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9.14 pm
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I should declare an honorary interest as an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association, which, although I am proud to be one, is not a great distinction because many hon. Members are vice-presidents of the LGA. I should also list my crimes--I was a member of Somerset county council for 12 years, leader of the council, chairman of the police authority and vice-chairman of two national bodies. For three years, I was on the Audit Commission. Quaintly, like many hon. Members who were in local government and now find themselves in Parliament, I still believe in local government and local democracy and I am prepared to stand up and say so because it is important.
Unfortunately, coming to this place seems to have addled my brain. When I intervened on the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), I was incapable of remembering a list of three things, which is a shame. We argued for so many years with Conservative Governments for the need to remove capping--of course--the need to reform the uniform business rate,
which it seems we spent yesterday reinforcing, and the removal of the wretched area cost adjustment, into which I shall not go because it is not relevant, but on which the Government are ducking the issue.
We should welcome some parts of the Bill. The removal of compulsory competitive tendering is the obvious case in point. The problem with CCT was always the first C. There was nothing wrong with competitive tendering as a process, a tool of local government. The compulsion was wrong. Distortions introduced by Conservative legislation meant the removal of fair competition and the stripping of local authorities of much work that had been properly done. Incidentally, CCT did not result in such good value to the taxpayer because of the value-added element that was lost in the process--let alone the detrimental effect on employees.
I welcome in broad terms the best value proposal, but I am worried as to whether the guidance will become uniform. My experience on the Audit Commission made it clear that it is very difficult to move from using performance indicators, however sophisticated they are, to a process that enables the establishment of best practice without dictating best practice. The most important thing is the capacity for communities to take local decisions that are right for them. I hope that local government will be properly involved in the derivation of performance indicators and in identifying areas that are best left to the local electorate to determine. There must be real choice in local government. If it means anything, it is the capacity to make a proposal and allow people a choice on the basis of that proposal.
I am worried about clause 14. I listened carefully to the Minister comment on how a general power of competence would not achieve similar results. I hope that we shall have a chance in Committee to explore the audit trail further, because I am not convinced that it does not exist. One area that is outside the audit trail of either the Audit Commission or the National Audit Office at the moment is that of quangos, such as housing associations. We have begged time and again for them to be included in the audit regime. None the less, I cannot see how bodies that are separately audited by authorities and set up by Parliament can fall outside the audit trail.
The major problem is capping. We have heard all this nonsense about reserve powers before. We heard it from the previous Government, yet, eventually, every single county council was capped. That was not the use of a reserve power; it was universal capping. The pre-notification issue, about which we have also heard before, is equally important. An indeterminate sword of Damocles hung over local authorities, which was detrimental to the way in which local authorities were managed and not in the best interests of rate payers.
All sorts of issues are involved in the way in which capping will be implemented in its new form, such as that concerning authorities that are already spending below the standard spending assessment. SSAs are arbitrary, not accurate, measures. It would be quite wrong to use them as a test of whether a council is competent and efficient.
The essential issue on which I shall dwell is that of democracy. If we do not give local voters real choices, why on earth should they vote? The Conservatives made that mistake over many years in government. By introducing universal capping and ensuring that there was no difference in total spend, they removed any local
argument for electing Conservative councillors, and paid the penalty for it. It worries me that the new proposals will achieve exactly the same by other means--by virtue of best value, dictation from the centre and the reserve power of capping.
Dr. George Turner:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Heath:
No, I do not have time.
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley):
We have had an interesting debate. We heard 18 Back-Bench speakers, many of them with long years of service in local government, so a great deal of experience was brought to the debate. Instead of attacks on capping and compulsory competitive tendering, it might have been appropriate if those on the Labour Benches had offered apologies for the antics of some of their local authorities over many years. I am referring not just to the imposition of high council taxes, but to mismanagement and, in too many cases, corruption as well.
Dr. Lynne Jones:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Evans:
I want to make a little progress as I do not have much time, but I shall give way to the hon. Lady later.
We are used to local authorities twinning, but a number of Labour-controlled authorities have overdone it. Poor service was twinned with high council taxes. To those authorities, beacon councils meant not beacons, but bonfires on which their council tax money seemed to go up in smoke, without any impact on services.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) seemed to associate large sums of money with much better services. Time and again, the figures proved that that was not the case. Some of the authorities with the highest council taxes and the highest level of expenditure had the poorest levels of service. We must divorce the two and find out how the money can be effectively and efficiently spent.
I went through this morning's newspapers expecting to read the usual spin doctors' reports on the Bill, telling us how wonderful it was and how it would restore local democracy, free local government and keep faith with the councils. Instead of that, the newspapers were dominated by national politics and the Prime Minister's attempts to fight back after the Government's black Christmas. The Guardian reported that the Government's fight-back
Someone less generous than I might have accused the Government of engineering the back-stabbing and in-fighting as a distraction from their policies, especially
on local government. As the Government relaunch themselves, they tell us that they want to move away from personality to policy. If the Bill is an example of policy, no wonder the papers are full of personality. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir P. Beresford) said that many hon. Members had read the Bill and read between the lines. They know exactly what the Bill means.
The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) said that he hoped that local government would be judged on its own merits and not used as a poll on national Government. After 18 months of Labour Government, I understand why he should say that. The Bill represents the continuation of an approach that lacks direction, consistency and detailed thought.
As we enter a new century, we witness attacks on our constitution and an erratic reform of government at all levels. [Interruption.] The Bill is part of that pattern and comes from the Government who have given us one institution for Scotland with a certain set of powers, including tax-raising powers; another institution for Wales, where the Welsh Assembly will take on many of the powers mentioned in the Bill; a different set of powers for London, with a directly elected mayor; and voting systems that beggar belief, especially the closed-list system for European elections.
We are constantly told to look at the big picture, but there is no big picture of which these reforms form part--only a series of small pictures which bear no relation to one another. [Interruption.] It is not a grand mosaic, but a system of crazy paving. None of these reforms--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but we cannot have a continuous sedentary chorus from those on the Government Front Bench.
Mr. Evans:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. None of these reforms will help. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) called them half-baked, but that gives them credit that they ill deserve.
"got off to a shaky start . . . as ministers braced themselves for hard times ahead".
It referred to
"three grim weeks which have cost two ministers' and one spin doctor's jobs".
Perhaps that was the spin doctor who would normally have spun this sort of story.
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