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Mr. Patten : Yes, because we are all agog to hear the Labour party's views on these matters.
Four years ago, the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) said : "Much has been made of the fact that some of the dire warnings of the rate-capped authorities last year of the effect of rate capping upon jobs and services have not come to pass. My answer to that is, not yet'."--[ Official Report, 25 February 1986 ; Vol. 92, c. 894.] We had rate capping in 1987-88, 1988-89 and 1989-90, and the answer of the hon. Gentleman year after year was the same--"not yet". Local authorities had to constrain their growth in manpower and public expenditure, but Armageddon has not so far put in an appearance.
Mr. Tony Banks : Everything is getting tacky.
Mr. Patten : The hon. Gentleman is a world famous expert on that subject.
Thirdly, I accept that it is difficult to run local authorities' affairs prudently. It is not an easy job, it is a challenging job, but it is not an impossible one. When I look at some of the figures that have been presented to us over the past few weeks, I wonder about some of the arguments of Labour Members. I find it difficult to believe that in Derbyshire, where school meal charges have not been raised since 1981, it is impossible to provide better value for money. I heard one of Derbyshire's local authority leaders say the other day that the price of school meals in Derbyshire had not increased over the past nine years. That is not true. The price has increased, but the price is paid by community charge payers and ratepayers, who are subsidising school meals to the tune of £15 million.
It is difficult to believe that there is no room for economy in Basildon, which is spending at 194.3 per cent. above its SSA, or that there is no room for economy or better value for money in Haringey, which increased its rates by 61 per cent. in 1989-90 and which is 30 per cent. above the SSA. I have also the example of my own sweet Avon county council. It is proposing to spend 18.4 per
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cent., or £117 per head, above SSA. It is proposing a budget for this year that is 20 per cent. greater than last year's budget. If one compares Avon with the Audit Commission's comparable local authorities--the Audit Commission family--Mr. John Evans : Will the right hon. Gentleman say a word about St. Helens?
Mr. Patten : I shall make my own speech.
Avon is spending 18 per cent. over SSA while a directly comparable authority--Kent--is spending below SSA. With the best will in the world, my constituents do not believe that they are getting 18 per cent. better quality services than people in Kent are getting.
Mr. Tony Banks : What complaints has the Secretary of State received at his advice surgeries? What do people complain about? What are their problems? Does he have the experience that I have in a so-called high- spending authority? Some 80 per cent. of my cases are about people looking for a decent place in which to live.
Mr. Patten : I should be only too happy to share the experience of my advice centres with the hon. Gentleman. My constituents have been vociferous about two issues in the past few months. One is the level of the community charge, which is in part a consequence of the spending decisions taken by the Avon county council. The second issue that they have drawn to my attention on a number of occasions relates to the attempts that the county council has made, again and again, to prevent one of the many good schools in my constituency from opting out and taking grant-maintained status. Avon county council spent a large amount of community charge payers' money on trying to stop it opting out. My constituents have raised that issue with me.
Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Bristol, East) : Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, after it was told that it was likely to be capped, Avon county council said to all and sundry that capping would mean that all nursery schools would have to be closed? Is it not the case that the Conservatives' budget, which is below the capped level, would preserve nursery education in Avon?
Mr. Patten : Yes. There is plenty of scope in Avon for better value for money and for the improvement of services. I know that my hon. Friend is one of the Members of Parliament for the county who has pressed continually and vociferously for those objectives. Before I close my speech, may I point out to the hon. Member for St. Helens, North (Mr. Evans)--who may listen to me now, since he was shouting at me a few moments ago about St. Helens, a subject in which I know he is interested--that, with a budget that is 16.2 per cent. or £130 per adult, above the standard spending assessment, he should not be surprised that St. Helens has been charge capped. However, I very much hope that that will be unnecessary in the future.
Mr. John Evans : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Patten : The hon. Gentleman hardly listened to my reply. I shall leave him to make his point when he speaks.
Although I realise that these matters have angered and annoyed the Opposition, at least superficially, I have
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attempted to set out the legal background to the debate. I have set out the principles that lie behind charge capping and the inordinate muddle in the Labour party on the issue. I accept that to run local authorities is difficult. If certain local authorities are represented by hon. Members who think that the job is impossible, I suggest that they should make way for people such as Councillor Mallom in Ealing, who would do the job admirably. I am delighted that for the many years that the Leader of the Opposition will spend in Ealing he will have an extremely good council to look after his affairs.Since last April I have been accused of acting illegally and have been pursued both in the courts and outside them. The courts have made their view plain. It is now for the House to decide whether I acted rightly and appropriately. Without hesitation, I commend the draft orders to the House.
Several Hon. Members rose--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker : Order. I ask hon. Members to bear in mind Mr. Speaker's appeal at the outset of the debate, in view of the large number of hon. Members who have a direct interest in these matters, for speeches to be brief. I believe that he intended that request to apply to Front-Bench spokesmen as well as to Back Benchers.
4.53 pm
Mr. Bryan Gould (Dagenham) : The Secretary of State has just spoken for over an hour--[ Hon. Members :-- "With interruptions."]--in a debate in which many Back-Benchers know already that they are likely to be squeezed out, on a speech in which he had so little confidence in his case that he did not even try to justify the orders for which he is seeking approval. It must have been a speech that he wrote and believed he would never have to make. But he did make it. As the Secretary of State has supported and embraced the principle of charge capping, that raises the question : why is it that, according to reports which I shall be interested to hear whether he denies, he opposed any extension of that principle when conducting his review of the operation of the poll tax? I suspect that I know the answer. The right hon. Gentleman is at least an honest and intelligent, if somewhat pliant, politician. He knows perfectly well that the speech that he has just made, and his announcement on charge capping, is a confession of failure and the final denial and renunciation of the underlying principle that was claimed for the poll tax.
Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr . Gould : No, I shall not. I have only just begun my speech. Perhaps I should say that, although I shall not refuse to take interventions, I have no intention of delaying the House to the extent that the Secretary of State delayed it.
Mr. Chris Patten : With respect, as all lawyers would say to the hon. Gentleman, a major reason for the length of my speech was that I tried to give way to as many Opposition Members as possible. When we last held a similar debate I gave way about 20 times. On this occasion I have given
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way almost as many times. The hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members would have criticised me if I had not given way.Mr. Gould : We could have borne the length of the Secretary of State's speech if we had thought that it contained any substance and measured up to the seriousness of the issue.
The case for the poll tax was always, and only, that it would encourage and confirm accountability. In 1987 the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who, like so many other poll tax Ministers, seems to have moved on, said in a speech to the Associaton of District Councils :
"The Government has chosen the path of accountability. I personally believe that accountability is the key to any reform of local government finance. The first priority must be to restore the link between those who vote in local elections, those who use the local services provided and those who pay for those services."
We see there immediately a powerful hint of the true raison d'etre of the poll tax. It was meant to compel local authorities to load any supposedly additional spending on to the poll tax payer, who was then confidently expected to round on the local authority, when confronted with that high bill, and demand, without Government intervention, that local authority services should be cut. That was the theory and the principle. On the basis of that principle, it is hard to see why a power to cap should have been required.
In the early stages of the debate, the power was explained in the Green Paper as a purely transitional measure that was needed while the poll tax was running in parallel with the rates. It was only subsequently, in Committee, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman made it clear that he saw that such a power would be required to deal with local authorities which he described as reckless and irrational and out to prove some sort of distorted political point. It would be interesting to hear during the debate how many or how few authorities are believed to fall within that description.
Because of their confidence in accountability--that the poll tax payer would insist, when bills emerged hugely above the levels that had been promised, on a reduction in services--many members of the Conservative party remained pretty relaxed. There is a suspicion that some of them--I do not know why the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) comes to mind--welcomed the prospect of very high poll tax bills and saw them as yet another turn of the screw on recalcitrant local government. In their view, local government would again be cut down to size without direct Government intervention.
The script was not, however, followed by everybody. To their eternal credit, many Conservative councillors, as well as councillors of other political parties, refused to play their part. They became alarmed by what they understood to be the significance of the poll tax for local authority services. Conservative Back-Bench Members of Parliament also became alarmed. That is why, in an amazing volte face, accountability was suddenly no longer the name of the game. What was urgently required was a measure to try to salvage something from the political wreckage. That is why accountability was thrown out of the window. There was no more talk of accountability ; what was required was a political rescue act.
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Mr. Oppenheim : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?Mr. Gould : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment. The Secretary of State, who had always understood the contradiction between capping and accountability, could not even wait for the local elections which, by then, were just one month away. The urgency was so great that he had to find some political culprits ; he had to identify them on the basis of political criteria. That is the exercise that we are now debating.
Mr. Oppenheim : Bearing in mind the hon. Gentleman's clear opposition to capping, will he categorically rule out the possibility of any future Labour Government capping, or in any way limiting, local government spending?
Mr. Gould : The hon. Gentleman must bear with me. Like the Secretary of State, I intend to make my own speech. I make the hon. Gentleman the same offer that the Secretary of State made to other hon. Members--I shall deal with that point, but if he is dissatisfied with the answer he might try again.
The objective of the poll tax-capping exercise is not to save poll tax payers from large bills. If that were the case, a quite different set of criteria would have been adopted. Indeed, one paradox of the whole episode is the degree to which people resent being faced with high poll tax bills, but because they have Tory-controlled authorities no one appears to be riding to their rescue. If the aim had been to reduce bills, the Government would have had to suffer the political embarrassment of charge-capping Tory local authorities. It would have been impossible to draw up a list on the basis of any sensible criteria, such as the size of the bill or the sharpest increase in expenditure, which did not include Tory authorities. How was it possible to exclude from the list a Tory authority such as Windsor and Maidenhead, which set a charge of £449 ; or Kensington and Chelsea, which was £189 per head above the target figure ; or Milton Keynes, which was 98 per cent. above the target figure? In drawing up a list that omitted authorities that fell into those categories, the Secretary of State abandoned any pretence that he was trying to help poll tax payers. The exercise became simply an attempt to shift the political blame. The Government wanted to duck out from under. It was essential to round up a group of politically identifiable culprits that could be saddled with the blame. That is what the charge-capping exercise is all about.
Throughout the whole saga of rate capping and poll tax capping, the Opposition have always made clear their objection in principle to the whole business of capping local authorities in their revenue-raising capacity. But we pay more than lip service to the principle of accountability. The proper remedy for a local authority that is overspending, or thought to be overspending, is that it should submit what it has done to the judgment of the local electorate. A further remedy, which we believe is infinitely preferable to the practice of charge capping, is to increase that element of democratic accountability by introducing the requirement of annual elections. That is where we stand.
Mr. Maples : One of the authorities which in no circumstances would need to be capped is the hon. Gentleman's authority of Barking and Dagenham. If the
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system of grants and local authority finance that the Government have introduced is so unreasonable, how has the Labour- controlled authority of Barking and Dagenham managed to set its community charge at just £3 above the Government's suggested budget figure?Mr. Gould : The hon. Gentleman is correct to point out that my local authority, having fixed a poll tax level within a few pounds of the assumed or target level, naturally felt confident that it would escape any attempt at charge capping. Unfortunately, other local authorities which had, in some senses, performed even better, found that they were not similarly exempt from that attack.
All question of principle, including the principle that is said to underlie the poll tax, has been swept out of the window. We now confront a cynical exercise in finding political scapegoats. That is why, in drawing up his list of charge-capped authorities, the Secretary of State refused to tell local authorities in advance what criteria he would apply. What a stupid and ludicrous way to run a country. The Government warn of penalties if certain rules are broken, but refuse to reveal to those who may be subject to the penalties what rules will be set. There is an important difference between the old rate-capping power--which was objectionable enough, but at least applied to the forthcoming financial year--and the way in which the charge capping operates, which means that the rules in the football game, to which a learned judge referred, are set after half time. How much confusion, delay, hardship and cost could have been avoided had the Secretary of State simply told local
authorities--local authorities that were keen to apply the rules--in advance what they should do? Had he done so, the vast majority of charge- capped authorities would have had no difficulty avoiding the disruption with which they are now faced.
The Secretary of State wanted to reap the political advantage, as he saw it, of some vague and ill-defined threat which he hoped would bring down the level of poll tax bills in general. He was not concerned about the disruption and confusion that he eventually caused to authorities that have been charge-capped.
Mr. David Wilshire (Spelthorne) : The hon. Gentleman keeps urging my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to explain his criteria. Could he explain his criteria and tell us what "in extremis" is?
Mr. Gould : As anyone who understands local government knows, the phrase "in extremis" applies to cases of illegality and fraud. On the occasion that I used that phrase, I was explaining that local authorities were not free from legal constraints.
Mr. Chris Patten : I want to be clear about that, because the hon. Gentleman appears to be stretching words a little generously. Is he saying that when he used that phrase, all that he meant was that local authorities should be capped only if they were guilty of fraud? Is that what the power that should be reserved is all about? It is an astonishing reinterpretation of what the hon. Gentleman said.
Mr. Redmond : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State took more than an hour to make his speech, yet he still seeks to intervene. If he had spent that hour explaining why he wishes to impose charge capping, he would have done a better job.
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Mr. Deputy Speaker : Nothing out of order has taken place so far.Mr. Gould : The obligation of local authorities to comply with the law must always be supported by the power to intervene. I shall restate the points of principle that I made clear a moment ago. We have always opposed in principle rate capping and charge capping. We believe that the right remedy for any supposed overspending is for authorities to submit what they have done to the judgment of the local electorate.
It is because this is a political exercise that the list ignored all the obvious criteria : which authorities presented the highest bills which showed the sharpest increases, and which most departed from target. Instead, the list relies on tortuously selected criteria that can be explained only in terms of producing that precise list. Of course, it does not include a single Conservative authority. When it comes to targets, the Secretary of State sweeps away those criteria as though they were of no relevance. There is a paradox, which was described by the right hon. Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt), who has now departed to the Welsh Office, at the last Conservative conference as defining the sensible level of spending. The assumed or target level of poll tax bills was to be the sensible level of spending on the basis of which transitional relief would be calculated. I suspect that many thousands of people now understand all too well that transitional relief was a confidence trick. They will also understand why the Secretary of State is so keen to sweep it aside as of no consequence. Although it was regarded as irrelevant to excessive spending, it might have been thought that a council which met its target--very few did--might be safe from charge capping. Not a bit. The list includes Haringey, which set a poll tax level lower than its target figure. It includes four further authorities--Brent, Calderdale, Hammersmith and Hillingdon--which have been charge-capped to a level that brings their poll tax lower than the assumed or targeted level.
Because it is a political list, it does not even take into account what was spent. It is a list that ignores spending from the reserves ; it conveniently overlooks Tory-controlled authorities, such as Wandsworth and Merton, which have dipped heavily into their reserves. All that is disregarded. If Merton had been forced to count the spending that it has financed from the reserve, its bill would not have been £279 ; it would have been £457.32.
Because it is a political list, it includes boroughs which are major contributors to the safety net and which are deemed to have overspent by less than the amount that they are required to contribute to the safety net. Camden is told that it must contribute £75 to the safety net and, at the same time, that it has overspent by £41 per head. We are told that Islington has overspent by £30 per head and it has been forced to contribute £41 per head to the safety net. Basildon is forced to contribute £38 per head to the safety net and is regarded as overspending by £35 per head.
Because it is a political list, it includes Calderdale, one of the lowest- spending authorities in the country. Even before it was charge-capped, Calderdale ranked as the 47th lowest spender out of more than 400 local authorities. After charge capping, Calderdale will be the fourth lowest spender in the country.
Because it is a political list, it includes authorities such as Wigan, Doncaster, Rotherham, St. Helens and
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Barnsley. Does anyone seriously argue that those authorities are extravagant or that they are anything other than prudent managers of their budgets?Because it is a political list, it includes Brent, whose budget would have meant, had the rates system continued, a lower rate than it had previously charged.
Because it is a political list, it includes Greenwich. I was impressed by the work that Greenwich had done in preparing such a careful and detailed explanation of its circumstances. That authority has been recognised by Ministers and by the Audit Commission as an efficient authority that manages its affairs well.
Because it is a political list, it includes authorities such as Basildon, which has already lost £4.9 million as a consequence of the business rate--it has earned 8 per cent. less in revenue from the business rate than in the previous year, and that is without taking into account inflation.
The list is based on the convenient criterion that it excludes all authorities that have budgets below £15 million. That is included in the Act because it means that all the high-spending Tory districts are exempt from charge capping. It also means that only 20 out of nearly 300 districts can be brought within the net.
In other words, the list is a political fix. The only defence that the Secretary of State could make was that he had so far persuaded the courts that he had provided himself with the legal power to do as he did. That is scarcely surprising. But that is rather different--as I think the right hon. Gentleman conceded--from the issue of fairness and common sense. In the court of informed opinion, and on the test of fairness and common sense, the Secretary of State must be found guilty.
Mr. Chris Patten : At the risk of incurring the hon. Gentleman's wrath, I invite him to name a single class of
authorities--metropolitan districts, county councils or shire districts--in which Conservative local authorities are spending more and setting higher charges than Labour local authorities.
Mr. Gould : That is a red herring, given that we are talking about charge capping. But let me put on record the fact that in the shire districts, the poll tax bills fixed by Labour-controlled district authorities are lower than those set by Tory-controlled authorities. That is true whether the county is controlled by the Tories or by the Labour party. If the Secretary of State wants to contest that, let him produce figures to show that it is wrong.
One of the further embarrassments to emerge from the charge-capping exercise is the spotlight that it casts on standard spending assessments-- the criteria chosen by the Secretary of State. We have the testimony of the former Minister for Housing and Planning, now the Secretary of State for Employment. In the speech to which I referred, he said :
"From 1990 we wish to have a presumption against annual changes to the distribution formula. To assist that, we propose that there should be no requirement for these matters to be considered every year. But although the method of assessing need may not change, we shall of course use up-to-date statistics each year, when making the calculations. Our plans will ensure stability, accountability and a great deal more simplicity."
The right hon. and learned Gentleman was speaking in the earlier halcyon days before we saw the full horror of the poll tax. By the beginning of this year, the Secretary of State was singing a rather different tune. On 18 January, he said :
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"I want to make it clear to my right hon. and hon. Friends ... that the SSA methodology is not cast in stone If my hon. Friends, the local authorities in their constituencies or the local authority associations wish to come to us with fresh evidence in support of a new methodology for SSAs, we shall be quite prepared to consider changes that we can put in place for next year."--[ Official Report, 18 January 1990 ; Vol. 165, c. 435.]It is not surprising that the Secretary of State should so rapidly have moved his ground. It is not surprising, either, that, having recognised the fallibility of the SSAs that he had put in place, he nevertheless insisted that that was the criterion on which he would base his charge capping. Notwithstanding the powerful arguments put to him about the errors made in the calculations of those SSAs, he was not to be deterred. It must be said that those powerful arguments came not just from charge-capped authorities but from a large range of authorities throughout the country--authorities which were, and remain, under Tory control, as well as authorities controlled by Labour and other political groups.
The Secretary of State insisted on using those SSAs as the basis of his criterion for charge capping, notwithstanding the powerful arguments of Brent that it had been wrongly treated and notwithstanding the persuasive evidence that charge capping of a group of similar authorities, Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, St. Helens and Wigan, which are by no means extravagant, suggested that something was wrong with their SSAs.
The Secretary of State insisted, notwithstanding the fact that Basildon was fixed with an SSA that gave it a lower spending level than it had enjoyed 10 years earlier, and notwithstanding the cuts that the SSA had meant in the case of Haringey, for example. The Secretary of State looked forward to those cuts, which he described so charmingly as a "parade of bleeding stumps".
The Secretary of State insisted, notwithstanding the problems that he created for the Secretary of State for Education and Science--for example, when Avon wanted to reorganise its education arrangements to save money but was prevented from doing so--and in the local management of schools.
The Secretary of State insisted, notwithstanding the evidence from Islington that it was charge-capped because two minor changes were made in the "other services" block of the SSA. Those changes were made between November and January and were made up by the introduction of a visitors' right criterion and by the reduction of the days of snow lying on London. On account of those two minor changes, Islington was charge-capped but, at the same time, it was prejudiced by a mistake in the number of children in education--a mistake that involved 3,670 children, at an average cost of £2,000 each.
Mr. Chris Patten : I shall not seek to intervene again, but I would like to come back on something that the hon. Gentleman said. He said that Labour shire districts were spending less than Conservative shire districts. I have the figures. Conservative shire districts have spent, on average, 9 per cent. over SSA ; Labour shire districts have spent, on average, 45 per cent. above SSA. Conservative shire districts have spent £8 per head over SSA ; Labour shire districts, £47 per head over SSA. Conservative districts hve spent about one third above the average rate bills per adult
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with their community charge bill this year. The hon. Gentleman should not believe everything that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) tells him.Mr. Gould : I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that intervention. He has illustrated just how difficult he finds it to follow such matters. His answer is not relevant to my contention, which was that Labour-controlled shire districts had set lower poll tax bills than Tory- controlled shire districts. That is and will remain the fact until the Secretary of State can produce more relevant information than he has just produced.
I intend to make progress with my speech and to bring it to a close shortly. However, I cannot leave this issue without asking one question. Given the nature of that list, and the cynicism behind this whole political exercise, did it achieve anything, even in terms of the Government's stated objectives? Politically, it has been a failure. The people of this country well understand that the poll tax is the Government's responsibility. Paradoxically, charge capping has reinforced that impression because people now know that every element of local government finance is under the direct control of central Government. More predictably, the exercise has brought precious little benefit to poll tax payers, even in the authorities that were led to believe that they might face lower bills and gain some advantage.
The truth is that many people's bills will remain high--they will be reduced by very little--but, in addition, those people will have to bear the extra burden of seeing their services cut and their facilities reduced so that the authority can fund the extra costs of lower collection and the administrative costs of imposing the charge capping. That is because the costs of capping have proved much higher than was envisaged. I am not talking about the direct administrative costs which, of course, the local authorities have to bear, although cuts must be made to meet those administrative costs ; the real impact is in terms of collection, which is already frighteningly lower than was forecast, but which is even lower in prospect because of the delays and confusions that have been engendered by charge capping.
The unpreparedness of the right hon. Gentleman's Department in terms of those issues is well demonstrated in the report made to the Association of Metropolitan Authorities by a local authority treasurer after a discussion with civil servants. The report states :
"When capping' was mentioned the D.O.E representative was shocked when informed that replacement bills would take three months to issue with no cash coming in in the meantime. He obviously didn't realise that paper needs to be ordered, stationery designed, software amended, rebates and transition re-calculated, bills printed, folded, collated and enveloped. I'm sure he thought that some magician would appear overnight to resolve these problems."
Local authorities are now having those problems. They have cash flow problems, with the additional borrowing requirements. They also face lower collection levels.
That is why, as I have been informed, every one of the capped authorities will be forced to rebill its local charge payers at levels higher than those suggested by the Secretary of State. In other words, the price that they pay is not only in that parade of bleeding stumps ; it is in bills that are still much higher than he promised. Where the cap has been put in place and because those cuts have been necessary, the local electors will get the worst possible deal.
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They will not get any real reduction in their poll tax bills ; but they must take a substantial cut in services and facilities. The orders are the latest instalment in a sorry saga. In introducing the poll tax, the Government have created a monster that attacks and damages everything that it touches. It has damaged local government finance and autonomy and the level of local government services. It has damaged family budets and the prosperity of millions of people. It has damaged the electoral prospects of the Conservative party and the reputation and political prospects of the Secretary of State himself. It has ended by destroying the very reason for its own existence. The Government have been compelled to take responsibility for a measure that they thought would improve accountability, but the accountability of local government to the electors has now disappeared from the scene.Some limit must be placed on the destructive progress of the poll tax. We intend to do what we can in Opposition to stop its progress. That is why we shall vote against the orders, and we cannot wait for the day when we can sweep away the poll tax.
5.24 pm
Sir Rhodes Boyson (Brent, North) : All hon. Members should congratulate the Government on providing two days for this debate, instead of trying to get the provisions through secretly. It is not often that we are given two days to debate a local government issue, and if Opposition Members have any generosity left at all, I shall expect them to agree with me on that point, if not with anything else that I shall say.
I shall speak particularly about what is happening in Brent. The Labour authority decided on a community charge of £498, when the Conservatives believed that they could provide good services with a charge of £470. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State then capped it at £459. A delegation from Brent went to see my right hon. Friend and we saw how reasonable my right hon. Friend is when he increased the charge allowed to £472. He listened to the arguments and decided that that was the amount of money that was required. As the Member of Parliament for Brent, North over the past years, I have received hundreds if not thousands of letters objecting to the massive expenditure of the Labour republic of Brent. Many people have put their houses up for sale. At times, some roads looked like refugee camps with people leaving because they could not afford to stay. Many people were brought into penury by the heavy rates and community charge levied in Brent. Some people have gained considerably from the introduction of the community charge, but before its introduction, I can remember people--especially old ladies--having to sell up and leave although they wanted to keep their own houses and to have their children and grandchildren visit them there from time to time.
I do not need to go into the Maureen McGoldrick case or nuclear-free zones. For many years, Brent has been a reason-free zone. I have no doubt that many people welcomed the introduction of the community charge. Of course, I am speaking only for the people of Brent, North. Other hon. Members from Brent may agree with me in the
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secrecy of their hearts, but cannot do so in public, when I say that there was every sort of trendy expenditure in Brent. Having said that, it is with some reservations that I support the Government. I do not want the destruction of local government. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will agree that we do not want so much power to pass to central Government--whether Labour or Conservative--that the balance with local government is destroyed. No Government should give themselves more power than they would be prepared to give to an alternative party if it was to come to power. No Government must ever forget that--even one who have been in power for as long as our Conservative Government.The question is, therefore, what should we do in both the short term and the long term? In the short term, I believe that we should reintroduce annual elections. That is the one point on which I agree with the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould). For a long time, London has suffered from four-year elections. When councillors are elected, they think they are there for ever and get carried away with what they are doing. Nothing is more salutary to councillors than to know that one quarter of them face election every year. I should like to see that return--
Mr. Shersby : My right hon. Friend is making an important point. Does he recall that the extension to four years was made by the late Anthony Crosland when he was Secretary of State for the Environment under the powers then available to him? Parliament had decided that elections should take place triennially instead of annually but the late Anthony Crosland extended that to once every four years. My right hon. Friend is right to raise this matter in a non-partisan way. The House should consider it.
Sir Rhodes Boyson : I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention because I had forgotten that point. It was fortuitous that my hon. Friend was sitting next to me and could remind me of it. This is a non-party issue. I am talking about annual elections for a quarter of the council. That would mean that we could have both continuity and change. Until that is introduced, there should be annual referendums.
Fortunately, we have had a referendum in Brent. The four-yearly election came round this year and we gained nine seats. There was a swing of 6.4 per cent. to the Conservatives in Brent, North. The electorate in Brent said, "We do not want the community charge set by the Labour party. It is too much." If Opposition Members are democrats--I do not doubt that they are-- they should be in favour of annual referendums. The Government would not be saying that local authorities' policies are nonsense. They would give the local electorate a chance to have second thoughts. The Government could say, "Do you really want to do that?" The Government would not destroy local power but would ask people whether the Government or the council was right.
Mr. Allen McKay (Barnsley, West and Penistone) : I share the right hon. Gentleman's views. My local authority has always had a third of its councillors re-elected each year. That provides a balance and influences the direction in which the council moves. This year Labour increased its majority and its number of seats.
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Sir Rhodes Boyson : I had better go and speak in that constituency some time, although I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman.Let us consider the long-term issues. We would prefer it if charge capping was unnecessary. I approve of the orders, and I shall certainly vote for them tomorrow. My enthusiasm is such that I wished to vote for them tonight. The problem with local government is that in most cases local elections are a referendum on the popularity of the Government--Brent, North was an exception, as was Hillingdon and other parts of London. In 1968 when the Labour party was in government, one council--it may have been Hackney or Islington--which previously had had no Conservative councillor, passed into the control of the Conservatives. It was the biggest-ever swing in a local government election. Local elections have ceased to be an opportunity to vote on local issues and have become a referendum on whether the Government are popular.
The only way in which we can return to true local elections is by separating national and local government powers and finance. If they overlap, national and local government will continually wrestle with each other. Conservative Governments will wrestle with Labour authorities and Labour Governments will wrestle with Conservative authorities. Housing is no longer mainly a local government responsibility. By creating grant- maintained schools--I would prefer a voucher system--education could be taken away from local government entirely. The police have been mentioned. Then there is planning and social services.
If we could take all those responsibilities away from local government, in local elections we could vote on local matters such as parks, libraries and other services which are traditionally controlled by the local authority. Expenditure on such services could be covered totally by the community charge. In that way we could separate local and national government. In Scandinavia and West Germany, where the two are separate, there are no battles between central and local government.
There should also be smaller units of local government. The Conservative party destroyed the small boroughs in London in 1964. I opposed that then and I oppose it now. The small councils throughout the country were destroyed in 1972. With no disrespect to the hon. Members for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) and for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), if one draws a map of Brent it looks like a single unit. But it is cut in two by the North Circular road. The North Circular road is as effective as the Berlin wall. One cannot cross it. If one attempted to do so, one would not make a habit of it. Only at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning can one try to cross. The two areas have little in common.
Many people in Brent cannot serve local government : it is too large. They can give one or two evenings a week at most. Most people cannot give four or five nights. That causes the politicisation of local government. If local government was made truly local again, the community charge could be fixed locally without any bother from national Government. We could have one third annual elections to determine whether people agreed with the level set by the council. In the 19th century, what was called permissive legislation was introduced. It was not intended for certain activities that we call permissive legislation now. It was adoptive in legislation. One could take it or not. In 1834, when the Poor Law Reform Act was passed, commissioners divided up the country, just as the local
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