers, or perhaps write to me if there is not time today?

I will return in writing to the point about interim officers being able to move around and whether they are held to the Nolan principles as a founding principle. This debate is more about the standards regime that governs elected members in that context, and that is the consultation that we undertook. I have no doubt that the Nolan principles will continue to be enormously influential in contributing to the effectiveness of local government. They are a prescription for the values to foster a culture of integrity and ethical behaviour. This Government are committed, at the heart of our ambition for the whole of local government, to creating a fit, legal and decent local government sector, and that is what the public have a right to expect. To be effective, local government must serve to foster vibrant local democracy. It must encourage a wide diversity of talented people to step forward to represent their local communities in that position, and we are committed to working to that end. Question put and agreed to.

11:28:00