Upholding ethical standards

The Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL), established in 1994 by John Major to advise the prime minister on arrangements for upholding ethical standards of conduct across public life in England, clearly expected more from the government in this area. For while the CSPL’s January 2019 review of Local Government Ethical Standards contained 26 recommendations, on 4 October 2022, the CSPL’s chair, Lord Evans, wrote to the secretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC), at the time Simon Clarke MP, indicating that it was ‘very disappointed that many of its careful recommendations have not been accepted’. Among other things, Lord Evans noted ‘clear frustration within local authorities at the limited powers within the local government standards regime to address poor behaviour by a minority of individuals’. Because while the 2019 report indicated that ‘the vast majority of councillors and officers want to maintain the highest standards of conduct in their own authority’, it nevertheless noted that a ‘minority of councillors engage in bullying or harassment, or other highly disruptive behaviour, and a small number of parish councils give rise to a disproportionate number of complaints about poor behaviour’. 

The CSPL’s January 2019 report stated that sanctions ‘serve four purposes in a standards framework’ namely: ‘motivating observance of standards arrangements, deterring damaging behaviour, preventing further wrongdoing, and maintaining public confidence’. Since punitive sanctions can deter behaviour seriously damaging to the public interest, ‘[t]he credibility of any standards regime is undermined without the option to resort to sanction when needed’. The CSPL therefore recommended that: ‘Local authorities should … be given the power to suspend councillors without allowances for up to six months. Councillors, including parish councillors, who are suspended should be given the right to appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman, who should be given the power to investigate allegations of code breaches on appeal. The decision of the Ombudsman should be binding.’

On 18 March 2022 the government, through Kemi Badenoch MP, then minister of state for LUHC, gave its response. In the government’s view the absence of sanctions in current legislation was deliberate. This was to differentiate from ‘the previous, failed Standards Board regime’ which had ‘allowed politically motivated and vexatious complaints and had a chilling effect on free speech within local government’. The government considered that the CSPL’s proposals ‘would effectively reinstate that flawed regime’. Consequently, the government’s view was that on ‘the rare occasions where notable breaches of the code of conduct have occurred, local authorities are not without sanctions under the current regime’, as ‘councillors can be barred from cabinet, committees, or representative roles, and may be publicly criticised. If the elected member is a member of a political group, they would also expect to be subject to party discipline, including being removed from that group or their party. Political parties are unlikely to reselect councillors who have brought their group or party into disrepute. All councillors are ultimately held to account via the ballot box.’

Nevertheless, the government said it would ‘engage with sector representative bodies of councillors and officers of all tiers of local government to seek views on options to strengthen sanctions to address breaches of the code which fall below the bar of criminal activity and related sanctions but involve serious incidents of bullying and harassment or disruptive behaviour’.

However, there does not yet appear to have been any such meaningful engagement on this issue. And local government practitioners at the sharp end continue to highlight the problem. For instance, immediate past president of Lawyers in Local Government (LLG), Quentin Baker, writing in Local Government Lawyer in November 2021, said that the LLG has ‘long-standing concerns that the local Standards Regime lacks teeth and as a result is ineffective in constraining the very small number of councillors who persist in breaching the accepted standards of conduct for those in public office … which erodes public confidence in local government’. The current LLG president, Helen Edwards (now director of law and governance and monitoring officer at the West Midlands Combined Authority), agreed that the LLG remained disappointed at the lack of sanctions, while acknowledging that the government ‘did not completely close the door on that …’. Edwards added that: ‘[The] LLG will look to be actively engaged in those discussions.’ And in a January 2023 public interest report on Cheshire East Council’s culture and governance, auditors Grant Thornton said it hoped that its report ‘will encourage the ongoing debate around the effectiveness of the standards regime for local government’.

However, on a more positive note, and welcomed by Helen Edwards, the government agreed in principle with the 22nd recommendation of the CSPL’s report: that the disciplinary protections for the three local government statutory officers – monitoring officer, head of paid service (chief executive) and chief finance officer ­– should be enhanced. The government recognised that ‘this will be pertinent to monitoring officers … who may be subject to personal pressures when conducting high profile breach of conduct investigations’.

But how are local government leaders to ensure that the Seven Principles of Public Life become the cultural norm in their organisations? The CSPL may assist, for on 24 January 2023 it issued its review paper, Leading in Practice, which aims to stimulate discussion about how to embed ethical cultures into organisations, since this will not happen by accident. The CSPL, therefore, devised a series of reflective questions for local government leaders to ‘support the ethical buoyancy of their organisations’. These derive from challenges and successes noted by the CSPL in evidence sessions. The report can be viewed and downloaded from the CSPL’s website.

Nicholas Dobson writes on local government, public law and governance