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1.30 pm
Mr. Michael Heseltine (Henley): I listened withsome scepticism to the Deputy Prime Minister's rather overblown assertions about the benefits of the constitutional reforms that the Government intend to extend to local government. I should have thought that a certain modesty might have attended upon his judgment of the consequences of their constitutional reforms of the past two years. I very much doubt that when the Government introduced an Assembly in Scotland they anticipated that Labour would not control it. The inevitable consequence of the present circumstances is that on the next economic downturn it will be controlled by the Scottish Nationalists and the United Kingdom will face a major constitutional crisis.
I read with incredulity references to making the constitution for local government more accountable. We have an Assembly in Wales, but when it passed a vote of censure on a Labour Minister, where was the accountability? It was dismissed as though it were of no consequence whatever.
As for the House of Lords, the Government's action was one of political spite. There is no constitutional reform; they have simply decided to get rid of the hereditary peers and replace them with a committee. The virtue of the committee was that it enabled no decision to be taken about an alternative or any reform. We all know--especially those of us who listened to the late Enoch Powell and Mr. Michael Foot--that there is no reform that the House will pass that will create a credible House of Lords, as any such reform would deny the powers of the Commons. The Government can therefore only deal with the hereditary peers and face up to the fact that there is no constitutional integrity in any proposed reform, as we will find in the not too distant future.
I should have thought that those arguments would weigh in the mind of the Deputy Prime Minister as he tried to persuade us that we would benefit from his innovations in local government. In London, the situation is farcical. Everyone knows that the Labour movement wants the hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) to be mayor. It is quite evident that he carries the overwhelming support of the Labour movement. So what is his crime? Why are we going through this charade? [Interruption.] The Deputy Prime Minister is quite right to leave at this point, but I am sure that he will consult Hansard because I am about to explain why the Government do not want the hon. Member for Brent, East to be mayor.
The hon. Gentleman has committed the ultimate crime: he says in public what the vast majority of Labour Members believe in private. His only crime is living up
to--and owning up to--the essence of what the Labour party is all about, and that has to be stifled to ensure that London does not get the choice and the man that the bulk of the Labour party supports as the potential candidate. So all the stuff about accountability and constitutional reform turns out to be ill-judged, short-term and not thought through. I therefore approach the overstated claims of constitutional reform in a mood which is a great deal south of zero when I hear them being repeated today.
I shall concentrate on two lines in the Queen's Speech about the reform of local government. Of course I am well aware that there will be legislation to introduce directly elected mayors. I should now like to make what might broadly be called a loyalty pledge to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). I agree with every single word of his speech today, with the exception of the passage about directly elected mayors.
In my view, the proposal at least to experiment with directly elected mayors is long overdue. First, we have too many councils. When we were in power, we had to face the need to continue the process that has been under way in this country since the 1960s to rationalise the number of councils so as to reflect modern conditionsand the sophistication of contemporary services. My colleagues in that Government, the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales, decided that they would go straight to unitary authorities and that they would prescribe them by law. I believe that they were right to do so, and that that is the only way in which we shall achieve the desired results.
In England, for all sorts of political reasons, the decision was to set up a local committee to examine the matter area by area. The proposal was controversial and ran into the ground, but I advise the Government that the relevant legislation is on the statute book that would enable progress towards unitary authorities to take place. Such a structure is necessary for a modern system of local government. It is what obtains in Scotland and Wales, and in all the large metropolitan areas of the country.
Secondly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find candidates to stand as councillors. That is not a problem particularly for the Conservative party--all parties are finding it difficult to find men and women of the necessary calibre to become councillors. The reason is self-evident: increasingly, competitive pressures mean that it is difficult for people to deliver, on a part-time basis, the intensity of service that the job today requires.
However, all hon. Members know that local government is of massive significance to the fabric of our society. It delivers a range of services that are fundamental to the quiet and decent enjoyment of a civilised society. Therefore the inevitable question arises: how does one create the accountability that will deliver the services with a degree of local discretion while at the same time carrying out national priorities? That is the dilemma that we must resolve.
Running a major city such as Leeds, Newcastle or Birmingham is more than a full-time job. The chief executives appointed to lead the official side of council work are paid, on average and broadly speaking, more than their peer group of local citizens. Certainly, the amount that they receive is in line with the earnings of the more senior people in their peer group. Yet the council leaders, whose job of leading such cities is as sophisticated and testing as any job in government--with
the exception of the most senior Cabinet Ministers--are supposed to give their full-time commitment for remuneration that is at the very opposite end of local community norms.
There is something crazy about that situation. The remuneration of council leaders does not reflect the need to attract the men and women--already engaged in full-time careers--who will give a positive lead in identifying, and being accountable for, the dynamism of Britain's great cities. That makes no sense. Priorities are topsy-turvy when officials earn dramatically more than their political masters.
To get the men and women whom we need to run the councils we must recognise the scale of the responsibility involved in what is a major undertaking. Moreover, accountability would be best entrenched if those leaders were directly elected. That would give them a local profile--especially in the major cities--commensurate with the quality of the job and the challenge involved.
As I understand it, the Government consider that we should move to experiments of the sort that might be compatible with what I am saying. My anxiety is that, if it is left to local discussion to work out the compromises that would lead to an agreement to centralise power in one directly elected person, an effective administration will never be established. That is because the potential leader, looking forward to the sort of employment terms that I am outlining, would have to reach all sorts of compromises with the other councillors to get them to agree to shift power from the committee structure to him or her. The type of streamlined and effective organisation that I consider it our task to demand would therefore not be realised. We will get that only if central Government set out a framework that the House can debate and legislate for, which would enable us to find out whether it could be made to work in practice.
The next and absolutely essential change that must take place is for central Government to realise how Whitehall suffocates local government officials. All of us who have been in government understand the consequences of the formula-driven distribution of funds from central Government. Each Department distributes by formula certain sums of money as of entitlement--of right--to local authorities. Whether it is housing, social services, education or whatever, central Government hold the purse strings.
At a local level, it is like a barony--the equivalent officials in each authority are looking up to Whitehall and not across to the leadership of their councils. Those officials are much more interested in the word coming down from Whitehall than in a collective concept of how to run the local authority more effectively. That is because central Whitehall prescribes in the minutest detail how they get the money and what it can be spent on.
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