Government Defends Crackdown on Local Council Publications After Select Committee Report Calls for Delay

Local Government Minister Grant Shapps has issued a spirited defence of Government proposals to crack down on council publications after the Communities and Local Government Select Committee published a report calling for a delay to the plans.

Responding to the report published this morning (Thursday) Mr Shapps said: “We will of course consider the Select Committee’s recommendations. However we are clear that few things have done more to undermine local democracy than the explosion in town hall Pravdas bankrolled by hard pressed taxpayers.

“Similarly the murky practice of government lobbying government has had a corrosive effect on the public’s trust in politicians. The age of wasting taxpayers cash on pet projects like local propaganda sheets or employing lobbyists to push a certain agenda is over.”

The committee’s report challenged Communities Secretary Eric Pickles’ outspoken condemnation of ‘local authority Pravdas,’ calling for the Government’s changes to the Local Authority Publicity Code to be delayed so that an independent review can be commissioned to assess the impact of council publications on independent local media.

The committee, chaired by former Sheffield Council leader Clive Betts MP, published the findings of its last-minute inquiry into changes to the Publicity Code proposed by the Government in September and aimed at stopping what it has described as ‘propaganda on the rates’. The Government has said it intends to lay the Code before Parliament this month.

The committee’s report agrees there is a need for a Code to regulate local authority publicity and acknowledges that “there is a clear concern that some local authorities are using council taxpayers’ money to promote their local politicians or policies.”

It accepts that “there has been some abuse by a small number of local authorities which effectively pose as, and compete with, local commercial newspapers.” It notes the concern that, if no action were taken, more councils could start publishing frequent ‘newspapers’ and adds: “While there is clearly a case for individual politicians and parties to state their position on particular issues, this should be at their own expense. It is appropriate that the proposed Code should prevent such activities being undertaken at taxpayers’ expense.”

But the committee says that, while “the evidence suggests that a quarterly, or less frequent, publication will be sufficient to meet a local authority’s need to communicate with residents,” it feels this does not need to be specified in the new Code.

Mr Shapps had told the committee in December: “Four times a year still feels quite regular if you are a resident and something is stuck through your door.” He said that “in addition to its leaflets that go out with the council tax and the numerous other ways it has to get information out to its citizen, that is not overly restrictive and would enable them to push whatever sensible messages about bin collection they need to get out to residents.”

The report refers to the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee’s recommendation during the last Parliament for an Office of Fair Trading investigation into the impact of council publications on independent local media, and calls for the Secretary of State to follow that recommendation.

“As this inquiry has found, solid evidence about the scale of this impact in support of this assertion remains scant and offers insufficient justification for the constraints on local authorities proposed in the replacement code.

“Nonetheless, there is concern that if no action is taken then other local authorities will follow the lead taken by the relatively few councils which currently publish frequent newspapers.”

Looking at requirements placed upon local authorities to publish statutory notices, the report says: “We recommend that the Government review the publication requirements for statutory notices, with a view to making them more cost-effective and better able to take advantage of new means of publication such as the Internet.”

The committee believes that hiring of political lobbyists by local authorities to contact Ministers and MPs “is a waste of public money” but said the issue should be addressed by the Government working with representative organisations for all tiers of local government to develop a Code specifically addressing the use of lobbyists.

The NS gave oral and written evidence to the Local Government Select Committee last year. Lynne Anderson of the NS told the committee that, according to the Audit Commission, 150 council publications took private advertising. “You don’t need your local council competing with you for scarce advertising revenues,” she said. “Those are the very ad revenues which keep journalists in their jobs. Councils should not be in the business of competing.”

The local media industry and the NS had previously submitted evidence to the Government’s consultation on the proposed changes to the Code, calling for third party advertising on council publications or other council media platforms to be banned, and stressing the importance of effective enforcement to avoid councils bypassing the proposed controls.

The NS submission stated: “The Code and our proposals would certainly not prevent local authorities from providing their communities with information relevant to them, the council and its work in any effective form. The NS has always made it clear that it has no complaint with the traditional type of non-competing council publication, such as an A-Z of council services, published two or three times a year… The NS and its members have also provided the Government with examples of local councils and local media working together on initiatives to inform and involve their local communities.”

The submission also outlined NS opposition to any move to remove statutory obligations to publish public notices in local newspapers, pointing out that this could result in important information becoming inaccessible to a large section of the UK population who do not have access to the internet.

“Recent research has shown that the vast majority of people in the UK rely on their local paper to keep them informed about local council plans and decisions and to allow them to make their voice heard on important issues which affect them. We hope that all local authorities will therefore be encouraged to use the local media, which remain the best-read and most trusted form of local news and information,” said the NS.

Note: The Coalition Programme for Government document published in May 2010 gave a firm commitment to ‘stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers’.

For further information please contact Lynne Anderson on 020 763 27421 or lynne_anderson@newspapersoc.org.uk.

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