The Chair: The apology is accepted, but I am not sure that any one would have realised that.

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Ian Mearns: At the outset, the Minister's opening gambit was to say that the Bill would give a limitless general power of competence to local authorities. In answer to the hon. Member for Bradford East, the Minister talked about previous legislation. I thought that the whole idea behind the Localism Bill was to free up local authorities to determine their own future in any way they see fit - I am talking about in a reasonable world, with reasonable people behaving reasonably. The limitlessness of the Bill as the Minister describes it only goes to clause 2. Further restrictions are then put on it in clauses 3 and 4 and so on. I am struggling to see where any limitlessness to the powers of local authorities under this Bill can stretch. I really am struggling with that whole concept.

Andrew Stunell: Put that down to me learning the job. Perhaps there is a better word than "limitless". The fact that we are not defining every boundary of this power in clause 1 is deliberate. In the past, local authorities could only do things that were permitted to them by legislation. We are now inverting that and saying, "You can do anything that isn't forbidden by legislation." That does not mean that we are taking away the current forbidden territory and saying to authorities that they can go into the forbidden territory. It is not saying that they can abandon their statutory and legal duties that are imposed by existing legislation. Perhaps it is that concept that I failed to convey in my previous contributions. I apologise if that is the case.

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Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab): A little thought: it might involve cross-border arrangements between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, for example. Also, if there was a large fire in France, a tender could be put out through the European procurement regulations for someone to come and put the fire out.

Robert Neill: Apparently it does not include Northern Ireland, but I understand the point. Sometimes, because firefighters are in the business of saving lives, they are likely to respond and do the decent thing, even if the law is unclear. No one would criticise them for that.

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Ian Mearns: I served in a local authority for 27 years and am aware of different ways of running the committee system in different places. In my local authority in Gateshead, we had an open committee system whereby there was no whipping beforehand and committees could go on at length, rightly, to scrutinise properly the proposals put forward by officers and senior members. In other local authorities not too far away from where I was, the committees were pre-whipped and proposals went through on the nod. If that was to be the system adopted under the new proposals, it would seem only fair to allow a scrutiny system to be adopted, unless, of course, the local authority determined otherwise.

6.15 p.m.

Brandon Lewis: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but he fails to point out that, ultimately, on any council, there is always a council meeting where councillors - whether in opposition or not - can make comments and speak against an issue that they were not happy with when it was brought up earlier.

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Ian Mearns: I understand that the hon. Gentleman found compelling evidence on his trip to Torbay that the authority in that one place might want to go down that route. However, in the eyes of the local electorate, who would be the most qualified person to take over the dual role of mayor and chief executive? From the perspective of the local population, given the expertise that they would want from the head of paid service in the local authority, the answer would probably be the chief executive. Although the chief executive would appoint a head of paid service, he would still be the head of paid service. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has taken account of the implication in the Bill that 12 very large local authority areas will be compelled to go down that line. It is not a question of whether they would want to do that. Torbay might, but Manchester or Birmingham might not.

Stephen Gilbert: When we get to the relevant provision, I am sure that we will properly explore that matter. However, as I understand the Bill, 12 major cities will be subject to a referendum on whether they want an elected mayor. I do not think that giving somebody a choice is quite the same thing as compelling them to do it. The hon. Gentleman makes the point that we would still need a head of paid service, but of course we would not - the Bill makes that clear. The Bill will enable some local authorities - Torbay or perhaps the Greater London authority - to make arrangements that will empower one individual to set clear directions for the authority. Such directions are sometimes vague at present, and they are not transparent or clear.

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Ian Mearns: I am interested in the relationship. If the mayor becomes the chief executive officer and there is a separate head of paid service - I accept that there is that distinction - would it mean that in the new relationship under which the mayor is the chief executive officer, the head of paid service would be impelled to follow instruction from the mayor?

Andrew Stunell: As I think we all understand, a local authority is not a regiment of soldiers. An obligation to follow a command does not have the same force as it would in a military situation. The position will be exactly the same as if the deputy chief executive received an instruction from the chief executive, because if it were lawful and sensible, it would be followed. I do not think that the Nuremberg defence would get the head of paid service very far, if he said that he was just instructed to do something. I am not sure how I can answer that question in a meaningful way, except to say that there would be a power relationship between the mayor and the head of paid service, with the head of paid service carrying out the instructions that he or she received from the mayor.

Ian Mearns: I accept that distinction, but there would be a different nuance from if, under the current arrangements, the deputy chief executive of the council was given an instruction from the leader of the council. The deputy chief executive would have to take advice from his chief executive and other legal officers about following a particular set of instructions.

Andrew Stunell: As the hon. Gentleman said earlier, local authorities have different cultures. I could point him to some local authorities in which what the leader says is the word of God to everybody else, but I could also point him to others in which the word of the chief executive is more towards that position. A wide range of things is happening in local authorities at the moment, and our proposal is within that wide range.

I will pick up two other points that were made. I was asked whether there are any examples of a move from dual leadership to single leadership. The example that I have in front of me is that of the elected mayors of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The dual leadership model has ended there and the exact system that we propose has been introduced.

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Ian Mearns: Those arrangements would be forced into place quite soon after the agreement was made. Do the measures at all affect, in retrospect, any of the existing mayoral model towns and cities around the country?

Andrew Stunell: The arrangements are specifically for the new category of mayor, if I may call it that, in the large cities. Other provisions foresee the possibility of existing mayors adopting such powers on their initiative over time. That is what my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East was referring to.

The measures will give councils an opportunity to streamline their administration and to make significant savings - taking council chief executives off the payroll and combining the remaining head of the paid service post with other statutory posts such as monitoring officer or finance officer. Under the mayoral arrangements, the mayor can issue reports - currently issued by the head of the paid service - on matters such as how the council can discharge its functions and the number and grades of staff it needs to do so.

Amendment 42, it appears, would limit the mayor's discretion, compelling him or her to issue such reports regardless of whether they were necessary or appropriate. If we put in place a mayor with substantial executive powers, it seems sensible to let him or her exercise those powers.

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Ian Mearns: Another anomaly in the North-East region is that since the unification of both Durham and Northumberland counties into unitary authorities, Durham is now the biggest geographical and population area of the single-tier authorities in that region. It has a population of almost 500,000 and, although it is a geographical county, it is a unitary authority. It should not therefore be discriminated against in relation to Newcastle or anywhere else.

Robert Neill: The same proposition applies if the hon. Gentleman wants to table an amendment on Durham. It is a bit rich to talk about Durham as an example, because it was his Government who imposed a unitary authority on the people of Durham, without giving them any referendum - and they did so by secondary legislation.

I have set out my stall on that issue, and I will return to the gist of the amendment. The Government have made it clear - it is part of the coalition agreement - that we believe in encouraging directly elected mayors in the major provincial cities of England. Those cities are the obvious places for directly elected mayors because, as the hon. Member for Sunderland Central and others have indicated, they have a real sense of identity and place, and people and businesses identify with them. They are therefore the most appropriate places to start having the directly elected mayor model. That would exactly replicate what we see in the great provincial cities of Europe and north America. We take the view that those mayors, having the legitimacy of being directly elected, can be given additional powers

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

The full transcript may be read here.

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