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Mr. Andrew Turner: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Matthew Green: I will not because I am going on—not yet for quite so long as the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge.
I also want to touch on rural areas, as hon. Members might imagine given my constituency. The Government have introduced the term, "rural-proofing". I welcome it, but they need to show what it means. I shall give an example from my constituency. We have a community—Bishop's Castle—that hit the highest level on all the Countryside Agency's sheets of the most deprived areas. The people there have been trying to get together a sports and arts facility, which is much needed because anyone in Bishop's Castle has to make a 20-mile round trip to get to one of those facilities. The Government have so far failed to find any route to help to fund that facility. Bishop's Castle is in a rural regeneration zone and has objective 2 status, but such facilities do not meet any of the necessary funding criteria, although, quite frankly, people are deprived by not having them.
In rural areas, social exclusion for the young and elderly is very much dictated by the complete lack of transport provision. Many parts of my constituency have no bus service, and some of them have a bus service that comes once a week. That shows the level of the problem. How can people enjoy a coherent lifestyle if they are reliant on that?
I want to finish by considering what the Government need to do to improve the quality of life for local communities. As I have said before, local problems need local solutions, so the Government need to devolve as much power as possible to local communities. They need to take power from Westminster to the regions and local councils. That decentralisation will empower local communities and allow them to make the choices and decisions that work in their areas. None of us has a magic one-size-fits-all solution, and if people pretend that they have, they are, quite frankly, barking mad.
We also need to revitalise local democracy. Proportional representation for local elections—we hope that it will be introduced in Scotland shortly—would have a major impact, by ending the monopoly one-party states that we see in local government, and that can be said of all parties.
Siobhain McDonagh: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Matthew Green: I will not give way because I have taken some time and I am now winding up.
The Government also need to enable the provision of first tier councils—community councils—where they are wanted, even in urban areas. If people decide, perhaps in a local referendum, that they want a low-level council, let them have one. My constituency is entirely parished—there are first-tier councils throughout my constituency—but other hon. Members will have none in theirs. Very often, such councils can be the most effective way to deliver local solutions.
Finally—this has been touched on—what will really make a difference to the quality of life of many people in our local communities, particularly pensioners, is giving them extra income in their hands. Scrapping the unfair council tax and replacing it with a tax based on ability to pay would give those on low incomes more money. The Conservatives introduced the council tax in 1991, and the fact that their spokesman has said nothing about it confirms that they still support the council tax. They obviously still think that it is a fair tax. Council tax is no longer sustainable, and we have heard the Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire say that that it is approaching the level of unsustainability.
The Government are now considering local income tax as part of the balance of funding review, but the day after that was announced by the Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire, the Prime Minister announced in his monthly press conference that the Government will never introduce local income tax. The Deputy Prime Minister and all the Ministers under him are clearly open-minded about local income tax, but they have already been overruled by No. 10, saying that they cannot do it. I would very much welcome the Minister clarifying in her winding-up
speech whether the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would be able to persuade No. 10 that local income tax should be introduced if the balance of funding review recommends it.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Limited time is available to the debate, which covers a broad canvas, as has been acknowledged. I hope that not all hon. Members whom I call will wish to cover its entire breadth.
2.35 pm
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was indeed going to commence my remarks with the observation that the title of the debate could be treated not as a subject but as a coat hanger on which various coats could be placed, so as long as hon. Members put at the end of each metaphorical coat the words "the quality of life for local communities". In that respect, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) did not disappoint. Indeed, he covered a huge area on that basis.
I should like to talk not just about the quality of life in local communities, but about the role of Government in enhancing it. Of course, as the hon. Gentlemen reflected, that is a huge subject, encompassing the health of our environment, the planning and organisation of our cities, the investment that we might make in sport and culture, the way that we deal with the housing needs of our population and the way that people can transport themselves around to get to those amenities, and so on.
I very much welcome the debate, broad ranging though it may be, because it signifies the coming together of joined-up government. Addressing the quality of life in local communities is, frankly, something that, historically, Governments have not done, and it is still fair to say that it is regarded as something of a fluffy issue; it is not really the stuff of high politics. Governments of the right traditionally have not addressed the issue. They have agreed that the market will sort it out and that the role of the Government is to maintain basic order, to hold the ring or, to extend the metaphor slightly using Roy Hattersley's telling phrase,
- "to hold the ring while the biggest and best trained boxers beat the smaller and less trained boxers to a pulp."
As we have heard this afternoon, bricks and mortar are very important. Whether we have a roof over our head counts rather a lot in our quality of life. If we have a roof over our head, whether we can have locally available to us a doctor's surgery, a post office, amenities for entertainment, shops and so on also count. Even if we have all those, whether we can get to them matters too—for example, people may not have cars.
Mr. Hammond: Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that perhaps quality of life is a better indicator
of how Government should distribute funding than some of the cruder underlying indices? For example, that measure that would recognise explicitly that people living in materially more affluent areas of the country might also suffer some downsides from living in those high-pressure, economic growth areas. That seems to be something positive that we can reach for in the debate.
Dr. Whitehead: If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, he might be pleasantly surprised. Rather than responding to that point in particular, I hope to develop my argument a little.
The design of our communities is very important, but other intangible factors are at work, governing the quality of life in our communities. For example, the health of our communities depends not only on the important building blocks of the physical arrangement of the environment, but on the less tangible world of the provision of public goods. I refer to goods in the sense that they are goods, instead of bads. That is often a fragile raft. Sometimes communities with relatively poor physical provision of amenities can thrive, whereas others with better provision can occasionally flounder, and who can be said to have the better quality of life thereby?
Communities that flourish will, for example, be those with a high degree of what we might call social capital—the glue that binds people together; the richness of community associations; the web of sports clubs, allotment societies, mother and toddler groups; or even more informal social contacts that enhance mutual support and improve the quality of life in those communities.
I recently met groups of semi-randomly invited constituents to discuss quality of life. Among many other topics in the discussion, I asked them one central question, which could be considered as a positive or a negative: what one thing would most improve the quality of their life if they consider that they have a good quality of life; or what one aspect of their life that they might lose would most damage that quality of life? Those who consider that their quality of life might improve tend to mention specific things that might help: for example, accessibility of services. Those answering the negative questions, however, say that the biggest single thing that would reduce their quality of life would be to be suddenly deprived of their friends, neighbours and community.
Where do Governments come into this? It seems to me that they come into it in a number of ways on which I believe our Government are beginning to gain traction. First, there is the question of bricks and mortar, which is a contentious issue in itself. It is not enough simply to provide: we need to think publicly about how to provide and in what way we provide. My mind was cast back to an interesting statement made in 1929 by the architect Le Corbusier:
- "We must never . . . lose sight of the perfect human 'Cell', the cell which corresponds most perfectly to our physiological and sentimental needs. We must arrive at the 'house-machine', which must be both practical and emotionally satisfying and designed for a succession of tenants. The idea of the 'old home' disappearing and with it local architecture, etc., for labour will shift about as needed, and must be ready to move, bag and baggage."
It is interesting to look at a number of research projects into how communities can be seen to work in terms of how urban areas are designed. A study in San Francisco made a clear correlation between the location of particular houses, the number of friends and social contacts that inhabitants of those houses had and the extent to which those houses could be involved or less involved in their communities. Houses that were, for example, on the edge of dual carriageways or in the middle of busy intersections had less social contacts, whereas houses that were designed in areas where community interaction was possible had much higher levels of social contact and interaction.
That brings me to an apparently ephemeral although important issue, certainly in terms of the debate on antisocial behaviour: trust in communities. It is interesting that the Government's strategy unit document on social capital considered, perhaps curiously, that measuring the degree to which people trust strangers in communities might be a good index of the extent to which communities work. It is interesting to make international comparisons of responses to the question, "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you cannot be too careful when dealing with people?" As a nation, we come badly down the list—31 per cent. of us answer positively to that question, whereas in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Canada, more than 50 per cent. of people answer positively to that question. There are also substantial differences within the United Kingdom in terms of who answers positively to those questions.
In that context, work on ensuring that people feel safe in their environment and are able to trust people and use amenities in their communities without being in fear of their personal safety or being afflicted by neighbours from hell, is important. It seems to me that the underlying idea of much work on antisocial behaviour is not simply to stop antisocial behaviour but to build a more positive aim: to ensure that there is trust within communities and that people are able to go about their business and make use of their communities, therefore enhancing publicly the quality of life in communities, because people are not too afraid to use community facilities in the first place.
It is interesting to consider in that context the Palo Alto experiment, which took place a little while ago in America. A number of researchers left a number of cars with the bonnet up—or, as they would say in America, the hood—in different parts of America. They then observed how long it took before the car was taken to pieces. In some of the six different locations, the car was taken to pieces within two hours. In Palo Alto, however, not only was the car not taken to pieces but, after two days, when the researchers got thoroughly fed up with hiding behind a bush watching the car and came out and drove it away, the researchers were reported to the local
police on the grounds that they were acting suspiciously. That sort of index of how communities work, whether they work well and whether there is trust and safety in communities, is vital in relation to discussions of how Governments can make a change in the quality of life in communities.Of course, the role that Governments have under those circumstances is different from the traditional one of doing things and making things happen. Instead, the role is one of capacity building, providing opportunities for communities to work, supporting communities when they do work, making sure that measures are available for communities to build and sustain themselves, and making sure that those work. It is also about ensuring that the needs of the environment and the people are held in balance. When we debate the question of building more houses, is the issue simply that we should not build any more houses in certain places because the quality of life of particular people will be degraded? Alternatively, if we are trying to build communities as well as housing estates, does such a public good require a public discussion about how it works?
The rewards in terms of better public health, community cohesion and less crime, which underpin and support the capacity building of communities in terms of their social capital, are considerable. They are not easily measurable by traditional means, however, and certainly not by numerical targets, which some have attempted to use. Such projects and programmes are perhaps also unattractive to Governments because the results do not turn up in six months, they do not give good headlines, and they take many years to turn around and change communities. I commend the Government, in relation to their communities programme and other proposals, on resisting the temptation to opt for short-term gain and on investing in the long-term future in making these changes to how communities work and how they do so effectively.
It is essential that Governments go down this route, because unless we find ways of supporting and building capacity in our communities, and of joining up government to do it, the inevitable consequence is the Le Corbusian vision of the isolated worker and individual—in their community but not of their community—simply going about their business and not doing anything else with their lives. It seems to me that communities are the heart and the stuff of life of our country, and supporting them, thereby enhancing the quality of life of those communities, is an essential role for Government to undertake.
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