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7.15 pm

New clause 3 should be accepted because the public and parish councils must be sure and made aware of the fact that their finances are to be presented publicly and be open to scrutiny. "Sleaze" is a nasty word, but sleaze is sleaze is sleaze, whether it is found on the Government Benches or our Benches, on a city, county or parish council, or whether it involves Mr. X the builder whose wife is on the parish council--we all know how local communities work.

I believe that the Audit Commission should be properly consulted about the provisions that it wants included in the Bill if, as I think we should, we pass more power to local level. That would ensure that greater accountability followed that power.

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): I have to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) that I was part of the original working group that led to the formation of the National Association of Local Councils, and I am delighted to learn that it is in such excellent hands. I am also a vice-president of the Kent Association of Parish Councils.

I congratulate the Government warmly on their efforts to enhance the powers of parish councils, which I believe to be entirely appropriate. It is clear that the pool of people from which parish councillors can be drawn is growing every day as people take earlier retirement, or are even forced to do so. I have great sympathy for the new clause, but, even if it cannot be accepted, I hope and believe that Ministers will agree that parish councils are increasingly demonstrating their capacity to take on more roles. I hope that the move to give them more control over their local communities--communities of which parish council members have great knowledge, on which those members are able to spend much more time and to which they can offer greater personal commitment than is often possible for borough and county councillors--will continue.

Ms Hilary Armstrong (North-West Durham): This is an interesting little debate. I am sure that the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) will not press the new clause, because it would in essence give parish councils a power of general competence, and therefore many more powers than other authorities would have.

Until we properly address the relationship between central and local government and the powers of other authorities, it would be perverse of the House to give parishes powers that other tiers of government cannot exercise. Were we to do that, new legislation would have to be introduced to ensure that parish councils were made accountable for those powers and that all the necessary checks and balances were in place.

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I am a fellow vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils and president of the Durham Association of Parish and Town Councils. I greatly support the important role that such councils play in their localities, but I am not convinced at this stage that they want to become county and district councils too. However, I believe that they have an important role to play, together with those authorities, in exercising functions that are currently the responsibility of other tiers of government.

That is why our new clause 4 offers models of partnership on two activities that are identified in the Bill--transport, and crime prevention and community safety. Given the current framework of local government, new clause 4 is by far the best way in which to proceed. We should ensure that there is real partnership between parish councils, town councils and the other tiers of government that have responsibilities in the areas they serve.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mrs. Jackson) referred to new clause 3. If the Government were minded to be sympathetic to new clause 1, new clause 3 would become even more important as an acknowledgement that the auditing of parish and town councils should be far more onerous than it is at present. I thank the Minister for his letter about auditing, which did not arrive until after we had tabled new clause 3; if we had delayed tabling the new clause, it would not have been discussed today. I appreciate that it does not take into account some of the measures that the Minister addressed in his letter.

Those of us who are concerned about probity in public office will be reassured by many of the measures outlined in the letter. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hillsborough on her persistence in pursuing the matter and on ensuring that we looked at it in detail in Committee. I felt that it was important to pursue it on the Floor of the House. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the measures outlined in his letter of 21 January will be implemented swiftly, as the Bill is implemented, so that the new powers in the Bill do not come into effect until those measures come into effect.

New clause 4 deals with the powers relating to transport, and to crime prevention and community safety; it emphasises a partnership approach. The Bill addresses transport and crime prevention, but we believe that it is important to reflect the work going on in local government on the face of the Bill. Local government is committed to seeking to achieve more sustainable patterns of transport use and successful local crime prevention initiatives. Local authorities have extensive responsibilities in both areas, and, in many senses, they are in a prime position to tackle the real problems that local communities face.

We had some interesting and wide-ranging debates in Committee on the problems of transport in rural areas, which local authorities are in a prime position to tackle. By going along with the spirit of new clause 4, the Government would ensure that parish councils were involved with district councils, county councils or metropolitan authorities in ways that would mean that there was a close look at transport needs and what could be done to tackle them.

The Department of Transport is already working with local authority associations to develop further a package approach to transport investment, to ensure that

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authorities in a local area work out what is needed and to ensure that they target the finance available to tackle those needs. Parish councils have an important role to play in that and we should ensure that they are fully part of any plan that is being made.

I reiterate that we believe that local authorities need to be able to secure improvements in the quality of bus services and the integration of bus services with other forms of transport. Our debate in Committee highlighted the problems of rural areas in that regard and how important it was to take account of them.

It is also important that local authorities retain the ability to influence rail services. That is not as important in rural areas as it once was or as it should be. None the less, it is important that, as part of a wider transport strategy, all the different aspects of public transport come within the partnership approach that we seek to develop through new clause 4.

We want to ensure that the Government establish a policy and a financial framework within which authorities are encouraged to implement innovative transport strategies embracing a package of measures designed to improve the quality of public transport. They should look at car use; I know that the Road Traffic (Reduction) Bill, which is before the House tomorrow, deals with that.

Yesterday, I was in Loughborough looking at what the council has done to enable that small market town to provide pedestrian access, accessibility from the edges of the town and access for the disabled. Those developments have come about because the various authorities in the area have worked together and, despite the financial constraints, have come up with a package that is working for the town. It is our job to provide the framework to encourage and give an incentive to local authorities to work together on such developments.

There are things that can be done and there are things that local authorities are already doing. We believe that the Bill offers an opportunity for the Government to emphasise that parish and town councils play an important part and need to be consulted effectively. More importantly, they should be seen as partners in transport proposals.

The same is true of crime prevention, which is important in rural areas as well as in urban areas. When I was in Loughborough yesterday, I realised the importance of the integrated way in which the authorities had tackled crime prevention and transport in the town centre.

The second part of new clause 4 addresses crime prevention by encouraging concerned people and organisations to work together, each of them playing a vital role. We know very well that, if crime prevention is left to the police and seen as the responsibility of one agency rather than all agencies, adequate solutions simply do not come forward.

I have visited areas where they have spent a year considering crime prevention and bringing together voluntary organisations, different tiers of local government, the police, crime prevention panels, and so on, so that they work in partnership to identify practical ways in which they can deter criminals and find new ways of reassuring local people about security and community safety. Getting local government to take responsibility for ensuring such co-ordination would change things radically.

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The recent Audit Commission report on finding ways forward for young offenders, "Misspent Youth", marked a remarkable departure for the Audit Commission, bringing together some of the things that it does best. It made it clear that we can save an enormous amount of money and more effectively tackle the problem of young people committing offences if we take a much more co-ordinated approach and if local government plays a strategic role in ensuring such co-ordination. All our experience points to that approach. New clause 4 would ensure that parish and town councils were in the middle of a partnership approach to the development of a strategy for crime prevention and community safety. The Government ought to listen to such suggestions.

I have re-read what the Minister said the last time we debated crime prevention. He thinks that it is an issue for the police. I was not satisfied with his approach then and remain dissatisfied. The Audit Commission's report identifies other ways of going forward and the new clause would enable the Government to take them up. The new clause is not dictatorial or profess that we know best. It offers local solutions to local problems. It would begin to tackle problems in a way that I know can work. We ought to be pushing to ensure that such an approach works.

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