There are enough threats to democracy already – Labour must not add another

Local news is the first line of defence against corruption in public life. Across the country, thousands of journalists hold power to account – uncovering truths which decision-makers might prefer to keep hidden. And as more and greater powers are devolved by central government reform, this scrutiny will become even more important.

In particular, council taxpayers must have full oversight of any plans to change how their local authority operates, and how money is spent. Yet despite this, a provision within the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, currently in the House of Lords, threatens to reduce scrutiny rather than strengthen it.

What on the face of it may appear minor technical provisions – removing the requirement under the Local Government Act for communities to be notified of changes to a council’s governance structure through a public notice in a local newspaper – are in fact an assault on the public’s right to know.

Instead of openness and transparency through an independent news environment, councils would be free to flag such changes “in a manner they think appropriate”, meaning such decisions could be kept secret or buried on council websites. In a recent debate in the House of Lords, a cross-party coalition of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat peers warned that communities would be left in the dark unless these plans for secrecy are abandoned.

Ministers have claimed that, in practice, the measure would apply to very few councils, but this argument misses the point. If left unchanged, legal provisions for local government secrecy could easily be weaponised by rogue authorities seeking to keep ratepayers in the dark.

We only have to look at events in Nottinghamshire – where the newly-elected Reform UK-led council banned the local paper – to see how this could play out. With politics arguably more volatile than ever and councils up and down the country likely to change hands in May, is it really the government’s plan to allow new administrations to change council structures without informing the people who elected them?

Allowing councils to decide unilaterally whether and where to publish crucial notices would also lead to an inequality of access to information on the basis of geography.

Residents in one local authority area would have enhanced information rights if their local councils did the right and transparent thing, while those in other areas could see their access to information curtailed.

This appears to be both discriminatory and deeply unfair. I do not believe ministers could have intended this outcome. The local news sector takes seriously its role as an independent and trusted platform for public notices. Millions of people – particularly elderly and vulnerable groups – rely on printed local papers to access these public notices.

The local news sector has also worked hard in recent years to increase the reach of the notices by leveraging its significant digital audiences; where eight in 10 of the population engage with local newsbrands online every month.

A major innovation has been the Public Notice Portal – a digital one-stop-shop for all the public notices published in print local newspapers built with funding and expertise from the Google News Initiative.

We are immensely proud of this platform which ensures that there are even more ways for the public to access the notices, while maintaining the link to an independent news environment which drives engagement and provides scrutiny.

The success of the portal has led to further work with Google News Initiative funding to add archive and consultation functions, deepening residents’ engagement with providing greater transparency over local decision making.

The power and reach of local news brands, with professional journalism and community understanding at their core, means notices also gain editorial attention and weekly roundups ensure an even larger audience are alerted to key proposals in their area. Coverage of local government affairs is right at the heart of local media’s public interest journalism offering. That is why the plans to remove these notices publicising changes to local authority governance from local papers must be abandoned. There is no case for this proposed change. Ministers must remove the provision when the EDCE Bill reaches report stage in the House of Lords.

They should also take the opportunity to state the importance to local democracy of robust legislation linking public notices to local news media. Any future review of public notices must start from this vital principle.

The threats to our democratic rights are numerous. The government must ensure that they do not unwittingly create another.

• Owen Meredith is chief executive of the News Media Association