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5.41 pm
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett (Denton and Reddish): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) because I want to congratulate him. Today, we have probably seen one of the greatest examples for a long time of bare-faced cheek from any Conservative Member. I welcome his conversion to a belief in local government. It is just a pity that, during the 18 years that they were in government, the Conservatives showed little or no sympathy for local government.
Mr. Jenkin: Will the hon. Gentleman join me in the Lobby to vote against the Henry VIII clause in the Bill?
Mr. Bennett: I would certainly be pleased, if I were to serve on the Committee, to vote against the Henry VIII clause. I agree with the hon. Gentleman: we should not be putting such clauses in legislation, but I wish that the previous Administration had been as good at preventing their introduction as some of us on the Back Benches.
I welcome the proposals to get rid of compulsory competitive tendering because I do not accept that that practice did anything useful for local government. It led to a huge waste of resources because one group of people bid for contracts and another group of people tried to manoeuvre things so that contracts were not awarded in a particular direction.
In so far as any money was saved, it was not a saving to the citizen, although it may have been a saving to the local authority. What tended to happen--it was certainly the experience in my constituency--was that people who lost a refuse contract were re-employed at lower rates of pay. They then had to apply for benefits of various sorts to make their income up to nearly what it was before. The difference was that, instead of having the honour of working to earn the money, they had to rely on the benefit system. That was not to anyone's advantage.
I also noticed that a substantial number of people in the poorest parts of my constituency lost their jobs and that those jobs went to people in richer parts of Stockport. Often, the job went from a breadwinner to someone who had the second job in a household. I do not object to second jobs in a household, but it meant that, in some of
the poorest areas of Stockport and Tameside, jobs and income, which was earned as a right, disappeared. That not only impoverished people there, but reduced income opportunities for shops and the rest of the community.
I do not believe that compulsory competitive tendering did anything useful for local government. I welcome the fact that it is to be abolished, but there is not much else in the Bill that I have much enthusiasm for. The whole question of best value is verbiage. It has been already said several times that it is a smokescreen to cover up further Government control.
I applaud the aim of regenerating local government, but there are much simpler ways of doing that. Basically, one has to set local government free and trust the local electorate. Until we do that, it will be very difficult to regenerate local government.
We also have to look firmly at the powers of local government. As long as we continue to reduce the powers of local government, it will be very difficult to increase enthusiasm and interest in it. In the year I was born, the list of powers held by the local authority in the city of Manchester was very long. It was responsible for the gas supply, the electricity supply, the water supply, sewage disposal, buses and trams, refuse collection and disposal, housing and education from nursery schools up to further and higher education. It was responsible for social services provision and the poor law institutions were still under its control. It was also responsible for environmental health, the police, the fire service, parks, cemeteries, crematoriums, libraries, wash houses and baths. I could go on, right down to a substantial share in the Manchester ship canal. Those were extensive powers and they attracted to local government people who were enthusiastic about running those areas of responsibility.
Having taken virtually all those things away from local government, we have to recognise that the situation has changed. Even in the areas of responsibility still held by local government, there is a tendency for Whitehall to want to dictate what is done. We have to recognise that, unless we return to local government far more of those powers, we should stop calling it local government and accept that it is merely local administration of national services. Until we recognise the need to reverse that trend, it will be very difficult to rebuild local government.
It has been suggested to me that if we have elected mayors and cabinet government within local authorities, we will somehow attract people back to serve on councils. The first thing we have to recognise is that we must give much greater status to elected councillors and not, as so often happens, knock those individuals who provide a useful service. We must also recognise the problems of attracting people to such jobs. In the early part of the century many people did not have good educational opportunities. They ended up in relatively dead-end jobs and were very pleased to be able to show their skills and powers of leadership by becoming members of local councils. As a result of improved educational opportunities, the number of people in that situation has reduced dramatically. It is the same for Conservative councillors. Many people were forced into family businesses where they were not able to exercise their skills and they ended up being able to show those skills and their willingness to serve their community through the local councils. Many of those opportunities have now disappeared.
It is extremely difficult for people to get time off work for such tasks. That is not because the employers say that they cannot have time off to work on the local council, but because it is spelt out clearly that if they do, their promotion chances will disappear. If we are to attract people back to serve on councils, we must accept that it is extremely important to ensure that local councillors have status and are offered the opportunity to take time off.
I believe that, as long as local authorities are receiving the vast majority of their funding from central Government, it will be extremely difficult to get back the autonomy. We should return the business rate to local authorities. Until we do, it will be difficult to give them the status they require.
I think that the Government must face the fundamental question of how far local people should be able to make choices. In my childhood, my father used to tell me firmly that I could make a choice if I lived in Greater Manchester. I could either aim to live in the city of Manchester and pay high rates and have high-quality services or I could live across the boundary in Stretford or one of the other smaller authorities surrounding Manchester and pay much lower rates and have much poorer services, unless I was crafty and able to slip across the border to enjoy some of the services provided by the city. People had a clear choice. That choice is increasingly disappearing. That is what worries me about best value. People should have the right to choose to have a lower level of services in their area and to pay less for it. That is difficult if there are national standards for education, social services and other functions.
Will best value apply to education? It seems logical that it should, but we do not want a proliferation of best value measures and the whole inspection system, which currently comes from the Department for Education and Employment.
If we are introducing best value, it is important to take a holistic view and measure all the services provided by a local authority. I am worried that any measuring exercise--be it the simple measurement of profits and costs in compulsory competitive tendering or a system that lays down criteria--will fail to look at the whole picture. I should like to illustrate that by considering the provision of services for the elderly in Reddish. It is not difficult to measure what is provided by social services, such as luncheon clubs and home helps. However, the authority provides or assists with a range of other equally important services for elderly people. The Reddish library provides an excellent service for the elderly to borrow books and talk to people. It is a helpful service for the community. The same is true of allotments, which are often run by a voluntary committee, many of whose members are pensioners. Stockport council should be proud of the support that it gives in that area, but the activity of the parks department is equally important. Stockport's neglect of the bowling greens has undermined an opportunity for elderly people to enjoy themselves. I should like all those services measured under best value, but it is difficult to achieve such holistic measurement.
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