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7.3 pm
Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow): I enjoyed the speech of the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) rather more than I did that of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman), who opened the debate for the Opposition. He spent 20 minutes trying to tell us that the Tory party was the defender of local government democracy, but it gave us the poll tax, rate capping and, for those of us who were in local government in the 1980s, year after year of cuts in powers
and spending. When we consider the disillusionment in local government, we must remember that a key issue is that of powers. If people do not believe that local government is capable of delivering anything or if those in local government are not able to deliver what they want, that will be a source of much disillusionment.I want to concentrate my comments on those parts of the Bill that deal with structures. However, much in it is welcome. In particular, I welcome the changes on functions and the ability to promote economic, social and environmental well-being that appear in part I. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Minister said that that will be a duty and not just an enabling power. The abolition of the surcharge is long overdue and I was glad to hear her show in her opening remarks the same strong commitment that she has shown on many occasions in debates on the subject of the repeal of section 28. I welcome the fact that she insisted that that would happen.
I have no difficulty with the idea that we should consider the possibility of structural change in local government. The key questions are what form that change will take and who will decide how it is carried out. To what degree will decisions be made at a national, as opposed to a local, level?
Irrespective of whether there have been experiments in some local authorities, the Bill proposes something very new and different. It proposes the complete separation of the executive function from the scrutiny function. Councillors will have executive powers that they will exercise personally, and that is a completely new concept. If I have understood clause 11(7) correctly, it appears that a range of people with executive powers might be appointed, rather than elected, to the new positions. We are moving to something that is untried and untested in our political system. We must recognise that in the proposals for the executive functions.
Some of the proposals are based on arguments about the failings of the committee system in local government. Sometimes, I have felt that that has been turned into the argument that local government has failed consistently for years. I have seen many of the faults of the committee system and I have spent many unhappy hours with sub-committees of sub-committees and gone through all the processes and time that it takes to do something that appears to be relatively simple. However, let us consider what local government achieved 20 years ago. Innovations for equal opportunities took place in local government, not central Government, and the Greater London council introduced a policing committee. That idea was attacked then on the ground that local authorities in London should have nothing to do with the police, but it is now being implemented.
Local authorities did much innovative work on economic redevelopment and on the relationship between the regeneration of estates and economic development. That all happened in local government, and it involved much more innovation than many central Government Departments can claim to have introduced over the past 20 years. I wonder why we need to be so prescriptive in the proposals. Why must we insist on a separate executive and why is it not possible to consider alternative models? I do not argue that change should not be made or that we should not adapt to changing circumstances.
Many questions have been asked about the mechanisms involved in decision making and the role of the scrutiny committees. In many local authorities--it is not true in all; it depends on their political composition--the system is likely to be based on a one-party cabinet and a scrutiny committee that is subject to the rules on political balance. Therefore the scrutiny committee will be made up of a majority of members from the majority party on the council and the cabinet will be made up entirely of members of the majority party. How will the scrutiny functions operate and what will be the role of an opposition councillor on such a committee? I suspect that the scrutiny function might involve rather more political polarisation than often happens at the moment in the committee structures of local government.
Some hon. Members have discussed the possibility of there being two types of councillor. I have no illusions about all councillors having equal influence over events, because anybody who has been on a council knows that that is not true. I spent 17 years on a local authority, as a back bencher, as a committee chairman, in opposition and as leader of the council, so I have seen it from all aspects, and I have no illusions about the different influences of those positions and the power relationships between them. At the end of the day, however, in each position I, like any other member of the council, had one vote in any of the council's significant policy decisions.
If we are to have councillors whose primary role is as a member of a scrutiny committee, there is an important question about the resources for those committees, which was raised earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). Resources are not mentioned in the Bill. We know that the effectiveness of a Select Committee in the House depends on its members and, in particular, on their personalities. Those of us who have served on Select Committees recognise that they are seriously hampered by a lack of resources to do their work and the small number of people who work directly for them.
What will be the situation of local authority scrutiny committees when we move away from the experimental arrangements that have been set up in some places and completely separate the executive function from the scrutiny function? Who will service the scrutiny committees? Will a council officer be able to give advice to the executive and then go to the scrutiny committee and suggest how it might question the executive? That is not realistic.
Will working for the scrutiny committee be an attractive job for a local government officer? Will a junior officer go to the committee and say, "By the way, you really ought to question what the housing department has been doing and what it has suggested to the executive"? We need to examine how we can provide scrutiny committees with independent resources and people to work directly for them, rather than being dependent on others for their jobs and careers so that they will not want to upset someone when doing their work for the committee.
Dr. Lynne Jones: I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and there are many dilemmas to face in how we go about making changes without increasing costs. We need closely to consider the scrutiny role and, in particular, the committees' powers to call witnesses and demand that they answer questions correctly. We need to be clear about those responsibilities.
Mr. Gerrard: My hon. Friend makes the critical point that the powers of the scrutiny committees need to be spelt out. Why will they not be able to initiate or propose policies in certain circumstances? The support that they receive will be critical to their effectiveness.
There has been much discussion about how members of scrutiny committees will function, but little discussion about the effect of the structural changes on local government officers and how they will work in relation to the executive and the scrutiny committees. We need to give that some thought because if we are to make these changes, we want to make them work. We want the scrutiny committees to have teeth and to be able to operate sensibly and efficiently; otherwise, they will become second-class structures and be seen as repositories for people who are not considered fit to be in the executive. If that happens, the system will start to fail.
The other issue that was raised earlier, on which I want briefly to comment, is secrecy and private meetings of the executive. That is a recipe for creating suspicion. We do not expect Cabinet meetings in Downing street to take place in public, but I should think that during several Governments' time in office, many decisions taken in private in the Cabinet have been regretted when the public reaction has become apparent.
We must tell councils to have executive meetings in public and to make agenda papers available in advance. It is not good enough to put that in guidance, because some people will totally ignore it. If we do not do that, we will contribute to poorer decision making. People should know in advance what will be discussed, and members of the executive will be alerted to matters that are likely to create a problem. It will also make it easier for the executive to change its mind. It is easier for us all to change our minds before we have announced our decision and put it into practice than to do so afterwards. I therefore hope that we will consider transparency and openness, and recognise that there is a significant difference between providing transparency after a decision has been made and providing it before it has been made.
We have discussed the problems that might arise and what would happen if there were an emergency. Most councils have provisions in their standing orders to make decisions in an emergency; that is not an insoluble problem. We all recognise that certain issues on the agenda, particularly to do with individuals, must be dealt with in private. Transparency is even more important when individuals, rather than groups, hold executive power.
Although I have concentrated on concerns about the Bill, the number and scale of amendments needed to make it work, to make the system open and to ensure that the scrutiny committees have the power and support that they need are not that great. I hope that we will consider those details, because I am sure that we can improve the Bill so that it will deliver what we all want--a better and more efficient system of local government.
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