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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. The hon. Gentleman has made his point about other Acts and he should not go into detail about when they were debated. He should get back to new clause 5.
Mr. Letwin: As ever, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am grateful for that admonition. Luckily, too, I had finished the quotation. I mentioned it because the Minister will be interested to learn that it was from one Mr. Michael Foot, who cannot be said to have been a reactionary Conservative making utterances for the sake of causing trouble. That doctrine used to be espoused on both sides of the House, even by those most devoted to socialism in its full-blooded form. However, we still find that new clause 5 has not met with the ready acceptance of Ministers. Why not? I regret that the reason undoubtedly is that they have been corrupted by the same thing as afflicted the previous Administration. That is not a partisan point, but a serious one about what happens to Governments in their relationship to local government and in their whole use of powers.
9 pm
Later this evening, we shall debate Henry VIII clauses and the same point will be made then: the Labour Government have introduced more wide-ranging powers for Secretaries of State to amend Acts by order than ever before in British history. That is regrettable, but the Government have not done it on their own; those powers are the culmination of a trend. Similarly, we see the culmination of a trend in this measure. I remember the vigorous arguments of the early 1980s when the great expansion of local government finance first occurred--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman must talk about the new clause. Other matters have nothing to do with what is before the House at the moment.
Mr. Letwin:
I am talking about the new clause, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I am trying to explain why the Government have fallen into the trap of opposing the
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would put his own case. I have not heard the Minister speak on the new clause, so we do not know what the Government's view is. We must hear the voices for the new clause and then, if necessary, we shall hear the voices against it. Let us not get into detailed explanations of why the Government should oppose the new clause until we have heard what they have to say.
Mr. Letwin:
I would not dream of suggesting that I know what the Government will say, although you might agree, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if the Government did not intend to take the view that I was describing, Ministers would by now--in what I regret is rather a long speech--have intervened. We know that the Government will not accept the new clause.
To reverse the point and make it positive, the reason for the new clause is that the Government need to adapt; they need to realise that local government is capable of running its own affairs. It is vital that if this country is to have a grown-up local democracy, local people should be given the chance to decide whether local government is running its affairs properly. I understand why my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex has said that the clause should be time-limited only if best value is being exhibited, rather than time-limiting the whole clause. He is saying that the local population may not be able to judge whether there is best value, but they are able to judge whether they like the level of local government spending.
Personally, I should have gone further. If those powers must be introduced at all--in respect of clause 29, I regret their introduction entirely--they should all be strictly time-limited. My hon. Friend has not gone that far and I understand why. However, it is also necessary for Ministers to understand it, until they come to the realisation--one to which we came very painfully as a result of the prolonged arguments between the Treasury-driven side and the democratically driven side that we went through from the 1980s--that repeated efforts by Government permanently to control local government are no more than a route to perdition. Ultimately, those efforts corrode local democratic accountability and generate their own necessity: because Governments undermine local democracy, they feel more and more inclined to control it and we enter a vicious circle. The new clause nobly attempts--although not as fully as it might have done--to begin to extricate us from that vicious circle.
Ms Keeble:
I believe that the hon. Gentleman was an adviser to Baroness Thatcher when she was Prime Minister and to Secretaries of State for Education while the Conservatives were developing the thinking that resulted in the imposition of more regulations and strangleholds on local government than have ever before been experienced. Is he saying that he was wrong to do that, or is he now into the repentance politics of the Conservative party?
Mr. Letwin:
I am saying that we collectively made a dreadful error in believing that it was necessary to
With that, I shall bring my remarks to a close. I hope that the Minister will recognise that it is a matter of great constitutional importance that he should recognise the force of the argument that there should be a natural presumption in favour of the falling away of any hugely arbitrary power from legislation, and that there is an extraordinarily strong case for time-limiting the powers relating to best value if he wants to give back to local government a degree of democratic accountability that will ultimately be his only source of rescue from the vicious circle into which he is getting himself.
For both reasons, I hope that the Minister will not take the adverse line that I, perhaps improperly, speculated he would take, and that he will come to the Dispatch Box and surprise us all by welcoming this brilliant new clause.
Sir Paul Beresford:
In supporting the new clause, my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) correctly pointed out that many Conservative Members, rather than being repenters, regard the best value aspects of the Bill as the continuation of a trend that started under a Labour Government in the late 1970s. Someone described local authorities as falling into three groups: parasitic, commensal and catalytic. In the late 1970s, the parasitic variety was dominant. Since then, the middle group of commensal authorities appears to have expanded and the catalytic group, which all Governments have tried to encourage, has slowly increased.
To set the scene, let me go back to the days ofthe Conservative Government's dealings with local government, in the 1980s and early 1990s. There was a trend of considering not only the financial aspects of local government, but, I remind the repenters, the way in which local authorities organised and ran their services. We introduced the Audit Commission and the citizens charter as the means to encourage local government to move forward. Many local authorities failed to improve: they continued to ignore the fact that they were not providing any value, let alone best value, and to plague local residents both financially and through the quality of services.
When I first arrived in this country, I lived and worked in areas such as the east end of London which had appalling local authorities--I shall ignore their political complexion, but most hon. Members will be able to guess. Those authorities imposed on local people huge council taxes--or rates as they were then--plundered local businesses and provided appalling services. The next
stage of attempting to force local authorities to examine their services, which best value also attempts to do, was the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering, which was remarkably successful.
Having set that scene, the next scene we come to is the best value scene. Best value appears to many of us, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon, to be the next stage in the process I have described. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) is going one step further. He is saying that we should look further ahead and accept that there are an increasing number of catalytic local authorities--to use the original description--for whom new clause 5 is the right approach.
The Minister has said time and again that we must have faith in local authorities. She also said that we should have faith in her. I can take a limited step forward with regard to local authorities, but I have no faith in her or her Government's approach. A number of local authorities are best value authorities that meet many of the Bill's requirements without the huge imposition of inspections, procedures and expenditure on consultation that it demands. My hon. Friend the Member for North Essex is giving the Minister the chance to accept that the top 10 per cent. of authorities--perhaps even more than that--should be left alone to get on with their successful operations.
The spirit behind best value is the same as the spirit behind compulsory competitive tendering. Using the reserve powers in the Bill--which involve best value and capping--we will get hold of those authorities at the bottom and lift them to the top. Middle-range authorities can and will benefit if best value is introduced properly. I am concerned that that will not happen and that we are placing a liability on local authorities in implementing best value.
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