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Mr. Curry: There is a serious purpose behind new clause 5--to discover whether the Government believe that the panoply of powers that they are now taking unto themselves, adding to current powers, will be needed in perpetuity. The principle of best value, as I understand it, is that it will produce regular improvement in how local government delivers services. As we discussed in Committee, there is bound to be a time when the excellent become a little more excellent, the ordinary move up a bit in the league tables, and the rather unambitious ones in the bottom half of the tables become passable. However, with each improvement, incremental gain becomes ever more difficult to achieve. Do the Government believe that there will be perpetual improvement, or is there a local government nirvana in which authorities will be deemed to be performing satisfactorily? The purpose of the new clause is to find the answer to that question.
There are two possible scenarios. In the first, we look at the current circumstances of local government. The Minister may need to be prompted when he replies, but he should not need my questions interpreted as we go along. I try to speak in relatively modest English.
Ms Armstrong:
The right hon. Gentleman is not saying anything new.
8.30 pm
Mr. Curry: I am sure that the right hon. Lady knows from her long experience in the House that politics is often a matter of trying to repeat arguments that were clearly not understood the first time.
In the first scenario, we accept that there is clearly room for significant improvements in local government at the moment. The Secretary of State should not have to use his powers, because delivering improvements will not need a
gargantuan effort or the skills of rocket scientists, although there may be problems in one or two areas. For example, we have a "will he, won't he?" situation in Hackney on the future of the education service.
Improvements should be evident early on, but what happens 10 years down the road if the legislation is still in place and local authorities have made significant improvements? Having made a great deal of effort they may find it difficult to continue making incremental gains. The Secretary of State will not give up and will continue to expect more gains. Every year, all Governments build cost-efficiencies into their financing formulae and expect productivity gains. Every year people protest that the gains are not easy to achieve. At some stage, they are bound to be right.
Do the Government envisage the extraordinarily extensive powers of intervention being needed in perpetuity? They have released local government into a gilded cage. It is an open prison in which local authorities cannot see the walls, but they know that if they go beyond a certain frontier they will get an electric shock and the guards will come after them. That is the best value principle.
I quite like the best value principle, because it is a logical successor to the compulsory competitive tendering process. It would not have been introduced without the experience of competitive tendering. The previous Government were looking for a more sophisticated mechanism that was less demanding of resources to supersede competitive tendering. One cannot say that the Government's proposals will not require vast resources for policing. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is having a conversation on the Front Bench at the moment. The Treasury may become rather twitchy at some stage about the resources demanded by all the monitoring. It usually reacts like that.
Mr. Gray:
Did I understand correctly that my right hon. Friend believed that CCT involved more monitoring costs than best value? Surely it is the other way round.
Mr. Curry:
No, that is the opposite of what I said. The previous Government were concerned about the manpower costs of CCT. We recognised that it was necessary to find a mechanism to allow the most responsive and competitive authorities to recover certain freedoms and discretions, relieving some of the manpower costs. That is a logical incentive. Best value has provided a different mechanism for control, but it has not relieved the public purse--defined in the broadest sense--of the immense cost of the supervision. The money resolution had to give enormous new resources to the Audit Commission.
Mr. Forth:
I hope that my right hon. Friend is not forgetting the unquantified additional costs added to the Bill by the previous group of amendments, in which we identified a new army of co-ordinators, forums and all sorts of other things that would--probably mistakenly--attempt to co-ordinate all the others.
Mr. Curry:
I have not forgotten about that. We pointed to the need for some co-ordination, but we are anxious that co-ordination should not take over the inspection functions. The costs will be very substantial.
I should like to tease out what the Government think that local government will look like in 10 years. That is a legitimate question. Governments tend to look at the ground immediately in front of them, because that is where the landmines explode, but they have another major local government Bill on the way--apparently it is to be published in the next few days--that is also very prescriptive of how local authorities must behave and what choices they have to take, removing discretion from councils to choose their own form of management. We are getting prescription across the board. I am anxious to know whether there is some stage at which the rhetoric of liberty--the freedom rhetoric--will be complemented by measures that suggest that local government is to be trusted.
As I said in Committee, the Government and their predecessors--I am not in the business of repentance politics, so I do not apologise for it--were more concerned about good local administration than about local government. The Bill is another prescription for efficient local administration, but it removes local government from the people because it does not give them the discretion to choose--even to choose bad councillors and inefficient local government if they want to live with that.
What does the Minister envisage as the net result of the legislation? It has a purpose. At some stage, we hope to reach a form of local government about which we can say reform has been achieved, when we can return local government to the people. The community should take responsibility for local government; we do not need a canopy of measures constantly riding shotgun.
If the Minister can give us some idea of the Government's intentions, the new clause will not be necessary. It was tabled to try to tease out some idea of where the Government imagine they will end up after the long voyage that they have undertaken with the local government barque being towed behind at some distance. If the Minister can tell us that, she will do us all a service. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) has done us a great service by tabling the new clause which requires that question to be asked and answered.
The sunset clause provides for the natural extinction of powers if they have not been exercised. If they have not been exercised, that is because the local authority concerned behaved in a way that the Secretary of State deemed satisfactory. In a sense, that is an incentive; it is a means by which the local authority can be rewarded with more freedom through the absence of restraint and direction. I do not understand why the Minister does not admit that that is rather a good idea. It enables a local authority to demonstrate its efficiency, good will and capability. If it can do that, why on earth should it continue to be bound by the constraints. Why can it not be said that a local authority has demonstrated that it can live within the responsibilities defined by its own electorate instead of by the Government? If the Minister accepts that, she will have done local government a service instead of constantly talking about its freedom.
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam):
I welcome the new clause as it provides a useful opportunity to debate a number of issues in the Bill. It also reflects the Conservative Front-Bench approach to revisionism and repentance in respect of the 18 years of Conservative Government. We welcome that, although I listened to the
New clause 5 is a clever amendment, as was reflected in the exchanges around the Chamber. It provides for the cessation of the capping power being exercised by the Secretary of State if a local authority is a good local authority under the terms of the Bill. If the Secretary of State has no need to use the best value powers to regulate a local authority, after the three-year period to which the new clause refers the other powers within the Bill cease to have effect. That is to be welcomed.
It is a pity that the Conservatives did not take that approach in government and that it took the sunset of a general election for them to realise that such a measure would focus the energy and attention of local government. I urge the Government to give the new clause serious thought, as it represents another way of achieving their intentions in respect of beacon councils. Beacon councils are about providing a means by which local authorities can secure greater independence, autonomy and freedom of action for and on behalf of their local communities. If the new clause can achieve that, it must be welcomed.
We have one or two reservations, however, because the new clause does not extinguish those powers; it merely adds a second stage to the exercise of those powers.
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