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6.50 pm
Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon): May I make a suggestion to the Minister for Local Government and the Regions, who has just left the Chamber? Too often, she makes herself the worst advocate of a reasonable case. Instead of using simple English to explain her intentions, she uses an Orwellian jargon that replaces meaning with slogans. That does not work; it would be better for all of us if she stated directly what she was trying to achieve. We could then understand the good points and disagree with the bad points.
The Minister tried to make a case for change. However, she failed to demonstrate that a new structure was necessary to remedy problems in local government. The new structure will stand as much chance of success or failure as the old one. Structures are not always at the heart of a problem--it is the way people make them work. She failed to show that the existing structures--in the hands of people of efficiency and good will--could not deliver her results just as well as new structures. People who were not efficient, or who did not have good will, would make just as much of a mess under the new structures as they would have done under the old ones.
How should we judge the Bill? We need sensible criteria. Does it promote competent, accountable, accessible local government, with a sustainable and reasonable balance between what central Government require and the independence of local councillors? Such a balance must be achieved. We all know that the Government have requirements and that local government aspires to greater independence. Sensible government will find a way in which those two forces can come to an arrangement.
It would be helpful if we had a clear idea of the Government's view of that relationship. However, their view is disguised by their curious placatory rhetoric and the use of words such as "modernisation". Modernisation is described as though it were a nirvana that we could achieve. It has become a Government mantra, but the word is devoid of any intrinsic meaning.
Will the Bill help in meeting those criteria? The straws in the wind are not good. In the Budget, the number of specific grants increased again. The Secretary of State for Education and Employment told local councils that they had to use that money for the purposes that he specified--irrespective of the principles of hypothecation. However, now there is a review of local government finance. Perhaps that will tell us a little bit about which way the Government are going.
From one of the new Labour think tanks--the new Labour forum, I think--we hear that there is a flirtation with the idea of abolishing local education authorities. That is all part of the front line first project.
In The Guardian, Sir Jeremy Beecham--who seems to have been under-rewarded in comparison with some of local government's lesser Labour luminaries--stated that the danger of front line first was that
- it masks a real shift of power away from local government and back to control by Whitehall. We could, unless we are careful, be witnessing the strange death of local democracy . . . the fact is that "frontline first" and the general move toward more ring-fencing of resources are pushing relentlessly in the direction of greater central control.
- Downing Street, the Department for Education and Employment and the Department of Health are all expressing interest in radical options to channel funds directly to services without the involvement of local government--so-called "frontline first" funding.
Ideas include giving funds directly to the country's 25,000 schools, and handing care of the elderly to health authorities.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and his advisers believe attacking councils is a vote winner. There is strong and persistent spin coming from Downing Street that Mr Blair wants results and sees local government as bureaucracy standing in the way.
The central problem is that of prescription by central Government. All parties are to blame for that. If it helps hon. Members, I shall say "mea culpa"--as a Local Government Minister, I played my part in that process. We have seen prescription of the means of service delivery and of methods of assessment and testing--with an emphasis on outcomes. There has been a move from compulsory competitive tendering to best value. Those are not opposites, but a continuum--the use of different methods to achieve the same outcome. The prescription is the same.
There has been a move from universal and crude capping to the use of specific and much more severe forms--if the Government choose to exercise the powers that they have taken. There has been widespread creation of inspectors--the new commissars of local government. Many local councillors are now more preoccupied with passing the test with the inspectors than the test with the electors. Under the prescription that is so prevalent, perhaps the inspectorate is in danger of taking over from the electorate.
The Bill has contradictory aspects. There is a credit side. The general power--used sensibly, in the hands of reasonable people--will be of benefit to the community and will enable people to enlarge the partnership that is at the heart of local regeneration. Obviously, the attempt to bring order to ethical standards is important. If we can sort out and clarify the allowances system so that it is transparent and there is common agreement as to what is reasonable, we shall have done local government a service.
However, there is a debit side. The first element of that is the prescription of structures, and the wholesale condemnation of the existing arrangements. It was interesting that the Minister said that she was not an ideologue, but that the present system was insupportable. If that is not an ideological statement, what is? The present system is dismissed, without finding out whether it can be changed or reformed.
An amendment to make that reform possible was tabled in the other place. We hear that moves are afoot to introduce a famous fourth way--I suppose that will be better than the third way. It will be interesting to see
whether a way can be found to give the present system an internal rejuvenation, and whether the Government will be receptive to that. It would be a pity if there were only three choices on the menu.Another element on the debit side is the curious methodology for referendums. I do not like referendums, especially those with a 5 per cent. threshold and no floor for the number of participants. A 5 per cent. threshold is pretty dismal. However, if the electorate are not sufficiently responsive to the need for change, if that need does not well up in their breast, the Government will take power to cause it to well up by requiring a local referendum. However, at that level a referendum would be a tool of coercion--as the Government are well aware.
The Bill contains ambiguities--for example, on the possibility of more frequent elections. In the original Green Paper, the Government referred to the imposition of annual elections--presumably, they did not want councillors to sleep easy in their beds at night, because they would have to keep looking over their shoulders at the electors. The Government retain the power to impose elections by order, although the method is not specified in the Bill.
If the Government really do not want councillors to sleep easy--if they really want to introduce an instrument that, they hope, will threaten the monolithic majorities in certain areas--there is an obvious answer. They should introduce proportional representation in local government. That would do the trick--whether we like it or not. That would deliver the result far more effectively than the Government's clumsy proposals.
There could be ambiguity in the relationship between directly elected mayors--if we take that route--and directly elected service chiefs. That is possible under the Bill. I cannot imagine a greater recipe for incoherence than to have people with separate mandates pursuing an allegedly common policy. I cannot understand how that would deliver joined-up government--one of the preoccupations of the Labour Administration.
As others have said, it is difficult to imagine the role of councillors in scrutiny mode. All parties have problems attracting candidates to local government. If we are honest, we must admit that we all scratch around to find candidates for certain wards. We all win seats in uncontested wards where we have difficulty in putting up candidates. If I tried to persuade someone to stand as a councillor by saying, "Come on Fred, stand for the council--you'll enjoy being a scrutineer", rather than by saying, "You're going to run the council", I should not be greeted with the spontaneous enthusiasm that I normally expect when I ask people to do something on behalf of the party. If we divide the process up between the deciders--those on the inside track, backed up by the officers--and the scrutineers, who will service the scrutineers? There would be a real difficulty.
There is one aspect of the Bill that I am inclined to support even though I realise that I may not be wholly on-message. I am sympathetic to the idea of directly elected mayors. London was a damn silly place to start; having an elected mayor in London who will enjoy fewer powers than any directly elected mayor elsewhere was a pretty silly way to test the concept. I do not think that I will feel a great deal better governed when I wake up on 5 May, whoever has won the election and however I have resolved my personal difficulty about whom to vote for
as my second option. I rejoice only in knowing that the Prime Minister probably faces a greater difficulty deciding whom he will vote for as his second choice.Perhaps, at last, we have a chance to reverse the tide of centralisation that is symbolised by the number of leaders of councils who are now in this place. I can see several sitting on the Labour Benches, and there are no doubt some on the Opposition Benches, too; they have migrated to this place. However, the day that people migrate from this place to local government because they think that that is where real power lies, we will know that we have at last brought about a mechanism that can challenge the complacency and centralising tendencies of Government. On the whole, that would be a good thing, and I am anxious that we should achieve it.
However, the political parties will all receive a nasty shock. People who stand for the post of mayor will not just seek a party mandate; they will want a much wider appeal that goes beyond their party. They will all be off-message, as has been demonstrated by events recently in London. Because they will be held responsible for all services, even the ones that they do not control closely, their necessary tendency will be to seek more power so as to bring reality into line with perception. That will involve interesting chemistry. They could seek more power over education. Policing is another obvious example. The man or the lady seeking to be a tough mayor will want to be able to control the police.
The process might be inconvenient, but it is a lot more persuasive than the Government's regional agenda, which is dying on its feet. Its pale ghost--a Banquo's ghost--will appear tonight in the form of the proposal for the Standing Committee on Regional Affairs. Elected mayors could turn out to be the sorcerer's apprentice for that legislation. Once they are unleashed, the Government will find it awfully difficult to put them back in their box. That is why they are a rather good idea.
There will be many unanswered questions. How will an elected mayor relate to elected councillors, and what will their relative powers be? Are we moving towards a gubernatorial system in relation to service inspectors and the role of the mayor? For once, this is an experiment that is worth carrying out.
The Bill offers some possibilities. We can improve it in Committee, and I hope that the Minister does not approach that with the attitude that a light is behind her and that she can stonewall all the questions that are asked. With the majority at her disposal, she will be perfectly able to do that. Instead, I hope that she realises that we all want local government to work, and that in the past, all parties have not delivered to local government the conditions in which it can thrive as it should if we are true believers in representative democracy. As we are in the House, we should at least believe in that.
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