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5.19 pm
Mr. David Rendel (Newbury): Hon. Members will be surprised to hear that my speech will not be about Brent but about the Bill, which contains some useful provisions and some measures that are, at the very worst, harmless. I have some concerns about the Bill that I wish to flag up. As the Minister has told us, the Bill falls into three main sections. I do not want to comment on the Bill's second section, which concerns the change to the financial year for the Audit Commission. That seems to be one of the more harmless parts of any Bill that I have seen since I was elected to the House.
I should like to make one or two comments on the third part of the Bill before I return to its heart, the first section. I welcome the third part of the Bill, which concerns the publication of performance indicators, and the fact that local councils now have some flexibility in how they publicise them. In so far as it goes, that measure is welcome. That is a comparatively minor change, however, and does not go far enough. I say that not so much because--as might have been expected--I am concerned about the possibility of local councils publicising their performance indicators in their publications as because I am concerned about the inflexible way in which those indicators will now be publicised in free newspapers.
The Bill allows publication in free newspapers so long as those newspapers are delivered to each dwelling in a local authority area. In some of our inner cities, in the more tightly bound urban areas, there may well be places where freebies genuinely are delivered to all the buildings and dwellings. But where a local authority has even a small area of rural countryside, freebies are unlikely to be delivered to each dwelling in that area. After all, it is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect the publisher of a free newspaper to spend money ensuring that his newspaper reaches every little farmstead, where a paperboy may take half an hour to cycle there and back. There are many areas of the country where the distribution of freebies does not extend to every house in the area, nor is it necessary that they should do so for our purposes.
Surely the important feature about the publication of performance indicators is that the greatest public breadth of distribution is achieved, the information provided is clear, the scope of the information is right, the information is relevant to local people, and that it is what they want to hear about. At present, we do not have a total distribution system. The problem with performance indicators being publicised only in newspapers that can be purchased is that, as is well known, not every household purchases the local newspaper. We do not have total distribution at present. Surely, we wish to enhance distribution to ensure that more dwellings--not necessarily every dwelling-- receive the information. For that reason, this part of the Bill should be greeted with only a half cheer.
The heart of the Bill is contained in its first section: the extension of the Audit Commission's remit. The Liberal Democrats do not object to the principle of a commission, which is independent of government, examining the performance of local or national government for the purposes of a genuine audit. That would be valuable, and I support much of what has been said about the
enhancement of the Audit Commission's powers. The commission is useful in helping local people to make judgments about the performance of their local authorities and in exposing corruption and general malpractice. We should enhance the commission's powers if possible as it also keeps local councillors on their toes.
I should like to criticise some of the aspects of the commission's enhanced role which have been introduced by the changes contained in the Bill. Let me start with a few specific criticisms that worry some of our local authorities now. Over the past few years, local authorities' financial resources have been cut severely. They often have too little money to fulfil even their statutory responsibilities, let alone their discretionary responsibilities. As local authorities have so little money--largely as the result of Government cuts in the money provided--they may be unable to do what they ought to do, let alone what they would like to do. They are concerned that they may, quite unfairly, be blamed for any such failures.
It is therefore reasonable that local authorities should, where possible, be given a right to reply to any audit criticisms that are published about them. There is a strong case to be made for any reports based on the new procedures contained in the Bill to be handed to local authorities in draft form before they are published. The authorities should have the right to comment on the reports and to publish their reply to any criticisms that they contain at the same time as they are published.
Secondly, there is concern about over-inspection. The Government are supposedly keen on deregulation and on removing the bureaucratic controls that harm the organisations in this country. They seem to be concerned about deregulation mainly where it affects businesses, but local authorities also need to maximise their income and minimise their expenditure. There is no doubt that the inspections in local authorities which are now taking place with ever-increasing frequency take up a great amount of the time of officers, particularly middle-management officers and the management tier that has been particularly hard hit by Government cuts in local authorities.
Thirdly, I do not yet believe that the Government have given us sufficient assurance that they understand the need for confidentiality over some of the material involve. That is particularly true in the social services sector, which contains some highly sensitive material which would be seen if an audit inspection was carried out. It is important that the confidentiality of that material should be properly safeguarded. I hope that when the Minister winds up the debate he will give us further assurances that he recognises the importance of the issue and has considered all the difficulties that it may entail. There are some more general criticisms of the Bill that need to be aired. The central principle underpinning the concept of auditing local government is that the auditors are independent of central Government and of the governing political philosophy of the day. That condition has not been satisfactorily met, even under the present arrangements; but the Government are clearly determined to tighten their grip still further on the Audit Commission, which is one of the Bill's dangers.
The Bill goes some way towards transforming the Audit Commission into an instrument of the centralised state, in confrontation with local government--
a significant danger. But of course we have come to expect such measures from the Conservatives. They have taken every opportunity to centralise power around their governing clique; they have undermined democracy at every turn and they have even pulled the rug from under their own Back Benchers and the House. We no longer have even Cabinet government; we have bureaucratic government through quangos--that is the Conservatives' way and they now seem to be seeking to impose an ever-more centralised bureaucracy on local authorities.
It is interesting that the Labour party is now taking very much the same track. It also intends to bureaucratise local government in a way that might even make Conservative Members wince. The Labour party is convinced that it will soon be pulling the Whitehall strings and it finds centralised bureaucratic government all the more attractive now that it believes that it may have the pleasure of inflicting it. We all know why the Tory and Labour parties are so keen to increase central Government's control over local authorities: they are both terrified--we have seen examples of it this afternoon--of the way in which some of the councils in their control may carry out absurd policies that destroy their reputations as political parties. However, neither of those parties is prepared to set up a new democratic system for local authorities that could return real control to the local electorate and ensure that those councils were made properly accountable once again. That is what the Bill needs; it needs the local electorate to be in charge, not just the auditors.
The problem is that sober auditing of government at any level is all very well, but in the end the only real test of the performance of government or of local councils is the judgment of local people--the judgment of the electorate, expressed through the ballot box. That judgment can be properly expressed only if we use a fair and representative voting system. That is not nowadays self-interest from the Liberal Democrat point of view. Liberal Democrats benefit from the present voting system in local elections. It is the Conservatives who have been annihilated in local government, in spite of the fact that they retain a certain share of the vote.
I have no doubt that the over-representation of Liberal Democrat councillors at the expense of the Tories does produce better local government; nevertheless, it is unfair and reduces accountability--unfair, that is, to Tory voters.
I am sure that local people are better judges of the performance of their local authority than the local auditor. Arming people with properly audited information can only enhance local people's judgment. However, let us have the courage to ensure that, when people cast their vote, that vote counts and makes a real difference. That is what gives people control over wayward local authorities.
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