Transport and the Environment Committee, 17 Apr 2002

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 17, 2002

Official Report 337KB pdf

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Local Government Covenant

We come to agenda item 7, which concerns the covenant between local authorities and the Scottish Parliament. A draft of the covenant and a covering letter from the convener of the Local Government Committee have been circulated to members. The covering letter explains that the draft covenant was drawn up on the recommendation of "The Report of the Commission on Local Government and The Scottish Parliament"—the McIntosh report. The convener of the Local Government Committee invites this committee and other subject committees to consider the draft covenant. Do members have views or comments to reflect to the Local Government Committee?

I have a couple of points. The covenant is to be welcomed. I assume that the Transport and the Environment Committee would welcome the covenant. Perhaps local government has not had the mechanisms to feed in uninvited views to parliamentary committees. We have invited evidence from councils, but it would be good if local government proactively took up issues with Parliament as a matter of course and not just when a crisis blows up.

Page 5, paragraph 19 of the draft covenant, referring to the local government and parliamentary representatives on the standing joint conference, states that there shall be

"not more than 16 from each side."

Paragraph 20 states that the geographical spread of local government and the balance of political representation will be maintained. Will 16 representatives be enough to do that? It appears that local government representatives to the standing joint conference will stand down annually. If all councils are to be represented at the conference over a three-year period, will there be rotating membership? What are the practicalities of that? For example, will a large council such as Glasgow not be represented at the conference for a year? I would like answers to those questions.

If the conference had more than 32 members, it would be an unwieldy structure that would find it difficult to do genuine business. I think that 32 members is possibly too many. It is important to maintain geographical diversity in the local government representation. The covenant will ensure that that is the case. The ultimate decision about who the local government representatives should be each year is for local government to make. However, it would be appropriate for this committee to ask how the geographical diversity will be maintained. We could also ask whether it would be appropriate for such a structure to exclude the biggest council in individual years and whether that is envisaged. We can ask those questions and reflect on them in the comments that we send to the Local Government Committee.

We are in the process of passing the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Bill, but bullet point 3 on page 4 of the draft covenant document introduces a secrecy clause into the covenant. If we are going to introduce a secrecy clause, it should be more tightly defined than that vague bullet point. In other words, there should be some recognition that confidentiality and secrecy should be observed only in extraordinary circumstances.

What is your proposed form of words?

I would like bullet point 3 to be more tightly defined. It is rather vague in that it just says that the Parliament and local government will

"respect confidentiality where that is required or requested".

We can add that comment.

I am not convinced by the covenant mechanism. Good relations between local government and the Parliament should arise through good practice in the committees. I am not sure that the covenant adds much to that. It is written in old-fashioned, portentous language that jars a wee bit with the modern approach that we would like to advance. While I applaud the intention of building good relations between local government and the Parliament, in its format and style the covenant is actually a lurch into the past. The first recommendation to the Local Government Committee might be for it to rethink its approach.

We may wish to think about whether the commitments in the covenant are common sense. The first bullet point of paragraph 16 states:

"The Parliament via its committee arrangements undertakes to facilitate consultation with local government on all proposals which affect or might affect the structure, role, functions and financing of local government. The financial effects of policy and legislative proposals on local government will be given specific attention; as will the impact of cross-cutting developments which span a number of service or policy areas."

That means that we would have to consult the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities on everything that happens in the Parliament. In practice, we might not want that to be the outcome. I am thinking about the evidence that we are taking for our rail inquiry and the care with which we constructed an appropriate panel of consultees and the balance that we struck between different groups.

I was in local government for a long time and I am a great supporter of it, but I wonder whether the verbiage of the covenant will deliver something that makes our job more difficult rather than easier. We have to proceed on the basis of common sense, rather than on the basis of quasi-legal charters of this kind.

Paragraph 16 also states:

"COSLA will undertake to provide a co-ordinated response which takes account of the views of individual councils."

My experience of COSLA is that it does not do that well. What COSLA provides is a common denominator view, which sometimes overrides the differences between councils. The party system can represent partisan or territorial interests, as opposed to the range of interests that exists throughout Scotland. On local government finance, Scottish councils have a range of well-established positions on the way in which the cake should be allocated and how the system should operate. In my experience, that diversity is rarely reflected in the COSLA viewpoint. We might want to highlight such issues.

Paragraph 18 refers to the need for

"regular meetings between the Committee and Council Leaders".

That shows the confusion that exists in the covenant between the role of the Local Government Committee, other committees of the Parliament and councils. Not all our relationships with councils are channelled through the Local Government Committee. One example is community care in which local government has a strong role, yet the Health and Community Care Committee acts as the lead committee in relation to community care issues.

I would not want a system to be constructed in which all the dialogue that should exist between COSLA and local government is channelled through the Local Government Committee. The remit of that committee is quite specific. The Transport and the Environment Committee wants to talk to COSLA and to local government organisations on transport issues. We do not want to do that via the Local Government Committee.

The benefits of the meetings that are proposed in paragraph 22 of the covenant are not clear. If the people want to make sense of those meetings, the meeting that is proposed for April needs to take place at a time when councils have had time to discuss the expenditure review. In my experience, that is the most important issue. People might also want to discuss the local government finance settlement. Those issues might dictate the date of the other meeting that is proposed. The mechanics of the proposal need to be thought through before we agree to it.

I sound fairly negative, but—

We noticed.

It is still an improvement on the previous debate.

There are levels of negativism. One issue is the principle of the covenant and others relate to the practicalities and implications of its implementation. We should not rubber-stamp the document and say that it is fine; we should raise some of the issues with the Local Government Committee and suggest that the covenant is thought through better. The committee needs to be a bit more modern in its approach to the covenant.

At the outset, we should note that the Local Government Committee is likely to proceed with the covenant, as the document has come about as the result of a recommendation of the McIntosh report. The current stage has been reached as the result of quite a bit of work by the Local Government Committee and COSLA. They are unlikely to decide that the covenant is a bad idea and that they will not proceed with it.

It is appropriate for us to make some of Des McNulty's comments. I am sure that the intention of the Local Government Committee is for the Parliament's subject committees to continue to have a direct relationship with local government on issues that are of importance to them. I am happy for us to reflect that issue in our response.

Des McNulty's other comments about the proposals have been subject to considerable debate between the Local Government Committee and COSLA. As a result, I cannot see substantial changes being made at this stage. Are there other specific points that Des McNulty wants us to reflect in our response?

We need to be realistic about the way in which COSLA works. COSLA represents local government on areas where there is agreement within local government. There are clear areas where agreement does not exist and, at the present time, not all councils are members of COSLA. There are important issues that need to be taken in consideration. You are right, convener. It is really an issue for the Local Government Committee to consider. I thought that that was why the Local Government Committee had circulated it.

Absolutely. I do not think that the committee was expecting members to say, "Let's not have a covenant at all."

My argument was not that we should not have a covenant, but that it should not be written in such quasi-legal language. We need something less formal that says that the Parliament will work with local government in a constructive way, perhaps giving examples of how that can be achieved. At the moment it is written like a legal document, which is not the best way to take it forward.

We can reflect those comments in the response that we send to the Local Government Committee.

It is good that the Local Government Committee has circulated the covenant to the subject committees for comment. It is clear that people have done a lot of work on the covenant, but so far it is all on paper and has not happened in practice. I would like to know how it would be monitored and evaluated to ensure that the covenant is the best way for us to work well with local government. Will there be a report after a suitable period about how well the approach has worked and whether there are snags that need to be ironed out?

Do we agree to co-ordinate a response to the Local Government Committee on the basis of the comments that members have made?

Members indicated agreement.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—