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The Audit Commission will need to measure in the round and produce indicators that reflect that. Therefore, it will need to consider community health. It will have to ask whether the community is working better as a result of the way in which services are delivered. I am delighted that some measures will be set in terms of delivery against community expectation. To measure that is a further challenge. It will produce a different way of organising performance indicators from the mechanistic approach of the previous Conservative Government. The Government will need to ensure that those more difficult three-dimensional performance indicators are robust. I am sure that work will be needed to ensure that that is the case.
Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings):
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) invited us to go back to fundamentals in considering the Bill--what we want from local authorities is the context in which the Bill is being debated. Before doing so, I want to deal briefly with some comments made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead).
Essentially, the misunderstanding in the hon. Gentleman's contribution was that he failed to recognise that CCT was based on an analysis of process, not outcome. The worry that some of us who value local democracy have about best value is that not just the process but the outcome will be defined, not by the local people, because the accountability will not be first and foremost to them, the recipients of the service--although I accept that consumers and electors are not synonymous--but by an outside agency, in this case the Government. That is the essential difference between CCT and best value. It is a difference and a concern which has been raised by the Local Government Association.
I come now, in the spirit initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin), to the fundamentals. We need to see the Bill in the context of our vision of local democracy. Local government is a key part of our democratic infrastructure, but only if it is in
the tradition of local self-government, not if it is an agency for central Government. That may seem self-evident. Surely we all recognise that local government is important democratically in a number of ways. It is important because it is the first interface which most people have with the exercise of political power. It is important because it helps to provide the framework of our political parties which, in a sophisticated democracy, are themselves crucial to good government. But it is also important because it provides an alternative means of delivering political ideas, of exercising political power; not a competitive means to this place--this Parliament is sovereign--but an alternative means, an alternative forum for different ideas, a different focus for power, a different focus for a distinctive view of how services should be delivered in a local community.
Sadly, although that may seem self-evident, it has not been a view shared by many national politicians since the war. It is easy to forget that before 1945 core services, such as electricity, health and water, were delivered by local government. The drift has been one way since then, and it has been away from local democracy and local government. Politicians of Governments of all parties have failed to trust local government with the power that it needs to deliver the sort of distinctive exercise of political authority that I mentioned earlier.
The tradition of people making a national name in local government before entering Parliament has also largely been lost in this country, although it still exists in many other democracies--France springs to mind. I say that it is lost because it was once the norm here. One thinks of the Chamberlains in Birmingham or Herbert Morrison in London, who became national figures in local government before they made their names in Parliament. That, loss, too, has had an effect on the way this place sees local democracy. If we accept my initial premise--that local government is an essential part of our democratic infrastructure--we must have the courage to allow local authorities sufficient power and finance to govern not only effectively, but distinctively.
There must be sufficient flexibility to allow innovation and diversity in different authorities. Audited performance plans and unprecedented levels of intervention by the Secretary of State raise legitimate doubts about the creation of vanilla-flavoured local government, constrained by a combination of rigid finance and uniform standards dictated from outside the locality. That will endanger the concept of genuine choices being made locally about the distinctive exercise of political authority. Such intervention is based on the bogus notion of equity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage pointed out, but also on the equally bogus notion of comparability.
The idea that there can be any useful purpose in having nationally uniform targets to compare local authorities in urban areas with small authorities in remote rural communities is nonsense. There is no good logical reason for uniform targets across such different types of local authority. It is as nonsensical as having uniform targets for different types of business; for example, by comparing a farmer with a person making soft drinks. It is a bogus notion, but a powerful one, and it is reflected both in the Bill and in the explanatory notes.
Annual performance plans across authorities must be different in style and content; they should reflect local needs and also differing local political priorities.There has always been a tension between Parliament and
local government, but the Bill will result in a degree of tension between the Secretary of State and local government that has never existed. The Bill specifically identifies the extension of capping through the idea that it can be applied over several years, and that extension will further prevent local authorities from developing and financing distinctive plans.
How can the Bill be anything but counter-productive in terms of attracting the best people to local government--the most innovative, dynamic and imaginative people? Who would go into local government, if all they could do was to go through the motions, conforming to some nationally agreed plan and set of targets? The Bill runs counter to the objectives laid down by the Government in various documents on local democracy about encouraging the involvement of good people in local councils early in their lives.
Few people could argue with the principle of best value that underpins the Bill and is central to the delivery of its stated aims of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, but the target-setting, measurement and consultation must be set, led and delivered locally. Local authorities must be more than simply agencies of central Government. The Bill is based on the view that the problem of local government is that standards of service are too variable, but its solution is prescription. Instead, the solution should be to enable local government to become more accountable to its electors, who will vote for best value when they recognise the relationship between what they pay and the quality and level of service that they receive.
Dr. George Turner (North-West Norfolk):
It is interesting to follow a political neighbour, if not a political friend. The views expressed by the hon. Gentleman are a long way from how I understand the Bill.
I warmly welcome the Bill and the role that it has to play. Although it has been criticised as too narrowly financial, the House should recognise that it is part of a package of measures designed to address the real needs of local government and local democracy. After 20 years of experience in local government, I cannot share the rather apathetic views of some hon. Members--surprisingly, even some of my Labour colleagues--who believe that turnouts of 20 or 30 per cent. at local elections are somehow acceptable.
I am delighted that we are addressing the need to rejuvenate local democracy. The one point on which I agree with the hon. Member for South Holland andThe Deepings (Mr. Hayes) is that local democracy will
be healthy when local people actually vote on the issues affecting their communities, rather than acting as a national opinion poll on the Government of the day. The tasks are challenging, but we all have an interest in supporting them.
In welcoming the Bill, I was amused to hear, if not the deathbed repentance, then the repentance from the coffin of the Opposition, because after living through 18 years when their actions showed us what they believed in, it was almost like being in a dream to hear what the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) had to say about local government. The Opposition must think that the electorate are fools if they really think that their actions will be seen as anything other than electoral posturing and the search for short-term political advantage. I genuinely hope that the Opposition will develop their views, as we need to be united nationally on some issues if we are to achieve proper local government.
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